060 scf case study collection feb2013

www.scf.io/ www.smallcellforum.org

RELEASE

DOCUMENT

Small Cell Forum Case StudiesSprint • SoftBank • AeroMobile • GlobeWireless • Vodafone Greece • City of Zaanstad • Network Norway • AT&T

February 2013

060.01.01

SMALL CELL FORUM

One scf.io/

Small Cell Forum supports the wide-scale adoption of small cells. Its mission is to accelerate small cell adoption to change the shape of mobile networks and maximise the potential of the mobile internet.

‘Small cells’ is an umbrella term for operator-controlled, low-powered radio access nodes, including those that operate in licensed spectrum and unlicensed carrier-grade Wi-Fi. Small cells typically have a range from 10 metres to several hundred metres. These contrast with a typical mobile macrocell that might have a range of up to several tens of kilometres. The term ‘small cells’ covers femtocells, picocells, microcells and metrocells.

Small Cell Forum is a not-for-profit, international organisation, with membership open to providers of small cell technology and to operators with spectrum licences for providing mobile services.

At the time of writing, the Small Cell Forum has 141 members including 68 operators representing more than 3 billion mobile subscribers – 46 per cent of the global total – as well as telecoms hardware and software vendors, content providers and innovative start-ups.

The Small Cell Forum is technology-agnostic and independent. It is not a standards-setting body, but works with standards organisations and regulators worldwide to provide an aggregated view of the small cell market.

This document forms part of the Small Cell Forum’s Release One which addresses the full range of applications for small cells: Home, Enterprise, Metro, Rural. The main theme of Release One is the Home, and includes the complete body of work operators will need to know for wide-scale deployment of femtocells intended for home or small office applications. These applications are based typically indoors and involve locations where a single femtocell is usually sufficient. Both 3GPP and 3GPP2 femtocells are included.

Release One also contains works clarifying market needs and addressing barriers to deployment of enterprise, metro and rural small cells.

The Small Cell Forum Release website can be found here www.scf.io. A description and roadmap for the release programme can be found here www.scf.io/doc/100

If you would like more information about the Small Cell Forum or would like to be included on our mailing list, please contact:

Email [email protected]

Post Small Cell Forum, PO Box 23, GL11 5WA UK

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For a full list of members and further information visit our website www.smallcellforum.org

JUNE 2012

Sprint announced that it had shipped more than 250,000 femtocells during March 2011 and more than 600,000 during May 2012, making its deployment among the biggest in the world. As expected, its deployment has gone through an evolution of technologies and equipment while the business case has been incrementally improved using knowledge gained from the initial deployment. The following sections outline Sprint’s history, present offerings and future vision for small cells.

The past: Consumer 2G (Airave 1.0)Sprint initially started looking at indoor coverage enhancement technologies long before its launch of femtocell services in 2007. It was responding to a common challenge in the US market, where rural areas and geographies with very low population concentration do not justify the rollout of a macrocell site. All operators in the US were assessing outdoor technologies to improve their

coverage and Sprint realised that mobile handsets and devices are particularly used indoors, hence the need for indoor coverage. Although there were – and still are – technologies available for indoor coverage, their disadvantages still outweigh the benefi ts of coverage. For example, indoor repeaters operate under the assumption that the macro network has strong presence in the area, something that is not valid for rural areas. Plus, indoor repeaters put an additional strain on the capacity of the macro network whereas a femtocell offl oads that traffi c.

At this point, Sprint realised that an indoor femtocell would be the best solution to this problem – especially for households that are already equipped with fi xed broadband connections. Sprint then developed and launched its original femtocell in three US markets during 2007, followed by a nationwide launch in 2008.

CASE STUDY | AT&T

A small cell success storySprint Nextel was the fi rst mobile operator in the world to launch femtocell services. Given that Sprint was assessing the use of femtocells before the technology was even given a standardised name, it is the operator that is most advanced in terms of technology evolution and market maturity.

CASE STUDY | Sprint | A small cell success story

The original femtocell, Airave 1.0 (see fi g. 1), was a proprietary solution from Samsung. The Airave 1.0 supported three simultaneous voice or data sessions, but data rates were constrained due to the 1xRTT air interface technology and could only go as high as a theoretical 153kbps.

Sprint provided the original Airave 1.0 to customers with coverage problems with an upfront cost and a monthly fee. Despite the added cost to the subscriber, the femtocell services were accepted in the marketplace but there was consumer criticism over the fact that femtocells improved a core operator asset (coverage) at an extra cost to the subscriber. Moreover, marketing and selling the femtocell access point in a traditional retail environment is a complex task for any mobile operator, especially when handsets are considered as revenue-generating and femtocells as problem-solving. Nevertheless, Sprint was the fi rst operator to discover the benefi ts of femtocells for indoor coverage while reducing churn.

Despite its success and being fi rst to market, Sprint realised that subscribers need higher data speeds when connected and that its deployment would benefi t from a multi-vendor ecosystem that would also improve cost effi ciencies.

Fig. 1: The original femtocell, Airave 1.0

Source: Sprint

The present: Consumer and enterprise 3G (Airave 2.0)Having learned from its fi rst femtocell deployment, Sprint developed a new femtocell platform with open, standardised interfaces, IMS core, 3GPP2 and SIP signaling. The femtocell platform was designed to support multiple venue-specifi c devices and device manufacturers. In August 2010, the Airave 2.0 consumer femtocell was launched on the new platform.

Consumer femtocellsAirave 2.0 is a consumer femtocell, manufactured by Airvana (see fi g. 2). It provides up to 5000 square feet of dedicated enhanced coverage, six simultaneous active voice or 3G data sessions, and Sprint Direct Connect, Sprint’s push-to-talk service.

Another benefi t of Airave 2.0 is that it provides a two-port router which can be used in cases where cable modem users only have a single LAN port which is used by their desktop computer. Although a minor improvement to its specifi cation – especially when considering bill of materials for the femtocell access point – the router

provides a functionality that was previously a major barrier for those customers who did not have an additional LAN port for multiple devices (PC, femtocell, etc.).

Another benefi t of the integrated router’s functionality is that voice is prioritised over other data traffi c, thus providing a high quality of experience for end users. Moreover, as with Airave 1.0, the Airave 2.0 operates in open access mode, meaning that any Sprint subscriber can connect to the femtocell when in close proximity to the device, although it is possible to establish a whitelist that only allows specifi c mobile users to have access.

However, the biggest change compared with the original femtocell was that Sprint changed its business model. With the Airave 2.0, the operator capitalised the cost of each femtocell access point which in turn made the femtocell a piece of network infrastructure rather than a device that belongs to end users. This allowed Sprint to offer the Airave 2.0 free to qualifying customers. This type of femtocell deployment needs to be carefully controlled in order to

limit uptake in case of strong demand; however, individual operator femtocell deployments – even in the US – have not yet reached the order of a million.

Sprint has reported that it has exceeded all the business case goals that were set for its femtocell deployment: it shipped more Airave 2.0 femtocells in one month that it shipped in total of the Airave 1.0.

Enterprise femtocellsIn addition to being successful in the consumer market, Sprint realised that femtocells are a natural fi t for the enterprise market where a variety of legacy technologies were being used to improve coverage. Despite providing an enhanced user experience for the most premium customer group, providing indoor coverage for enterprise customers is a very expensive process for mobile operators – especially when repeaters, distributed antennas or other passive elements are considered. However, enterprise femtocells signifi cantly reduce capex and opex due to their ease of deployment, remote in-band confi guration and the broadband internet connection.

Fig. 2: Sprint’s Airave 2.0 Fig. 3: Sprint’s Airave Pro Connect enterprise femtocell

Source: Sprint Source: Informa Telecoms & Media

SMALL CELL FORUM LtdPO Box 23DursleyGL11 5WA UK

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CASE STUDY | Sprint | A small cell success story

In November 2011, Sprint launched its enterprise grade femtocell, Airave Pro Connect (see fi g. 3) from UbeeAirWalk. This femtocell provides up to 100,000 square feet of dedicated enhanced coverage, 29 simultaneous active voice sessions, 32 simultaneous active 3G data sessions, clustering (handoff between multiple devices), as well as Sprint Direct Connect. The enterprise femtocell is part of Sprint’s enhanced coverage portfolio for large business, designed to reduce capex spending and drastically reduce the use of repeaters. It enables Sprint to capture smaller

business opportunities that previously could not have been addressed.

Sprint’s enterprise femtocell is not for direct sale, but rather is part of a solutions portfolio that requires the customer to make a multi-year commitment. The operator also reports that the cost of rolling out coverage in this environment is half what it was for non-femtocell technologies, thus providing a very powerful tool for enterprise customer retention and churn reduction.

