Case study of WLAN and Small Cells by China Unicom

China is a huge and most populated country. Many people do not realise that the number of mobiles in China is more than combined USA and Europe. There are challenges that come along with this huge subscriber base. That is why its not enough to have just cellular connectivity. Small cells and WiFi has a big role to play. A news article last year boldly stated that 'Wi-Fi to be new battleground in China's internet sector'.

According to this article by ThinkSmallCell last year, China Unicom is the second largest operator in China with 251 million subscribers and $21 Billion in revenues. They have only 40MHz available for 4G cellular as compared to 130MHz for the leader China Mobile.

This presentation from Small Cells World Summit 2014 is a good case study of how China Unicom is working on deploying Wi-Fi hotspots and Small cells to meet their customers needs. The complete presentation is below and available from Slideshare.

Progress on WLAN and Small Cellin China Unicom from Zahid Ghadialy

EE: Sharing experiences from small cell backhaul trials

Here is the complete presentation by EE as requested by quite a few people.

EE: Sharing experiences from small cell backhaul trials from Zahid Ghadialy

Non-Line-of-Sight Wireless Backhaul for LTE Picocell/Metrocell Deployments

Let’s Get Real! Non-Line-of-Sight Wireless Backhaul for LTE Picocell Deployments from Zahid Ghadialy

LTE Metrocell Overview Presentation

The embedded presentation below was given at yesterday's Telco Evangelist event in London, attended by around 40-50 people. This was a taster session for our full day Metrocell Masterclass, being held next in London on 21 Feb, but with more emphasis on LTE metrocells.

The audience was quite interested - for some, the idea of millions of small cells (including LTE metrocells) will be needed was new to them, and the consequences became more apparent. Good round of questions from the audience, with a lot of interest in the new commercial models of who (and how) may deploy metrocells - will site sharing, national roaming etc. be required in the future.

For more details of the Masterclass and wider range of information about small cells, see the ThinkSmallCell.com website

Telco evangelist 23 jan 2013 from David Chambers