Barcelona, 01 Mar 2012
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU), together with Etisalat, the leading mobile telecommunications operator in the United Arab Emirates, has successfully completed a technology trial with the groundbreaking lightRadio portfolio, highlighting how it can meet fast-growing customer demand for high-bandwidth mobile broadband services.
This is the first mobile broadband connection made in the United Arab Emirates, made possible by Alcatel-Lucent's lightRadio architecture over a working 4G LTE network.
Alcatel-Lucent showcased the capabilities of its new lightRadio Metro Radio Outdoor (MRO) product, at Etisalat's headquarters, in Abu Dhabi, making the lightning-fast data connection over Etisalat's commercial 4G LTE network, also powered by Alcatel-Lucent.
This new offering is part of Alcatel-Lucent's market-leading lightRadio Small Cells product family, and based on the lightRadio cube. It extends a service provider's LTE network to provide hotspot coverage in densely populated areas such as shopping malls, airports, and sports stadiums.
In the United Arab Emirates, demand for high-speed connections to mobile broadband services such as videoconferencing and on-demand TV has been driven by the mass take-up of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. In October 2011, Alcatel-Lucent and Etisalat signed an agreement to jointly develop the most sustainable and efficient way to meet this demand using the groundbreaking lightRadio portfolio. This successful trial of the latest technology marks a major milestone in turning that promise into a reality.
Tests conducted prior to the successful trial showed that service providers deploying the MRO in their LTE network could see improvements in capacity and performance that would allow them to realise cost savings of up to 40%, while delivering high-quality, lightning-fast 4G LTE data services to subscribers.
HE Ahmad Abdul Karim Julfar, Etisalat Group Chief Executive Officer, said: “Etisalat is proud to be part of this programme, helping to shape the future of mobile broadband networks to satisfy our customers' growing demand. With lightRadio, we will not only be able to accommodate this growth in traffic, but we will also be able to offer our customers the most innovative solutions so they can easily access the latest and greatest mobile data applications on their mobile device of choice.”
Stephen Carter, President, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Alcatel-Lucent, said: “We are happy to have the opportunity to work with Etisalat to leverage lightRadio to address their business needs. The work completed as part of this successful project has yielded valuable data about how service providers such as Etisalat can very easily deploy Alcatel-Lucent's metrocells to transform the mobile broadband experience for their customers, while at the same time reducing their power consumption, costs and equipment footprint.”
The successful mobile data connection was made using Alcatel-Lucent's new 9768 lightRadio Metro Radio Outdoor (MRO) product based on the lightRadio cube. Visit our Web site to find out more about Alcatel-Lucent's lightRadio solution.
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