Nokia Siemens solutions increase network capacity, reduce energy costs

MANILA, Philippines – Global telecommunication service provider Nokia Siemens Networks has new technologies for increasing what’s good and reducing what’s bad for operators’ facilities.

The company recently demonstrated successfully a new technology that allows operators to simply and cost-effectively increase voice capacity of their 3G networks, potentially up to 100 percent.

Using the live 3G network of Elisa Corp., a Nordic communications service provider, and R&D prototype devices supplied by Nokia, a trial call which was the world’s first circuit switched call over a high speed packet access network (CSoHSPA) was conducted.

Mobile systems such as GSM were designed to carry each voice call via a dedicated voice channel. This is known as circuit switching. The CS over HSPA feature carries voice calls over HSPA’s packet-based transport channels instead.

While mobile users would see no difference in their voice service, the CSoHSPA method, when supported by the continuous packet connectivity (CPC) features of 3GPP Release 7, requires far less handset battery power, providing a significant, potentially up to 50 percent increase in talk time.

The efficiency of the system also means call set-up times can be cut in half and operators benefit from much higher voice capacity per carrier, making it feasible for both consumers and operators to use 3G as the preferred network for making voice calls.

To enable the technique in existing 3G networks, no changes are necessary to the core network and only a simple software upgrade required in the radio access network.

The CSoHSPA feature, standardized on top of 3GPP Release 7, is part of HSPA evolution, or HSPA+.

Also, Nokia Siemens Networks has demonstrated HSPA+ peak rates of 21Mbps, and pioneered network simplification with the flat architecture of I-HSPA (Internet HSPA) to improve overall network efficiency to meet the needs of booming data traffic.

In addition, Nokia Siemens Networks has launched the hiT 7080’s version 4.2, a high capacity and multi-service optical network platform that is compact yet scalable, supports any network topology and can be deployed anywhere in the network.

The solution is touted to give operators significant savings in their space and energy costs. At the same time, the new platform expands and optimizes network capacity to help operators cope with the 100-fold growth in global data traffic expected by 2015.

Meanwhile, Globe Telecom recently upgraded its prepaid charging system to Nokia Siemens Networks’ prepaid solution.

The move allowed Globe to decrease the number of charging platforms by one-third, reducing the hardware footprint and power consumption.

The prepaid solution is based on charge@once select and charge@once topup, and is integrated into both Globe IT and Services platforms, as well as to Nokia Siemens Networks’ and third-party network platforms.

It also integrates both voice and data services into the same platform, with a single online balance for end-user customers.

Nokia Siemens Networks provided development, testing, implementation and project management services to ensure a smooth charging system modernization for Globe.

Nokia Siemens Networks also recently had its head of Asia South sub-region, Lars Biese, in the country to talk about Long Term Evolution (LTE) Technology in an industry event.

LTE promises to deliver new multimedia intensive and rich calls by improving data speeds, reducing latency and building on a scalable and flat network design.

Nokia Siemens Networks prides itself as the first to demonstrate LTE technology with data speeds in the 160Mb/s range, including the successful handover between LTE and HSPA in 2006.