Small cell technology continues to make inroads into carrier deployments as Ruckus Wireless announced today that Telefonica’s O2 operations in the United Kingdom has begun deploying its products for coverage across parts of London.
Ruckus noted that the deployment uses its SmartCell 8800 products to provide free Wi-Fi to customers in parts of central London. The product includes a dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi antenna, small cell 3G/LTE radios and uses 5 GHz spectrum for wireless backhaul. The backhaul link meshes traffic over the 5 GHz band between nodes and relies on self-organization network technologies to provide line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight capabilities.
Financial terms of the agreement were not mentioned.
Recent reports have highlighted increased emphasis being placed on small cell technologies by wireless operators as a way to enhance network capacity in high-traffic venues. These solutions include distributed antenna systems, microcells, picocells, femtocells and Wi-Fi offload. Analysts and carriers have noted that one of the biggest challenges remaining to implementing these solutions is the ability to integrate the small cells and traffic they carry into an operators overall network scheme. This is especially tricking for Wi-Fi offload, which typically relies on unlicensed spectrum that makes it more difficult for a carrier to exert its control over the user experience.
Check out RCR Wireless News’ recent special report on small cells.
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