The future: Public small cellsSprint has announced an LTE network rollout with a strong focus on small cells. Its VP of Network Development and Engineering laid out a detailed plan for the operator’s small cell strategy:• Sprint will double its femtocell rollouts in the consumer and enterprise environments during 2013

and will start using femtocells to add coverage and capacity in indoor public problem areas.• During 2013, Sprint will roll out picocells in high-traffi c areas, starting with 400 buildings, each of

which will support 100 to 200 individual small cells.• In late 2013 and 2014, Sprint will deploy outdoor picocells in dense urban areas to improve the

outdoor user experience and alleviate capacity constraints.Sprint has also said that it expects future networks to be heterogeneous, meaning that existing macrocells may be complemented with small cells to alleviate either coverage or capacity constraints.

Sprinthttp://www.sprint.com

This case study was originally published in Informa’s Small Cell Market Status report, Q2 2012. Reproduced with kind permission of Informa Telecoms & Media.

NOVEMBER 2012

The Japanese market is one of the most advanced and competitive environments in the global landscape where 2G has already been switched off in favour of 3G and now LTE. Moreover, indoor coverage is a major issue for all mobile operators and a variety of technologies are deployed to improve indoor reception: boosters, repeaters, Distributed Antennas (DAS) and most recently, small cells.

A signifi cant challenge in the Japanese market is regulation, where femtocell access points are subject to a paid licence compared to repeaters of mobile handsets. This increases the cost of the femtocell deployment considerably, especially when large scale deployments are planned and the femtocell service is open to all subscribers.

Small cell deploymentsSoftBank is believed to be the fi rst, and to date only, national operator worldwide to have deployed residential, enterprise and public access small

cells in both rural and metropolitan areas. It has also deployed more than 270,000 public access Wi-Fi hotspots. SoftBank has also demonstrated how diverse a range of backhaul options can be employed for small cells – it uses DSL, fi bre, wireless and even satellite in rural areas. Its deployment began with femtocells in the fi rst quarter of 2009 for the consumer and enterprise markets and has since extended to include public access small cells in rural areas (outdoors) as well as in metropolitan areas (indoors) in shops.

SoftBank reports that all of its small cell deployments so far are focused on coverage as expected in the Japanese market although the consumer femtocells are very likely to be used for traffi c offl oad as well. The residential and enterprise femtocells support up to eight users and data rates of up to 14.4Mbps. The public access small cell models in rural and metropolitan areas support 16 users and data rates of up to 14.4Mbps.

Small cell success story: SoftBankSoftBank Mobile is the cellular business arm of SoftBank Group, a Japanese telecommunications and internet company that also includes fi xed, internet, media and marketing businesses. SoftBank operates a WCDMA network and has recently launched LTE with aggressive deployment targets.

CASE STUDY | SoftBank

CASE STUDY | SoftBank | Small cell success story

Following its initial consumer and enterprise deployment, SoftBank launched public small cells during Q1 2011 and rural small cells during Q4 2011. The operator has deployed small cells in shops while the rural outdoor small cells are deployed on concrete poles. SoftBank plans to start LTE small cell trials in 2013. In total, Informa Telecoms & Media estimates that SoftBank has deployed more than 100,000 units in the consumer, enterprise, metropolitan and rural areas. The following provides a breakdown for SoftBank’s small cell deployments.

One notable feature of SoftBank’s deployment has been the emphasis on rural. Few other carriers have shown the same level of deployment as SoftBank.

A substantial portion of SoftBank’s public deployments have been in rural areas, and it is likely that the operator can now boast the highest percentage population coverage of any carrier. The operator has installed small cells in remote villages that would not normally be economic to serve, as the population and usage is too sparse to justify traditional infrastructure – but using more cost-effective small cells changes that calculation. Indeed, these isolated areas often do not have fi xed broadband, (hence the need for satellite backhaul referred to above) so it becomes possible for communities to get online through 3G on their phones or dongles for the fi rst time.

These systems do not need high capacity (by defi nition there are few people there) so 16 users is suffi cient, but the range must be increased over a standard small cell so need both a bigger radio and some optimisation to the modem.

A very powerful and touching variation on this was described by SoftBank last year. In the wake of the tragic earthquake and tsunami, much of the communications infrastructure in Sendai was

Residential

Rural

Enterprise

Source: Informa Telecoms &

Media

Fig. 1: SoftBank’s small cell deployment segmentation

destroyed or unusable. SoftBank reacted quickly, equipping 4x4 vehicles with diesel generators, small cell basestations and satellite connectivity and sent them to disaster areas. As soon as they were activated they could connect and deliver an autonomous, self-contained bubble of coverage – enabling communities to connect to loved ones following the crisis.

While we think of small cells, or communications more broadly, as important for social reasons or economic reasons it is important to appreciate how powerful and essential they can be in such critical situations.

Underlying technologySoftBank has been one of the few operators to deploy femtocells with IMS, contrary to most operators that chose to deploy dedicated femtocell gateways to aggregate traffi c from the access points. By doing so, SoftBank has capitalised on the benefi ts of an IMS-based deployment which is easy to expand, carrier-grade and maintains high levels of service quality. The company had one of the earliest 3G networks (dating back to FOMA) and this probably made it more sensible to jump to IMS rather than further invest in the

3G Iuh approach. As such, they used femtocells somewhat to test their IMS services as they have moved to that for LTE.

SoftBank has used several backhaul technologies, including DSL, fi bre and even satellite in rural areas. The operator reports that it even uses wireless backhaul for small cells until a fi xed line is deployed.

It is notable that the company has used satellite broadly, which makes sense in rural areas with limited broadband, but has not been widely copied by other carriers to date.

Business modelSoftBank claims that the pricing model for all of its small cells is free of charge to the end customer and it expects that it will remain so in the future. Given that coverage is a major concern in Japan due to the very high population concentration, SoftBank’s free small cell services may provide a competitive advantage over its competitors.

Similar to many other operators, SoftBank’s small cell strategy is to initially increase coverage, and then use a dense small cell network for capacity offl oad. Finally, the same network may be used for value added services.

SoftBank has deployed more than 100,000 small cell units in consumer, enterprise, metropolitan and rural areas.

Air interface WCDMA/HSPA

Access model Open to all SoftBank subscribers

Deployment type Consumer, enterprise, rural and public areas

Core network IMS

Backhaul DSL, fi bre, wireless and satellite

Pricing Free of charge

First million deployed Sprint Wireless (US)

Fig. 2: SoftBank’s small cell deployment specifi cations

Source: SoftBank



CASE STUDY | SoftBank | Small cell success story

Lessons and conclusionsSoftBank reports that initially its free femtocell offer resulted in some users accepting the device but never activating it. Over time and with some expense it managed to resolve this issue.

On a more technical note, SoftBank also reports that in some urban public small cells, a very high population concentration can saturate a small cell. For example, in coffee shops where there are large queues at certain times, the small cell may not be able to handle all subscribers. In these cases, the small cells are able to calibrate their power levels so users close to the edge are transferred to the macro network. Newer small cells with higher capacity could ease this situation.

SoftBank – and all other Japanese operators – would also benefi t from a more relaxed regulatory landscape where consumer/enterprise small cells could be freely deployed by end users without any, or reduced, licence costs to the operator, providing more freedom to implement new business models and pricing schemes. Nevertheless, SoftBank is perhaps the most advanced operator in terms of small deployment with a consumer, enterprise, and public rural and metropolitan strategy.

SoftBank’s strategy includes consumer, enterprise, public rural and metropolitan deployments.

SoftBankhttp://mb.softbank.jp/en/


FEBRUARY 2013

Airborne GSM small cell at-a-glance• GSM solution for airline passengers• Backhauls to satellite• Up to two picocells per aeroplane, serving up to

24 simultaneous calls• Commercial launch: March 2008• Technology provided by AeroMobile, Panasonic

and ip.access

AeroMobile Communications Limited is a UK-based company owned by Panasonic and Telenor. It provides 2.5G GSM and mobile data services on board a number of aircraft, badged as the eXPhone product in conjunction with Panasonic’s Global Communication Suite on its Ku-band satcom-equipped platform. AeroMobile also offers airborne GSM services over the Inmarsat SwiftBroadband L-band platform. Its promotional literature says that it provides “world class, proven technology and services that allow the safe and managed use of passengers’ own mobile phones and PDAs in-fl ight”. But terms like ‘proven’ and ‘safe’ are not just public relations-speak, as we shall see.

ip.access was a natural fi t for AeroMobile. ip.access has been deploying small cell solutions for more

than ten years, providing more than 100 customers around the world with the capability to accelerate the introduction of small cell solutions into their networks irrespective of use case, technology or deployment model.

The use case studied here is certainly not the home or enterprise that so many of us associate with small cells – but it’s a highly effective use of the technology. In fact picocell-enabled in-fl ight GSM is a very popular service with passengers and a growing number of airlines and operators. Mark Pittick, Vice President Sales, Europe, ip.access, says: “Passengers today are increasingly demanding seamless connectivity. They simply don’t accept that they should be out of contact for that ten-hour long-haul fl ight or even a one-hour short-haul hop. ip.access with its small, lower powered picocells has been well placed to provide one of the key enabling technologies into this market for over ten years and has invested time and money with leading innovative communications players such as AeroMobile to help make this service a reality.”

