If you spend any time in a developing country, you quickly discover that the majority of Internet connectivity comes via cellular connections. For many in developing countries, a smartphone effectively is their first regular connection to the Internet.
Roughly 87 percent of all broadband connections in emerging markets will be by way of cellular by 2017, according to Alcatel-Lucent forecasts. This is especially true in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the GSMA estimates that Latin America will have the second highest installed base of smartphones in the world behind only Asia Pacific by 2020.
The latest 4G Americas report shows that Latin America added 17 million LTE connections over the past twelve months, a 324 percent connection growth rate and the highest in the world.
Small cells technology is helping operators in Latin America and the Caribbean keep up with mobile broadband demand. Small cells are inexpensive to deploy, and they enable operators to add coverage and density as subscriber demand warrants.
“As mobile data usage escalates, adding small cells has become the popular solution,” noted a recent Alcatel-Lucent blog post on the topic, Latin America’s path to broadband increasingly made possible by small cells. The post noted that small cells are increasingly being used as the primary means for servicing cellular connections in Latin America and the Caribbean, with macro cells adding density in areas of particularly high use.
Alcatel-Lucent should know. The company leads the market in Latin America for small cell use according to Frost & Sullivan. In fact, Alcatel-Lucent has more than 50 percent of the market, and has secured 18 contracts in 13 countries since 2013.
“Small cells are the key to bringing mobile broadband to their citizens,” noted the Alcatel-Lucent blog post. “And as operators move from 3G to 4G/LTE networks, small cells play an even more important role in providing increased bandwidth and capacity needed to support advanced communications applications.”
Leading the way in Latin America and the Caribbean are Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia, with the highest small cells usage. But small cells make so much sense that countries in all parts of Latin America are jumping on the bandwagon.
]]>For large enterprises, small cells make a lot of sense.
Upwards of 80 percent of all mobile usage now occurs indoors, according to Alcatel-Lucent, and enterprise small cells deliver a flexible and economical way for reliable mobile connectivity in-building.
Recently a field trial held at a large financial institution in Mumbai showed the potential of enterprise small cells. Small cells bathed a 45,000-square-foot, all-glass office space with cellular connectivity that replaced an existing DAS and delivered a call drop rate of only 0.87 percent, an increase in average throughput of 42 percent, and a boost in peak throughput of 82 percent, according to a recent TechZine posting, Field insights: Deploying enterprise small cells, that went into detail on the deployment.
Impressively, this was done with the use of only nine small cells.
There were five key takeaways from the field trial that large enterprises should note.
First, don’t forget about macro cell connectivity. It is easy to focus on femto-to-femto handovers and overlook macro cells, but ignoring macro cell connectivity can greatly reduce the effectiveness of enterprise small cells deployment.
Second, the field trial found that IP/backhaul expertise helped the small cells deployment meet all key performance indicators despite the fact that the core network the financial center was connecting with was more than 1,440 km away in Delhi.
Third, the trial found that proper advance planning made a huge difference.
“In the Mumbai enterprise, an early solution design called for using 12 cells across the 45,000-square-foot office space. But the initial design was then optimized upfront, based on network expertise and Bell Labs tools, which eliminated 3 small cells,” noted the Alcatel-Lucent blog post. That’s significant.
Fourth, scalability needs to be kept in mind when it comes to enterprise small cells. Enterprises often need to expand capacity, and not all small cells configurations can scale to meet extra demand later on. But proper small cells architecture can enable scalability as needed.
Finally, the field trial found that reliability should be a point of focus when designing enterprise small cells configurations.
“The most reliable enterprise small cell solutions avoid single points of failure,” noted the Alcatel-Lucent blog. “Each of the nine cells used in the Mumbai financial institution operates independently. That makes sure that any failure is isolated and does not affect the rest of the network.”
Enterprise small cells deployment makes a lot of sense. But the devil is in the details.
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“We know that there’s a new market and new problem here to solve,” said Mike Schabel, senior vice-president of small cells for the wireless division at Alcatel-Lucent. “To handle the expected volume, we would need to significantly increase the number of cell towers used in the network. So we made [base stations] smaller.”
Small cells represent the future of the network for operators. They are cheap, easy to deploy, and can be adapted to deliver the right amount of coverage for an area of heavy use.
