The Finnish vendor used Flexi Zone small cells to prove that throughput in hot spots and complex urban areas can be doubled using a single base station, and hopes the development will provide operators with an effective method of addressing mobile traffic growth.
“When we first announced Flexi Zone micro and pico base stations, we did what many pundits thought was impossible by packing a macro sector’s worth of capacity into the industry’s smallest outdoor small cell and bringing full macro software parity,” said Marc Rouanne, EVP of mobile broadband at Nokia Networks.
“We also promised to show that it would be possible to software upgrade a small cell to LTE-A. Now we’ve done that too.”
Nokia Flexi Zone small cells are designed to support up to 600 active users or devices, and are already reported to be supporting heavy traffic loads of more than 150 active users per cell.
Nokia Networks has been developing its expertise in this field, and in February announced an upgrade to its small cell solution.