But it wasn’t always that way. As John Little, CTO & COO at AeroMobile, says: “During one of our fi rst

GSM in the air : no mere fl ight of fancy

CASE STUDY | Aviation

CASE STUDY | AeroMobile | GSM in the air: no mere fl ight of fancy

meetings with a telco operator they pointed out of the window and said: “There’s been more traffi c from that cell tower in the last hour than there would be on one fl ight.” So their initial interest levels were very low. But things have changed. “Now you have to be connected on a plane,” he says, adding, “and that original telco – along with more than 200 others – has now signed a roaming agreement with us!”

AeroMobile offers an on-board GSM network that enables the passenger to roam on the aircraft as if he or she were roaming in another country. Up to two picocells are employed – for capacity in some cases and coverage in others (for example, a dual deck A380 would require two base stations for coverage). Figure 1 shows a standard installation on-board a commercial aircraft. In order to achieve RF coverage in the cabin two RF leaky feeder cables (basically coaxial cables that leak RF down their length) run down the port and starboard of the aircraft cabin. The leaky feeders are connected to an RF combining unit that connects the picocell(s) and the Network Control Unit (NCU) installed at the rear of aircraft.

There are two NCUs feeding each of the leaky feeder cables via the RF combiner. Put very simply, as the aircraft fl ies over different countries the system stops the mobile phone receiving a signal from the ground network. The picocell RF level is positioned above the RF noise fl oor generated by

the NCU such that it provides the only GSM service on the aircraft and is not interrupted by accidental terrestrial signals.

The NCUs and the picocell(s) are connected via ethernet to an on-board server which contains part of the base station controller (BSC), the control system and the radio interference avoidance system (RIAS). The control system and RIAS together manage (1) what frequency bands the NCUs will operate on and (2) the BTS frequency, changing them automatically as the aircraft fl ies across different countries. The RIAS and the control system also ensure that the service is enabled and disabled automatically at the correct altitude as the aircraft takes off and lands, with no need for the crew to be involved.

But that’s not all. The ip.access picocell has to be in avionic format – a form factor that is specifi ed in the airline industry. This means the equipment had to go through a strict regime of testing covering vibration, RF susceptibility, RF radiation, temperature, temperature variation, shock and crack safety and many more environmental tests. It’s called RTCA DO160D, a complete set of environmental testing you have to carry out on all avionics installed on aircraft.

When using commercial off-the-shelf products such as the ip.access BTS you have to be especially careful to maintain traceability of components and manufacture to ensure that the units being delivered are to the same standard as the units tested during their environmental testing. “So we have to work very closely with ip.access to control manufacturing changes,” says Little. “The picocells

were already designed by ip.access to meet the specifi ed range for normal operation of minus 10 degrees up to plus 55,” says Pittick. “That was something we didn’t have to improve for this application”.

So, says Little, “Before we committed to using the product we spent time in an environmental chamber where we could take the commercial off-the-shelf product and vibrate it. We found that the oscillator was FM modulated with the vibration. This resulted in the transmission being badly degraded at 1.8GHz. So we changed to a more robust oscillator.” The AeroMobile service operates over different satellite bearers: L-band and Ku band. In the future it will also operate over Ka band. Of the two available today, Inmarsat’s L-band, while global, has a higher latency/lower bandwidth than Ku band and care needs to be taken in the design to manage the GSM signalling due to the higher satcom latency.

Panasonic’s own Ku-band system has higher bandwidth and lower latency and is committed to over 80 per cent of planes served by AeroMobile. Etihad, Emirates, Virgin Atlantic, Gulf, SAS, Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacifi c, Transaero, Aer Lingus, Air France, KLM, Turkish Airlines, and Lionair are just some of the names signed up to operate – or that are actually operating – Ku band that will eventually see service in hundreds of aircraft.

A single picocell on the Ku band aircraft can be confi gured to support up to ten simultaneous calls, although this can vary depending on the airline’s requirements. With a dual picocell confi guration up to 24 calls could be supported, but Little comments that very few airlines have requested this requirement, as SMS and data are the primary services used by passengers. As for backhaul, Pittick, explains: “On-board satellite transceivers communicate with satellites/networks and in turn down to ground-based transceivers which are then connected to a mobile network.” ip.access has ensured that the volume of traffi c passed between the base station and

the BSC is kept to an absolute minimum. Utilising techniques to put all voice calls into one packet, thereby reducing the IP overhead and silence suppression for example, allows for very effi cient use of backhaul bandwidth. Over and above this, AeroMobile has optimised this again for its own special market needs and challenges by further compression of the voice and signalling and employing signalling spoofi ng.

Commercial service came with the fi rst local approval from the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) for a Qantas 767 in 2007. Emirates followed in early 2008 with the Boeing 777, Airbus A330 and A340 with European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) approval. “Emirates has now been fl ying for more than fi ve years with over 12 million mobile devices connecting to our network,” says Little.

AeroMobile’s system is increasingly being charged by operators in the rest of the world rate for roaming – or less. Some operators offer extremely attractive roaming rates as a differentiator especially for their corporate accounts and business customers. Arguably, this tactic could boost loyalty and the habit of usage. And it isn’t all business users; relatively low-cost Twitter and SMS traffi c tempts a fair number of ordinary users. The technology, the roaming agreements and both customer or operator enthusiasm have not been a problem. Regulation

and certifi cation, however, have been more challenging. To get to the point it is at today AeroMobile has had to obtain approvals for every country that the system overfl ies. That process is almost at an end, with only one or two countries still to open up to mobile calls on commercial aircraft over their territory. As for certifi cation, “We started in 2004 and it took us three years to get EASA approvals,” says Little. “Working with our Design Authority and EASA the key driver was to ensure that installation and operation of the system would not affect the safety of the aircraft.”

AeroMobile followed a unique and ground-breaking process at the time to obtain certifi cation. In order to prove that the concept was safe, AeroMobile completed theoretical calculations relating to the use of multiple phones transmitting simultaneously at full power. “We had to prove that in the event that the on-board system failed all the phones could theoretically transmit simultaneously at full power (2 watts) without causing a safety impact on the plane,” says Little. “This was taken to the worst case by assuming that 512 phones were all transmitting at the same time on every seat (plus more). This allowed us to calculate the theoretical fi eld strength within the cabin and avionics bay.” Despite that, in normal operation the phones are managed to a very low power level of 1 mW.

Fig.1: A standard installation on-board a commercial aircraft

Ku/SBB antenna

Leaky feeders

Equipment installation



CASE STUDY | AeroMobile | GSM in the air: no mere fl ight of fancy

“Then,” Little continues, “you look at all the avionic equipment on the aircraft and fi nd out the RF susceptibility of every piece of avionics compared to the theoretical RF fi eld generated by the simultaneous 512 2W phones. A safety level agreed by EASA allowed us to determine what avionics would require individual transmitting personal electronic device (t-PED) testing.

“We used a 32 Watt transmitter to simulate the RF level generated worst case by 512 phones transmitting for on-board t-PED testing – so considerably higher than a single device. The avionics that required t-PED testing from the above analysis included on-board receivers (for example GPS, ILS/VOR, VHF, DME) along with smoke detectors and announcement systems. In fact anything that we thought could be affected we had to test on the aircraft.”

Today all the fl y-by-wire systems on-board an aircraft have already been tested to a very high RF susceptibility level ensuring that as the plane fl ies by high-powered transmitters that the on-board avionics are not susceptible to the RF levels. This allowed AeroMobile to determine the RF susceptibility of all Critical and Essential avionics on-board the aircraft. t-PED testing on the fi rst type of aircraft took three to four days – a signifi cant investment by the airline in downtime. Having eventually satisfi ed EASA, the equipment was classifi ed on Boeing and Airbus aircraft as ‘no safety effect’. Little adds, however, “Not all aircraft will have been through this process so our advice to passengers is always to obey each airline’s specifi c rules and policies regarding the use of phones and PEDs in fl ight.”

Having once resisted the concept, airlines now want GSM connectivity and are signing up to Ku band and, by extension, the Panasonic service. Little says: “2.5G is the base of our product currently, but as newer aircraft come online and as the on-board systems get upgraded I see us transitioning to 3G at the absolute minimum, if not LTE.”He continues, “As with all operators, we see mobile data as the future of our business. Together with our partner Panasonic, AeroMobile is developing an on-board 3G solution to handle increasing demand; it will be in service in 2014.”

Still, increasing demand is a nice problem to have. The service enabled by AeroMobile and ip.access is gaining traction at an incredible speed. As Gail Burlinson, marketing manager with AeroMobile, says: “We have ten airlines fl ying with our services on-board, including some VIP carriers, but more importantly there will be up to 20 by the end of the year. In terms of usage we saw growth of 50 per cent across all services on our network throughout 2012 and already in 2013 with increased aircraft installations and passenger awareness, data usage in January 2013 has already exceeded that of the last six months of 2012, which is staggering – and demonstrates that when passengers know there’s the option to stay connected, they will use it!”

