Huawei to help build smart winery in Canada

Huawei and its partners have made a commitment to explore 5G intelligent agriculture applications in Canada - including at a winery.

At a memorandum of understanding signing event hosted by Willow Springs Winery in Stouffville, Ontario, on Wednesday, a number of groundbreaking "smart agriculture" wireless technologies were demonstrated.

The high-speed internet technologies demonstrated by Huawei Canada and its partners Global UAV, ARHT Media, Telitek and Hub6 include drone-powered precision vineyard inspection, green backup power for winery operation, a real-time microclimate monitoring system, premium drone delivery service, collector wine library, and interactive augmented reality holographic communication.

"Working with Huawei and our other technology partners we have been able to create a truly intelligent winery, making innovative use of wireless applications to operate more efficiently and produce wines that are drawing notice from around the world," said Sheriden Huang, CEO of Willow Springs Winery. "We will be operating tools that rely on 5G technology and yield even better outcomes and greater wines."

The current early-stage innovations use wireless 4G technology, and the parties pledged that they will explore even faster and more powerful applications by using 5G technology.

"Huawei's vision is to bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world," said Eric Li, president of Huawei Canada. "The work being done here can one day be used in wineries everywhere. In fact, I believe they will be common right across the agricultural sector."

According to Li, there are more than 200,000 farms in Canada. Intelligent agriculture can help them connect and operate to meet their full potential, and each hectare represents a single point of connection.

"The result will be the ability to predict and prevent disease, to ensure crop rotation and irrigation with exact precision, to collect data drawn from small sensors to uncover huge efficiencies and far greater results. It's the future of farming," Li said.

As one of Huawei's partners, Global UAV displayed how its 4G-connected drone technology applies to vineyard inspection. CEO Michael Burns said the company has cooperated with Huawei on a variety of projects, and the plan is to use the 5G technology to build a smart winery tourist destination.

"For the long run we would be using the technology to monitor the growing Canadian ice wine culture," said Burns. "When we build up the center, people will not just be able to communicate with us, but also communicate with those in other parts of the world. So really we want to build it as a tourist destination."

However, Burns said the current 4G network has limits in terms of the speed to support the data that drones produce.

"The 5G network in Canada will really open the opportunity for a lot of new technologies. More data, higher resolution, much faster drone speed, so it's looking into a window into the future where we might be," Burns added.

"Huawei is dedicated to rural and remote connectivity. We envisage a future where every farmer in Canada has the opportunity to use smart agriculture solutions and devices on their land and in their facilities, no matter where they live. That's why we have committed to working with our carrier partners to help connect every Canadian to high-speed internet by 2030, including the far north," said Chris Pereira, director of public affairs, Huawei Canada.