Connectivity in the stadiums

I have recently been observing a lots of discussions around connectivity in the stadiums. I have used this picture above a few times to show different solutions available in different situations. You can see that in theory Wi-Fi, DAS, Micro and Pico would all be suitable for the connectivity in stadiums. In practice this is generally limited to DAS and Wi-Fi.

ThinkSmallCell have recently written an article on the stadium Wi-Fi experience of The Cloud here. Some very interesting choices were taken to keep things simple:

For the main stadium bowl, The Cloud designed for 50% concurrent access for the maximum 30,000 crowd, connecting 80 Wi-Fi access points using 1km of fibre and 9km of CAT6 ethernet cable.

Each access point can handle up to 250 concurrent users. Tightly focussed beams were used to segregate seating blocks, splitting these into distinct coverage sectors.

To simplify the design, the older 802.11b standard wasn't used/supported, VoIP was blocked and a maximum of 3 SSIDs assigned. Unlike a cellular system, there's no handoff as you move around the stadium – you'd need to reconnect and create another session. During peak usage, almost everyone is sitting down rather than moving about (if you ignore those jumping up and down on their seats).

Both Wi-Fi spectrum bands at 2.4GHz and 5GHz were used, with devices capable of the higher frequency prioritised to use it. 56% of clients used the 5GHz band, which has much more spectrum and many more channels available. The different propagation characteristics mean there are different coverage footprints, so planners are actually designing two networks rather than one.

The side lobes on the 5GHz coverage footprint were massive, limiting the number of Wi-Fi access points that could be deployed.

You can read the complete article on the ThinkSmallCell website here.

A question some people often ask is why bother with connectivity in the stadiums. There are many reasons and personally, I would rather have connectivity than don't, even if I am not going to use it.

Real Wireless has done substantial amount of work in this area and a slide from their recent presentation discusses the benefits for various parties very well. You can read their opinion on this topic on their website here.

No discussion on Stadium connectivity would be complete without mentioning the US operator AT&T. They regularly publish statistics and details of connectivity in various sports venues on their website here. A recent report from their new site on DAS connectivity in various stadiums as follows:

• So far this season, there have been 119 pro football games and 214 college football games played across more than 75 different venues where we provide in-venue coverage via Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS). 
• In total, across these 333 games our customers have used more than 104.9 Terabytes of mobile data on our in-venue cellular networks. That’s the same as 104,913 Gigabytes. Or more simply put, it is equivalent to more than 300M social media posts with photos. 
• At this point in the year, pro football fans are edging college fans in average data usage per game by a 342GB to 293GB margin. Or a difference equivalent to about 140K more social media posts with photos per game on average.

Another recent report from the AT&T part in San Francisco where both Wi-Fi and DAS are present as follows:

Here are some of the record-breaking numbers we saw on our venue-specific mobile network at AT&T Park from the Giants’ three home games during the World Series:

• Fans used more than 477GB of data on the AT&T cellular network during the game on 10/25. This is equivalent to more than 1.36M social media post with photos.
  • This marked the highest single game total for cellular data usage at AT&T Park in ballpark history.

• Fans used an average of approximately 447GB of data per game over the weekend on the AT&T cellular network. This is equivalent to more than 1.27M social media post with photos.
  • It’s an increase of approximately 29% in cellular data usage compared to the average game during the League Championship series vs. St. Louis.
  • It’s an increase of approximately 109% in cellular data usage compared to the average game during the final home series of the regular season vs. San Diego (9/25-9/28).
• The peak hour of data usage during three home games was on 10/25 was from 5-6pm PT, the hour in which the first pitch occurred. In this hour more than 83GB of data crossed our venue-specific cellular network.

• On our AT&T Wi-Fi network we saw more than 1,626GB of data move across our network during the game on 10/25.
  • This is the highest single game Wi-Fi total in the history of AT&T Park.
  • 1,626GB is equivalent to more than 4.65M social media post with photos.
  • This showed an increase in Wi-Fi usage of approximately 302% compared to the average game during the 2012 World Series.
  • This showed an increase in Wi-Fi usage of approximately 163% compared to the average 2014 regular season game at AT&T Park.
  • This showed an increase in Wi-Fi usage of approximately 29% compared to the average game of the League Championship series vs. St. Louis.

• The collective data usage equaled approximately 2.1TB of data across both our cellular and Wi-Fi networks at AT&T Park during the game on 10/25.
  • This marked the highest single game total for collective data usage (cellular and Wi-Fi) in AT&T Park history.
  • 2.1TB is equivalent to more than 6M social media post with photos.

