Huawei. Photo: VCG

Chinese telecommunications equipment giant Huawei on Wednesday signed a cooperation agreement with Hungary's East-West Intermodal Logistics and British telecommunications operator Vodafone, in a joint effort to build Europe's first smart railway hub managed by a 5G private network to be empowered by Huawei.

The move, which comes as some other European countries are still weighing whether to use the firm's 5G technology due to oppositions from the US government, could enable Hungary to lead the way in 5G industrial solutions ahead of other hesitant countries, Chinese experts said.

According to a report from the Xinhua News Agency, the project, which covers an area of 85 hectares in Fenyeslitke, will become Europe's largest intelligent multi-modal railway hub and Europe's first railway port to use a 5G private network for internal communication and technical equipment networking management.

Vodafone Hungary and Huawei's Hungary subsidiary will provide a 5G private network for the project. 5G technology will be used to remotely control fully automatic gantry cranes for intelligent loading and unloading operations. It will be able to handle 1 million standard containers per year after project completion in the first quarter of next year.

Cai Lingyu, CEO of Huawei's Hungary subsidiary, said at the signing ceremony that this is the first time that Huawei has used its world-leading 5G technology to empower the traditional railway logistics industry in Europe and realize remote control of gantry cranes through 5G technology. 

With 5G technology's high transmission speed and low latency, company staff can complete their work remotely by sitting in the central control room with the help of 5G back-transmitted high-definition video, Cai said.

"The use of 5G in railways or ports might still be a new practice in Europe, but that's already been widely used in various scenarios in China. Therefore, the Chinese tech giant is the ideal partner for the Hungarian railway hub to achieve an intelligent transformation," Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Beijing-based Information Consumption Alliance, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Xiang said that the decision to include Huawei is a "far-sighted" one to help it lead other European countries in the 5G era. "We expect more European countries to follow suit."

The deal also indicated that the Chinese tech giant, though under a strict crackdown by the US, will not give up extending its business in overseas market.

Huawei recently increased recruitments from Europe and the US. At the end of September, company founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei publicly stated that he would specifically look for "outstanding talent" from all over the world. 

The latest well-known participants include French mathematician Laurent Lafforgue, the winner of the Fields Medal in mathematics. A former BBC news executive also announced his landing job at Huawei some days ago.