Following a successful pilot in a village in the north of England, EE intends to connect around 1,500 rural communities in the next few years.…
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Alcatel-Lucent boosts small cell pitch with $4M EBlink investment and tie-in
EBlink provides wireless "fronthaul" technology, which could help Alcatel-Lucent sell its vision of sticking the base station into the cloud.…
Read MoreVerizon begins its small cell rollout
Alcatel-Lucent says it's begun deploying its tiny capacity-boosting base stations in Verizon's network, and Ericsson is probably is doing the same. Don't expect the big small cell deployment we're seeing from AT&T, though.…
Read MoreIt’s a Small Cell World: AT&T’s tiny cells pop up at Disney theme parks
The Magic Kingdom will use the mobile industry's latest network sorcery. AT&T is installing tiny base stations throughout Disney World and Disney Land to boost mobile voice and data capacity throughout the theme parks.…
Read More2014: The year AT&T’s mobile network goes small
After a year of testing small cells in every way imaginable, AT&T is ready to begin its large-scale rollout of the technology. The tiny base stations will boost bandwidth in the high-demand places with surgical precision.…
Read MoreAlcatel-Lucent solves the problem of where to put 4G small cells
Alcatel-Lucent's new site-certification program has identified 600,000 locations on billboards, cable lines, and street furniture in the U.S. and Europe as small-cell ready.…
Read MoreSpiderCloud builds a small-cell double threat, hosting both 3G and LTE for indoor networks
SpiderCloud has already established an early lead in indoor mobile networking. Now it's hoping to extend that lead in the age of 4G networking with a small cell that can support multiple wireless technologies.…
Read MoreAlcatel-Lucent to cut 10,000 jobs in bid for €1B savings
The cuts are intended to save on costs, but also to help Alcatel-Lucent transition from something of a networking generalist to a specialist in IP networking and "ultra-broadband" access.…
Read MoreEricsson’s new small cell, the Radio Dot, brings the mobile network indoors
Ericsson has designed an enterprise small cell the size of a smoke detector. It claims the Dot will be the cheap, flexible product needed to fill the big indoor capacity and coverage holes in today's networks.…
Read MoreAmazon’s wireless network trials are no mystery: It’s testing licensed Wi-Fi
The wireless technology Amazon is testing is called TLPS, which is basically Wi-Fi on its own boutique band. If Amazon can get it to work, then it could connect to Kindles to 4G-style services at Wi-Fi prices.…
Read MoreO2 blankets London’s Canary Wharf in free Wi-Fi
The free Wi-Fi project could be a prelude to large-scale small cell rollout in one of Europe's busiest financial and commercial centers.…
Read MoreSmall cell partnership sees Qualcomm take small stake in Alcatel-Lucent
The companies are to work together on developing small cells -- devices that may help mobile carriers cope with rising data usage. As part of the deal, Qualcomm is taking a stake of under 5 percent in Alcatel-Lucent.…
Read MoreEricsson CEO: We’re ready for the carrier Wi-Fi boom
Ericsson has fully integrated BelAir Networks' high-powered Wi-Fi technology into its mobile networking gear. The first big evidence of that will appear in Q4 when its first commercial small cells go live.…
Read MoreBelgium’s Accelleran aims to corner the small cell market for that other LTE
Not many tech startups come out of Belgium, but Accelleran has assembled a team of Technicolor veterans to build a small cell for the lesser known version of 4G: time division-LTE.…
Read MoreHow Free Mobile is using femtocells to build a mobile network with millions of nodes
Europe's mobile enfant terrible Free Mobile today introduced phase 2 of its plan to flood France with cheap data and voice services. It's installing femtocells in homes around the country, accessible to any Free customer.…
Read MoreNetwork transparency: How future mobile networks could be built in glass windows
As data demand grows we'll need to stick cells in many more places. Ericsson is exploring the notion of embedding small cells into windows and other glass surfaces.…
Read MoreCisco wades deeper into small cell waters with $310M Ubiquisys purchase
Another month, another big acquisition to bolster Cisco's portfolio for mobile carriers. This time it's Ubiquisys, the highly-rated purveyor of small cells, SON technology and other operator-focused treats.…
Read MoreHow the mobile industry can support 1,000x growth in broadband traffic
The demand for mobile data is increasing at an amazing rate. A challenge of this magnitude needs more resources and, more importantly, radically new ways of acquiring, deploying, managing and optimizing these resources. Qualcomm's Prakash Sangam looks at what's needed to keep up.…
Read MoreSmall cells will get a band of their own (when the Feds aren’t using it)
The FCC proposes to dedicate 100 MHz of airwaves for small use, but not exclusively. Carriers would need to share it with existing government users. The high-frequency band would be ideal for small cell deployments, but carriers don't like sharing.…
Read MoreSprint will use the biggest vendors to build its smallest cells
Sprint is selected two of its small cell manufacturers, Samsung and Alcatel-Lucent, which happen to be the same suppliers building its big macro networks. If vendor number three Ericsson also scores a win, Sprint's heterogenous network will be very vendor homogenous.…
Read MoreHow O2 is using the Olympics to lay a foundation for small cells
The U.K.'s O2 has launched a 100-hotspot Wi-Fi network just in time for the Olympics, offering up its capacity to all takers gratis. But there's something else under the hood of these Ruckus access points: a slot waiting for a future O2 small cell.…
Read MoreWi-Fi Alliance begins certifying Passpoint devices
The Wi-Fi Alliance is now inviting vendors to submit their handsets and access points for Hotspot 2.0 certification. If they pass muster, they will receive the Alliance’s Passpoint stamp of approval, meaning they should be able to connect automatically to other Passpoint gear.…
Read MoreSprint has big plans for small cells
Sprint plans to make an aggressive use of small cells in its future LTE network, launching tens of thousands of tiny high-capacity base stations in high-traffic indoor and outdoor areas in 2013 and 2014.The end goal of Sprint’s small cell efforts is a heterogeneous network.…
Read MoreInterview: Ericsson CEO on the rise of the HetNet
The heterogeneous network, or HetNet, will turn today's big-tower cellular systems into dense, multi-layered and tremendously high capacity networks. Given the complexity of such systems, it’s easy to imagine HetNet as a technology of the future, but Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg says you would be wrong.…
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