Underlying this success story is another one: for small cells, which are going beyond the home and enterprise in some very surprising ways. There are now small cells being deployed not just in homes, businesses and shopping malls but at sea and on planes to facilitate services no other form of cell could allow.

Pittick says: “Extending mobile networks and providing coverage now knows no bounds. Areas where we once

assumed it would never be possible to provide communication have been accessible. Small cells are now being increasingly used to provide mobile services on ships and aircraft, in small remote communities with no power or land communications, in homes, businesses, underground garages, on top of skyscrapers – you name it. And with that extended access comes extended opportunities for revenue generation.”

Today, thanks to ip.access, AeroMobile and Panasonic, you can use a regular GSM or smart phone to roam at 30,000 feet. Operators are clearly convinced it’s a good idea. And now that attitudes to mobile phone use on planes are changing – albeit with a lot of testing and cooperation from companies like AeroMobile – this market is growing fast.

In fact mobile calls in-fl ight may eventually be not just a luxury for business users but a necessity for all of us, one that, like in-fl ight entertainment (IFE) – could infl uence your choice of carrier. As Little says: “From an airline’s perspective we are turning a new corner where we will see all airlines having to offer mobile connectivity to keep up with their competitors.”

AeroMobile:http://www.aeromobile.net

Panasonic Avionics:http://www.ipaccess.com/en/femtocells-introduction

ip.access:http://www.ipaccess.com

Fig.2: ip.access nanoGSM BTS

FEBRUARY 2013

Where Land & Sea Connect

Marine GSM small cell at-a-glance• GSM solution for marine market• Backhauls to satellite• One picocell per ship serving around 20 users• Commercial launch: April 2009• Technology provided by Globe Wireless &

ip.access

But that small crew is still important, for everything from cooking, painting and cleaning to engineering, maintenance and steering ships. And the container-led boom in global trade means that there are a lot of ships. The owners of those ships often make a signifi cant investment in training, an investment they hope pays off in long-term staff retention.

However, that isn’t always possible. Long periods at sea and a near total disconnect from the rest of the world mean that staff churn is a problem: many crew might join for one leg of a journey and then, after only a few months of regular isolation, leave.

But it could take very little to keep them on. A modest perk such as the occasional call home could boost loyalty signifi cantly. However, that was not an option for some time. Kevin Watson, Project Manager with Globe Wireless, a leading provider of total solutions in the fi eld of communications, operational and IT solutions to the maritime industry, explains: “If a crew member wanted to make a phone call they had to have direct access

GSM: a global service for maritime!Today’s commercial fl eets are not the labour-intensive businesses of years ago. Containerisation has allowed vast volumes of goods to be packed into enormous shipping containers and to be loaded and unloaded on runners and by crane into ships of staggering size. No longer do thousands of dockworkers haul single bags and boxes on to every corner of ships ill-designed for the purpose. Enormous cargo ships can be manned and maintained by staff numbering only a few dozen. Even tankers and refrigerator vessels, which also ply their trade in huge numbers, need only a modest complement of staff to do their job.

CASE STUDY | Maritime

CASE STUDY | Globe Wireless | A global service for maritime!

to the handset and satellite terminal on the bridge. In some cases there would be an extra handset – a crew phone – and they had to purchase prepaid calling cards. They shared that one voice line over the satellite terminal with the ship’s business use so there were restrictions on placing calls. They pretty much never received a call because the cost to call a satellite phone from shore using your local telco is prohibitive.”

Integrating regular GSM with satellite would be a logical response, but for many years it wasn’t possible to have a GSM solution on board a commercial ship; the satellite terminals just didn’t have the bandwidth. Or it would be too expensive so the crew wouldn’t use it. But older satellite terminals have been, or are being, replaced by IP-based satellite terminals, which are faster and offer higher throughput than their predecessors. Two of the services that use these modern terminals are Fleet Broadband from Inmarsat, a company that provides communication services to a wide range of business and government customers on land, at sea and in the air, and OpenPort from global mobile satellite communications company Iridium.

Both services use L-band, a band used by satellites that is in the 1-2GHz frequency range. L-band isn’t ideal for high-speed data but it does have the twin

advantages of working well with smaller antennas than other satellite bands and experiencing almost no attenuation problems caused by rain and bad weather.

Bandwidth may not be at terrestrial network levels; broadband-type data is pretty much out of the question. On the other hand, the target market is not business executives using smartphones and laptops. Basic connectivity is all the crew require. Thus a 2G GSM system with a highly optimised link to satellite backhaul would be ideal.

Enter Globe Wireless’s iFusion communication system. Globe iFusion integrates a FleetBroadband 250 antenna, a least-cost satellite gateway and a router. Most importantly perhaps, it offers a GSM network. Called GlobeMobile, this is a GSM solution providing crew members with voice calling and SMS capabilities at reasonable rates. GlobeMobile can be used not just with Inmarsat FleetBroadband, but with VSAT and Iridium OpenPort terminals.

Kevin Watson takes up the story. “Globe iFusion contains the below-decks equipment for FleetBroadband 250. It’s all-in-one: you plug it in, connect it to the network, hook it up to the antenna and you’re ready to go. Then we plug in the BTS (picocell) that we get from ip.access and that allows the cell phones to connect.”

In this case Globe doesn’t send the voice signal over the voice channel; that would not be cost-effective. It uses the signalling and the data channels of the satellite to communicate with shore and send the voice signal. “That allows us to send multiple calls through at one time – and to keep the cost down,” explains Watson.

Even though it had been possible to set up VoIP calling before GlobeMobile, it was a more complex undertaking and involved more equipment. End users still had to pick up a handset at a specifi c place on a ship – and paid a lot more to do so. They also had to chat in front of an audience. Now they are supplied with a GlobeMobile SIM card and can send and receive SMS and voice calls from shore in their cabin, in private.

The business model is fairly straightforward too. The SIM cards have a small starter prepaid balance that can be topped up as required. It’s not as cheap as terrestrial but it offers major savings on a direct satellite call from the bridge.

A very important role in this small cell implementation is played by ip.access, a major provider of 2G and 3G small cells. If a ship uses the Globe system then ip.access supplied the picocells – or rather picocell, since a typical vessel installation requires only one.

It is relevant in this context that ip.access focuses entirely on in-building challenges. This means it has developed solutions that are easy to deploy, integrate and scale. Admittedly we’re

not talking about an ordinary building here. The ip.access GSM picocell would normally provide coverage up to a cell radius of about 300 metres. A ship is different; the normal ranges don’t apply. Much of the ship is made of thick metal, which has a real impact on the signal levels. In fact you might think it a terrible place to have a base station. In that case you would be surprised to learn that, as Mark Pittick, Vice President Sales Europe, ip.access, explains: “It depends on how the ship is confi gured. The corridors act like wave guides: as the base station is radiating it actually channels the energy quite effi ciently around the ship, often just where you need it.”

If a door is shut, that attenuates the signal – but that is not usually the case. Watson says: “We’ve found that if we place them in stairwells – generally the doorways are left open – we can get about fi ve decks of coverage from one of the cells. They’re usually placed strategically so that they’re near a crew common area or near where the crew has their bunks.”

The picocell is unobtrusive: about an inch deep with a footprint about the size of an A4 sheet of paper. “The size is ideal for the situation,” says Pittick. “Not too big and not too small.”

More importantly perhaps, the backhaul has been highly optimised. “We basically squeeze the voice call into as little bandwidth as possible,” says Pittick. This is important because satellite backhaul is very expensive. Optimisation is essential to allow a relatively low calling rate.

”It’s not like prepaid services in the UK,” says Pittick, “but it is low when you consider the price compared with services you can use in remote parts of the world.”

And the customised Globe + ip.access solution is cost-effective too. Pittick explains: “It’s not the sort of solution that a major operator may choose to use in its land networks – the ip.access standard solutions address these needs. But for maritime, aviation or for a small island network it is ideally suited because it is a much lower cost than having to buy products from the macro vendors.”

And the customers are certainly grateful. “On vessels where we offer GlobeMobile the uptake from the crew is around 80 per cent,” says Watson. But given the numbers, is that much of a market? Remember, these are commercial vessels; the number of crew isn’t as high as it would be on, say, a cruise vessel. Watson estimates 16-20 users per vessel.

In fact, given the low numbers per ship the overall usage is pretty spectacular. Take-up of the GlobeMobile network has long since passed the 20,000-subscriber mark on well over 1300 vessels. The service continues to roll out at a steady rate of 50 or more new ships a month and, with thousands more out there, has a lot of potential business waiting, especially as old satellite terminals are replaced. “We’re constantly installing additional systems for new customers or existing customers that are upgrading from the

That allows us to send multiple calls through at one time – and to keep the cost down.



CASE STUDY | Globe Wireless | A global service for maritime!

It’s all-in-one: you plug it in, connect it to the network, hook it up to the antenna and you’re ready to go. Then we plug in the BTS (picocell) that we get from ip.access and that in the BTS (picocell) that we get from ip.access and that allows the cell phones to connect.

Kevin Watson,Globe Wireless

old-style satellites to the new ones,” says Watson.

