Spectrum efficiency can now be improved 20x: Ericsson

By Nandita Singh

BENGALURU: Ericsson has launched a new suite of solutions catering to specific needs of the telecom operators in India. The solution includes software and hardware additions to Ericsson Radio System, providing the capabilities needed to reduce the total cost of ownership by up to 40 percent when rolling out the company’s total site solution for mobile broadband, making investments in low-ARPU markets viable.

Mobile broadband holds a great promise for the under-served India market, where the next billion needs inclusion strategies before it snowballs into a society of haves and have-nots of “Digital India”.

“India is a very diverse market so (as an operator) our greatest need in challenging areas is to complement the existing GSM networks with WCDMA and LTE access. We see the Radio 2219 and Psi Coverage as important assets when we extend mobile broadband coverage across the country, ” says Rajesh Singh President, Corporate Network Planning at Idea Cellular.

The Ericsson solution comprises Ericsson Site Manager software paired with Ericsson Site Controller, Radio 2219, Antenna Integrated Radio, AIR 2488, MINI-LINK 6363, MINI-LINK 6651 indoor unit among other new additions to the Ericsson Enclosure family. It also includes new software enhancements to both the Zero Touch WCDMA and Flow of Users solutions.

According to Nitin Bansal, Head of Network Products for Ericsson India Region, it is a single RAN solution for network modernization, an upgrade to which enables the operator to manage spectrum at least 20-times more efficiently – be it for 2G, 3G, 4G or for composite technology use. “The end-to-end solution is easy to implement,” says Bansal elaborating that most of the pain operators face is in site acquisition and tower installation.

The Ericsson solution, according to Bansal, is light in weight and cost of ownership, but loaded in output. The company has developed it after factoring in the inputs from operators in emerging markets, including India.

Typically, operators are not forthcoming in making investments in rural, remote areas, that need connectivity more than ever, in the light of low and uncertain returns.

The ITU’s (International Telecommunication Union) Connect 2020 target is to ensure that more than 50 percent of people in the developing world are using the internet by 2020. ”This essentially translates into 500,000 new users added to the internet each day, globally. Ericsson solution helps create viable business even in rural or off-grid settings, enabling the ITU agenda,” says Arun Bansal, Head of Business Unit Network Products, at Ericsson

The company’s solutions are 5G ready and can be scaled in line with the multiplying IoT use cases. The first of commercial scale 5G deployments are expected in 2019.