Huawei commands a distinctive position within the connectivity sector, offering a comprehensive suite of solutions tailored to the mining industry. Although the company has encountered regulatory obstacles in North America, Australia, and Europe regarding 5G infrastructure participation, its influence in the mining sector is expanding substantially in other regions, particularly across Africa, South America, and Central Asia. During the Exposibram 2025 conference held in Salvador, Brazil, Theodore Shao, Vice President of Mining, Oil and Gas operations for Huawei in Latin America, discussed the company’s technological offerings and their applications in modernizing mining operations.

Addressing Regional Connectivity Challenges

South American mining faces significant infrastructure obstacles, particularly in Brazil where major mining operations are situated in terrain characterized by hills and dense forests. Cellular network operators struggle to maintain consistent coverage in these remote areas. The establishment of permanent 4G LTE or 5G network infrastructure presents additional complications, as existing environmental permits for mining operations do not typically authorize construction of fixed cellular towers or associated land clearing. Aviation regulations further complicate matters due to tower height requirements.

Huawei has developed a practical response through its Cell on Wheels (COW) technology—portable base stations mounted on vehicles or trailers that can be rapidly deployed without requiring permanent infrastructure. These systems incorporate telescopic masts, antennas, and power generation equipment. Rather than demanding extensive land preparation, COW stations can be positioned on existing access roads or small clearings. Multiple COW units can be merged to create continuous coverage across operational zones, providing flexibility for extending networks to satellite mining areas without substantial capital expenditure.

Practical Implementation at Vale’s Gelado Project

A notable implementation of this technology exists at Vale’s Carajás operation, specifically the Gelado project, which processes high-quality pellet feed from tailings previously deposited since 1985. The installation represents Latin America’s first end-to-end remote mining control solution utilizing a private 5G network. Five COW stations encircle the dam operation area, with the network employing both 4G and 5G infrastructure. The 4G component supports MCPPT voice communication and emergency backup, while 5G facilitates remote video transmission and operational data. The system enables remote operation of amphibious excavators and future deployment of fully electric dredgers.

Solar power and energy storage supplement locations with inadequate grid connectivity. The dual-band approach ensures connectivity reliability and operational capacity, with all data remaining within the mining zone for enhanced security. Vale maintains complete operational and maintenance authority over the network through Huawei’s MAE-Light Network Management System.

Expanding Applications and Technology Integration

Huawei is actively engaging with mining companies throughout Brazil and Chile regarding COW deployment. While Chile’s Atacama region permits permanent cellular structures, COW systems still offer advantages through rapid deployment in extremely remote areas. Future applications may include fully autonomous equipment operations, particularly as mining operators adopt flexible autonomous haulage systems with onboard intelligence capabilities.

Beyond COW solutions, Huawei provides comprehensive connectivity options addressing transmission efficiency. These include campus switches establishing future-resistant networks, passive GPON systems utilizing fiber optics for high-speed internet access, and WiFi6 infrastructure for underground operations.

Peru’s Underground Mining Success

Peru, where Huawei has operated longest, recently deployed South America’s first FTTM plus WiFi6 solution for underground mining operations. This integration incorporates GPON equipment, WiFi6 systems, and campus network management platforms. The optical network configuration includes underground Optical Ring Passive systems and surface Optical Distribution Networks enabling signal conversion through Optical Network Units. Huawei operates seven LTE 4G networks across Peruvian open pit mines, including Toquepala, Toromocho, and Cuajone, with two recently upgraded to 5G capabilities.

Strategic Partnership with Codelco

In July 2025, Huawei signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Chile’s Codelco to explore connectivity solutions, energy systems, and artificial intelligence applications. The agreement encompasses underground personnel tracking, safety enhancement in large operations like El Teniente, and high-precision location tracking integration with connectivity infrastructure. A private 4G network installation was completed at Codelco Andina in 2024.

Advanced Autonomous and Teleoperation Systems

Huawei’s autonomous driving technology prioritizes onboard truck intelligence, enabling obstacle identification and real-time path adjustments shared across vehicle fleets. The system combines LiDAR, 4D millimeter-wave radar, and camera-based sensing feeding data to the Mobile Data Center, an onboard intelligent platform controlling operations through 5G telematics units.

