Vodafone Australia trialing regional coverage hub (small cell) with Nokia

Vodafone Australia has unveiled its new technology for helping improve mobile signal for voice, data, and Internet of Things (IoT) in regional areas, with its Vodafone Regional Coverage Hub. The Hub is a simple, self-install, small cells solution. It relies on ethernet backhaul for connectivity with the operator network.

ZDNet reports that this has been developed in partnership with Nokia. Nokia has a similar solution called Kuha that they have trialed in UK.

Vodafone press release mentions that this hub was able to provide coverage for 8 sq. km., which is roughly 1.5 km radius. Its a low power solution so coverage area would be restricted. The small cell is providing 4G and NB-IoT coverage.

Its interesting to note that as this is 4G only, older 4G devices and devices that do not support VoLTE will not work on this small cell. 

AT&T's Small Base Stations on Wooden Poles

We blogged about Sprint's outdoor small cells in pictures last month, not we just heard about AT&T's small cells on wooden poles.

Kudos to @ATT for building built a few somewhat neat small base stations on wooden poles in PA https://t.co/MfqrCTkv0H
Will be glad to tweet comparable photos from other carriers to show it is NOT impossible!
Why not make it a credible industry goal?#5gReady NOT #5gMessy ! pic.twitter.com/yezr28e8gJ

— Michael Marcus (@MarcusSpecSoln) September 21, 2018

Here are some of the pictures courtesy of Michael Marcus:

Related posts:

• The 3G4G Blog: Different types of Mobile Masts
• The 3G4G Blog: AT&T Blog: "Providing Connectivity from Inside a Cactus"
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Sprint's Outdoor Small Cells - In Pictures

Patients to get free Wi-Fi as UK National Health Service (NHS) turns 70

The UK National Health Service (NHS) turned 70 on 5 July 2018. To celebrate this they have also created a dedicated website here.

Back in June, Dean Bubley tweeted about NHS's WiFi Journey from Small Cells World Summit 2018. By December 2018, Full Wi-Fi rollout in secondary care will be completed.

NHS Digital explains the following:

NHS Digital is working to make sure that everyone can access free WiFi in NHS sites in England. NHS WiFi will provide a secure, stable, and reliable WiFi capability, consistent across all NHS settings. It will allow patients and the public to download health apps, browse the internet and access health and care information.

Local Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and NHS trusts are responsible for choosing a supplier that can provide an NHS WiFi compliant system which suits their needs, and working with them to implement it across their local NHS sites. The chosen system must be based on a set of policies and guidance defined by NHS Digital.

This is the latest update from David Corbett, NHS WiFi Programme Head

whilst our boss @JulietBauer and the world of NHS IT is at #Expo18NHS the @NHSDigital #nhswifi team are quietly getting on with supporting the rest of the GP estate to go live. Great to see @NHSKernow go live this week and to hear @Daisy_Group making good progress in Humber/Lincs pic.twitter.com/ffdTArEZkt

— David Corbett (@davidcorbett74) September 5, 2018

Make sure to follow David to keep up to date on this subject.

Hong Kong gets LAA via SmarTone Small Cells

According to Mobile World Live:

SmarTone, the smallest mobile operator in Hong Kong, said it installed small cells using licensed assisted access (LAA) technology in a number of congested areas in the territory and plans to extend the rollout to additional locations.

The operator, with a 17 per cent market share by subscribers, said its LTE network now makes use of both licensed and unlicensed spectrum as well as five-carrier aggregation to reach theoretical peak download speeds of 1Gb/s.

The LAA small cells were deployed in Central, Causeway Bay, Tsim Sha Tsui, Mong Kok and Shatin districts. By installing LAA small cells in strategic locations, the operator said its network can absorb traffic surges during festive and special events.

In June Hong Kong’s regulator allocated additional spectrum for the provision of public mobile services, a move it said would put the market at the forefront of adoption of advanced technologies including LAA. The Communications Authority officially allocated 580MHz of spectrum in the 5GHz band.

I have written about LAA on the 3G4G blog here. I have also expressed doubts here with increasing densification where Wi-Fi and Mobile signals will have to compete to deliver best end-user experience.

Disruptive Asia mentions that Ericsson is the vendor. Ericsson conducted trials with SmarTone last year, more details available on Ericsson's website here. As per Disruptive Asia:

The Ericsson LAA technology deployed by SmarTone combines licensed and unlicensed LTE carriers with 5CC carrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO and 256 QAM to enable gigabit level speeds (at least theoretically – real-world speeds are likely to be around half of that, although that’s still way faster than current LTE speeds).

One catch with LAA is that it requires customers to use an LAA-compatible smartphone to take advantage of the faster throughput speeds – and there aren’t very many of those at the moment. According to the latest report from the GSA (July 2018), commercially available handsets supporting LAA include the Samsung Galaxy S8, Note 8 and S9, Sony’s Xperia XZ Premium and Xperia XZ1, HTC’s U11, LG’s V30 and V30+, and ZTE’s Nubia Z17.

One reason there aren’t many handsets is that the LAA ecosystem is still in its infancy, and few operators have commercially launched LAA – in fact, SmarTone is only the fifth cellco in the world to do so. Meanwhile, the GSA counts just 22 LAA trials and deployments in progress.

Test report on Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) using the unlicensed 5 GHz band by SmarTone Mobile Communications Limited is available on Hong Kong's Office of the Communications Authority website. See September 2018 report here and January 2018 report here.

HTCL (Hutchison Telephone Company Limited) also known as Three Hong Kong is also looking at LAA and is doing its own testing. Test report from The Communications Authority website is available here.


Related Posts:

• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: T-Mobile USA is deploying 25K small cells with LAA