By Telecom Lead Team: Nokia Siemens Networks announced
that its Flexi Zone allows local offloading of Internet traffic, saving up to
80 percent of transport and mobile packet core costs. Flexi Zone can also
reduce the cost per bit for operators by more than 50 percent compared to
adding capacity through additional, larger, macro sites.
The company is launching its Flexi Zone approach at
Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona.
Building on Nokia Siemens Networks’ Liquid Radio
architecture, Flexi Zone is aimed at areas of high density usage, such as
business campuses, shopping malls, or sports stadia.
Flexi Zones allow virtually unlimited scaling of capacity
as each zone can have up to 100 access points and yet behave, from the network
point of view, as a single base station.
Nokia Siemens Networks Flexi Zone comprises multiple,
inter-connected low-power small cells that use a common pool of resources
managed flexibly by a zone controller. These clusters of HSPA, LTE and WiFi
access points complement the macro-cellular network to deliver the best
coverage and capacity where and when required.
With its compact and highly integrated access points,
Flexi Zone redefines how small cells are deployed. Based on the new
architecture, each cluster of cells requires only one traditional connection to
the network.
Within the cluster, operators can benefit from more
flexible street level wireless connections. This can significantly reduce an
operator’s network planning and installation work, because only an electrical
power supply is needed to deploy Flexi Zone access points on lamp posts and
other street furniture. Placing the access points as close as possible to
subscribers achieves the best mobile broadband customer experience.
Flexi Zone leverages the capabilities of small cells to
create a seamless hot zone for a superior mobile broadband experience. Flexi
Zone is the first small cells implementation using Liquid Radio baseband
pooling, with a novel architecture that simplifies the deployment and operation
of a small cell network. It’s the perfect answer to the conundrum facing
operators who must constantly scale up network capacity to meet booming demand,
while at the same time limiting their costs,” said Thorsten Robrecht, head of
Network Systems product management, Nokia Siemens Networks.