Shovel teleoperation technology employs AI-enhanced sensing delivering 4K video at 60 frames per second with sub-180-millisecond latency, providing operators with 150-degree viewing angles and cm-level positioning accuracy exceeding 95 percent. Realistic force feedback enhances operator perception, while automated one-click loading functionality streamlines operations.

Comprehensive Network Architecture

Huawei’s F5G (Fifth Generation Fixed Networks) framework represents unified fiber-based solutions encompassing WiFi6/WiFi7, switches, firewalls, SD-WAN, 4G/5G, optical systems, and cloud services. This integrated approach eliminates requirements for multiple infrastructure providers, reducing complexity and improving security while lowering investment costs. Passive GPON networks prove superior in harsh mineral processing environments characterized by dust, temperature extremes, and humidity, requiring fewer active components and consuming less energy.

Interest in Digital Twin technology permits simulation of mining and processing operations, enabling Huawei’s Pangu Mine Model to apply artificial intelligence algorithms to specific operational scenarios, learning from digitized human expertise and integrated sensor data.

Huawei’s Portable 5G Towers and Fiber Networks Take Root in South American Mines

Huawei Technologies is accelerating the rollout of private 4G and 5G networks across South America’s copper- and iron-rich hills, entering 2025 with new mobile base stations at Vale’s Carajás complex in Brazil and a July memorandum of understanding with Chilean state miner Codelco to pilot artificial-intelligence-driven automation. The Chinese vendor says its mix of portable “cell-on-wheels” towers, fiber-to-the-mine (FTTM) optics and WiFi 6 access points can overcome the region’s rugged topography and limited public telecoms coverage, giving miners a secure way to run remote or autonomous equipment and to meet stricter safety targets.

Huawei’s growing presence matters because reliable connectivity has become essential to next-generation mining. Excavators, haul trucks and underground personnel tracking systems now depend on uninterrupted high-bandwidth links. Yet South America’s biggest mines often sit thousands of meters above sea level or deep inside rain-forest concessions where conventional cellular carriers see little commercial incentive to lay fiber or erect steel masts. By filling that gap—largely free of the geopolitical scrutiny that hampers its 5G business in North America, Europe and Australia—Huawei is carving out a lucrative niche in the global digital-mining market.

For global miners, the shift is more than a technology upgrade. Early deployments suggest portable base stations can be moved as pits migrate, 5G latency is low enough for tele-operation, and unified management platforms reduce cybersecurity risk by keeping data inside the concession perimeter. Analysts add that Chinese vendors are also bundling cloud hosting and AI models, potentially compressing a decade of incremental modernization into a few years.

Portable Coverage in Brazil’s Dense Forests

Brazil illustrates the scale of the challenge. Giant open-pit operations such as Vale’s Gelado project lie within the forested hills of Pará, outside the reach of most public cellular signals. Environmental permits seldom allow permanent towers, and aviation rules restrict structure heights. Huawei’s workaround is the Cell on Wheels (COW): a trailer or truck fitted with a telescopic mast, antenna array, power generator and optional solar panels. Multiple COWs can be positioned along existing haul roads, switched on within hours and later relocated as the pit expands.

At Gelado, five COW units form Latin America’s first end-to-end remote-control mining system on a private 5G network. The 4G layer handles mission-critical push-to-talk voice calls and emergency fallback; the 5G layer streams high-definition video from amphibious dredgers and transmits operating data to a centralized control room. Vale retains full ownership of the network through Huawei’s MAE-Light management software, ensuring that proprietary process data never leaves the mine’s fiber ring.

A Regional Product Suite

Huawei contends that its breadth of offerings—spanning COWs, fixed campus switches, passive Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) equipment, WiFi 6 routers for underground workings and cloud-delivered machine-learning models—sets it apart from traditional telecoms vendors. Industry outlet International Mining has reported that the company “is uniquely positioned in the connectivity market for the range of solutions it can offer to the mining sector, particularly in South America” where hilly and forested terrain complicates conventional roll-outs International Mining.

Underground Optics in Peru

Peru, home to some of the world’s deepest block-cave copper mines, is already using Huawei’s FTTM plus WiFi 6 package. The system combines underground optical rings with ruggedized access points that can withstand dust, humidity and temperature swings. Seven Peruvian open-pit mines, including Toquepala, Toromocho and Cuajone, run on Huawei LTE networks; two have been upgraded to 5G, demonstrating that the same physical fiber backbone can support higher bandwidth with a software change.