It’s not a bad business model for Globe either. As the only game in town – or on board – for GSM users wanting to call home there’s revenue and profi t to be earned. And the end users clearly love it. “We hit a milestone late in 2012 of a million minutes per month,” Watson says. “That was a big deal for us. “

It also succeeds in keeping crew loyal a lot longer – and often makes them into a part-time marketing service. When they rotate to a new vessel they are beginning to expect the same communications service, which is a word-of-mouth bonus for Globe.

As for the future, the Globe Wireless and ip.access parts of the network could easily be enhanced to cope with more demand but satellites are far less fl exible. “We have 2G on board now and that seems best suited for the satellite terminals and the limitations we have there as far as bandwidth and throughput are concerned,” says Watson.

Let’s not forget that satellite terminals were not even digital eight years ago; modems were the norm. And bandwidth was much more limited than it is today. That said, these services will not remain just in the L-band forever. New opportunities (being pursued by Inmarsat among others) exist in the Ka band where bandwidth is less of an issue and new satellites are planned. Of course GlobeMobile is not limited to

L-band. It is already in place on vessels with Ku and C band, and the company is ready for Ka.

However, Ka is more vulnerable to rain fade than the L, C or Ku satellite bands. That problem is being addressed, but for the moment, the GlobeMobile service will remain voice and SMS, which, given that nothing affordable existed before, is perfectly acceptable for most crew members.

However, the compactness of Globe’s all-in-one network – the MSC, the SGSN, the HLR – everything, essentially, on one server – is a model that Pittick, for one, feels could be effectively applied by other companies in other areas – with a little help from ip.access. As he says: “When you look at that type of architecture you could say that there is no reason why you can’t just put this solution in a rural village in Africa, for example, so you could offer communications for the fi rst time to places that had none at all. Mobile cellular services to the surrounding village community and long-distance calls interconnected via satellite are just the start of new applications for this model.”

Globe Wireless iFusion:http://www.globewireless.com/solutions/ifusion


DECEMBER 2012

The Greek mobile market is experiencing signifi cant challenges as the economic climate is imposing pressure on the profi tability of the country’s operators. Mobile operators are facing additional challenges from increased competition, the price pressure and a market penetration level of 133 per cent – on top of that, they are also experiencing increasing data traffi c volumes.

Although the need for investment in mobile broadband is no less than in any other western European market, it is obvious that in a market like Greece the allocation of capex to mobile broadband technologies like UMTS900 and LTE is a key differentiating factor for a mobile operator. Vodafone Greece has consistently led with its

mobile broadband strategy and is one of just two operators in Greece currently operating and deploying LTE networks in urban areas.

Vodafone Greece – much like most of Vodafone’s subsidiaries – has chosen small cells as one of many tools to maintain a competitive edge. It started with consumer femtocells and moved to public-area femtozone services, a move that could lead to it generating new revenue. Its innovative project aims to provide for the Greek consumers’ growing demand for internet access by establishing internet usage and free access as a daily commodity. More specifi cally, it wants to be the fi rst mobile provider to set the pace for free internet access in public places.

Small cells deliver competitive advantage in tough economic climateVodafone Greece, the Greek subsidiary of Vodafone, operates a mobile network across the country. It is one of the largest mobile operators in Greece and has formed a strategic partnership with Hellas Online (HOL), a fi xed-line provider which offers triple-play services.

CASE STUDY | Vodafone Greece

CASE STUDY | Vodafone Greece | Small Cells deliver competitive advantage in tough economic climate

Consumer femtocells: Full SignalVodafone Greece launched its consumer femtocell service in July 2010, the fi rst of Vodafone’s subsidiaries to do so after Vodafone UK.

The service, called ‘Full Signal’ offers a femtocell access point to users who need a good mobile signal in every corner of their house or offi ce – even those in basement fl ats or buildings with thick walls that can block mobile signals. Vodafone UK is now using similar branding for its consumer femtocell, changing its name from ‘Vodafone Access Gateway’ to ‘Sure Signal’ to make sure that consumers understand what the service does without the need for more explanation: the service’s adverts on national television promote the benefi ts of the service rather than the technical properties of the access point.

Vodafone Greece’s Full Signal access point currently retails at €90 (US$117) and is being offered at discounted prices or free of charge to contract customers wishing to strengthen their indoor coverage.

The femtocell service is the fi rst in the Greek market and the one with the highest installed base. Although Greece may present a somewhat limited potential for such a service – due to a strong prejudice against cellular masts – the Full Signal service is well accepted and signifi cantly improves the customer experience where used.

Public-area small cells: location-based servicesAfter establishing its consumer femtocell service, Vodafone Greece launched a public area, small cell service in December 2012 in approximately 200 fast-food restaurants and cafeterias of a well-known retail chain around Greece. Importantly, this is the fi rst hard launch of small cell zone services based on location, which may enable a variety of new business models while enhancing the user experience.

Vodafone – through its partnership with HOL – has opted to provide both 3G and Wi-Fi access in order to focus on a ‘free data’ value proposition rather than restrict itself to either one of these technologies. Wi-Fi and femtocells allow not only smartphones and internet feature phones, but also notebook computers and tablets, to be connected to the network.

Service descriptionThe service, named ‘Free 3G Hotspot’, is deployed in approximately 200 Flocafé cafeterias and Goody’s fast-food restaurants across Greece. By using a small cell and a directional antenna, Vodafone Greece is able to create a new cell that covers the indoor location of these venues, enabling its network to handle traffi c generated in these areas

differently. The user experience when entering these areas is described below (see also fi g. 1).

As soon as the customer device is ‘camped’ to the small cell, all traffi c through the small cell is whitelisted and does not count towards the subscriber’s monthly allowance. An SMS notifi cation is sent after fi ve minutes to alert the

Vodafone Greece has launched a cost effective zone-based service driven by small cells

Source: Vodafone Greece

Fig. 1: Vodafone’s Free 3G Hotspot: internet service fl ow at customer entry and departure from small cell coverage

Vodafone subscriber enters venue

Indoor Cell-ID triggers location-based service

Vodafone subscriber leaves venue

Macro Cell-ID triggers normal service

Handover to small cell

Handover to macro cell

5 minute delay

3 minute delay

SMS with service details is sent to handset

Macro Cell-ID triggers normal service



CASE STUDY | Vodafone Greece | Small Cells deliver competitive advantage in tough economic climate

The new location-based service from Vodafone Greece has the potential to attract mass market interest

user about the service; this delay was implemented to avoid sending the SMS to customers who do not intend to remain in the Free 3G Hotspot coverage area of the restaurant/café. In a similar fashion, an SMS is sent when the user leaves the coverage area of the small cell but with a shorter delay.

Vodafone Greece has also launched an Android app to notify subscribers in real time when they enter or leave a Free 3G Hotspot: the app monitors the ID of the cell that the handset is connected to and notifi es the user. The majority of user reviews in Android’s Google Play store are positive, suggesting that users perceive the service in a positive way and understand the benefi ts of connecting to the small cell.

So to summarise, Vodafone Greece has launched a zone-based service driven by a small cell as well as an Android app that can be used for value-added services.

Deployment driversThe deployment drivers for Vodafone’s Free 3G Hotspot are fi rst and foremost aimed at establishing internet usage and free access as a daily commodity. The competitive and fi nancially challenging environment in Greece does not allow much fl exibility for mobile operators to launch new services but Vodafone Greece has created a relatively cost-effective new location-based service that has the potential to attract mass-market interest. It is a service that could, in the future, potentially provide new revenue opportunities by offering advertising options to venue owners through Android apps or other location-based services.

Vodafone Greecehttp://www.vodafone.gr/


MARCH 2013

Private GSM at-a-glance• Private GSM solution for the municipality of

Zaanstad in the Netherlands.• Internal enterprise network including PBX

integration, edge-based mobile network software and 41 GSM small cells serving up to 1500 employees.

• Connects to PSTN and enterprise voice and data network. Roams onto macro.

• Launch: November 2011. • Technology provided by Dimension Data,

Quortus, ip.access and Private Mobility.

This radical reappraisal meant that the majority of municipality offi cials would have no fi xed workplace; staff, when entering the building, would fi nd themselves a place to work. And only members of the customer contact centre and the secretarial staff would have a landline. The rest of the staff would be given a choice of smartphones.

But these smartphones were not going to get most of their use on macro networks. The City Hall was to have a new telephony infrastructure bringing small cells to an unusual enterprise application – a private mobile network that would allow the 1500 or so City Hall staff to work and be contactable at any one of 1050 workstations or anywhere else in the building.

Specialist IT services and solutions provider Dimension Data was the system integrator for the project – the designing and building of a private GSM network fully integrated with an IP telephony-based communications platform, bringing Unifi ed Communication functionality to employee smartphones. When employees are working outside the building, they are also reachable and may simply roam between the private GSM network and the public network.

Small cells in the enterprise: private GSM comes to City HallWhen the municipality of Zaanstad in the Netherlands brought together services previously housed in three locations in its stunning new City Hall, it decided it also needed a new, more effective, more effi cient approach to working within the building.