Each outdoor version of Alcatel-Lucent’s small cells can cover up to 600 meters and be integrated into bus shelters, sign holdings and other existing street furniture with minimal visual impact. Each small cell delivers up to 150 Mbps downlink per user, and supports roughly 200 simultaneous users.
Small cells interoperate with existing macro tower infrastructure, too, enabling mobile operators to mix the technology with their existing tower setup.
One challenge when it comes to small cells, however, is securing sites to install the necessary small cells.
Alcatel-Lucent has partnered with the world’s largest outdoor advertising firm, JCDecaux, to help make this part of the equation easier. JCDecaux has more than a million assets at more than 3,700 cities and 63 countries, including billboards bus shelters and other outdoor spaces where small cells can be placed.
We’ve been working with companies like JCDecaux to ensure a smooth, simple delivery in new spaces for the wireless industry, by retrofitting into existing street scapes,” noted Schabel.
Amsterdam is one example of the partnership put into practice. Vodaphone used the Alcatel-Lucent solution to dramatically improve coverage in the city of 2.5 million people.
“With Alcatel-Lucent and JDCecaux, we have successfully deployed the small cell technology in Amsterdam, enhancing the network quality of our infrastructure,” said Kevin Salvadori, Vodafone group technology strategy and operations director.
Mobile broadband use will keep growing for years to come. Operators need to ensure that they have the infrastructure to support the growth in demand, and small cells are one way to meet that need.
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Large office buildings sometimes encounter a troubling problem in the form of poor cellular reception for employees. With atriums, business space in basements, internal walls and glass windows, more than one “modern architectural masterpiece” has discovered that workers lose cell coverage when they enter the building.
Of course, there are steps that can fix such problems even after a building is constructed. One of the best options is small cells technology for good in-building cellular coverage.
Small cells enable mobile operators to easily and cheaply add coverage where needed. A single enterprise-grade small cell (100 mW) can cover about 1000 square meters depending on the particular topology of the space, and several can be combined for complete coverage.
In building environments, though, it can sometimes take great expertise to identify exactly where and how many small cells to place for effective coverage. And obviously unnecessary small cells add unwanted capital expense.
When determining small cells setup, three keys should be taken into account.
First, collaborate with the IT department. When operators work with a corporation’s IT department, they can save time and hassle by leveraging the firm’s on-site knowledge, including location, existing power and backhaul facilities.
Second, Determine coverage requirements. Start with an on-site survey to glean a full understanding of the critical areas that require small cells coverage. These can include such places as executive offices, the company restaurant, and spots where workers often congregate. It helps then to estimate the number of users expected to use cellular in each area, and plan for growth.
Third, calculate placement requirements. Operators should optimally balance two aspects of small cell overlap. A good propagation estimate helps avoid overlapping cells, which can cause interference.
When these keys are taken into account, though, small cells technology makes a world of difference for buildings that challenge existing cellular access.
]]>In business as well as our personal lives there are finite resources that gate our activities. The big one that covers both is time which we cannot create more of and hopefully optimize for obvious reasons. In mobile communications the issue is getting the most out of not just the finite but scarce radio frequency (RF) spectrum allocated for service provider networks.
Realities are that in most parts of the world mobile service providers have access to different frequency bands as a result of things like auctions and mergers. Thus, they have a need to mesh their various spectrum assets (i.e., bands and associated carriers) in general. They also must optimize them to meet the insatiable appetite of customers for bandwidth-hungry services such as real-time and streamed video where Quality of Experience (QoE). Indeed, QoE and its extensibility to cover anywhere a customer is located is now foundational for attracting and keeping customers.
The challenges of creating fatter pipes that can deliver the bandwidth the tsunami of traffic headed operators’ ways are daunting to say the least. It is one of the reasons why records continue to be broken at auctions for the spectrum that is being freed up by policy makers. To say the least, getting more bandwidth and extending it closer to the customers has critical competitive implications, and this has become a paramount concern specifically in the now hot race to deploy 4G LTE and now 4G LTE-A (Advanced) services. In fact, there is a need for speed by customers, and a need for speed to deploy mobile broadband services for consumers and enterprises at express speeds ASAP.
A recent TechZine posting, LTE carrier aggregation and the massive capacity challenge, by Hector Menendez, Senior Marketing Manager, Wireless Solutions Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent, as the title says highlight how LTE carrier aggregation (CA) can help mobile service providers optimize the bandwidth they have to meet growing traffic demands and provide the QoE required to be competitive.
As Mendendez explains, “CA lets operators aggregate these disparate chunks of spectrum spanning across different bands by supporting inter-band CA.” This is the most common use for CA as most spectral assets that operators own have been acquired piecemeal over time.” He adds that, “In some markets, many operators are also turning to LTE-TDD as a way of further augmenting capacity of existing LTE-FDD networks…and can use intra-band CA to combine several carriers to achieve higher speeds as a way of differentiating their services.”
Additional Carrier Aggregation Benefits
You might think that on the basis of creating more bandwidth alone that CA would be attractive, but there is more. CA also enables operators to make better use of network resources through load balancing, and as pointed out in the posting can reduce interference and improve network performance via intelligence allocation of resources.
In fact, in many ways CA is like a Swiss Army knife, as the graphic below shows.
Source: Alcatel-Lucent
Menendez concludes that: “Carrier Aggregation represents one of the most cost-effective and efficient way of addressing the capacity challenge and could be the biggest success of all LTE-A features. All indications are that we will see CA go mainstream in the not too distant future giving operators a truly valuable tool.”
That might sound like hyperbole, but given the scarcity of spectrum, the unusual mix of radio assets in most operators’ footprints, the need for speed to satisfy traffic demands in general and customer expectations, and the need to be competitive, Menendez is more than directionally correct. Mobile service providers have a growing sense of urgency to be fast-to-market, fast-in-the-market and best in market and certainly when it comes to getting LTE-A, and other advanced forms of wireless technology into the hands of customers ASAP, CA is going to be a critical part of the equation.
]]>The Law of 80 Percent clearly explains why in-building Internet access currently matters a lot. Mobile data traffic grew by roughly 80 percent in 2014, about 80 percent of mobile usage occurred in-building, and 80 percent of WLAN installations are at risk of not being able to handle traffic loads, according to research by ABI and Gartner.
This is a problem as Internet access expectations shift from coverage to quality and capacity. While some form of Internet access is available just about everywhere, there is a huge difference between good Internet and inadequate capacity.
Enterprise cells and indoor small cells can help meet this demand.
In-building cellular Internet can be addressed by three technologies, according to a recent Alcatel-Lucent webinar, Fact vs. Fiction – The Debate on In-Building Architecture Options that can be found on YouTube. These three technologies are distributed radio systems (DRS), distributed antenna systems (DAS), and distributed baseband (also known as small cells technology).
Each technology has its pros and cons when deployment options are considered.
With DAS systems, the benefits include a neutral host, coverage, and well understood technology, according to the Alcatel-Lucent webinar. But it requires dedicated backhaul, and this limits capacity. It also has a high total cost of ownership due to cooling and space requirements.
DRS is good for very high-capacity situations, such as sports stadiums. It also is an early example of cloud random access network architecture. But it is not a neutral host, and it needs unlimited backhaul.
Indoor small cells are perhaps one of the most useful of the three when it comes to in-building cellular. Small cells are easy to scale, use shared backhaul, and are cost-effective for both capacity and some coverage. Yet, small cells also require RF interference management are not a neutral host and is a relatively new technology.
The right mix of technologies depends on the situation.
For instance, DAS is good for public spaces where there is no operator differentiation. This includes shopping, trains, airports and restaurant situations.
DRS, on the other hand is good for retail storefronts and stadiums, since they allow for vendor and operator differentiation.
Small cells make the most sense for private and enterprise in-building cellular needs due to their cost and scalability. Banks, hospitals, factory building and regional headquarters should consider small cells, according to Alcatel-Lucent.
Whatever technology is ultimately chosen, however, the need is clear: In-building cellular is the current battleground, and the need for adequate quality and capacity is crucial.
]]>It’s a story experienced all the time in cities across the world, and is a major challenge for transit operators in the battle for passengers. When you are wet through and the bus still hasn’t come around the corner, taking the car always feels like the better option.
However, telecommunications technology is helping to readdress this balance. Research has shown that use of mobile apps which show up-to-date and accurate journey information is improving journey experience. Passengers can plan their journey better meaning the wait for the bus is no longer such a drag.
Using a smartphone is also increasingly the way to kill time while you wait. This has had a significant impact on perceived and actual waiting times when public transport is delayed, a real Achilles heel for transport operators. Smartphones allow users to work and interact on the go and constant access to mobile broadband is now expected by urban dwellers.
But with more and more people using data-sucking devices, the pressure on urban communications networks is immense. Indeed 77% of people say they currently experience slow download speeds. You might have a full 4G LTE signal, but the performance of the network is poor, only adding to the frustration of that wet Monday.
Existing 4G networks use macro cells, which are not optimized to provide connectivity suitable for a large number of passengers to access mobile data services at the same time. But there is a way to improve radio coverage. LTE small cells solve the mobile broadband capacity crunch by boosting coverage density and capacity in saturated areas.
While LTE small cells are not common yet, their deployment may about to be as widespread in cities as the humble advertising billboard. At the end of September JCDecaux joined forces with Alcatel-Lucent to speed up the roll-out of connected street furniture. With references including 276 railway transit systems, and 10 of the top 20 airports in the world, it’s an agreement that could have huge implications for the future of connectivity.
Alcatel-Lucent’s small cell technology is suitable for 3G and 4G networks and is simple and quick to install. Crucially it offers a capacity gain two times greater than current macro networks and can reduce demand on macros by up to 70%. Smart cells also offer a 38% total cost of ownership saving over using only macros.
Teams from both companies are now working together to optimize the aesthetic integration of small cells in JCDecaux’s street furniture that are in tune with the urban environment and meet demand for broadband.
So in the smart city of the future, you may not be able to stop the rain, or the bus from being late. But at least your smartphone won’t let you down.
For more information contact thierry.sens@alcatel-lucent.com.
Mobile operators know that small cells deliver efficient, cost-effective wireless coverage since they can be placed anywhere to add or augment service. But while the technological benefits are not in dispute, actual small cell deployment can be a challenge. The very advantage of small cells is also a disadvantage.
That’s because unlike macro cells, small cells require many deployments and agreements with many sites. Instead of one deployment, there are several. This adds complexity, especially with small cells outdoors.
The numbers bear this out. A recent study by Informa Telecoms & Media found that roughly 60 percent of the operators it surveyed said that deployment problems were the biggest challenge with small cell technology.
One way to reduce the challenge of small cell deployment is through a collaborative approach, according to a recent TechZine article by Jean Jones, Director of Marketing, Wireless, Alcatel-Lucent, 3 tips for faster small cell deployment.
“As small cell deployments grow in the next few years,” noted Jones, a “collaborative approach offers a highly effective way to acquire the sites you’ll need. So you can achieve faster, cost-effective deployment on a large scale.”
By collaborating with site acquisition specialists, construction companies, cable operators, systems integrators and other key businesses work as partners, wireless operators can get faster, simpler access to all the resources, skills and expertise they need.
Part of this is looking for site acquisition specialists who are pooling their resources with backhaul facility providers, which can give providers quick access to backhaul and skilled technicians.
Alcatel-Lucent, through its Metro Cell Express Site Certification Program, found that operators who leveraged such specialists were able to speed up their small cell deployments by as much as 40 percent. By using such specialists, operators also can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 20 percent, according to Alcatel-Lucent.
A third way to reduce the challenge of small cell deployment is through the use of pre-approved small cell deployment sites.
“With immediate access to these kinds of qualified sites and assets, it’s quicker and easier to find locations that put capacity close to your subscribers,” noted Jones. “You also save time negotiating with site owners. And you eliminate the effort involved in getting the required permissions.”
Mobile operators know the benefits of small cells. But they also know the pain of small cell deployments. With good collaboration and smart use of existing relationships, however, this pain can be greatly reduced.
]]>Most mobile traffic is consumed indoors, and operators need to get a better grip on serving this market since it is a huge one.
Roughly 80 percent of mobile traffic is now consumed in-building, according to a recent Gartner study, whether mobile bandwidth is consumed in a public space, a shopping mall, or at the office. The total market for in-building services is estimated to be $4.3 billion currently, according to ABI research, and it is expected to grow to $8.5 billion by 2019.
Business leaders recognize the need, too; 72 percent of businesses are interested in enterprise cells that can boost performance on their premises. An Alcatel-Lucent infographic tells the tale.
Source: Alcatel-Lucent (for larger view)
That’s a big opportunity.
Yet mobile operators have several challenges they must face when it comes to in-building wireless.
