Chinese technology company Huawei has joined forces with Botswana’s Debswana Diamond Company and announced the first 5G-inspired smart diamond mine project.
The partnership was announced at the 2023 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
The diamond mining company uses the Huawei-enabled system at its Jwaneng open-pit diamond mine as it began in December 2021.
It involves a private eLTE network that enables Debswana to connect more than 260 pieces of equipment — including drilling rigs, excavators, heavy trucks, and pickup trucks — enabling interconnection between the mine’s production, safety, and security systems.
MoneyWeb reports that before deploying the eLTE network, Debswana’s system was highly limited in terms of coverage and, being a public network, was subject to interference.
This was pointed out by Debswana’s head of information management Molemisi Sechaba, who added that the limitations meant the mine’s data couldn’t be transferred stably in real-time.
Sechaba explained that the improved stability provides significant benefits for Debswana’s operations. The first is efficiency.
“We are convinced that we did not make a mistake,” Sechaba said, referring to Debswana’s choice of Huawei as a partner.
He explained that the ability to transfer data in real-time makes its equipment more efficient, increasing yield and reducing operating expenses.
Sechaba was joined by the country’s minister of communications, knowledge, and technology, Thulagano Segokgo, and Huawei’s mining business unit CTO Xu Jun.
Segokgo expressed the government’s gratitude for such a system, as Debswana is a significant contributor to Botswana’s GDP.
In addition, Sechaba explained that 30% of Botswana’s GDP comes from Debswana’s operations and that the mining company contributes more than 70% of the country’s foreign exchange earnings.
Being 5G-oriented, the hardware used in the system — such as the base stations — supports network upgrades to 5G.
This means that Debswana can implement technologies like autonomous driving in the future, thanks to the higher bandwidth and lower latency offered by 5G networks.
Speaking for Huawei, Jun said the tech company is “committed to using its strengths in ICT technologies such as 5G, cloud, AI, and IoT to continue developing similar systems.”
