Huawei’s All-Optical smart-home showcase unleashes a new era of home connectivity in Africa

Huawei successfully launched its All-Optical Intelligent home showcase on the sidelines of the Africa Tech Festival in Cape Town. Powered by Huawei’s latest Fiber to the Room Solution (FTTR F50), it exemplifies how easily modern homes with complex layouts can achieve consistent coverage with innovative customer-friendly adhesive fibre cables.

Set in the picturesque and history-rich Bo-Kaap neighbourhood, the intelligent showhouse is kitted out with a range of fibre broadband applications within a sleek contemporary South African home. More than 100 IoT devices in the home – from smart lights, speakers, kettles, cameras and sweeping robots – showcase how the FTTR solution can transform ordinary homes into digitally capable spaces that people will cherish.

Once installed the FTTR solution ensures that speeds of up to 1Gbps are achieved consistently across the home’s Wi-Fi network, creating a seamless digital experience for the whole home. 

In lounge areas: Automated lighting, temperature controls and smart cleaning robots can be created to bring peace of mind to living areas. 

Entertainment rooms: The FTTR solution guarantees stable high bandwidth connections enabling entertainment rooms to be fitted with 4K and higher resolution displays for movies or Virtual Reality gaming, without freezing or lost frames. Next-generation cloud gaming is also enabled by this solution. Visitors to this intelligent showroom experienced the latest game Black Myth: Wukong with zero latency.

Home offices: Thanks to FTTR F50 intelligent offices can be created to enable live streaming to colleagues. Smart conference rooms are also enabled with the solution’s support for 360-degree video and ultra-wide monitors. The high speeds and reliable connection make for better remote working experiences for out-of-office professionals.

In the nursery: The strong and consistent Wi-Fi connections provided by FTTR F50 make for easy monitoring of children’s activities in the home through intelligent nanny cameras and temperature sensors in these bedrooms.

In the kitchen: Smart lighting configurations as well as kettles and air purifiers are enabled to make meal preparation more enjoyable and seamless. While cooking, smart speakers can be activated by voice, delivering low latency, immersive sound experience that sets a desired atmosphere.

This stunning intelligent showhouse can run up to 128 IoT devices on a single network at the same time. The enterprise alternative can have up to 300 simultaneous connections. Huawei’s innovative adhesive fibre cable, called the Self-bounding Transparent Fiber, seamlessly fits into the design aesthetic of any home and can easily be installed without the need for power tools and home remodelling.

Furthermore, the LinkHome app enables homeowners to manage and troubleshoot a range of home activities and services from remote locations, including more efficient use of power, and easy to control from a mobile smartphone.

The showroom exhibition was a great success, with more than 150 guests attending to witness the fast, stable and seamless roaming Wi-Fi in every room. Network operators, business leaders and media from South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Eswatini, and Namibia engaged with this future-forward showcase, sparking conversations about the opportunities it could unlock in their home countries.

Extensive Wi-Fi coverage for everyone in the home usually comes with cumbersome wiring and the need for drilling to run cables through ceilings and along walls. FTTR F50 makes stable connections available at a consistent speed no matter where you are in the home, without the heavy lifting, with almost impossible-to-spot, thin, transparent cable. 

Sub-Saharan Africa is increasingly seeing an increase in demand for fibre-to-the-room solutions. People want more than entry-level speeds of 10Mbps to 50Mbps as several countries officially launched Gigabit services. In places like South Africa, Mauritius and Kenya, users know that higher speeds will deliver better experiences, however, in-home Wi-Fi coverage is also a challenge many contend with. Huawei’s FTTR, with a main and a sub FTTR set, eliminates the issue of Wi-Fi dead zones bringing coverage to every corner of the house, its cottages, home office and even pool houses.

If the fibre to the home provides 100Mbps or 1Gbps speeds, then the FTTR F50 lets users make the most of these speeds in every room without any compromise. Thanks to this showcase, more operators are acknowledging and planning to go to the market with this solution as they believe FTTR is a key driver of Africa’s digital transformation.

Showcase Video: