T-Mobile US taps Eden Rock for SON

T-Mobile US continues to push its network capabilities, announcing today that it had selected Eden Rock Communications to supply self-organization network technology to the domestic market’s No. 4 operator. Financial terms of the deal were not released.
The deployment will include Eden Rock’s Eden-Net centralized SON platform, which it says provides a cloud software intelligence layer that works across multiple network equipment vendors. In testing the platform, which T-Mobile US has deployed across its network, provided “fewer dropped calls, increased throughput and reduced leakage.” T-Mobile US added that the offering will allow the operator to continue adding SON modules to further increase network efficiencies.
T-Mobile US over the past 18 months has aggressively rolled out LTE services, and has recently focused on addition both capacity and coverage to that network. The carrier’s current network architecture has its LTE service running across its 1.7/2.1 GHz spectrum holdings, with its legacy 2G/3G operations running across its 1.9 GHz spectrum. The carrier recently closed on the acquisition of 700 MHz spectrum from Verizon Wireless that it plans to begin using later this year to bolster coverage of its LTE service, and has said it plans to begin re-farming its 1.9 GHz spectrum to add capacity to its LTE network.
SON has increasingly become an important tool for mobile operators as they look to add more diverse network elements to their operations. These include small cell technologies, which analysts expect to add thousands of new access points to a carrier’s network that will need to be tied into their centralized operations in order to reduce interference concerns. A report released late last year by Infonetics Research found that 87% of mobile operators surveyed had deployed SON in their networks, an increase from just 27% at the end of 2012. The survey added that by 2015, 100% of those operators surveyed planned to use SON in their network.

“Mobile operators know they need to keep network operating expenses under control, and they’re placing a big bet on SON while acknowledging the complexity of and their unease with automation that minimizes human intervention and maximizes computerization,” explained Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics. “Nonetheless, the ultimate goal is to use cell planning and field testing for zero-touch, self-healing networks. But, it’ll take some time to get there. SON’s just started, after all.”
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