CASE STUDY | City of Zaanstad

CASE STUDY | City of Zaanstad | Small cells in the enterprise: private GSM comes to City Hall

This isn’t the only important advantage of private GSM. This approach also provides a robust environment, with fewer access points being needed than with a DECT or Wi-Fi network. With a private GSM environment employees experience the benefi ts of proven GSM technology, but they are not dependent on the public GSM network, over which the municipality has no control and which may become congested at times.

An important part of the IP telephony solution is the PBX: an Avaya Aura Contact Centre system, which handles all incoming calls to the main number that citizens and businesses use to direct their questions to the municipality authorities. Small cells were also part of the network: Dimension Data sourced the 41 picocells from ip.access. The private GSM network technology came from another UK company, Quortus, and the Dutch company Private Mobility provided the roaming interconnect with the macro network. Together, these technologies brought together normal voice, text and packet data services with advanced PBX functionality.

This approach to encouraging worker fl exibility isn’t necessarily a cheap option. Not just the infrastructure and software costs but training

employees and explaining to them how the system works are a major investment. The longer-term gains are a clear attraction of the scheme, however; quicker response times, greater customer satisfaction and greater fl exibility, effi ciency and employee availability will, eventually, generate savings that should more than offset the original investment.

Certainly, after a settling in and training period the workforce has now embraced the concept. However, the network had to deliver on a technical level too. And that’s where the partners in the project came in. Partners like Quortus, which offers operators the capability to embed full core network functionality into cost-effective software applications deployable at small cell sites. This means that advanced network features – like data offl oad, session creation, switching and handoff, traffi c compression, edge caching and presence information – can be handled at the edge.In the context of the city of Zaanstad, the Quortus SoftCore Connect architecture was used. This is described as providing “a scalable way to deploy both GSM and 3G radio networks in enterprise networks… combining easy integration with enterprise IP PBX systems and direct access from mobile devices to local LAN data servers.”

Much of which was relevant to this project. However, there were a couple of differences from much of the company’s previous work. Firstly, this was big: one of the biggest projects of its type undertaken in Europe, in fact. And secondly, the operator wasn’t actually a traditional operator. Control of the network, at least inside the building, was in the hands of the City Hall.

So why the private GSM approach to small cell deployment? In fact, the logic is fairly straightforward. Whereas in the residential market leaving your small cell takes you back on the macro, in the enterprise you can burden the real core handing from cell to cell as you walk down a corridor. In Zaanstad City Hall, when a call is made on the move all the audio, the mobility and the handover control as you walk down the corridors past the ip.access picocells is dealt with locally. A lot of backhaul is saved because of the local switching of the voice and data too. The macro network is in any case, unaware of it.

You also get the advantage of a mobile network, with added capacity, coverage and control, because you have proper integration with the enterprise voice network, in this case via an Avaya PBX.

Andy Odgers, CEO of Quortus, explains: “In this new environment, the GSM or 3G handset is effectively an extension of the Avaya PBX; our software integrates the handset into the enterprise voice network.” There is a Quortus-supplied local core in the enterprise which models for these phones as if they were SIP clients (or SIP phones) hanging

off the Avaya PBX. Thus they can have almost all the features of a PBX, “which,” Odgers argues, “is where features ought to be. They shouldn’t be in the MSC sitting outside if you are meant to be part of an enterprise voice network. Users ought to be able to leverage the much more feature-rich Avaya – or Nortel or Cisco or similar – core manager: one of these advanced class 5 SIP servers that have a wide range of advanced enterprise oriented features.” Among such features are those allowing your GSM or 3G handset – GSM in this case – to be part of hunt groups, to be part of dual ringing, to access click-to-dial, or IM pop-ups, or short code dialling, or pick-up calls, or dial zero for the receptionist… in fact, all the things you fi nd in modern PBXs you can now use from your GSM handset. In the Zaanstad system you can also access the intranet directly, as well as the internet on the local LAN and internal IT services.

At the same time, there are still the capabilities of a regular GSM phone service from the macro network: voice, SMS, secure user authentication and packet data. Also, unlike DECT, say, when you leave the building you go onto the macro network.

You could argue that this system is bringing some reality to endlessly predicted trends like bring your own device (BYOD). The reason is that here there is no proprietary SIP client to download. You can use almost all the features of the SIP network – the Avaya in this case – on any handset, smart or not. Importantly too, even when you

are outside the building and back on the macro network you still have short code dialling and many other facilities of the PBX. The user experience does not radically change. This was a deliberate part of the planning from the start.

It certainly brings new meaning to another over-used term: this really is hot desking. Employees no longer have to log on or log out of a workstation. However, they can always be found. If you are, for example, part of a planning department hunt group the PBX will ring round to fi nd someone to answer a call sequentially. Whether you’re on a desk phone or your mobile – at home or on the street – you can be contacted.

Private GSM is a useful way of taking what’s best from a mobile network while offl oading the actual traffi c from the macro. But also, by making it internal and linked to the PSTN via the PBX, it gives the City Hall more capacity, resilience and, of course more control over what is after all, its own, private network.

And that gives the City Hall numerous options, many of which it is only just beginning to explore. Take, for example, the security guard at the front desk of the building. He has a web screen that is linked to the communications system. When someone needs fi rst aid, the guard puts the message on the web screen. That rings or texts the phones of predetermined fi rst aiders who can then all run to wherever they’re supposed to go. All this happens independently of the macro network.

In this new environment, the GSM or 3G handset is effectively an extension of the Avaya PBX; our software integrates the handset into the enterprise voice network.



CASE STUDY | City of Zaanstad | Small cells in the enterprise: private GSM comes to City Hall

In the past when we talked about FMC there was no real convergence… Here you really are part of the enterprise voice network. The convergence here is happening where it voice network. The convergence here is happening where it should be.

Andy Odgers, CEO, Quortus

That small cell ‘community’ doesn’t just benefi t the City Hall. Many employees today reach for their mobile phones when at their desks – because it’s easier and because that is where their address book tends to be. They then grumble about paying mobile rates. However, on this GSM network, if they make PSTN calls in the building it just goes out over the PBX.

It sounds impressive. Why, therefore is it not more common? That is, in part answered by another question: if the Quortus software supports 3G small cells too, using an embedded Iuh femto-gateway, why is this a 2G/2.5G GSM system?

In fact the Netherlands is a slightly special case; it has opened up some of its GSM 1800MHz spectrum so anybody can transmit, given a modest outlay. Not all countries even where such relaxing of otherwise typically stringent spectrum regulations is in place, have been quite so effi cient at spreading the benefi ts. However, this doesn’t yet apply to 3G in the Netherlands unfortunately.

The City of Zaanstad municipality is clearly pleased with its new network in its City Hall – and because of its high profi le in the Netherlands, town halls and corporates have been watching the outcome with interest, as have system integrators and established mobile operators. However, working with this model may require some skills extension for operators in particular. For an operator to work directly with enterprise networks would require some new and possibly less familiar capabilities: private network installation, radio planning, PBX integration and

extended CPE maintenance, for example. But many operators are looking at it as a way of securing footprint within the lucrative enterprise and corporate sectors. The Zaanstad project could be seen as a sort of test bed: a good reference to help deal with the questions that operators need answered – questions of ownership between the operator and the enterprise, say. “However,” says Odgers, “there is more and more interest from operators and system integrators so I think it will happen.”

And when it does, it might signal a revival of another overused – and even mocked – concept: fi xed mobile convergence. “In the past when we talked about FMC there was no real convergence,” says Odgers. “All that often meant was that you were on a cell long-lined inside the enterprise. The behaviour was just the same as if you were outside. Here you really are part of the enterprise voice network. The convergence here is happening where it should be.”

Source: FrameWeb.com

City of Zaanstad:http://www.zaanstad.nl/

Dimension Data:http://www.dimensiondata.com

Private Mobility:http://www.privatemobility.nl/

Quortus:http://www.quortus.com


FEBRUARY 2012

Full Dekning at-a-glance• Enterprise femtocell deployment• Integrated with fi xed-line replacement solution• SON and femtocell-femtocell handover Plug ‘n’ play to existing LAN installation• Trialed in 2010• Full commercial launch Q1 2011• Technology providers Ubiquisys and NEC

Network Norway has made its name by being different. Like many challenger brands, it operates in a highly competitive environment. In the case of Norway’s third operator, that means competing with two incumbents that have both fi xed and wireless assets, and between them account for

more than 80% of the total available market.So it should come as no surprise that the company has been at the forefront in using new technologies such as small cells to differentiate itself. Having conducted extensive user trials in 2010, Network Norway began offering enterprise femtocells to its customers on a commercial basis in Q1 2011. The service, which is based on self-organizing femtocell access points from Ubiquisys and gateways from NEC, has been an unqualifi ed success.

