Nokia gets its MWC launches in early

Newly-enlarged networking vendor Nokia has decided to beat the Mobile World Congress rush with four product launches this week.

FastMile is an LTE technology that’s designed to deliver broadband to people having trouble acquiring it the old-fashioned way. It consists of a home indoor router and outdoor antenna, coupled with a specific RAN macro configuration and cloud-based controller running on Nokia AirFrame.

“Nokia FastMile gives operators an exciting opportunity to tap a new customer base and bring the Internet to millions who today do not have access to global communications networks. It’s also a cost-effective way of taking into use underutilized spectrum in rural areas,” said Thorsten Robrecht, head of Advanced Mobile Network Solutions at Nokia.

Staying in the small cell area the Nokia Flexi Zone Mini-Macro Base Station (pictured) is designed to be half way between a traditional small cell and a macro and fill coverage holes. It is also launching Nokia SCORE, which stands for Site Certified for Overall Relative Efficiency, and is a service designed to take the hassle out of small cell deployment in urban areas.

“We have a laser-like focus on driving network evolution towards ultra-dense, multi-connectivity HetNets that are easier to deploy and which can provide a differentiating customer experience for operators,” said Randy Cox, head of Small Cells Product Management at Nokia. “With these innovations, we’re bringing unprecedented RF power to extend the coverage capabilities of our Flexi Zone small cell solutions. This new SC product category will open up new ways for operators to use small cell technology to meet the growing coverage and capacity needs of their customers in urban, residential and rural areas.”

Lastly we have another couple of services designed to make life easier for CSPs. Nokia Pop-up Network is a service designed to offer a temporary boost in coverage and capacity for big outdoor events, while Nokia Geo-Data as a Service combines anonymized 3-D geolocation data from devices with network data to provide insight into network, device and application performance as well as subscriber behaviour.

“With these new solutions Nokia is able to offer benefits to a wide range of non-technical functions within an operator’s business, not just to support network planning and operations,” said Dennis Lorenzin, head of Network Planning and Optimization at Nokia. “For example, the marketing department could benefit from the data insights by finding new ways to generate revenue with targeted offers or by enhancing its brand reputation with optimal service quality at busy events.”