The rapid growth in wireless data use is placing capacity burdens on the traditional large (macro) cell site capacity. The number of users within a cell's coverage area competing for bandwidth has prompted the growth of small cell and DAS. These systems provide similar...
Alcatel-Lucent (ALU), which announced its “Shift Plan” a year ago, is now looking to shift some of its submarine cable business. When the Paris-based telecom equipment company released its 2014 second quarter results, it announced a planned initial public offering for the subsidiary scheduled...
Small cells can be big investments for regional operators, many of whom may not be ready to invest $1M or more in a small cell gateway. These are the target customers for ClearSky Technologies' hosted small cell solution. The company sells access to its...
Qualcomm got a lot of attention at Small Cells World Summit 2014 with its talk about "inside out" connectivity enabled by small cells. The mobile chip giant wants operators to consider super powerful indoor small cells as a way to connect entire neighborhoods. Indoor...
Operators are securing enterprise small cell contracts with promises of faster and more reliable connectivity. Putting those promises into practice requires close cooperation with vendors like Alcatel-Lucent and SpiderCloud Wireless, who discussed the challenges on a recent RCR Insights panel along with Peter Jarich...
Enterprise small cells have been of interest to mobile operators for some time, but only recently have the end users of these solutions started to appreciate their potential value.
"I think we're just starting to see a legitimate enterprise demand for in-building cellular, and I...
AT&T and Verizon Communications will almost certainly be keeping a close eye on XG-FAST developments at Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs, following last week's announcement that the lab has achieved speeds of 10 gigabits per second over a distance of 30 meters, using two bonded pairs...
As operators build heterogeneous networks to expand coverage and capacity, they want best-in-breed solutions and are ready to work with multiple vendors. Vodafone has shown that equipment from more than one vendor can interoperate within a single location by integrating Alcatel-Lucent's small cells with...
Vodafone selected Alcatel-Lucent as a "supplier of reference" for small cell and Wi-Fi technology as part of its Project Spring investment program. Through Project Spring, Vodafone plans to spend about $11 billion to expand and improve its LTE and 3G coverage in Europe and...
The virtualization movement continues to gain steam as the mobile space looks for ways to increase efficiency while reducing costs.
The latest push comes from the Small Cell Forum, which announced plans to address network function virtualization as part of its on-going “release program.” The...
Nokia Networks announces two acquisitions
Nokia Networks said today that it will buy Nice Systems' 3D geolocation business to enhance the planning and optimization of mobile networks. "The evolution of small cells and LTE necessitates more accurate 3-D geolocation capabilities," Nokia said.
Israel will be the...
Amdocs showcased its offering for small cell network planning that leverages recent acquisitions, including Actix and Celcite, at the recent LTE World Summit.
Neil Coleman, director of marketing at Amdocs, discussed the Smart Cell Placement solution with RCR Wireless News. Smart Cell Placement identifies experience...
Small cells remain a bit of an enigma for the wireless space. Predictions for years have opined that the move to small cell deployments were just around the corner as surging demand for mobile data services had traditional wireless networks on the ropes.
Those predictions...
Small Cell Industry Awards
The Small Cell Forum announced the Small Cell Industry Awards for 2014 as part of last week's Small Cells World Summit in London. For small cell innovoation leadership, Alcatel-Lucent won for its site certification program. Cisco won the vendor award for...
Small Cell World Summit
The Small Cell World Summit 2014 is set to bring hundreds of carrier representatives and solutions providers together in London this week. The Small Cell Forum said it will discuss the recently announced third iteration of its use cases and best...
In partnership with RCR Wireless News, research consultancy ATLANTIC-ACM examines the emerging small cell infrastructure development space and the economics and market dynamics impacting small-cell deployments.
What you will learn:
Current business and strategy considerations for small cell deployments, emerging sourcing models, network expectations, survey results...
Welcome to this week’s edition of cell tower industry news, created by Jarad Matula and brought to you by Towercrews.net.
Just as we expected, this week's PCIA Wireless Infrastructure Show saw the tower companies more vocal than they have been in a while. This week's cell tower...
New network technologies and standards-based features driving changes at macro cell sites, and networks are moving toward HetNets with the advent of small cells and the increasing focus on indoor coverage through technologies such as distributed antenna systems (DAS). A new feature report from RCR...
Wireless carriers are scrambling to acquire and free up new spectrum resources in an attempt to feed consumer desire for mobile data services. This quest for spectrum along with the deployment of more efficient LTE services could meet those short-term needs, but a recent...
Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reader Forum section. In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible,...
In early April, I had the pleasure of participating in the NEDAS Forum event in New York City. The forum had attendees and speakers covering all aspects of the deployment value chain.
Antenna Evolution - Meeting the Demand for LTE, Small Cell, & DAS Networks
Implementations of Small Cell and DAS systems have many challenges; not the least of which is the selection and placement of the antenna elements. Since these systems deploy antennas close to the users,...
ABI Research is arguing that operators should deploy carrier-grade Wi-Fi at the same time that they are rolling out cellular-technology small cells, looking for an integrated solution in order to maximize the investment return from small cells.
The analyst firm noted that China Mobile and AT&T...