Note: All cellular data is specific to only AT&T customers using the DAS network at AT&T Park.

AT&T DAS guru Paula Doublin was one of the most memorable speakers at this year’s HetNet Expo. The company’s AVP for antenna solutions, DAS and small cells did not shy away from questions about AT&T’s budget for heterogeneous networks, nor did she sugar coat the outlook for small cell deployments. A video of her presentation is embedded below and a writeup is available on RCR Wireless website here.




See Also:

• Case Study: Deployment scenarios with DAS, RRH, Small Cells and Wi-Fi
• HetNet Strategies with Oi Brazil

Metrocells to help cut energy consumption in telco systems upto 90% by 2020

From a recent news article in Rethink Wireless:

Greentouch believes three key changes will make the difference to cellular networks' power hunger and CO2 emissions levels. These are the use of smaller, low power metrocells to add capacity in dense areas; wider infrastructure sharing; and techniques to match power consumption flexibly to the level of usage of the network at any time.

"We need to make resource usage proportional to the amount of traffic the network is handling," said Klein.

Smart antenna technologies will also be vital. Greentouch revealed first results of a key low energy project in 2011, demonstrating proof of concept base stations that use large arrays of up to 1,000 smart antennas to cut power consumption. The trial found that the energy needed to power each one dropped significantly as more were added, without impacting the range or capacity of the cell. The team was using fairly standard MIMO techniques, but harnessing the arrays not to boost capacity, but to reinforce a single transmission, creating a single strong beam from many low power signals.

There is work to be done on the fixed line side too. Key techniques will be the BIPON (bit interleaved passive optical network) protocol, which enables an optical network unit to recognize data destined for other units rather than processing it.

Greentouch was founded by Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs and has harnessed some of that legendary R&D group's expertise in areas like MIMO. Other firms whose labs and scientists are heavily involved include Samsung, Huawei, Freescale, Orange and IMEC. The organization describes its mission as a "five-year quest to achieve sustainable networking". Its members include operators, government agencies and research centers.

LTE-A Metrocells to boost the data capacity capabilities in HetNet base stations

From Business Weekly:

A transatlantic technology collaboration between Cambridge Consultants in the UK and Florida-based Airspan Networks is set to enhance speed and capacity over the transformational LTE (long term evolution) platform.

The partners have unveiled an LTE-Advanced metrocell boost for mobile broadband; 4G LTE, is a standard for wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals.

Cambridge Consultants has collaborated with Airspan, a leading vendor of LTE small cells and broadband wireless products and solutions, to boost the data capacity capabilities of the US company’s heterogenous network (HetNet) base stations.

The enhancements include LTE-Advanced features that support the deployment of HetNets, allowing operators to deploy small cells on the same radio channel as macrocellular LTE networks. Integrated networks deliver better coverage and capacity to users on both the small-cell and macrocell base stations, Cambridge Consultants’ Tim Fowler said.

Complete article can be read from the Business weekly website here.

There is also an interesting presentation from Airspan that I posted earlier here.

Deutsche Telekom: Tackling the data deluge with help from customers' Wi-Fi

From a recent ZDNet article:

...Deutsche Telekom putting its foot firmly in the Wi-Fi offload camp, and marks a further signal of Wi-Fi's growing importance to operators who seek alternative ways of managing rampant mobile data traffic.

"The astonishing increase in data traffic calls for network optimisation and expansion, as well as the implementation of new high-speed networks," said Deutsche Telekom spokesman Dirk Wende, citing comments made by outgoing Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann. "The partnership with FON fits perfectly with Telekom's network expansion strategy. Wi-Fi and hotspots can be used to divert heavy data traffic to fixed-line networks and thus reduce the load on mobile networks."

Deutsche Telekom sees Wi-Fi as complementary to its existing services, and certainly has no plans to blanket Germany (a geographically large country) with its own Wi-Fi hotspots.

As it builds up its Wi-Fi offering, the operator is continuing with its LTE rollout across Germany, aiming for 85 percent population coverage by the end of 2016. Wende said Deutsche Telekom doubled the number of its LTE sites by the end of 2012 compared to 2011, and has deployed LTE services in 1800MHz spectrum in more than 100 cities.

