Telecom equipment company Nokia will introduce a new small cell in H2 2018 to support industries, enterprises, smart cities and mobile operators to use unlicensed spectrum for private LTE networks.
The small cell – Nokia Flexi Zone MulteFire Multiband Pico BTS – will allow companies to connect mobile sensor-enabled things and people more efficiently.
Nokia will demonstrate the capabilities of the Flexi Zone MulteFire small cell over an end-to-end Private LTE network in February at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 in Barcelona, Spain.
Market potential
The Smart Systems revenue for private LTE addressable market in industrial and commercial IoT will reach $118.5 billion in 2023, according to Harbor Research.
21 percent of in-building wireless equipment sold in 2022 will support shared and unlicensed spectrum, according to ABI Research.
“Innovations will unify and converge in-building systems to a multi-technology connectivity RAN operating over licensed, unlicensed and shared spectrum”, says Nick Marshall, research director at ABI Research.
ABI Research earlier said deployment costs enabled by new technologies will significantly reduce and consequently increase the size of the available market.
Research agency IHS Markit said the mobile backhaul equipment market had the size of $8.2 billion in 2016. But the small cell backhaul segment size was over $148 million in 2016.
There were more than 63,000 outdoor small cell backhaul connections/links deployed during 2016, and the number of connections/links is expected to grow to around 560,000 in 2021 — a five-year installed base of approximately 1.7 million.
Ericsson 5G small cell
Ericsson recently announced 5G Radio Dot small cell radio designed to meet indoor mobile broadband performance requirements demanded by 5G.
The 5G Radio Dot from Ericsson takes less than half the time to install compared to other indoor solutions, and will support the new 5G mid-bands (3-6GHz) with speeds up to 2Gbps.
Daryl Schoolar, practice leader, Ovum, said the new indoor solution from Ericsson is going to be attractive for operators wanting to offer enterprises good indoor performance for enhanced mobile broadband and new industrial applications that can’t be met by Wi-Fi or 5G base stations deployed outdoors.
Nokia is yet to introduce 5G small cell. Nokia today said private LTE and, in the future, 5G, will help transform operations for industries and enterprises, in segments such as logistics, energy, mining, transportation, manufacturing, venues and smart cities.
Private LTE will provide high-coverage and performance, low latency and reliable wireless connectivity as an additional option to Ethernet, allowing companies to increase productivity and efficiency through pervasive wireless mobile connectivity.
Nokia’s MulteFire small cell capabilities:
# Industries can track parcels and containers in key logistic hubs and campuses, to connect with and remotely control their vehicles while leveraging MulteFire performance for video applications such as surveillance.
# Mobile service providers can expand their mobile enterprise offer to companies in regions of the world outside of their licensed spectrum footprint.
# Owners of public buildings such as hotels, malls, stadiums and venues will also benefit from new revenue streams, with the ability to open up their Private LTE network to mobile providers to enhance indoor services for subscribers at their location.
Nokia will start selling Flexi Zone MulteFire Multiband Pico BTS, a compact 4-liter outdoor and indoor small cell, in the second quarter of 2018.
The company claims that MulteFire radio access technology enables throughput of up to 300 Mbps.
“Nokia is driving the transformation of industries in the same way that mobile networks and devices transformed our lives as consumers,” said Randy Cox, head of Small Cell Product Management at Nokia.
Baburajan K