“Mobile operators have a number of challenges really,” noted Mat Leaver, head of Alcatel-Lucent’s in-building small-cells solutions group, in a recent video. “There is no one size fits all. There’s no standard building; they come in different sizes, they are built with different materials that affect the RF; and they can’t even get their mobile signal in there.”
Alcatel-Lucent has been working on a number of solutions to serve the needs of in-building small cells and enterprise cells.
“We have three real solutions we’re focusing on,” noted Leaver. “We have a distributed antenna system we’ve been working with to really revolutionize DAS and make it more friendly in terms of CAPEX and how much space it takes up in a building. From that, we have DRS [distributed radio systems systems] where we use our metro radio unit and that’s really good for tackling stadiums and high-capacity venues.”
Then, of course, Alcatel-Lucent also has an indoor small-cell solution that offers both 3G and WiFi, enabling providers to offer mobile broadband even in highly congested areas and where buildings limit radio signal coverage.
Such end-to-end services can essentially eliminate in-building challenges such as indoor clutter, network design, RF interference, cell optimization and installation. And if data from Gartner and others is to be believed, this is an urgent need.
Most mobile traffic is consumed indoors, and operators need to get a better grip on serving this market since it is a huge one.
Roughly 80 percent of mobile traffic is now consumed in-building, according to a recent Gartner study, whether mobile bandwidth is consumed in a public space, a shopping mall, or at the office. The total market for in-building services is estimated to be $4.3 billion currently, according to ABI research, and it is expected to grow to $8.5 billion by 2019.
Business leaders recognize the need, too; 72 percent of businesses are interested in enterprise cells that can boost performance on their premises. An Alcatel-Lucent infographic tells the tale.
Source: Alcatel-Lucent (for larger view)
That’s a big opportunity.
Yet mobile operators have several challenges they must face when it comes to in-building wireless.
“Mobile operators have a number of challenges really,” noted Mat Leaver, head of Alcatel-Lucent’s in-building small-cells solutions group, in a recent video. “There is no one size fits all. There’s no standard building; they come in different sizes, they are built with different materials that affect the RF; and they can’t even get their mobile signal in there.”
Alcatel-Lucent has been working on a number of solutions to serve the needs of in-building small cells and enterprise cells.
“We have three real solutions we’re focusing on,” noted Leaver. “We have a distributed antenna system we’ve been working with to really revolutionize DAS and make it more friendly in terms of CAPEX and how much space it takes up in a building. From that, we have DRS [distributed radio systems systems] where we use our metro radio unit and that’s really good for tackling stadiums and high-capacity venues.”
Then, of course, Alcatel-Lucent also has an indoor small-cell solution that offers both 3G and WiFi, enabling providers to offer mobile broadband even in highly congested areas and where buildings limit radio signal coverage.
Such end-to-end services can essentially eliminate in-building challenges such as indoor clutter, network design, RF interference, cell optimization and installation. And if data from Gartner and others is to be believed, this is an urgent need.
In our never ending quest to deliver higher capacity networks and more effectively deliver a true broadband experience to wireless consumers, our industry continuously engages in vigorous debates about new technology, architecture, and processes followed by rapid acceptance and adoption.
I only look to small cells as an example, where the industry has quickly evolved from a macro-centric view that small cells were an unnecessary nuisance, to the current view where they are accepted as necessary for scaling the network and create compelling new opportunities for network optimization, efficiency and applications. With the small cell debate behind us, we have turned to new ones: How should we use unlicensed or shared spectrum? How do we enable a centralized SON layer in the field that works across multiple vendors? How do we integrate small cells with a virtualized or cloud RAN architecture? …and the list goes on.
One debate, which appears to have not yet achieved uniform acceptance and adoption, is around the concept of building multi-vendor networks. I have long held the position that for wireless networks to scale long into the future, it is important to leverage best in class technologies and solutions even if that means allowing for wireless networks to be built with technologies from multiple vendors.
This view most certainly goes against the prevailing model where the network is sub-divided into the RAN and the Core, and everything in the RAN for a given region, country, or circle was provided by a single vendor (mono-vendor). The typical justifications for deciding on a mono-vendor strategy range from technical to operational, but as we move from a macro network to a heterogeneous network, I believe we should challenge these long-held positions.
I’ll admit, I am heavily influenced by reading Christenson’s “Innovator’s Dilemma” early in my career, which cemented in my mind that status quo is often fiercely justified for the purpose of protecting a position, often a financial position, but we should never fear disruption and innovation if it could open a new pathway to something better. I can’t bring myself to believe that our industry will capitalize on our opportunities if we cling to our mono-vendor legacy.