"With Wi-Fi To Go we want to extend our Wi-Fi network; a wide area coverage with Wi-Fi like we have with mobile is not the intention," said Wende. "Wi-Fi is a complement to mobile and fixed lines. In our mind we want our customers to be always best connected — it doesn't depend on the technology."

Deutsche Telekom is launching the Wi-Fi To Go service based on the FON partnership, and said by 2016 it wants to set up more than 2.5 million additional hotspots in Germany through the offering. As part of the FON deal, Deutsche Telekom customers now have access to some eight million hotspots worldwide, with Deutsche Telekom adding 12,000 hotspots to the FON pot...

Complete article: How one mobile operator is tackling the data deluge with help from customers' Wi-Fi | ZDNet:

This brings us to the same debate as I mentioned in a post earlier 'Is Wi-Fi the Third RAN?' 

UK 'Not-spot' gets five Metrocells from Vodafone

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From Salisbury Journal:

LAST year, the village of Cranborne was selected as one of 12 communities UK-wide that would participate in a Vodafone pilot project to bring mobile telephone signal to rural “not-spot” areas.

Having successfully fulfilled the technical criteria for the trial, which included having no 2G or 3G signal and a sufficiently fast fixed-line broadband connection to support Vodafone’s new Open Femtocell technology, Vodafone engineers visited local businesses and community buildings in the centre of Cranborne to position five Metro Cells, each the size of a home broadband router, to give the best signal cover to the village.

The only cost to the trial community is the cost of power to each box.

In February the system was successfully installed and, earlier this month, the village celebrated the official launch of the technology.

North Dorset MP Robert Walter attended the launch. He said: “I am thrilled the new technology has been successfully installed and that, for the first time, businesses, residents and visitors can make and receive mobile telephone calls from the heart of the village. It is my sincere wish that the experience of these trials helps to deliver more solutions to rural areas affected by signal blackouts.

A good example of how Metrocells can solve coverage problem and may also future proof against capacity issues.

Are we going to see more of Cloud RAN (C-RAN) in future?

China Mobile was in news a few times the last month with regards to Metrocells and C-RAN. The first item from TelecomAsia:

Alcatel-Lucent has unveiled a new TD-LTE metro base station for its lightRadio product line that will be deployed by China Mobile, which co-developed it.

 

The compact lightRadio Metro Radio – revealed at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona – houses two lightRadio cubes, fully integrated with a directional antenna, with an output of 5W.

 

Alcatel-Lucent says the design allows it to “provide the coverage normally associated with a much bulkier, heavier remote radio unit linked to an external antenna via an RF coaxial cable.”

 

China Mobile will deploy the 2.6 GHz Metro Radio in its TD-LTE network in Shanghai, Nanjing and Qingdao – specifically, in busy indoor and outdoor locations like shopping centers where macro coverage can suffer either from building density or too many people trying to access the network.

 

The Metro Radio is the first product to result from a co-creation agreement signed by Alcatel-Lucent and China Mobile just over a year ago to conduct joint development and test activities on lightRadio TD-LTE projects.

An article on the same topic in Rethink-wireless throws a bit more light:

The TDD lightRadio Metro Radio houses two of ALU's now-famous 'cubes' (highly compact radios which can be installed on lamp posts) integrated with a directional antenna. This enables a level of coverage which would normally require a far larger remote radio unit linked to an external antenna via cable, claimed ALU.

China Mobile's first trial TD-LTE network using the lightRadio product covers 13 cities including Shanghai, Nanjing and Qingdao. The base station will be deployed in busy indoor and outdoor locations, such as retail malls and sports stadia. As well as C-RAN, Mobile also plans to deploy compact metrocells combining 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi on a massive scale in future.

Another one:

ASOCS Ltd., a Silicon IP provider of software defined radio solutions and CMRI, Research Institute of China Mobile (CMCC) Ltd., the world's largest mobile operator, have signed a strategic memorandum of understanding for the joint development, commercialization, testing and deployment of large-scale baseband processing units for China Mobile's next generation Cloud-RAN network.

Earlier trials undertaken by leading mobile operators, identified the bottleneck of Centralized Base-band Units, consisting of general purpose CPU, to perform major baseband calculations in cost and power efficient management. The solution was to introduce significant offloading capabilities of such calculations with highly specialized Modem Processing Units (MPU).

Today there is a growing understanding in the industry that such MPU should support a wide range of system partitioning, topologies and real time system performance, including large scale Collaborative Multi-point communications (COMP) and massive MIMO. Since communication algorithms are evolving over time, and since the C-RAN concept provisions on-the-fly reconfiguration of the BBU to support a variety of mobile communication standards, an MPU solution which is re-configurable at runtime has a great advantage over traditional hard-wired designs.

