Nokia partners with Comarch over IoT
Networking giant Nokia has commenced a technology partnership with Polish software vendor Comarch to develop IoT platforms aimed at key industries.
Networking giant Nokia has commenced a technology partnership with Polish software vendor Comarch to develop IoT platforms aimed at key industries.
Small cell provider SpiderCloud Wireless has announced that giant US operator Verizon will commence testing its LTE-U system to deliver in-building capacity.
Dutch operator KPN has rolled out a suite of small cells based on C-RAN architecture after successful trials in Amsterdam and The Hague.
The Small Cell Forum has come up with six new development programmes designed to feed the carriers’ demand for more bandwidth as we head towards 5G
Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri put a stop to rumours suggesting it might re-enter the handset business. But speaking in London at the vendor’s first capital markets day in five years, Suri confirmed the Nokia brand is to be re-licensed to appear on other smartphone makers’ devices.
Nokia Networks has announced it has bagged a 3G contract form Bharti Airtel in Mumbai, west Bengal and Bihar, which according to the Finnish infrastructure provider marks India’s first dual band, dual carrier 3G implementation.
Broadband solution specialist Genesis Technical Systems claimed copper holds unrealised potential for both fixed and mobile operators, saying it is “time to tap into technologies that turn copper into mobile gold.” The Canadian firm claimed the economics of small cell deployments makes fibre less attractive than enhanced copper solutions.
Networking vendor Alcatel Lucent opened up is campus at Villarceaux, just outside of Paris, to showcase some of the projects its R&D arm – Bell Labs – is working on. Principal among these is its focus on small cells, including new partnerships with Qualcomm, JC Decaux and Accenture.
Small-cells-as-a-service provider Cloudberry Mobile, this week revealed that it is just about ready to switch on what will be the world’s first carrier-neutral small cell network in Norway.
The run up to MWC has seen several equipment vendors gearing up their small cell strategy as operators move on from plugging coverage gaps to boosting their service offerings with the technology.
Swedish vendor Ericsson will unveil a managed services business model later this month during MWC that will see it take ownership of small cell infrastructure on behalf of operators. The Small cell as a Service offering is designed for high capacity environments that also experience peaky demand, such as sport stadiums, allowing operators to ‘fill in’ for capacity needs without densifying the macro network.
Too many operators still consider small cells an engineering-led solution for plugging network holes rather than a business-led solution for launching new services. This is the warning from small cell specialist ip.access, backed up by research commissioned by Yankee Group.
Heavy users of mobile data services are ten times more extreme in the LTE era than on 3G, with just 0.1 per cent of mobile users in both developed and emerging markets consuming over half the LTE downlink data. This compares to one per cent of 3G users consuming half the downlink data.
Small cells are a vital part of the future broadband network, Alcatel Lucent corporate CTO Marcus Weldon told delegates at Broadband World Forum in his keynote address. Weldon noted that mobile computing is now the dominant form of computing due to the success of tablets, which introduced just a few years ago, are now processing more data globally than desktop PCs and laptops.
US operators will begin trials of an indoor coverage solution provided by Ericsson in Q2 next year, based on a small cell product that weighs just 300 grams. While it has not officially named a first trial partner, a comment provided for the product’s launch release puts AT&T squarely in the frame. Sebastian Tolstoy, head of business development and strategy for Ericsson’s radio division told Telecoms.com: “As you can see from the release the first operators we’ll go to market with are American operators.”
Silicon vendor Qualcomm has outlined plans to drastically increase capacity in mobile networks. The vendor believes that, by using its technology, operators will be able to provide a thousand times more bandwidth capacity than today, while also reducing costs.
Almost all operators (98 per cent) believe that small cells are essential for the future of their networks, according to a report from Informa Telecoms and Media. The research firm’s quarterly small-cell market status report also highlights significant new technological progress with operators announcing major public access deployments and the first dual-mode LTE/3G devices.
The global number of small cells now exceeds the total number of traditional mobile base stations, according to research published this week.
Chipmaker Qualcomm has strengthened its small cell portfolio by acquiring a firm that specialises in modem and system design for base stations and high-speed wireless backhaul infrastructure.
Public access small cells will outnumber macro cells by Q4 2012, according to a report from Informa Telecoms & Media.