Network Infrastructure

China’s three mobile carriers have created a new company, China Tower, which will take over ownership of the three firms’ telecom infrastructure while ambitiously planning to build 1 million new towers in the next two years. Instead of the three …

Carriers have lagged behind cable operators in Wi-Fi deployments, but now it looks like mobile operators are ready to catch up. Carrier-grade Wi-Fi hotspots are expected to grow from 14% of overall Wi-Fi hotspots today to 72% by 2018, according …

DALLAS – Airvana has developed a small cell system that it says can support multiple wireless operators. The company discussed its solution this week at Small Cells America, saying it supports all major LTE bands and can be installed and …

Cisco talks QoS issues, virtualization potential The drive toward network simplicity continues to run up against the need for mobile operators to support two separate networks in order to handle voice traffic (2G/3G) and growing data demand (LTE). The solution …

Small Cells Americas is underway in Dallas, and Wi-Fi is a major theme at this year’s event. The show kicked off yesterday with a Wi-Fi monetization workshop, and today ABI Research is moderating a panel entitled “Carrier Wi-Fi and Small …

A conversation with Mavenir Systems Inc. Chief Technology Officer Terry McCabe Q: How has VoLTE shifted the way mobile operators conduct business? How has it changed their role as service providers? TM: In today’s competitive mobile marketplace, it has become more crucial …

An Arizona-based company is working with major wireless infrastructure player Crown Castle to strengthen three Southern California towers using an innovative new product. QuakeWrap Inc. founder Mo Ehsani, professor emeritus of civil engineering at the University of Arizona, told RCR …

American Tower is reportedly preparing to spend up to $1 billion to buy 51% of India’s Viom, a tower company controlled by Tata Teleservices. According to reports, American Tower wants to merge Viom’s estimated 42,000 towers with the 12,000 towers …

 A shift to better subscriber experience and network utilization With the growth in mobile data, operators face more than an increase in the volume of traffic. The complexity of managing that traffic has also intensified, driven by subscribers expecting an ever-higher …

American Tower has agreed to buy Bharti Airtel’s Nigerian towers for just over $1 billion. The holding company for Bharti Airtel’s African operations will sell 4,800 towers to American Tower and then lease them back. The deal will help Bharti …

AT&T turf vendor Velocitel has named a new CEO effective immediately. Former CEO James Estes, who will continue with Velocitel as chairman of the board, told employees late last week that Kevin Hostetler will take on the CEO role and …

The rush to facilitate voice-over-Wi-Fi for service providers continues with a partnership that will place Genband’s evolved packet gateway in Nokia Networks’ mobile broadband portfolio. The solution will be integrated into Nokia’s Liquid Core portfolio to support multimedia voice, data …

Denmark has overtaken South Korea as the most connected country on the planet and Ericsson has partnered with IBM to design a new phased-array antenna. The United Nations’ Information and Communication Technology Task Force on Nov. 24 released its most …

The Next-Generation Mobile Networks Alliance has created a standard approach to reporting the specifications for base station antennas, and now companies that supported the development of the standard are trying to get it more widely adopted across the industry. Kevin …

5G standards are still undefined, but the companies involved in 5G research and standardization are already creating tools for next-generation networks. Today Ericsson said it is collaborating with IBM to design phased-array antennas for 5G networks. Phased-array antennas can increase …

The tower industry continues to offer excellent returns to companies that own and operate cell towers, but the tower construction business may be under some pressure. Crown Castle merges into REIT Tower giant Crown Castle is moving forward with its …

I spent yesterday at Alcatel-Lucent/Bell Labs’ annual FutureX Days. This event showcases the topics the research teams are working on to a mix of customers, partners, press and university professors. The top executives of the organization also share their strategic …

FirstNet receives $7 billion funding FirstNet, you’re one of the first good things to come out of government funds in a while. To understand what FirstNet is, why it’s so important and how it will affect the tower industry, let’s …

DALLAS – Even as the wireless industry pushes forward with exploring “5G” technologies, there are a significant number of barriers and challenges going on with current deployments, including voice over LTE, infrastructure implementations like small cells and the push toward …

The introduction of Carrier Aggregation in LTE Release 10 (LTE Advanced) allows network operators to dramatically improve throughput performance by combining multiple LTE downlink carriers from different frequency bands. In this webinar, Rohde & Schwarz will present a technical overview …