Chinese vendor Huawei, which has been effectively shut out of competition in the Tier 1 U.S. wireless infrastructure market for several years, is touting the deployment of its Active Antenna Unit (AAU) solution on 100 commercial networks worldwide.
The solution is an important part of Huawei's GigaRadio solution, ushering in an era of "massive deployment," the company says.
The AAU solution is unique in a couple respects, according to the vendor. First, it can be deployed on multimode networks while working on multiple frequency bands. The highly integrated nature of the structure means it requires reduced site space and rental fees, as well as simplifies construction to help operators build greener and more efficient mobile broadband networks.
Second, the compact AAUs can be rapidly installed on poles, walls and other public facilities in urban areas, densifying network site resources.
"Huawei is committed to satisfying customer requirements by helping them address various challenges through innovative technological solutions," Yang Chaobin, chief marketing officer of Huawei Wireless Network Marketing Department, said in a release. "The AAU solution is designed to address site construction issues in the MBB era. Its massive deployment by global operators has ushered in a new era for base stations and has mapped out an evolutionary path for future radio frequency units."
Huawei says a large number of leading telecom operators from regions such as Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the South Pacific, China and others have commercially deployed AAUs on large scale live networks "after receiving exceptional results" from trials on specified networks.
In 2012, a U.S. government report called out Huawei and fellow Chinese vendor ZTE as security threats that could be used as backdoors for Chinese espionage. The companies said the claims were without merit, and the chairman of Huawei USA even presented an open letter to the U.S. government spelling out its position. But as a result Huawei has largely been locked out of major network infrastructure contracts with U.S. telecom operators, including Verizon, Sprint and others.
However, a Huawei executive told FierceWireless in a January interview that various developments could open up the company's prospects in the U.S. mobile infrastructure market, including Nokia's acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, as carriers like to encourage competition among their network suppliers.
Huawei did strike deals to supply network infrastructure equipment to cities in Washington state and Oregon last year. In September, PocketiNet Communications selected Huawei to roll out Fiber to the Home (FTTH) in Walla Walla, Wash., and last May, Eastern Oregon Telecom selected Huawei to bring a gigabit broadband network to rural homes and businesses in Hermiston, Ore.
For more:
- see this release
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