Network Norway has built rapid growth by focusing on business customers, and on the back of a dramatic trend in Norway towards mobile, rather than fi xed, telephony. In 2007 the company

How Network Norway is utilising small cells to change the world of businessSuccessful small cell deployments around the world have established the technology’s effectiveness in a residential context. But small cells can also dramatically change the world of business communications. This case history outlines how Network Norway has combined a new self-organizing femtocell product (Full Dekning, or “full coverage”) with its Mobile Centrex offering, to create a complete turnkey fi xed line replacement solution for small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

CASE STUDY | Network Norway

CASE STUDY | Network Norway | How Network Norway is utilising small cells to change the world of business

was a retail operation with just four outlets. Since becoming a mobile operator in 2009 it has built 18% market share in Norway, with a national distribution network of around 100 B2B dealers, concentrated particularly on serving the needs of small to medium enterprise (SMEs).

Mobile in Norway is making rapid inroads at the expense of fi xed line communications. “The market in Norway is going mobile only,” says Geir Ove Jenssen, who heads up the Network Norway femtocell operation. “In 2010, 64% of all call minutes originated on a mobile phone. But an even higher proportion – 79% – of call minutes terminated on a mobile.”

Fixed line subscriber numbers have been falling year-on-year for a considerable time now, in both the residential and enterprise markets, according to fi gures from the Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority. “The rate of change was about 3% up until 2007,” says Jenssen. But since then, he explains, the decline has accelerated. “Fixed network subscriptions dropped 10% year-on-year from 1H 2009 to the comparable period in 2010,” he says. And this trend is not restricted to POTS lines. Fixed IP-telephony is also declining.Why is this happening? Jenssen is in no doubt that, at least in the enterprise sector, the motivation

is simplifi cation and cost reduction. “The mobile can replace the fi xed line service, but the same is not true in reverse,” he explains. “So if companies are looking to rationalize by employing a single integrated service, mobile is the only way that makes sense.”

Network Norway is driving this change via its Mobile Centrex offering, which allows businesses – and SMEs in particular – to trade their fi xed line PBX for a virtual mobile exchange whose functionality is integrated into the network.

Mobile Centrex gives Network Norway’s enterprise customers all of the facilities that they would expect from a sophisticated business communications system, such as short dialing, conferencing, hunt groups, personal groups and call queueing, including VIP handling. There is also a PC switchboard application installation for the attendant, as well as a smartphone app for user control, statistics on attendant function and user defi ned voice prompts.

In addition, the system brings integration benefi ts. The most obvious of these is that each member of staff has a single phone number, while callers still have the choice of calling a switchboard number if they so wish. Companies also save PBX costs and expensive service agreement fees.

But the Mobile Centrex approach has one potential pitfall: dependency on the mobile phone is 100%. In an enterprise environment, every missed call might be a missed business opportunity. Business users are therefore demanding; they will not tolerate dropped calls or a service that does not deliver to the promised level of reliability.

The need to provide absolute reliability – especially at the customer’s own site – represents a challenge. Although cellular coverage in Norway is generally excellent, building regulations are extremely stringent. As a result, offi ce and industrial units are frequently constructed with steel or concrete walls and metal layer windows, making it very diffi cult to achieve indoor coverage with macrocells ‘from the outside in’.

The problem worsens as smartphones proliferate: it is harder to build indoor coverage with 3G than with 2G. And although many enterprise customers are located in clusters, for instance on industrial parks, it is generally not practical to rely on deploying a supplementary macrocell base station whenever a customer experiences indoor coverage problems.

“The femtocell is the commercial answer to these problems,” says Geir Ove Jenssen. Network Norway has combined the Mobile Centrex solution with a femtocell offering branded Full Dekning (literally ‘full coverage’), to create a seamless enterprise service with 100% coverage indoors, in a cost effective deployment with low equipment cost and straightforward deployment.

Simplicity is the watchword for the service. Installation, which is performed by Network Norway’s dealer network, is highly automated; no more complex, according to Jenssen, than installing Wi-Fi access points. Pricing is simple, with a monthly cost to the customer of €12.50 per femtocell over a 24 month contract, and no initial set-up fee. At these price levels, the service is economic only because it does not require the complex and costly cellular network planning needed by traditional indoor coverage solutions.

The service – which was the fi rst femtocell offering in Scandinavia – was launched with a major marketing push, including advertising in national and regional newspapers, the business press, and billboard slots at Norway’s major airports. The campaign focused on several different segments. Many potential customers will consider the switch to exclusively cellular working only if they receive a service-level guarantee, and the femtocell offering is key to that capability.

Full Dekning also allows dealers to help customers that have little or no mobile coverage in an existing workplace, or which are expanding. Customers moving to a new facility also value the service, as do those in the process of switching from 2G to 3G handsets, and experiencing a subjective degradation in indoor coverage. Finally, Full Dekning also allows Network Norway to take care of companies that have home-working employees with bad coverage at home.

As we have seen, the service relies heavily on technology and automation. Dealers are provided with an online order processing and tracking system that automatically works with Network Norway’s back-end systems such as billing and CRM, and communicates directly with the centralized storage and logistics system to fulfi ll hardware orders.

Although the service is dealer-installed, Network Norway imposed rigorous requirements to simplify the installation process and produce an end-to-end zero touch capability. The Ubiquisys access points are confi gured in open access mode and make extensive use of self-organizing network (SON) technology to provide landline-quality coverage. The use of SON is particularly important for the SMEs targeted by Network Norway, which tend to occupy mixed use buildings on industrial and retail parks, with extensive use of steel construction, few windows and an awkward mix of offi ce and production/warehouse spaces.

The femtocells communicate via the customer’s LAN without the need for a central controller node, and implement femtocell-to-femtocell hand-off, allowing several access points to be used to achieve coverage throughout a large facility, without the danger of dropped calls when users move around. When fi rst powered-up, the femtocells self-confi gure, establishing basic connectivity with the core network, and downloading any required confi guration parameters and software.

If companies are looking to rationalize by employing a single integrated service, mobile is the only way that makes sense. Customers want to communicate with a person, not a company.



CASE STUDY | Network Norway | How Network Norway is utilising small cells to change the world of business

The femtocell offering allows companies to take care of their communications needs simply and effectively – not only for employees at the central offi ce or factory, but also those who are on the move and those who work at home.

Geir Ove Jenssen,

Network Norway.

The same self-organizing network (SON) capabilities allow the femtocells to self-optimize in real time on an on-going basis, adjusting their power level and neighbour list based on base station output. The network is also self-healing: if a femtocell is moved, there is a power failure or some other kind of fault, the surrounding femtocells automatically reconfi gure to compensate.

The high level of self-organization and automation still leaves plenty of scope for dealers to add value. Before installation, they need to obtain physical fl oor plans and establish the capacity needs in each area. It is also vital to ensure that the customer has suffi cient throughput in the fi xed broadband connection that will be used for backhaul – both in the uplink and downlink.

The dealer also takes responsibility for a simple level of network planning to ensure coverage, similar to what would be required when installing an enterprise Wi-Fi system. The intention is to create overlapping coverage areas to allow handover, while paying attention to challenging spots such as doors, enclosed staircases and sharp corners.

Jenssen says that in this respect the femtocell solution is a far cry from the systems that have traditionally been used to solve indoor coverage problems. Such systems require specialist equipment and an expert radio engineering project to implement. “Our solution delivers high quality indoor mobile coverage in any size or shape of building with no radio engineering and no local controller to drive up the cost,” he explains. “It’s enterprise mobility made simple – just plug in some femtocells to your existing LAN and within minutes you have a complete high performance 3G HSPA network.”

The dealer attends on site to support the customer in the installation process, and performs static and moving tests to ensure that coverage is adequate and handover is occurring effectively. After-sales support uses existing processes and is provided in three lines, fi rst by the dealer and/or Network Norway customer service, then by Network Norway tech support, and fi nally at engineer/product level.

According to Jenssen, customers are impressed with the quality of the service. “Customers that have poor macro network coverage clearly perceive femtocells as delivering good quality on key parameters – such as coverage, capacity and speech quality,” he says. More than three-quarters of those involved in Network Norway’s 2010 friendly user trials refused to return their femtocells, while 100% said that coverage was improved.

Jenssen is also impressed with the state of the technology. “SON is vital,” he says, “particularly when trying to address customers in bigger, more complex buildings with many users.” And from the dealers’ point of view, the ability to provide a highly differentiated offering is valuable. “They consider femtocells a tool to attract and retain customers to mobile solutions – and to Network Norway in particular,” he explains. “Customers perceive the dealers as able to handle femtocell installations, and provide good support.”

The bottom line, says Jenssen, is that the femtocell offering allows companies to take care of their communications needs simply and effectively – not only for employees at the central offi ce or factory, but also those who are on the move and those who work at home. “Now,” he says, “no customer is out of reach.”

