Dr J W Byun, the CTO of SK Telecom, South Korea is speaking on Day One of the LTE World Summit, taking place on 24-26 June 2013 at The RAI, Amsterdam. Ahead of the show we speak to him about how SK Telecom has been able to extend its global lead in LTE and gives some insights into what he sees coming down the line for telecoms.
Technology innovation appeared thin on the ground at this year’s Mobile World Congress, but the challenge of enhancing performance and capacity by better utilising existing network resources remained a key focus for many network vendors.
Public access small cells are gaining clear market traction and will dominate small cell revenues for the foreseeable future, according to Informa Telecoms & Media which issued its latest quarterly small-cell market status report for the Small Cell Forum last week.
Bengt Nordstrom, founder of industry consultancy NorthStream, shares a series of predictions for the mobile industry in 2013. In this third instalment he says that LTE rollouts will result in operators requiring less small cells than had previously been the case, ending the “small cell debate”.
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.
Any modern communications network is a complex architectural arrangement. By 2013 it’s likely that a mobile network operator will have 2G, 3G and LTE operations running in parallel, with support infrastructure such as backhaul that has been updated and augmented over the years. As networks mature, they also evolve—the trend right now is to alleviate RAN congestion with smaller cells, increasing network density but also putting extra burden on the backhaul infrastructure. In order to keep pace, backhaul implementations also need to evolve.
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.
Mobile operator O2 UK has revealed that it expects to run out of spectrum on its macro cell layer around 2014. Speaking at a round table briefing hosted by the Small Cells Forum, Telefonica UK’s chief radio engineer Robert Joyce said that, “As we see it, with the increasing demand from tablets and smartphones the macro cell will not be able to cope. We can take the macro cell grid to eight times its current capacity and then we’ll run out of spectrum.”
Infrastructure firm Nokia Siemens Networks has signed a global reseller agreement with wifi specialist Ruckus Wireless to help operators integrate wifi coverage as part of its small cells portfolio designed for mobile broadband services.
Simon Brown, CEO of small cell specialist IP.Access talks to telecoms.com about the perception of small cells and the growing commitment of operators to deploy them.
Operators will soon be able double mobile broadband speeds for consumers at the edge of a base station cell, by allowing devices to connect with a second base station that serves a neighbouring cell. Nokia Siemens Networks and Qualcomm will be jointly demonstrating the HSPA+ Multiflow feature at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Femtocells have grown up and left home, according to ip.access founder and CTO Nick Johnson, commenting on the news Wednesday that the Femto Forum had rebranded as the Small Cell Forum. Johnson was unveiling the firm’s first 4G small cell – an event that highlights the growing maturing of the sector – yet brings with it some interesting network planning considerations.
The Femto Forum has announced that is has changed its name to the Small Cell Forum, as it look to bring all outdoor small cell technologies under its umbrella. Small Cell Forum chair Simon Saunders told Telecoms.com that the new name would better reflect its work, which embraces residential, enterprise, metro and rural small cells in addition to indoor Femtocells and that the expanded outlook beyond residential devices had encouraged telecoms vendor Ericsson to join the board.
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