Alcatel-Lucent’s LightRadio offering garnered a significant domestic customer as Sprint Nextel said it will use the “metro cells” to augment coverage in high-traffic areas. Sprint Nextel noted that initial deployments would be to enhance indoor coverage and capacity improvements.
The deployments are part of Alcatel-Lucent’s contribution to Sprint Nextel’s Network Vision program that will see the carrier re-vamp its entire network. Those plans also include the decommissioning of its legacy iDEN network and the deployment of LTE services. Alcatel-Lucent noted its LightRadio offering supports various network generations as well as Wi-Fi deployments.
Alcatel-Lucent unveiled its LightRadio solution in early 2011, touting the cube-like product as a shrunken base station. The technology places the duplexer, radio, amplifier and passive cooling components into a cube that can fit inside the hand with full deployment requiring only power and fiber. The company updated the offering earlier this year with its Metro Cell Express offering that builds on the LightRadio platform to provide a solution targeting indoor locations.
Alcatel-Lucent is currently one of three major vendors working with Sprint Nextel on its Network Vision program, and is tasked with deployments along the East Coast and Southwest. Ericsson and Samsung are the other two vendors on the project.
Sprint Nextel noted earlier this year that it would be looking towards small cell deployments as a greater part of its network plans, adding that the move could come at the expense of distributed antenna system deployments. During that same presentation, the carrier said it would be looking to launch an updated femtocell product during the fourth quarter of this year; that it would be looking at using Wi-Fi as a data offload option, though it did not have any interest in running that Wi-Fi network; and that it was looking at outdoor picocell deployments to begin in late 2013.
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