China Mobile (CMCC) has been pushing the cloud agenda for a long time. A whitepaper from them on the same topic is available here.

Picture source: NTT Docomo press release

NTT Docomo is another operator who believes very much in C-RAN. Occasionally it refers to the C-RAN as Centralized RAN. There were couple of announcements from their side:

The first one was a press release from Docomo here:

NTT DOCOMO, INC., Japan’s leading mobile operator and provider of integrated services centered on mobility, announced today it will begin developing high-capacity base stations built with advanced C-RAN architecture for DOCOMO’s coming next-generation LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) mobile system. The new architecture will enable quick, efficient deployment of base stations, especially in high-traffic areas such as train stations and large commercial facilities, for significantly improved data capacity and throughput.

Advanced C-RAN architecture, a brand new concept proposed by DOCOMO, will enable small “add-on” cells for localized coverage to cooperate with macro cells that provide wider area coverage. This will be achieved with carrier aggregation technology, one of the main LTE-Advanced technologies standardized by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The small add-on cells will significantly increase throughput and system capacity while maintaining mobility performance provided by the macro cell.

High-capacity base stations utilizing advanced C-RAN architecture will serve as master base stations both for multiple macro cells covering broad areas and for add-on cells in smaller, high-traffic areas. The base stations will accommodate up to 48 macro and add-on cells at launch and even more later. Carrier aggregation will be supported for cells served by the same base station, enabling the flexible deployment of add-on cells. In addition, maximum downlink throughput will be extendible to 3Gbps, as specified by 3GPP standards.

Another one from Rethink-wireless here:

Japan's Docomo has selected the vendors, Nokia Siemens and Panasonic, which will upgrade its network with certain LTE-A features like carrier aggregation.

This is a good win for NSN, which has not featured as heavily as Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent in the most advanced LTE roll-outs to date. Breaking into the Japanese carriers is tough, since Docomo in particular tends to rely on trusted local suppliers with which it has long-standing development alliances.

Panasonic, of course, falls into that category - it has worked with the operator since 2007 on LTE network infrastructure, but NSN was also brought into that project at an early stage and its efforts have borne fruit. The European vendor will supply its Liquid Radio multiple standard RAN. Like Docomo's LTE network, there will be heavy use of remote radio heads, with baseband processing virtualized in the cloud, as well as increasing roll-out of small cells to increase indoor and outdoor capacity. NSN says the base stations will deliver capacity of 300Mbps.

In future, the two vendors will support Docomo's own particular definition of Cloud-RAN, a concept which is being pioneered in China, Japan and South Korea, and which takes the idea of remote radio heads and shared basebands to a new level. Docomo says it favors C-RAN because the cell site equipment, consisting of radio and antenna, is compact and low power, and so can be deployed quickly in high traffic areas like train stations. It calls its architecture Advanced C-RAN and this will rely on some HetNet principles, including a separate layer of 'add-on' small cells adding localized capacity while cooperating with macrocells.

In the C-RAN, there will be high capacity master base stations supporting multiple macrocells plus the local small cells. The master BTSs will handle up to 48 macro and small cells at launch and more later. Carrier aggregation will be supported for cells served by the same base station. The carrier says it will boost peak downlink speed to 3Gbps over time, hitting 'true 4G' and 3GPP LTE-B standards.

If you are wondering what 'LTE-B' or the 'true 4G' is, see this post here.

In South Korea, both KT and SK Telecom have announced C-RAN strategies for their LTE deployments, dubbed Cloud Communications Center (CCC) and Smart Cloud Access Network (SCAN) respectively. As early as June 2011, SKT had deployed 1,772 RRHs and 609 baseband units within its LTE network in capital Seoul. The lower amount of baseband units suggests an average of almost three RRHs per baseband unit, assuming each RRH is single sector.

The above two pictures are from the Small Cells Standardization presentation here.

An old article from Rethink-wireless mentions the following:

This is the central concept of C-RAN, deconstructing the traditional base station to leave a low power unit at the cell site, integrating antenna and radio, while centralizing all the baseband activity and supporting hundreds or thousands of sites flexibly from the cloud. KT calls its LTE approach its Cloud Communications Center (CCC) architecture, and it has been co-developed with Samsung and Intel. The latter is leaping on the opportunity to bring its expertise in servers and data centers to the telco network, and in this case its platforms are integrated with Samsung modems to create a centralized exchange for signals communications processing. This is linked by fiber (essential for C-RAN) to the cell sites.

As seen in vendor strategies like ALU's lightRadio and Nokia Siemens' Liquid Radio, the CCC also harnesses virtualization technology so that the central processing resources can be allocated flexibly according to the peaks and troughs of demand in different sites. Yung Kim, senior EVP head of strategy planning at KT, told TelecomAsia: "For example, at a sports stadium you can dynamically allocate more resources for that area during a game on a millisecond basis." The design also improves coverage at the cell edge, he added, claiming twice the capacity per cell, on average, because of better improved edge management.

The CCC architecture can manage 144 base stations per server and accommodate 1,000 servers in each data center, all them acting as a central processing entity. Most tasks are run on off-the-shelf processors rather than dedicated ASICs, also a key trend to reduce the cost of data networks and to converge the norms of the IT data center with those of telecoms. The performance and power advantages of modern computer processors are now up to the task of massive telecoms networks, believe carriers like KT, hence the intense interest of Intel, although some ARM-based chip vendors like Marvell and Freescale are also pushing from the network into the data center.

Do you have an opinion on the C-RAN architectures in the future? If yes, we would like to hear.

Is 2013 the year of Metrocells?

A recent market market report by Informa for the Small Cell Forum has highlighted the following:

• December last year marked the first launch of a dual mode 3G/LTE femtocell by NTT DoCoMo which allows CS fallback and will be used to promote the migration from 3G to LTE. Orange France has also launched consumer femtocells, diversifying its small cell offerings.
• The small-cell market is growing at a rapid pace: The largest deployments have already reached 1 million active cells. Initial metrocell deployments are taking place while all the operators in several markets now offer femtocells.
• Both SKT and KT have launched LTE small cells for public access in South Korea.
• According to Informa Telecoms & Media’s estimates, the small cell market will generate US$22 billion during 2016, 73% of which will be driven by public area small cells.
• The number of small cells deployed overtook the total number of macrocells between October and November 2012 and consumer femtocells overtook macrocells during February 2013.
• The femtocell market now includes several deployments that reach well into hundreds of thousand units, including Vodafone, Softbank and SFR. Sprint’s deployment reached 1 million units as of October 2012 and analysts estimate that AT&T’s deployment has reached similar numbers.
• As of February 2013, there are 46 commercial services and a total of 60 deployment commitments.

According to this report: The Small Cell Forum released these numbers here at the Mobile World Congress. Gordon Mansfield, chairman of the Small Cell Forum, said 2013 is the "year of public access" small cells, noting that by 2016 public access small cells will drive $16.2 billion in revenue despite the fact that they only make up 4 percent of small cells today.  Mansfield also said 98 percent of mobile operators believe small cells are essential; however, of the 46 operators that have deployed small cells, the majority are larger operators.

The Informa report does provide a definition of the type of Small Cells but clearly mentions that these are for guidance only. I have posted my views earlier about what Metrocells are here and here. I much prefer to use the term 'Indoor Metrocells' rather than Picocells as Picocells are associated with legacy networks without an intelligence (SON, etc.) of its own. The same is true in outdoor case as I prefer 'Outdoor Metrocells' rather than Microcells. Having said that Microcells are still available from vendors and are comparatively more expensive but provide capability to cover larger areas and more simultaneous number of users.

The Small Cell Forum has also embarked on a Release plan to help speed up operator deployments. 'Release One' was released in the Mobile World Congress 2013 with focus on Home, the future releases with focus on Enterprise and Metrocells. An Infographic on releases is available here.

Below are some of the announcements regarding Metrocells from the last couple of weeks:

• Russia Is Bringing High-Speed Fiber to All Its Towns and will also provide cellular coverage in those towns using Metrocells. See here and here.
• ALU and China Mobile unveil TD-LTE lightRadio. The TDD lightRadio Metro Radio houses two of ALU's now-famous 'cubes' (highly compact radios which can be installed on lamp posts) integrated with a directional antenna. This enables a level of coverage which would normally require a far larger remote radio unit linked to an external antenna via cable. Details here.
• Node-H supports Broadcom’s Dual-Mode Small Cell SoC Family. Details here.
• Giza Systems and Bluwan Partner to Accelerate Middle East Heterogeneous Network Rollouts. Details here.
• CEVA and Mindspeed Extend Relationship to Address LTE-Advanced Small Cells. Details here.
• Aricent and Mindspeed Raise the Bar — Announce Launch of a High-Performing 20MHz Small Cell Reference Solution. Details here.
• Jin-Magic and Ubiquisys Join Forces to Improve Small Cell Performance. Details here.