Network Norwayhttp://www.networknorway.no/Tjenester/Full_dekning

Ubiquisyshttp://www.ubiquisys.com/femtocell-media-press-releases-id-250.htm

FEBRUARY 2012

3G Microcell at-a-glance• Mass market femtocell deployment• Zero-touch provisioning• Soft launch in eight locations September 2009• Commercial launch June 2010• Distributed through ATT’s 2,200 outlets• Technology provided by Cisco & ip.access

“AT&T’s 3G MicroCell is pretty magical”: just one of the recent tweets you can read about the US’s best-known femtocell offering to date. The AT&T Microcell service combines the latest gadgetry – courtesy of technology providers Cisco and ip.access – with some slick marketing, advanced network management, and an understanding of customer needs that is second-to-none.

The MicroCell proposition is simplicity itself. The marketing message is simple: it’s all about fi ve-bar indoor coverage. The customer experience is also simple: the MicroCell ‘just works’ out of the box.

But, as is so often the case, a great deal of technology, expertise and hard work has gone into creating that simple user experience.

AT&T launched the Microcell service commercially in September 2009 in eight locations, including cities in North and South Carolina and Georgia, in Las Vegas, and San Diego. The UMTS-based femtocell access point – the fi rst 3G femtocell to be launched in the US – supports four simultaneous users with both data and voice services, in ‘closed’ mode: the user can specify a ‘white list’ of authorised cellphones at the point of purchase, and manage the list subsequently online.

For this initial soft launch, AT&T chose a one-off purchase price for the femtocell of $149.99, but by offering a $49.99 rebate for customers who also used AT&T broadband, and a further $100 rebate for cellular customers taking a $19.99 ‘unlimited voice minutes’ femtozone tariff, the company effectively made it possible to acquire a femtocell free of charge.

Having successfully proved and refi ned the service commercially in the September 2009 pre-launch, the Microcell was rolled out nationwide in June 2010.

Zero touch has a big impact for AT&TAT&T has done more than perhaps any other operator to familiarise consumers with the idea of a femtocell. But the simple proposition that consumers fi nd so attractive is made possible only by some sophisticated technology and a consummate customer service operation. The Small Cell Forum looks at the history of the service that AT&T calls the MicroCell

CASE STUDY | AT&T

CASE STUDY | AT&T | Zero touch has a big impact for AT&T

The 2009 soft launch provided the Microcell team with an opportunity to fi ne-tune all aspects of the service – an opportunity that proved key when the time came for national roll-out. “It’s all about ensuring that it’s simple for the end user,” said Gordon Mansfi eld, AT&T’s executive director for radio access network delivery.

According to Jim Tavares, Cisco’s Director of Strategy and Business Development, one of the central goals was to minimise the need for customers to call AT&T customer care when they were installing the femtocells. “In a ‘zero touch’ experience,” he explains, “no communication is required with carrier customer care for device use. And supporting a zero touch approach lies at the heart of sustainable scale.”

The roll-out team realised that speeding this zero-touch provisioning fl ow would be the key to deploying femtocells – after all, AT&T has 100 million subscribers, and if even a small percentage of these purchased a femtocell, this would represent a substantial provisioning task. The process itself was to be extremely simple (there’s that word again!). First, the system would acquire the critical subscriber information: the proposed device location and the white list of subscribers. Then, once at home, the subscriber would plug the Ethernet

and power connections into the femtocell access point, and the device would become operational.

Achieving this degree of automation required quality hardware, an integrated backend software system, and much more. AT&T intended to sell the Microcell through its own stores. And with around 2,200 company-owned retail outlets, of which 700 are offi cially bilingual, the company soon realised that training store staff in advance of the national launch was a high priority. They would be at the forefront of ensuring potential customers understood the most fundamental conditions for owning a femtocell: they would need to be a 3G subscriber, have inadequate macro coverage at home, and possess a broadband connection of suffi cient quality.

To back up the work of the retail staff, AT&T built a sophisticated web portal, that acts both as a pre-sales information resource for customers and as an account management tool, allowing end-users to perform tasks such as confi guring their white list of authorized users. The site makes extensive use of videos, not just to demonstrate the benefi ts of owning a Microcell, but also to ensure that potential customers knew what to expect when they brought their hardware home for the fi rst time.

Of course the heart of the offering is the femtocell itself. The device is distinctively styled, with particular attention given to the industrial and interface design aspects. The latter consists of just fi ve LED indicators, vital details in the push for ‘zero touch’. These indicators – a power light, an Ethernet light, a GPS light, a ‘computer’ light (to indicate an ‘active’ state, for instance that data transfer is taking place) and a 3G light – serve a dual purpose. First, they must tell the consumer everything s/he needs to know about what the box is doing, both during confi guration and in-use; second, they allow support centre staff to troubleshoot any confi guration problems over the telephone.

Other fi ner points in the integrated deployment operation include the provision of a highly polished quick-start/user guide, and a system of intuitive feedback telling the customer that installation has been successful. At the smartphone, an automated SMS confi rms femtocell activation, and an on-screen alpha-tag (reading ‘AT&T Microcell’) shows when the handset is connected to the femtocell.

Early adopters praised the set-up process. Darren Murph at Engadget said: “Initial setup was a breeze; you simply head to AT&T’s setup website, login to your AT&T account, punch in your device’s serial number and then add or delete AT&T mobile numbers that can be used on the device. Got a friend that comes over often and likes to make calls? Adding him / her is no problem, and numbers can be added or deleted at any time after the initial setup, too.”

According to Jim Tavares, making the public face of the Microcell that simple required attention to a host of fi ne detail behind the scenes, much of which centered around ensuring that the network could locate each femtocell accurately. “The systems (within existing networks) aren’t defi ned to allow base stations to move,” he says. “A femtocell device can be utilised anywhere. Integration is required with key carrier billing, RF planning and regulatory IT systems.”

From the billing point of view, each cell site needs to be integrated with local and regional billing plans. This is generally achieved with reference to the Cell ID and service area identifi er (SAI) code.

In terms of RF planning, the femtocell needs to work in harmony with the existing macro network, and determine local requirements for parameters like its own carrier frequency, power level and so on. Tavares says that it was important that the provisioning system should provide maximum fl exibility and automation in order to set the femtocell’s parameters. Cisco effectively ‘wrapped the provisioning system around the radio’, reducing the adaptability burden placed on the radio layer itself.

Finally, the regulatory system in North America requires that accurate cell site location be available to allow emergency “E911” systems to work, and to permit lawful intercept by enforcement agencies. Part of the solution to all of these requirements was a “location verifi cation toolbox”

that combines GPS with network listen and subscriber information. The Microcell itself includes a GPS receiver, but fi eld testing showed that GPS alone would not be suffi cient to reliably locate each unit. The system therefore uses the carrier network as a source of local information: the femtocell confi gures itself to ‘listen out’ for adjacent cells. The resulting data is combined with the subscriber-reported street address and information from the built-in GPS, to give AT&T a robust fi x on the location of any particular femtocell.

The femtocell application talks to the carrier network at a variety of levels. In some cases the communication is standards-based – for instance the radio interfaces are standards-compliant. But other systems, such as billing and provisioning, as for most carriers, are proprietary. The femtocell application itself needs to exchange and act on information from the carrier network to manage the assignment of the femtocell to local gateways and provisioning elements. It then reports back through those elements on how it has confi gured itself, and monitors information such as its registration status.

The Microcell was launched against a backdrop of high expectation, underpinned with not a little scepticism. In particular, some commentators were convinced that the femtocells would create interference problems. The truth was that, again with careful management, femtocells in the network actually improved matters substantially.

It’s all about ensuring that it’s simple for the end user.



CASE STUDY | AT&T | Zero touch has a big impact for AT&T

Interference isn’t a problem. We have tested femtocells extensively in real customer deployments of many thousands of femtocells, and we fi nd that the mitigation techniques implemented successfully minimise and avoid interference. The more femtocells you deploy, the more uplink interference is reduced.

Gordon Mansfi eld,

AT&T

Speaking in March 2010, Gordon Mansfi eld was already confi dent enough to say: “We have deployed femtocells co-carrier with both the hopping channels for GSM macrocells and with UMTS macrocells. Interference isn’t a problem. We have tested femtocells extensively in real customer deployments of many thousands of femtocells, and we fi nd that the mitigation techniques implemented successfully minimise and avoid interference. The more femtocells you deploy, the more uplink interference is reduced.”

The main reason behind this improvement is the fact that a cellphone (or other connected device) communicating with a nearby femtocell transmits at a much lower power than if it were communicating via a far-distant cell tower. The presence of the femtocell therefore substantially reduces uplink interference for all users. This reduced interference improves service quality and data speeds – not only for the femtocell user, but also for all other customers trying to make a connection via the same macrocell.

There are already hundreds of thousands of AT&T Microcell access points already in the fi eld. As we move into a world of HetNets and small cells, the ‘zero touch’ principles pioneered by AT&T, Cisco and ip.access look likely to have had a major impact on the shape of networks for some time to come.

AT&T landing page: http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/devices/3gmicrocell.jsp?fbid=m1Acq2-WAeA

Cisco solutions pagehttp://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/ns341/ns973/att_microcell.html

ip.access solutions pagehttp://www.ipaccess.com/en/femtocells-introduction

060 scf case study collection feb2013

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