Paris and Chicago (4G World), October 19, 2010 – Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced that the company has secured its 12th Femto contract in only three months — another proof point of Alcatel-Lucent’s progress and strength in the worldwide small cells market. Alcatel-Lucent is clearly establishing itself as the leading end-to-end Femto/small cells vendor, currently holding more than 20 on-going trials (with Etisalat in the United Arab Emirates, for instance) and 14 commercial deployment agreements. Commercial contracts include the selection of Alcatel-Lucent by Vodafone Group as its preferred vendor for the deployment of a nationwide Femtocell service in the UK, implementation of which has already started.
Alcatel-Lucent’s Small Cell solution features numerous Bell Labs innovations around self-organizing networks (SON) which significantly reduce operational expenses while improving network performance. Not only does SON empower Alcatel-Lucent’s Small Cell portfolio to automatically configure at power up, it also enables the small cells to periodically monitor, update and optimize their neighbor relation lists and handover parameters – thus reducing handover failures by up to 80%. Using SON technology, Alcatel-Lucent’s Small Cell portfolio also has the capability to continuously adjust transmit power to the surrounding environment – to deliver the best possible coverage.
According to a recent study by market research firm Infonetics Research, “4G Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey,” there is significant operator interest in launching Femtocell services. This is particularly true of 3G Femtocell-based cellular home zones, with 36% of respondents currently offering such a service and 82% planning to do so by 2014.
“Having been an early proponent of this technology, introducing its first Femtocell solution more than five years ago, Alcatel-Lucent is well positioned to help mobile operators take advantage of this burgeoning opportunity,” says Richard Webb, Directing Analyst for WiMAX, Microwave & Mobile Devices, Infonetics Research.
“Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs’ modeling has shown that it is up to 100 times less expensive to send a bit through a small cell than it is through the macro cell. Small cells provide quicker and more economical capacity gains and should become an essential ingredient when augmenting mobile broadband capacity and moving to smarter networks,” adds Wim Sweldens, head of Alcatel-Lucent’s Wireless activities. “The small cell market is gaining real traction and is now set for the next phase, with commercial services and large-scale deployments expected to significantly increase by the end of 2010. Alcatel-Lucent is a front runner in this space as illustrated by our recent wins – i.e., one per week.”
About the Alcatel-Lucent Small Cell approach
The Alcatel-Lucent Small Cell portfolio currently consists of the 9361 Home Cell and the 9362 Enterprise Cell. Alcatel-Lucent’s Small Cell approach benefits from the company’s unique expertise in bringing together wireless and IP technologies into a single, coherent network. It is an integral part of Alcatel-Lucent’s Application Enablement vision – building on its High Leverage Network™ architecture to deliver wireless IP services.
More information: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/wireless/femto_small_cells.html
About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is the trusted transformation partner of service providers, enterprises, strategic industries such as defense, energy, healthcare, transportation, and governments worldwide, providing solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. A leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP and optics technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry. With operations in more than 130 countries and the most experienced global services organization in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with a global reach. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 15.2 billion in 2009 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com, read the latest posts on the Alcatel-Lucent blog http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/blog and follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Alcatel_Lucent.