David Chambers from ThinkSmallCell has written an excellent report rounding up Small Cells from the MWC which is available here.

Finally, there is one last chance to come to out Metrocell Masterclass in Cambridge on the 21st of March. Details here.

Ubiquisys to focus on 'indoor metro' and enterprise at #MWC13

Our intelligent small cell technology has delivered 99.999% availability in some of the world’s most demanding indoor metro deployments. And we’ve doubled the number of tier 1 systems integrator partnerships from 2 to 4, meaning that Ubiquisys intelligent small cell tech is now embedded in the major slice of commercially available solutions.

LTE multi-mode small cells – focus on indoor metro and enterprise
Working with silicon platforms from long-term partners Texas Instruments and Broadcom, Ubiquisys will be demonstrating a range of novel LTE/3G/WiFi products that can handle the immediate need to ramp capacity and provide an adaptive evolution to LTE provision. Ubiquisys has deployed outdoor small cells but our focus is on intelligent cells for indoor public spaces, where the majority of mobile data is consumed. The combination of abundant sites, simple installation and automatic operation means that indoor cells can be economically deployed in much larger numbers for a sustainable ramp in integrated 3G/4G/WiFi capacity (see our infographic on indoor/outdoor small cells).

High availability indoor metrocells
Our latest products feature ActiveCell® high-availability software designed, developed and deployed in 10s of thousands of Small Cells serving high capacity demand public environments. ActiveCell® high-availability software has now been proven in thousands of indoor metro sites in South Korea and Japan, delivering 99.999% availability and parity with macro network features and KPIs. This is in addition to the proven ActiveRadio® the most widely deployed intelligent self-organising cellular small cell, and ActiveSON® self-organising grids of multiple networked small cells that are continuing to be commercially deployed in Enterprises in significant numbers on a daily basis.

Complete article at: The Ubiquisys Blog | Ubiquisys Small Cells & Femtocells:

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AT&T Shifting to Small Metrocell, Wi-Fi Technology in Project Velocity IP Initiative

AT&T’s wireless network expansion plans include more than 10,000 new HSPA+/LTE cell sites, 40,000 small “metrocells,” and 1,000 distributed antenna systems (DAS) that will improve network performance, broaden Wi-Fi service, and reduce traffic on its traditional cell tower network.

With much of urban and suburban America (and the roads that connect communities) already covered by cellular networks, AT&T has embarked on an effort to more efficiently manage its wireless traffic.

AT&T, the lowest-rated wireless carrier by Consumer Reports, has suffered from a reputation for dropped calls and inadequate network infrastructure investment. The company has sought to correct those mistakes with the implementation of its multi-billion dollar Project Velocity IP (VIP) program that will expand capacity and bring Wi-Fi to new places.

John Donovan, senior executive vice president of AT&T’s Technology and Network Operations division told attendees at the Citi Global Internet, Media & Communications conference in Las Vegas the company was shifting investment towards deploying small cell technology like “metrocells” that provides service to 32 or 64 concurrent users in a small geographic area. These fiber-fed, low-power small cells traditionally cover areas less than 1.2 miles wide, and can be hidden on utility poles or on buildings.

AT&T intends to leverage its U-verse fiber to the neighborhood network to provide much of the expanded network’s backhaul connectivity, at least in cities where AT&T provides landline service.

More information at:
AT&T Shifting to Small Metrocell, Wi-Fi Technology in Project Velocity IP Initiative | Stop the Cap!:

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10 Metrocell (3G and LTE) trials in the CALA region

Alcatel-Lucent has long claimed that femtocells and metrocells can boost wireless networks, but this time, it seems that carriers are also betting on the technology. According to Osvaldo di Campli, Alcatel-Lucent’s president of the Caribbean and Latin American (CALA) region, three femtocell contracts have been signed in Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela. Di Campli said that there are ten metrocell trials across CALA, using both metrocell equipment for 3G and LTE, in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Uruguay.
...

However, in Brazil both femtocell and metrocell adoption face challenges. Although the government is studying regulation changes, currently carriers have to pay equal taxes when deploying macrocells, metrocells or femtocells, which can hinder investment.

Complete article here.