In an exclusive WinWin Live interview hosted by Telecom Review Group at MWC Barcelona 2025, Sergey Melnikov, Chief Technology Officer of Ucell, and Eric Bao, President of Huawei Wireless DIS Product Line, shared their perspectives on consistent indoor and outdoor experiences, which help them maintain their industry leadership.
Ucell: Top Operator Maximizing Indoor Network Opportunities
Last year, Ucell achieved the number one ranking within Uzbekistan’s mobile market. Boasting over 9.6 million mobile subscribers, Ucell has established its footprint and made a significant contribution to improving Uzbekistan's national rating.
In line with this, the company has successfully launched indoor networks. Ucell recognizes the importance of indoor networks as according to industry data, 80% of traffic is generated indoors. “Last year, Ucell widely deployed 5G network in eastern Uzbekistan to attract premium-class users,” stated Melnikov.
These include key locations such as metro stations, shopping malls, and offices, which served as good preparation for providing a better 5G user experience (UX).
With this in mind, signal loss at high frequencies (HF) is particularly significant. “Therefore, high-quality indoor networks are necessary to ensure a quality and stable experience, both indoors and outdoors,” continued Melnikov. “This increases customer satisfaction and strengthens Ucell's leading position.”
In the future, Ucell aims to focus on deploying 5G-powered indoor networks at high-value locations, such as the Tashkent Airport and New Tashkent City.
To deliver on this commitment, in terms of network planning, Ucell ensures a consistent experience for both indoor and outdoor networks via external macro stations that support 64T64R solutions. To achieve high performance in valuable locations, it is necessary to build 4T4R networks that can support fast and reliable indoor network coverage.
Huawei’s Digital Indoor System
On the other hand, Bao emphasized that the mobile AI and 5G-A eras are coming now. “Mobile scenario is extending from traditional people-to-people connection to people-to-things connection and things-to-things connection. Apparently, mobile AI brings brand new business opportunities to the operators and end users,” he explained.
However, this evolution presents challenges in the network’s technology. For instance, a mobile phone requires an uplink speed of 20 Mbps and 20 ms latency while smart vehicles require 500 Mbps and 1 Gbps uplink speeds and meter-level positioning. Moreover, humanoid robots require 20 ms latency and 500 Mbps uplink speeds.
Since most user traffic is generated from indoor networks, Huawei has invested in Digital Indoor System innovation to support operators’ business success, both now and in the future.
Huawei LampSite X is an innovative 5G indoor digital solution that can support all spectrums, from sub-1 GHz, up to sub-6 GHz and mmWave. Smoothly evolving with operators, it can support four operators’ spectrum at the same time, five bands, and 12 TRX in one radio, with full bandwidth, resulting in one of the most integrated modules.
When it comes to software innovation, Huawei’s distributed massive MIMO can achieve three-to-four times more capacity than the industry level. As a result, the experience could improve by more than 30%.
Finally, Huawei has also invested in passive Internet of Things (IoT) and positioning innovation to bring new business opportunities to the futuristic things-connect-things scenario.
“To sum up, Huawei’s Digital Indoor System is going to be kept simple for the customer and we’ll leave the complexity aspect to ourselves. As a result, we are confident that we can support the business success of all operators with a perfect indoor network, including Ucell in Uzbekistan,” concluded Bao.
Adding to the conversation, an artificial intelligence agent—WinWin—shared how network planning and construction help maintain leadership in the 5G era.