Industry Trends

Ericsson and Cisco: Better Together in Mobile Backhaul?

If you pay much attention to the mobile backhaul space, you may have noticed a big press launch this week by Ericsson and Cisco for a new partnership between the two tech giants. Both vendors will partner in the mobile backhaul space reselling each other’s solutions.

Analysts inside and outside the backhaul space have been hot to lodge their points of view on this combination. But as in William Shakespeare’s overused quote about “the sound and the fury” it might signify nothing. OK, that’s a bit of an overstatement, but there’s less here than meets the eye.

Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good ‘story’
Let’s take a look at the facts, as commonly understood in the industry. While Cisco is the 800 lb. gorilla in the IP networking room, when it comes to cell site routers it’s less than a 90 lb. weakling for microwave backhaul. Truly, Ericsson ranks high among microwave backhaul vendors, but its IP routers are not top-shelf offerings and leave much to be desired. You may think, well that was the point of the announcement: for Cisco and Ericsson to bolster each other’s relative portfolio failings by teaming up.

However, just as two wrongs do not make a right, a duo of less-than-optimal products cannot have the makings of a No. 1 contender. The shortcomings of both vendors’ kit are still present. Customers do gain the advantage of having one throat to choke, but they will just be choking the same throat twice as often.

Tried-and-tired method of microwave and IP
The underlying tried-and-tired method of using a different microwave radio and IP router in conjunction to solve Layer 3 issues in microwave backhaul still remains: individual devices living separate operational lives. Like a divorced couple staying in the same house, they may talk to each other when they must, but they don’t really like to. So, too, do microwave radios and IP routers have the ability to communicate, but they’re not designed to interact and honestly they’re not very good at it.

Which brings us to the inspiration for the integrated microwave router—the CTR 8000 platform from Aviat Networks. As we’ve made the case before, CTR 8000 microwave routers have been engineered from the ground up to function natively in both the microwave and IP communications worlds. The two technologies function seamlessly within one device. And existing as one piece of gear, a microwave router is easier to deploy and manage in the mobile backhaul network than a pair of randomly cobbled together radio and networking boxes.

In addition, with Aviat’s coded-for-microwave-networking software, ProVision, the leading network management system, admins at Network Operation Centers (NOCs) have full monitoring and management capability. They can see with minimal latency just how effectively microwave and IP activities are being carried out by CTR.

To find out more about the family of CTR 8000 microwave routers, we invite you to see our video that explains the benefits in crystalline detail.

-Derek Handova
Corporate Marketing
Aviat Networks

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- November 13, 2015
Top Five Criteria for Selecting Microwave Solutions (and Vendors)

Photo credit: rustman / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

The microwave radio business: a small community in a niche market where everybody tends to know each other. However, if your involvement in the microwave backhaul space goes back any length of time, no doubt you recognize the outside influence that industry analyst firms play within the industry. The analysts at Heavy Reading, Sky Light Research, Infonetics and a handful of others play a prominent role in shaping opinions about microwave radio solutions providers as well as the solutions themselves.

Reports from these analyst research firms remain very important even in a tight-knit place like microwave backhaul. They can make or break the business environment for microwave vendors for months—or years—at a time. For example, Infonetics issued its latest “Microwave Strategies and Vendor Leadership” survey results at the end of June. In this survey, 23 operators—from incumbent to competitive to pure mobile—laid bare their perceptions of not only the dedicated microwave specialist solution providers but also the telecom generalists who dabble in wireless backhaul infrastructure as an afterthought.

What emerged captivates the collective commercial consciousness.

Representing 33 percent of all capital telecom expenditures made worldwide in 2014, the 23 operators polled by Infonetics revealed just what microwave-oriented issues interest them ranked in order from most important to least significant. For 2015, the top five considerations in microwave equipment for the operators in descending order are:
1. Product reliability
2. Price-to-performance ratio
3. Service and support
4. Pricing
5. Management solutions
Among all the microwave specialists, Aviat placed first in product reliability, service and support and management solutions. Aviat also placed first in four other categories.

These other categories that also made the list somewhat lower down in Infonetics’ survey have much importance for operators but had their presence muted due to survey methodology, perhaps. For example, solution breadth and technology innovation did not make the top five but without them the operators’ very strong desires for sophisticated and robust microwave solution features such as cross polarization (83 percent rated very important) and high system gain (78 percent rated very important) could not reach fulfillment.

Infonetics did not survey how operators perceive solution providers on specific product features, but objectively Aviat leads not just the microwave only providers but all microwave providers with its extra high power Eclipse IRU 600 EHP +39 dBm radio and across the board support for XPIC (i.e., cross-polarization interference cancellation) on a number of products.

Full disclosure: Aviat also rated número uno for solution breadth and technology innovation among all microwave specialists.