For that reason, I accept multi-vendor, I push multi-vendor, I embrace multi-vendor, and I enable multi-vendor heterogeneous networks. Time and time again, we have proven in the field that technical barriers, like shared carrier, X2 interop, interference management, carrier aggregation, CoMP, SON, and even the up and coming cloud RAN architectures do not present insurmountable technical problems to handle in a multi-vendor heterogeneous network (macro and small cells from multiple vendors). Believe it or not, it can work and it does - surprisingly well. But for it to continue to work, we as an industry have to put this debate to bed and memorialize multi-vendor as the way we are willing to build networks of the future.
Recently, my team supported a hetnet ’Plugfest’ event organised by the Small Cell Forum, in partnership with ETSI, and hosted by the ORANGE Labs in Paris, where we demonstrated successfully that multi-vendor works with our small cell portfolio interoperating with macros from a different vendor, and other small cells working with an Alcatel-Lucent macro. This didn’t surprise me, because we have already demonstrated this repeatedly in commercial networks, but it was great to demonstrate this in a more open setting. I really appreciate the leadership of both the Small Cells Forum and ETSI in promoting multi-vendor networks.
I am proud to say that a number of influential wireless operators, who continuously define and industrialize new wireless architectures, are beginning to support multi-vendor hetnets through their commercial awards. And I am excited to see that new wireless entrants with wireline heritages accept multi-vendor by default, as that was their legacy. However, it concerns me that some still hold true to the mono-vendor story. Wireless operators should have the option to build a best-in-class network using innovative solutions from multiple vendors. As an industry, we cannot afford to stifle our growth.
Outdoor small cells are now widely recognized as a great solution for expanding mobile capacity and coverage. And their use is expected to grow sevenfold by 2018.[1] So here’s the next big question: How can you put these cells where they’re needed, faster and at lower cost?
Maybe you’ve already encountered deployment issues, including difficulties with small cell site acquisition. According to an Informa Telecoms & Media survey, nearly 60% of mobile operators say that deployment problems are their biggest small cell challenge.[2] In other words, operators’ top concerns are not about small cell technologies or products. Instead, they’re about the practical aspects of getting these cells up and running on light posts, utility poles, bus stops, buildings and other street locations.
This blog looks at a collaborative approach that makes these deployment processes faster and easier. Alcatel-Lucent adopted these methods for our Metro Cell Express Site Certification Program. And we’re discussing them here, because this business model earned a top award in the small cell innovation leadership category.
The results so far? Our methods have helped customers speed time to market by as much as 40%. They can reduce acquisition costs 20% through partnering with certified site owners. And they’re providing access to approximately 600,000 available sites all over the world that are suitable for small cell deployment. They also offer faster access to power and backhaul on a large scale, as well as a certified installation workforce.
Easier small cell site acquisition processes
Gaining the greatest return from your small cells investment means deploying at scale and faster than your competition. But the current processes used to identify, survey and approve potential small cell sites can be very time consuming — slowing the pace of your small cell rollout considerably. The issues you face include securing optimal site locations, site costs and acquisition, backhaul availability and cost, power availability and cost, and mitigating interference. In addition, deployments require a variety of critical assets, such as tower sites for wireless aggregation and fiber for backhaul.
Our site certification program grew out of a realization that no company alone can address all the challenges of rapid deployment at large scale. But a group that’s committed to working together can combine all the necessary assets, skills and expertise, as well as an installation workforce — to give mobile operators fast, streamlined access to these resources. That includes providing access to sites suitable for small cell deployment.For example, our program brings together, trains and certifies a wide variety of partners, including site acquisition specialty firms, a leader in outdoor advertising, construction specialists, cable operators in the United States, systems integrators and managed services providers. These partners provide access to tens of thousands of certified installation technicians and hundreds of thousands of outdoor small cell sites, as well as essential site assets. And with Alcatel-Lucent knowledge and experience behind them, they have the know-how to speed operators’ time to market and lower their costs.
Immediate access to qualified sites
How does this simplified process work? For site acquisition, Alcatel-Lucent has access to a large database of sites and related assets, all around the world. They include:
With these kinds of readily available assets, it’s faster and easier to find locations that put capacity close to your subscribers. And you also save time negotiating with site owners.
