LTE Awards 2012 – Category 5 Preview: Most Significant Development for Commercial LTE Network by an Operator

Now in its third year, the annual LTE Awards, in associated with Telecoms.com, are now established as the leading event of its kind. The LTE Awards are designed to recognise, celebrate and reward the great innovations that are being made in the industry, and this year are co-located with the LTE World Summit 2012, taking place on the evening of the 23rd, at the El Xalet, Montjuic, Barcelona. The event is sure to be a glamorous and entertaining evening for all participants.

The winners, from a varied selection of ten categories and 48 shortlisted companies, will be picked by an independent panel of judges, consisting of leading industry experts, during a two week assessment process.

To whet your appetite for the event here is a preview of Category 5: Most Innovative LTE Commercial Launch.

This award recognises the most innovative LTE commercial launch. The judges take into account the success of a network launch and what makes it stand out from others.

Huawei Technologies

In August 2011, Huawei and Wireless City Planning (WCP), a SoftBank group company, commenced deployment of the largest commercial LTE TDD network in the world – the first time LTE TDD has been adopted for a large scale commercial network deployment. The deployment uses technology such as SFN (Single Frequency Networking), 4x4MIMO, and the world’s smallest and lightest broadband RRU (Radio Remote Unit). This supports 40MHz bandwidth, offers downlink data speeds of over 400Mbps and increased site capacity by up to 1.2Gb/s. Each cell site can support 2,000 camping subscribers, 1,000 of which can be active at the same time. Further commercial launches are planned for parts of Tokyo and Osaka in November 2012. By March 2013, the deployment will provide 99 per cent of the population in Japan’s cities (an estimated 114 million people) with ultra broadband services made using Huawei’s LTE TDD solutions.

Nokia Siemens Networks

Nokia Siemens Networks and SKY, the largest cable and satellite TV operator in Brazil, launched an TD-LTE network using the 2.6GHz frequency on the 13 December, 2011. It is a unique 4G TD-LTE deployment with wifi an integral part of the solution. It includes one of the industry first TD-LTE based wifi wireless routers for consumers. The NSN technology includes its FlexiPacket Microwave transport platform and Evolved Packet Core (EPC), part of its Liquid Core architecture. In addition, NSN has provided its CPEi-lte 7212 wireless router. Nokia Siemens Networks has also provided its NetAct network management system to provide consolidated configuration, monitoring and network optimization. SKY plans to roll out services to new customers in other cities of Brazil, and other countries in Latin America, in the future.

Samsung Electronics

Samsung launched a network in with a major South Korean operator in January 2012. The network was located in the capital city of Seoul. As of March 2012 it cover 26 cities in Korea with about 28,000 cell sites and the ultimate goal in 84 cities covering 90 per cent of the country’s population. The Samsung network uses its SmartCloud technology and is the first LTE network that uses cloud computing. There are two key differences over other networks: centralizing hundreds of base station sites into one BTS site, and network-wide optimisation by connecting virtual server to all the radio units. SmartCloud is designed to create a flexible and high-capacity network for serving dense urban areas efficiently. A virtual server communicates simultaneously with all RRUs to mitigate interference across entire network, and help provide a better quality of experience to user irrespective of location to the cell edge or cell centre. It uses air resource management technology, to mitigate interference among cells. SmartCloud reduced CAPEX by 26 per cent and cut OPEX for the launch operator by 37 per cent by eliminating the need to operate hundreds of DU sites.

ZTE Corporation

ZTE launched a CS Fallback solution together with CSL in Hong Kong in February 2012.  The solution brings high quality voice services for LTE users, reduces the pressure on the 3G data network and; enhances the operator’s reputation in a very competitive market. It mitigates the need to migrate CS service to IMS for voice, maximising the existing 3G investment and smoothing evolution to CSFB service thanks to a lower TCO. The launch used a unique “Proxy MSC” solution preventing the need to upgrade all the MSCs in the CS network. ZTE and CSL will optimise the network in the coming 12 months. The LTE network will be inter-connected with other vendors to support CSFB roaming. In the future, the user experience will be enhanced to absorb more and more smartphones onto the LTE network.

The LTE World Summit is taking place on the 23-24 May 2012 CCIB, Barcelona, Spain. Click here to register your http://ws.lteconference.com/interest.