Overall, Aviat Networks was rated No. 1 by Infonetics’ operator survey respondents.

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- August 18, 2015
We Put the Spotlight on Voice Over LTE (VoLTE)

As one of the most anticipated network technologies, Voice over LTE (VoLTE) has been discussed by operators for years. The expectation was that deployments would start in 2013, but roll-outs in North America were delayed.

Logo courtesy of YTD2525 Blog

Operators have faced a series of issues that include poor voice quality and long call establishment times. Once these problems are solved, it is expected that VoLTE will allow operators to provide voice and data services using an integrated packet network. As the problems described show, the implementation of VoLTE presents challenges for the entire LTE ecosystem including microwave backhaul.

We have produced a white paper to describe some of the VoLTE requirements that must be met in order to overcome these technical challenges, which must encompass a flexible microwave backhaul as a key factor for a successful transition to all-packet voice and video VoLTE networks. A brief introduction to VoLTE is presented and then different VoLTE backhaul requirements are described with possible solutions.

Click here to download a white paper on this subject titled “VoLTE and the IP/MPLS Cell Site Evolution”.

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- August 7, 2014
LTE Backhaul: The View from Africa

Telecom Tower, Johannesburg, South Africa. Photo credit: Marc_Smith / Foter / CC BY

LTE has been moving more and more to the forefront in mobile cellular networks around the world. Africa, and particularly the Republic of South Africa, is the latest hotbed of LTE rollouts, with the leading country operators of Vodacom, MTN and Cell C coming online since late in 2012. In conjunction with these LTE access rollouts, our technical marketing manager in the region, Mr. Siphiwe Nelwamondo, has been authoring a series of columns on enabling LTE in a leading regional technology media Internet site, ITWeb Africa.

Naturally, his focus has been on backhaul. In the first installment of his series, Mr. Nelwamondo looked closely at the backhaul requirements of LTE. Chief among these requirements are speed, Quality of Service (QoS) and capacity. He concluded that it is too early to close the book on the requisite parameters for supporting LTE backhaul. Part two of the features, he examined the basis on which microwave provides the technical underpinnings for LTE backhaul—especially as related to capacity. More spectrum, better spectral efficiency and more effective throughput were Mr. Nelwamondo’s subpoints to increasing capacity.

Having more spectrum for microwave backhaul is always nice, but it’s a finite resource and other RF-based equipment from satellites to garage door openers is in competition for it. Bettering spectral efficiency may be accomplished by traditional methods such as ACM and might be increased through unproven-in-microwave techniques like MIMO. Throughput improvement has wide claims from the plausible low single digit percentage increases to the more speculative of upping capacity by nearly half-again. Data compression and suppression are discussed. The truth is LTE, while data-intensive, probably will not require drastic measures for backhaul capacity until at least the next stage of LTE-Advanced.

If indeed capacity increases are necessary in the LTE backhaul, number three and the most current piece of Mr. Nelwamondo’s contains additional information. Nothing is better than having something bigger than normal or having many of the standard model. As the analogy applies to LTE microwave backhaul, bigger or wider channels will increase capacity, of course. A larger hose sprays more water. Or if you have two or three or more hoses pumping in parallel that will also support comparatively more water volume. The same is true of multiple microwave channels.

However, the most truly and cost effective capacity hiking approach is proper network planning. Mr. Nelwamondo points out that in Africa—more than some places—mobile operators are involved in transitioning from TDM planning to IP planning. While TDM planning was dependent on finding the peak traffic requirement per link, IP planning allows the flexibility to anticipate a normalized rate of traffic with contingencies to “borrow” capacity from elsewhere in a backhaul ring network that is not currently being utilized. Along with several other IP-related features, this makes determining the capacity a lot more of a gray area. Some operators solve this by simply “over-dimensioning” by providing too much bandwidth for the actual data throughput needed, but most cannot afford to do this.

The fourth and final entry in Mr. Nelwamondo’s series will appear soon on other LTE backhaul considerations of which you may not have thought. Sign up below to be notified when it is available. [contact-form-7 404 "Not Found"]

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- Cloud technologies to improve performance and efficiency of mobile networks (phys.org)
- Mobile Network Modernization in Africa (aviatnetworks.com)
- On LTE Around the World (aviatnetworks.com)
- Public Safety Voice Legacy vs. LTE Broadband Future (aviatnetworks.com)
- CCA’s Berry highlights LTE roaming hub, backhaul issues for rural carriers (fiercewireless.com)
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- July 11, 2013
If Microwave Didn’t Exist for Small Cells, We’d Have to Invent It!

