Automation, Small Cells, And CA To Increase Network Resource Utilization

A conversation with Stephen Howell, General Manager, Wireless Network, Engineering Department, Telstra

Telstra has been very proactive in moving towards automated RAN optimization, small cells, and carrier aggregation (CA). In this conversation with Stephen Howell, General Manager at Telstra, we discussed their learning experience and the benefits that these solutions bring to Telstra.

A key learning point is the importance of automation in managing small cells. Stephen told us: “The new Automatic Neighbor Relation (ANR) feature was quite an eye-opener when we first saw it in our 4G trials. The way it worked seamlessly, and worked so quickly, we were quite surprised. Automation is the key to some of the savings we have been able to make in getting the engineers to work on more cells.”

Telstra has been using CA in 3G, and recently demonstrated 600 Mbps downloads using CA. Stephen is a great supporter of the technology: “One of the biggest advantages is that with CA you do not need to worry about handing over a mobile device between the two carriers. They simply sit on one carrier, and can use resources of the second carrier as those resources become available, which makes the whole optimization of the network far simpler. Having all of your carriers in the single pool is really the ultimate way to go. It just makes everything simpler, and frankly you get far more throughput.”

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