Quick connections to backhaul and installation technicians
Our program streamlines the next steps of deployment too, by giving you faster access to backhaul and power on the sites you’ve acquired, along with certified installation technicians. For example, our partners can provide distributed antenna system (DAS) nodes and the fiber optics used to connect small cells on utility poles, traffic signals, street lights, roof tops or other custom designs. And they offer access to shrouds, which give you a flexible way to add capacity or make other hardware changes, without new permissions.
To speed and simplify the process further, you get access to a workforce of tens of thousands of certified installation technicians. And our partners provide valuable expertise that’s crucial for efficiency. For example, by understanding the details of local procedures and requirements — such as antenna variables and the number of boxes allowed on a pole — they eliminate the small, time-consuming issues and delays that can easily slow down your small cell rollout.
Our program’s innovative approach is already speeding time to market and reducing the costs of deployment for mobile operators. As the use of small cells grows in the next few years, it offers a highly effective way to acquire the sites you’ll need — and achieve rapid, cost-effective deployment on a large scale.
As leaders in Europe debate whether the EU is “back” during the World Economic Forum, the region is increasingly falling behind when it comes to telecommunications, according to Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes.
“There is a real danger,” noted Combes in a recent blog post on Europe’s digital divide (published in the Wall Street Journal, “that Europe is losing ground in the information era.”
That’s because there is an increasing gap between what the latest smartphones can deliver and what Europe’s telecommunications companies can support due to a price war that inhibits infrastructure upgrades.
“Europe is locked in a vicious circle of competition focused exclusively on price, one that forces operators to reduce their investments and destroys their innovation capacity,” noted Combes. “This type of competition is bad news for a digital Europe and its consumers.”
The digital agenda in Europe needs to be reset by the likes of the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association (ETNO) and others. Telecommunications investment in the order of between €110 and €170 billion will be needed by 2020 if the region is to keep pace with the rest of the world in terms of cellular infrastructure and innovation. Failure could cost Europe €750 billion in lost GDP growth, and as many as 5.5 million highly-skilled jobs for young qualified European graduates.
“That’s a high price to pay for accepting life in a slow-motion telecoms world,” he noted.
What Europe must do, first and foremost, is move to an all-IP network infrastructure, supported by a virtualized infrastructures based on cloud technology.
Combes also suggested that Europe must invest more in applications and analytics and capabilities such as SDN and NFV.
“Today eight out of the top 10 global Internet platforms are American,” he wrote, and the two others are Chinese. “A new model of international work distribution seems to be taking shape in which the profitable operators are in the U.S. and the American Internet platforms are taking most of the residual value in Europe, while the application development centers are in India and the manufacturing is in China.”
Europe led the way when it came to 3G deployment, but now it is being left behind.
To fix the problem, operators need to end a competition model that is only based on reducing prices in the short term. Spectrum allocation also needs to be reviewed, and shared and efficient policies on net neutrality must be crafted to allow operators to differentiate themselves and revive investment.
“We also need to come back down to earth and stop thinking that the telecom sector can continue with 120 operators in Europe, subject to rules and procedures that change from one country to another,” Combes boldly wrote.
If Europe is not to fall too far behind, its digital agenda must tackle the recent decline in telecommunications. Importantly, as Combes stated, it must do so with a sense of urgency and purpose.
]]>The glass can be half empty or half full when it comes to mobile broadband.
On the one hand, data usage is growing at exponential rates, and seems to be no end in sight. In fact, it is projected that by 2017, the monthly mobile broadband usage of the average subscriber will reach 5 GB, according to research from Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs.
On the other hand, the emergence of LTE enables operators to more cost-effectively monetize this traffic demand by rolling out quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees for sensitive data traffic such as voice-over-LTE (VoLTE), as well as other data service packages that until recently did not make sense.
Finding the glass half full from the emerging data storm requires some planning when rolling out LTE, however. Network optimization is not a given. While LTE flattens IP traffic and enables new business models it also introduces new problems. Chief among them is increased network signaling rates.
Signaling rates are much higher with LTE over 2G and 3G systems, according to research from Alcatel-Lucent. Conservative estimates paint the networking signaling load increase at 166 percent with LTE. The reasons for the increase include heightened mobile application use on such networks, chatty apps, device idle-to-active and active to idle transitions and frequent LTE/3G/Wi-Fi/small cells coverage handovers.
