Ericsson said Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) is the first Russian operator to deploy its Radio Dot indoor coverage system after the vendor installed a network for the operator in a shopping centre in the city of Astrakhan.
The Sweden-headquartered infrastructure company deployed the indoor coverage equipment in a 50,000 square metre shopping mall and connected it to MTS' 3G network using carrier aggregation technology. The network will boost data rates for MTS' subscribers, delivering an average speed of 14 Mbps, Ericsson said.
Radio Dots are small mobile broadband antennas weighing 300 grams that are designed to boost data rates in public venues and the offices of medium-to-large enterprises, an Ericsson statement explained. A company spokesman told FierceWireless:Europe that the system has now been deployed by 30 operators in 23 countries.
MTS' VP and CTO Andrei Ushatskiy said the indoor equipment will improve customer experience for the operator's subscribers, and also form something of a test bed for future deployments. "Knowing the importance of delivering not only good in-building coverage but also having good data throughput for our customers, we used this project to fully understand all the benefits of this solution for improving our network performance," he commented.
Ericsson noted that research by its ConsumerLab division pointed to increased demand for indoor coverage among mobile users over 3G and LTE (4G) networks in the past two years.
Jeff Traver, head of the MTS customer unit at Ericsson Northern Europe and Central Asia, said that growth makes improving indoor network coverage and performance "critical to meeting consumer demands."
Indoor and outdoor networks "should work seamlessly together, providing users with high-quality experiences no matter where they are," Travers added, noting that Ericsson's Radio Dot system "empowers mobile and converged operators to quickly deliver high-performance coverage and capacity in any size or type of building".
Ericsson previously deployed the indoor coverage system on Etisalat's network in Egypt, linking the system to the operator's macro network to enable voice over LTE, HD voice and mobile broadband services.
For more:
- see this Ericsson MTS announcement
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