Airspan Small Cells and Macrocells Portfolio, including 5G

Back in April, a presentation from Airspan showed that they have shipped nearly 500k small cells. Sprint has nearly 300k MagicBoxes while Jio has around 120k small cells.

As you can see above, Airspan has a range of outdoor small cells and as shown below, a wide range of indoor small cells.

Airspan recently announced that it has partnered with Rakuten, the newest MNO in Japan, to bring comprehensive 4G and 5G solutions to the world’s first fully virtualized cloud-native mobile network. The announcement said:

Airspan’s Air5G OpenRange28 mmWave platform in 28GHz will deliver ultra-high capacity to Rakuten Mobile with record time-to-market, enabling unprecedented monetization opportunities. Airspan’s open RAN platforms will provide Rakuten Mobile the flexibility to disrupt the economics of traditional network operators and lay the foundation for transformational 5G architectures. With over half a million systems deployed globally, Airspan brings its proven disruptive economics to the fully virtualized Rakuten Mobile network.

Airspan’s mmWave virtualized Air5G OpenRange28 platform utilizes Qualcomm’s FSM100xx 5G chipset and supports open RAN architectures, seamlessly connecting to Rakuten Mobile’s virtualized BBU to deliver the world’s most advanced open interface virtualized RAN solution.  The OpenRange28 mmWave platform supports multiple functional splits for the widest possible set of deployment options, ensuring Rakuten Mobile customers benefit from the highest level of efficiency and the best user experience in Japan.

Airspan's 5G products can be viewed here.

With so many innovators working with Rakuten, it would be interesting to see their 4G & 5G network rollout. Looking forward to some big announcements at MWC next year.

Related Posts:

• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Turkcell's Small Cell Strategy
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Sprint's Trebl: Magic Box + Alexa + HiFi Speakers
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Dense Air: The Neutral Host Small Cell Wholesale Network Operator

Tutorial: An Introduction to Macrocells & Small Cells

I have been meaning to create a video tutorial on Small Cells for a long time. The problem is that its not as easy as most people may think. To explain small cells concepts, its necessary to explain macrocell, C-RAN & DAS. This is what I have attempted to do in this presentation.

The slides are embedded below and can be downloaded from Slideshare. The video is embedded on slideshare presentation but if you prefer, the direct Youtube link is here.

Please note that this video is for guidance only. Many vendors & operators use their own definition which may not agree to mine. In the end, we are all correct 😉

Deployment guidelines for Small Cells and Not So Small Cells

This post is collection of an article and presentation from Omar Masry, Senior Analyst at City and County of San Francisco. The presentation is a good quick summary and the article below gives a more detailed explanation of some of the issues

Wireless (Small Cell) challenges for California Cities & Counties from Omar Masry, AICP

Also read: 10 Key Issues for California Cities & Counties on the Challenges of Small Cells & “Not So Small Cells” by Omar Masry.

Building a Sustainable HetNet - Telus, Canada

Came across this interesting presentation from the LTE World Summit 2013, one from Telus in Canada. The presentation is embedded below but here are couple of things that caught my attention:

One of the issues which is now becoming universal is the need to negotiate with the municipalities and local councils for the right to lamp posts and other street furniture. I blogged this earlier as well with regards to a presentation by EE here. This also encourages for a third party to provide small cells hosting as a service (SCaaS)

Small Cells deployment report

Today, I went through the Informa's report on small cells. Some interesting points from the report as follows:

Microcells and picocells are already widely deployed in market but on a lower scale compared with femtocells. Metrocells are expected to enter the market during 2012 through operator trials or pilots and expand significantly during 2014 and 2015 primarily for 3G networks in developed markets and LTE in the US market.