Microwave backhaul is being reassessed as a strategy for small cell LTE traffic aggregation on business campuses. Photo credit: cbmd / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Small cells get all the press! As LTE rolls out in networks on every continent except Antarctica, small cells are grabbing headlines in technology trades and geek fan-boy blogs across the Internet. They’ll be needed sooner or later to provide LTE access in all those places around corners of buildings on business campuses, in urban parks surrounded by concrete canyons and other inaccessible locations. But little or only passing thought is paid to the ways in which small cell traffic will be aggregated back to the main network.

However, in a new FierceWireless ebook, microwave backhaul is pointed out as one of the critical strategies to provide throughput for all the small cell traffic to come. Microwave was here before small cell. And it’s such a good fit for small cell, if it had not already existed, we’d have to invent it now! Our director of product marketing, Stuart Little, tells FierceWireless that microwave meets the capacity needs of LTE backhaul. And Fierce adds modern microwave technology is changing the perceptions of its use for small cell backhaul.

Neither sleet nor rain nor changing K factors at night will stop microwave from small cell service. Specifically, Little tells Fierce that rain has little to no effect on microwave at the lower frequencies, and where it does have some effect in the higher bands, different technical techniques can help mitigate it. To find out more about small cell microwave backhaul, we recommend any of the Aviat blogs and related articles below. Or just read the FierceWireless ebook.

Related articles
- On LTE-Advanced and Carrier Aggregation (ytd2525.wordpress.com)
- Critical Role of Microwave in LTE and Small Cell Backhaul (aviatnetworks.com)
- Big Promise for Small Cell Mobile Backhaul (aviatnetworks.com)
- Upside for High-Growth Outdoor Small Cell Backhaul (aviatnetworks.com)
- How Demand is Driving Global Small-Cell Deployment Growth (geobrava.wordpress.com)
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- July 3, 2013
The Gavel Comes Down: Auctions are Bad for Wireless Backhaul

Unless you want to return to payphones, cellular technology requires cooperatively licensed microwave backhaul to function properly. Photo credit: UggBoy / Foter.com / CC BY

Competitive licensing of fixed microwave backhaul bandwidth is a bad idea. And it should not go any further. The reasons why are laid bare in a new article in IEEE Spectrum by former electrical engineer and current telecom law firm partner Mitchell Lazarus. In general, he argues against federal spectrum auctions for microwave frequencies, and in particular for fixed microwave links. Undoubtedly, readers are familiar with the large cash bounties governments around the world have netted from competitive bidding on cellular bandwidth—first 3G and now 4G. An inference can be drawn from Lazarus’ article that some governments (i.e., the United States, the United Kingdom) had in mind a similar, if perhaps smaller, revenue enhancement through competitive auctions of microwave channels.

The problem lies in the fallacious thinking that operating fixed point-to-point wireless backhaul bandwidth is comparable to that of mobile spectrum. Whereas mobile spectrum license holders can expect to mostly—if not fully—use the frequencies for which they have paid top dollar, the same has not historically been true of license holders of microwave backhaul bandwidth. In most cases, mobile license holders have a virtual monopoly for their frequencies on a national, or at least regional, basis. Their base stations send and receive cellular phone signals omnidirectionally. They expect throughput from any and all places. So they have paid a premium to make sure no competitors are on their wavelengths causing interference.

On the other hand, U.S. holders of microwave backhaul licenses have specific destinations in mind for the operation of their point-to-point wireless networks. They only need to communicate between proverbial Points A and B. And, historically, they have only sought licenses to operate in their particular bandwidth on a particular route. They had no need to occupy all of their licensed frequency everywhere. That would be a waste. They just have to make sure they have a clear signal for the transmission paths they plan to use. To do that, before licensing, they would collaborate with other microwave users in the vicinity and a frequency-coordination firm to establish an interference-free path plan. Any conceivable network issues would usually be resolved at this stage prior to seeking a license from the Federal Communications Commission. Essentially, the FCC is just a glorified scorekeeper for fixed microwave services, passively maintaining its transmitter location license database.

But starting in 1998, with dollar signs in their eyes, governmental spectrum auctioneers started to sell off microwave frequencies in block licenses. The need for fixed microwave wireless services then was growing and has only grown fiercer with each additional iPhone and iPad that has been activated. However, access device throughput demand on one side of a base station does not necessarily fully translate all the way to the backhaul. Lazarus points out the example of now defunct FiberTower and its failure to make block microwave licenses work economically. After buying national block microwave backhaul licenses at 24 and 39 GHz, Lazarus notes, the firm resold the frequencies to Sprint and a county 911 emergency network operator. But those were the only customers. Lacking a robust enough utilization of its licensed backhaul frequencies, FiberTower had several hundred of its licenses revoked by the FCC and was forced into bankruptcy November 2012.

Subsequent auctions have attracted far fewer bidders and generated much less income for the Treasury Department. Much bandwidth has lain fallow as a result. And infrastructure buildout has stagnated.

