Ericsson’s new multi band network solutions can potentially bring an end to ‘call drops’ and ‘poor data speed’ in India

India is still dealing with issues like call drops and network issues and there is certainly a huge amount of innovation needed apart from investment in the telecom sector. This new announcement from Ericsson is one such innovation that can enable operators to enhance capacity and coverage while saving energy and cost. Ericsson had announced their multi/dual antenna solutions couple of years back at the Mobile World Congress and today it has finally announced the launch of new dual band radio products customized for the Indian market, Wideband Radio 2242 – a single radio addressing two spectrum bands (1800 MHz and 2100 MHz) and three standards and Dual Band Radio Dot –provides significant boost to indoor mobile broadband connectivity. It combines two frequency bands (1800 MHz and 2100 MHz) in one form factor simplifying deployment that integrates 100% with outdoor networks.

This innovation can help operators deal with the ever increasing demand for data from all across India, Rajan Mathews, MD, COAI says, “These are major technology innovations that can certainly help country like India where a majority of people are still using a feature phone, these innovations will cater to multi technology handsets. These innovations can help in enhancing capacity and coverage and will also enable efficient use of spectrum and help operators in infrastructure sharing.”

A dual antenna solution can help both the telecom industry and the consumers. While it can also help operators to boost capacity in a more energy and cost efficient way it can also provide a superior end customer experience.

According to Nitin Bansal, Head of Network Products, Ericsson India, ”Ericsson’s latest range of dual band radio solutions have been designed to help Indian operators address this heightened demand by increasing capacity, improving coverage outdoors and indoors while enabling significant opex benefits”

Ericsson Wideband Radio 2242 could work well for the Indian market since it enables operators to build compact dual-band, triple standard sites with a minimum amount of hardware, occupy 50% less space and can be deployed more easily and faster. It has instant power sharing capability that allows power to be instantly shared between carriers, standards and bands, optimizing the use of radio resources. The output power of the radio is shifted instantaneously to the band and standard where it is needed most.

Ericsson Dual Band Radio Dot has been designed to provide a significant boost to indoor mobile broadband connectivity. Customized for the Indian market, this Dual Band Dot combines two frequency bands (1800 MHz and 2100 MHz) in one form factor thereby simplifying deployment, reducing the cabling cost and fully leveraging the available spectrum. Indoor environments pose special challenges for service providers as most residential and small business or venue requirements are addressed by the outside-in effect of the outdoor macro or micro networks.

Network performances has been put to test in the past where the number of smartphone users in India has grown exponentially and operators have had a challenging time keeping up with the rapidly changing data usage patterns. While these products have been announced it will still be a while before it’s available for operators in India and we certainly hope it can help the operators deal with the huge growth in video and social media consumption and cater to the dramatic increase in data traffic in India.