Alcatel-Lucent is expanding and enhancing its mobile backhaul portfolio to address the challenges associated with delivering mobile broadband services in crowded, urban environments where growing customer demand is creating a need for a rapid introduction of small cells.
 
Small cells are compact base stations that boost wireless capacity and coverage where it is most needed in busy public locations and highly populated areas. This has major implications for the mobile network - some operators may need to deploy and manage as many as 10 new small cell sites for each macro cell site, and to accommodate up to a 25-fold increase in mobile traffic demand over the next four years.
 
As importantly, small cells can be deployed in a diverse range of public locations such as lampposts, bus stops, public buildings and stadiums. To provide access to the network and transport back to the core for all of these new sites, operators will need to employ an equally diverse range of mobile backhaul methods, optical fiber, copper, microwave, Ethernet - which can make their backhaul networks very complex to manage.
 
The enhancements to Alcatel-Lucent’s mobile backhaul portfolio offer operators a consistent and cost-effective approach to delivering the backhaul resources needed to address massive increases in bandwidth, and also support the growing variety of wireless cell types and locations. Alcatel-Lucent also is making it easier for mobile operators to manage data traffic across all types of backhaul links in a more cost-effective way while ensuring that mobile broadband services can be delivered with the levels of quality consumers are demanding.
 
Nick Marshall, Principal Analyst, Mobile Networks at ABI Research, said: “This announcement helps strengthen Alcatel-Lucent’s position as one of the top vendors in the mobile backhaul market. Enhancements to address small cell backhaul help to make small cells a more attractive and viable way to address demand for ubiquitous high-quality mobile broadband. The ability to use the network for macro and metro means even greater economies of scale, which is critical given escalating mobile broadband demand.”