To handle this increase, operators must ensure that they have an evolved packet core that efficiently deals with this signal load increase. It needs to be split into a mobile gateway that represents the service edge of the LTE network, and a mobility management entity.
“Gone are the 2G/3G days of setting up a big fat, best-effort pipe, sending everything through and hoping for the best,” noted a recent Alcatel-Lucent blog post By Pat McCabe and Dave Nowoswiat, Product and Solutions Marketing, IP Routing and Transport, Alcatel-Lucent, entitled, Evolved Packet Core: at the heart of LTE’s global momentum . The authors note that, “To meet these data processing and capacity requirements, the EPC mobile gateways (GW) – the Serving GW and Packet data network GW – are best suited to an IP router-based platform – specifically one with separate and dedicated processors for control, packet forwarding and deep packet inspection.”
They further explain that on the mobility management entity side of things, operators need to make sure that they are built with high-performance CPUs in a low cost industry standard computing platform to cost-effectively maintain performance.
The recognition that a beefed up evolved packet core is the way and wave of the future can be seen in recent work done by Infonetics Research who has estimated that the evolved packet core market will balloon to $8 billion by the end of 2017.
Whether operators take the glass as being half full or half empty, one thing is clear: There’s a data storm, winners will be determined by how they handle it and an evolved packet core is going to be a central piece of the equation for success.
]]>Meet the digital nomads, a growing group of heavy mobile data users that's redefining how service providers think about connectivity.
There is a small, but growing, new class of data users amongst us. You've likely spotted one – that man hunched over a laptop at your neighborhood coffee shop, the woman swiping through a tablet in the park, or even that teen on the train whose eyes are glued to a video on his larger-than-average smartphone.
They are the digital nomads. Unlike the hunters and gatherers of the past, these nomads are always connected, regardless of where they are, and their expectations for connectivity have never been higher.
Nomadism isn't confined to an age group or a gender. It's simply a behavior determined by heavy engagement with data using one or more portable devices – someone who is sitting down and concentrating, not just casually checking it on-the-go. It's a phenomenon that's been talked about in the past, but it’s a behavior growing in prevalence thanks to the rise of wireless broadband in public places and the recent explosion of device form factors with which to take advantage of it.
Digital nomads may use any portable device, from a smartphone to a laptop, and likely own multiple, but the device this group of users is most likely to tote around is the tablet.
Tablets are highly portable – they work just as well on the sofa as they do on a train, in a stadium, or at a desk. The tablet category has also grown and morphed since Apple paved the way in 2010. It is now common to see larger-screen smartphones or "phablets" like the Samsung Note and smaller-screen tablets, like the Kindle Fire and, potentially, the rumored, soon-to-launch iPad Mini. Both new categories share the characteristics of the smartphone but have the data intensity of a larger tablet.
As a result, the digital nomad is using several times more data than the average smartphone user. They could be connecting via a home broadband network, a 3G or 4G cellular network via their phone or a data dongle, Wi-Fi, small cells, or some combination thereof. And, while they may not care which network they're on, provided it works well in their current location, the service providers should care immensely.
After all, it's up to the service provider to make sure the network is fast, the handoff is seamless, and the experience is comparable to that of in-home broadband. And, when any of those things fails to happen, it's up to the service provider to have one set of self-help tools and one number to call for support, whether the issue is on the fixed network, mobile network, or somewhere in between.
That's because nomadic users are not "broadband users" or "mobile users" – they are just data users above all else. That's a new way of thinking for many service providers.
Many operators have been busy deploying 4G LTE, filling in capacity gaps with small cell networks and managing offload to WiFi. This is all good, but a further network transformation will be needed to account for wireless nomads as the group continues to grow. Specifically, updates in policy and authentication are required to provide consistency of experience across different access technologies. Also, more sophisticated data plan pricing that takes into account fixed-mobile convergence – not only at the network level, but also in the IT that sits behind the network – would be much more conducive to the nomadic lifestyle.
If service providers are going to deliver the seamless experience and the kind of packages digital nomads really want to buy, there are a quite a lot of implications for the networks and the way they do business.
Luckily, this group also presents a host of new opportunities for service providers. And, just as it took a long time for the first species of nomads that roamed the earth to secure their niche, so the race to keep up with the wireless nomads is just beginning.
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