MoU with Codelco Opens Chilean Front

Chile, which produces roughly a quarter of the world’s copper, is the next frontier. In July 2025, Huawei and Codelco signed a memorandum of understanding to “explore cutting-edge solutions in connectivity, AI and automation for mining operations in Chile” International Mining. Initial focus areas include personnel tracking in the El Teniente underground complex and an AI-assisted high-precision location system at the Andina division, where Huawei completed a private 4G network in 2024. The partners will also evaluate renewable energy back-up for remote base stations, addressing Chile’s move to decarbonize its mining fleet.

From Autonomous Trucks to Digital Twins

Beyond basic connectivity, Huawei is pitching an “intelligent mine” stack that bundles on-board truck computing, millimeter-wave radar, LiDAR and 4K cameras with a 5G telematics unit. Data flows to a mobile data center where algorithms optimize haul-routes in real time and relay hazard alerts across the fleet. Shovel tele-operation uses the same 5G backbone to send sub-180-millisecond low-latency video to an operator 10 km away, with force feedback actuators giving the impression of a joystick in the cab.

All of this feeds into the company’s Pangu Mine Model, a digital-twin platform that learns from sensor streams and historic process data. By simulating how ore characteristics or weather shifts affect throughput, dispatchers can test scenarios virtually before changing a real production schedule. Although digital twins are still in pilot phase, early adopters in Brazil say they reduce unscheduled downtime on crushers and conveyors.

Security and Cost Calculus

Unified fiber-based architecture—known internally as F5G—means fewer active components in the pit, lower energy draw and a smaller attack surface. Mining companies wary of multi-vendor patchworks appreciate that a single dashboard can monitor switches, firewalls, SD-WAN endpoints and wireless nodes. Huawei argues this also trims capital expenditure: passive GPON splitters carry multiple wavelengths over one strand, so new cameras or sensors can be attached without laying parallel cables.

Regulatory Landscape

While geopolitical bans in the United States and some EU states prevent Huawei from supplying national 5G cores, the mining sector operates on private spectrum or unlicensed bands under industrial permits, insulating projects from consumer-network rules. Miners still weigh the risk of future sanctions against the immediate benefits of an end-to-end package. So far, Latin American regulators have imposed no specific restrictions on private mining networks built with Chinese equipment. Suppliers note that most data remain inside the concession, and encryption keys stay with the owner.

Competitive Field

Huawei is not without rivals. Ericsson promotes its own Private 5G for Industries portfolio, and Nokia has sold LTE networks to Rio Tinto’s Australian mines. Yet both firms typically expect a local carrier partner, whereas Huawei often delivers a turnkey solution, including ruggedized handsets and pre-configured switches. That combination, industry analysts say, lowers integration overheads for miners with limited in-house IT teams.

Outlook and Implications

If pilot programs in Brazil, Peru and Chile scale as planned, South America could become a proof-point for semi-autonomous haulage corridors, AI-driven maintenance and real-time environmental monitoring. Faster deployment of COWs may shorten the gap between pit development and first ore, while fiber rings future-proof operations against the next upgrade cycle—be it WiFi 7 underground or 6G above ground. For host governments, digital mines promise better safety tracking and lower carbon intensity, aligning with national sustainability targets.

Success hinges on skills transfer. Vendors will need to train local technicians to manage private cores, optical splitters and cybersecurity protocols. Codelco’s MoU envisions joint research centers and scholarships, an approach other state-owned miners could replicate to ensure long-term support.

In sum, Huawei’s incremental but persistent advance into South American mining shows how niche industrial applications can sidestep the geopolitics hampering public 5G markets. By matching portable base stations to the continent’s rugged topography and by coupling fiber backbones with AI toolkits, the company is positioning itself as the de-facto integrator for a generation of digital mines. The next 18 months—when Vale’s Gelado moves toward fully remote dredging and Codelco pilots AI-assisted tracking—will reveal whether that promise translates into sustained operational gains for the region’s biggest commodity exporters.

Sources

• https://im-mining.com/2025/12/08/huawei-in-south-america-unified-networks-for-the-life-of-mine/
• https://im-mining.com/2025/07/08/codelco-collaboration-with-huawei-looks-to-connectivity-ai-opportunities/