On the morning of February 2, an ice ferry loaded with over 20 tons of ice blocks and 5 crew members got lost on its way to Weizhou Island in the Beihai Sea. The fog was thick , the waves were high, and the north wind blew stronger and stronger. All of a sudden,  the engine stopped working due to the horrible weather. The boat had lost control, and some crew members were injured. The lives of the crew were in great danger.

A meager hope lay on a CDMA mobile phone one crew member had, and fortunately, the crew could still have clear voice communication with the people on the land . A rescue effort was immediately carried out by Weizhou government, Beihai MSA, China Unicom Beihai Branch, ZTE Nanning Service Center and other parties.

The primary task for the rescue was to locate the wrecked boat which had no navigating equipment. The only glimpse of hope was to implement remote positioning via China Unicom’s CDMA system. China Unicom’s Equipment Control Center began to search signals through ZTE CDMA base station system and was able to locate the boat somewhere 20 km southeast of Weizhou Island. By 1:30 am on Feb 3, the wrecked boat along with the rescue boats safely arrived in Weizhou Port, and the wounded were quickly sent to a hospital. The rescue came to an end, successfully.

Since June 2003, China Unicom Beihai Branch adopted ZTE’s C++ super-far coverage solution to cover the area of ocean from Fangcheng to the North Gulf of the Beihai with CDMA network When the network was completed in August 2003, CDMA signals effectively covered an area in the Beihai Sea as wide as 30 sea miles (about 56 km). In the 7-hour rescue incident, ZTE C++ Network served as the rescue center, providing stable and clear telecommunications while accurately locating the wrecked boat; otherwise, the rescue would be impossible.

As early as late 2001, based on the existing network construction and planning of China Unicom, ZTE introduced the turn-key customized “C++” network solutions which consist of super-far coverage solution, wide coverage solution, indoor coverage solution and integrated services solution. ZTE’s turn-key solutions aimed at improving network coverage and QoS by virtue of low-cost, high-speed, wide-coverage and feature-rich data services. In addition to Guangxi, ZTE’s super-far coverage solution had a wide range of applications in the developed coastal provinces such as Guangdong, Hainan, and Fujian, to solve the problem of network coverage in the coastal regions.

Also, ZTE’s integrated services solution can deliver diversified value-added data services such as LBS (Location-Based Service), SMS, WAP gateway and portal, and MMS/MME to meet the requirements of subscribers. In the Beihai rescue incident on February 2, ZTE CDMA system applied its unique location positioning function to help China Unicom Beihai Branch successfully rescue 5 crew members on a lost ferry.

Presently, China has a coastline of over 32,000 km, with more than 6,500 islands and 160 harbors. And there are millions of people in the southeast coastal regions who are engaged in sea farming. The characteristics of the unpredictable environment and strong mobility of people caused those coastal regions to have relatively high requirements for the quality of communications. In particular, those coastal regions are in urgent need of better network coverage and data services, such as location-based service and customized information. CDMA system enjoys many advantages due to its unique features in wireless location service, for example, soft handoff, BTS’s provision of GPS information, and determining the distance based on the delay of chips, etc. As a leading LBS system provider, ZTE is cooperating with China Unicom in the area of industry applications, and has deployed services in industries concerning fishery,  port authority and police administration.