A conversation with Stephen Howell, General Manager, Wireless Network, Engineering Department, Telstra
Download a transcript of the interview and be the first to receive the smart RAN report
Telstra has been very proactive in moving towards automated RAN optimization, small cells, and carrier aggregation (CA). In this conversation with Stephen Howell, General Manager at Telstra, we discussed their learning experience and the benefits that these solutions bring to Telstra.
A key learning point is the importance of automation in managing small cells. Stephen told us: “The new Automatic Neighbor Relation (ANR) feature was quite an eye-opener when we first saw it in our 4G trials. The way it worked seamlessly, and worked so quickly, we were quite surprised. Automation is the key to some of the savings we have been able to make in getting the engineers to work on more small cells.”
Telstra has been using CA in 3G, and recently demonstrated 600 Mbps downloads using CA. Stephen is a great supporter of the technology: “One of the biggest advantages is that with CA you do not need to worry about handing over a mobile device between the two carriers. They simply sit on one carrier, and can use resources of the second carrier as those resources become available, which makes the whole optimization of the network far simpler. Having all of your carriers in the single pool is really the ultimate way to go. It just makes everything simpler, and frankly you get far more throughput.”
Read or watch the full interview with Stephen Howell to get his insights on how RAN optimization is changing in response to increased traffic loads and with the emergence of new technologies and tools.
This interview is part of our upcoming report “The smart RAN. Trends in the optimization of spectrum and network resource utilization”. We have also discussed this topic at length in our recent RAN Optimization webinar
