Delivering rural fixed wireless broadband with Nokia FastMile Executive Summary networks.nokia.com
Drivers for rural broadband The United Nations has stated that broadband access is a basic human right. Yet 20% of households in developed countries and as much as 66% of households in developing countries do not have internet access. Currently, more than 4 billion people overall from developing countries remaining offline. * Operators have looked at providing broadband via cable, DSL, or fiber but find it cost prohibitive to delivering internet access in rural locations. Today s mobile rural LTE networks are not designed for triple play (telephone + TV + broadband) as received indoor signal is insufficient to allow for triple play. A typical household located more than 2 km away from a LTE radio station transmitting at 2.6 MHz would have insufficient signal for next generation broadband access. Even if signal was sufficient, mobile LTE network throughput capacity may not guarantee a minimal bit rate required for triple play. Delivering on rural broadband needs The Nokia FastMile solution brings operators a wireless alternative to fixed broadband delivering telephony, internet, and TV to everyone in rural and suburban areas, breaking free from the limitations of fixed phone lines and standard LTE wireless solutions. FastMile is an end-to-end solution offering that extends LTE of unused rural higher spectrum to provide coverage for LTE based fixed wireless broadband: higher LTE frequency bands can be used to offer reach of lower bands. Combining a specific fixed wireless radio antenna topology solution with interference mitigation techniques, along with an end user home modem that has a high gain, directional beamforming antenna, all installable on top of any existing LTE network, Nokia FastMile allows operators to build profitably on the existing macro installed base and idle rural spectrum offering fixed wireless broadband with guaranteed throughput to suburban, rural, and deep rural users. Adoption of this solution by end-users requires an easy to buy, install, and manage approach. FastMile is designed to increase end user adoption with fast and lowest cost deployment using an appealing and easy to install device in residential locations. Combined with an integrated installation capability that combined the residential devices, radio access network, cloud based * ITU Information and Communication Technologies Report 26 May 2015 P a g e 2
controller running on Nokia AirFrame, and smart phone applications to help with the installation, FastMile is focusing on keeping operator deployment costs to a minimum. End-to-end solution Nokia is bringing an end to end solution together that includes not only the network infrastructure and end user equipment, but also a smart phone application portfolio for consumers and operator Point of Sale locations to ease and speed the deployment of FastMile to end users. The solution consists of: Residential equipment that consists of an home outdoor modem with best-in-class radio performance, elegant and unobtrusive form factor, and a steerable beam forming antenna minimizing interference and improving spectral efficiency. The residential equipment also includes the home router which is the in-home connection point to distribute the broadband to the end user with Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac+ Gigabyte Ethernet. It also provides Power over Ethernet (PoE) to residential antenna. A secondary LTE-A Radio Access Network using higher unused rural spectrum is deployed using the existing rural cellular networks. By leveraging the existing rural grid of cell sites, total cost of ownership is reduced and time to market is increased. To deliver the highest capacity, this secondary network is deployed with specific antenna topology targeted for fixed wireless deployments to avoid intra-site interference together. Nokia is also leveraging existing radio resource management interference mitigation including advanced Radio Resource Management features in Nokia s enodeb which allows operators to maximize overall network capacity. P a g e 3
The cloud based FastMile controller brings the knowledge of the network together. The controller manages and coordinates the installation and setup of the FastMile outdoor modem with the end user. It also provides ongoing management of the FastMile home outdoor modem and FastMile home router. More importantly, the FastMile controller monitors the entire network of user equipment and monitors the network to ensure minimum guaranteed throughput is achieved. The controller seamlessly links into operator OSS / BSS systems and Point of Sale business flows as well as links with FastMile smart phone application portfolio. The smart phone applications portfolio consists of both consumers and point of sale apps. The consumer applications consist of an installation app that helps the end user with guided application that eases installation process of the home outdoor modem. The management application provides ongoing support of the router and the modem. The Point of Sale Application improves end to end sale experience at operator Point of Sale with visualization of deployment to ensure guaranteed throughput can be achieved at the required location and determine if the residential antenna can be installed in the proper location. Benefit to the operator and consumer Nokia s approach with FastMile gives operators an approach with easy to install home outdoor modem with self-tuning high gain antenna that provides up to 12X typical coverage area increase compared to standard mobile broadband network. The specific fixed wireless antenna topology, combined with advanced radio resource management interference mitigation by Nokia s smart scheduler in enodeb, delivers 2.5x throughput of comparable mobile network. All of this is key in delivering a positive business cases for operators to deliver fixed mobile broadband for rural and suburban deployments with better price to performance over any other rural broadband solution. For consumers, we are bringing years of mobile device design experience to create an attractive form factor with physical attributes that improves people s perception and experience of P a g e 4
FastMile. This experience is also being used to improve overall ease of deployment, installation and management of the FastMile home router and modem for the user. The smart phone application portfolio has the sole purpose of easing the installation and management of the home equipment. When you combine all of this with the cloud based FastMile Controller, consumers can be given a guaranteed high data rate, delivering on the needs of rural broadband. Expanding ecosystem To promote and develop the fixed wireless device ecosystem and provide operators additional deployment options, Nokia is engaging and expanding the end user device ecosystem for FastMile. Nokia has partnered with Netcomm Wireless, a leading fixed wireless device provider. Netcomm Wireless will license software from Nokia and provide a residential antenna portfolio that will be pre-integrated with Nokia FastMile solution to ensure seamless deployment to operators. Nokia is a registered trademark of Nokia Corporation. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks or trade names of their respective owners. Nokia Solutions and Networks Oy P.O. Box 1 FI-02022 Finland Visiting address: Karaportti 3, ESPOO, Finland Switchboard +358 71 400 4000 Nokia Solutions and Networks 2016 P a g e 5