Regulators should return the microwave backhaul licensing process to that of letting wireless transmission engineers cooperate informally among themselves, with the help of frequency-coordination firms, to arrive at fixed point-to-point wireless plans in the public interest. These are then submitted only for maintenance by the FCC or other regulators for traditionally nominal license fees—currently $470 per transmitter site for 10 years in the U.S., per Lazarus.

Forget the quixotic quest for chimerical hard currency. The commonweal demands it. You should demand it of the regulators—you can still give input regarding this scheme in some jurisdictions where it is under consideration. Clearly, the most efficient use of spectrum is to make it openly available to all because it means that every scrap of commercially useful spectrum is picked clean. We welcome your comments pro or con.

Related articles
- Qualcomm execs: Wireless spectrum is maxed out (reviews.cnet.com)
- Would Millimeter Waves be preferred Metrocell backhaul option? (ytd2525.wordpress.com)
- E-Band Global Regulation Roundup (aviatnetworks.com)
- Wireless Regulators Move to Prevent Spectrum Waste (aviatnetworks.com)
- Revenues From Macrocell Mobile Backhaul Gear To Reach $9.7bn In 2016 (misco.co.uk)
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- April 26, 2013
Big Promise for Small Cell Mobile Backhaul

Spectrum above 6 GHz is much more available for small cell backhaul than spectrum below 6 GHz.

A different solution to handle the burgeoning demand for mobile broadband capacity will be needed. More spectrum coupled with more spectral efficiency will not be sufficient. A clear solution is more sites, but deploying more macro-sites in urban and dense urban areas (where most of the traffic will be needed) will not be feasible.

Small cells promise a new “underlay” of outdoor and indoor, low power micro-cells that are deployed on public and private infrastructure within the urban clutter, are seen as seen as a likely solution. Sites being considered include:
- Pole tops (e.g., such as street lighting, traffic light systems, electric utility poles, telco poles)
- Bus stops
- Building walls
- Building rooftops
These new sites will need to be compact, simple to install, energy efficient and incorporate an organically scalable and tightly integrated backhaul solution. As a result, there will be many more sites—some projections estimate that up to 10 small cells will be deployed for every macro-site. Small cells hold out the promise of great gains for the end users but massive challenges for the operators.

Small cell deployments so far have mainly been concentrated in Europe (3G) and the USA (LTE). 3G small cells may also be deployed in other regions as a means to avoid the difficulties in obtaining planning approval for larger macro-cell sites.

It’s Still Early
Today, as far as wireless small cell backhaul (SCBH) solutions are concerned, there is evidence of product immaturity and hyperactivity in equal measure.

There is profusion of aggressively hyped solutions, including many that are a rehashing existing/niche solutions and at the opposite extreme some very new and unproven technologies. In practice, these solutions are jockeying for position while operators grapple to understand the formidable planning and infrastructure challenges being thrown up by their small cell ambitions. It is apparent that few appear that they will fully satisfy the anticipated and emerging requirements in terms of performance (i.e., capacity, latency, availability), size/shape, ease of deployment and most importantly, total cost of ownership. For the complete article, download the PDF.

Stuart D. Little
Director, Product Marketing
Aviat Networks

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- Mind Commerce Predicts Reduction in Macro Cell Spending to $50 Billion by 2017 (prweb.com)
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- 4G World Poses Five Questions about Small Cell Backhaul (aviatnetworks.com)
- Analyst: 98% of operators say small cells are essential for the future (fiercewireless.com)
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- February 1, 2013
Upside for High-Growth Outdoor Small Cell Backhaul

Related articles
- FCC pushes for gigabit broadband in all 50 states by 2015 (news.cnet.com)
- Background on Backhaul: What You May Have Missed in this Rapid Field (infovista.com)
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- Pole Sway and Small Cell Deployments for Wireless Backhaul (aviatnetworks.com)
- Google’s “confidential” test might be a super-dense LTE network using Clearwire’s spectrum (stevencrowley.com)
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- January 25, 2013
Metrocells – Is now the time for a landgrab?

Related articles
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- Infonetics: Ethernet Microwave Gear up 5% from Year-Ago Quarter; Backhaul Fuels Overall Microwave Market (sys-con.com)
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- January 18, 2013
On LTE Around the World

Back in October, mobile research firm Yankee Group held a very interesting webinar on the state of LTE around the world. The webinar, still available in replay, notes that, with the exceptions of Japan and Korea, North America is very far ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to implementing LTE. The LTE vanguard is based on North America, Japan and Korea having the greatest CDMA legacy.

Yankee Group analysts note the commonly known LTE driver in the form of worldwide proliferation of the iPhone and other smartphones has led to greater demand for high-speed connectivity. Overall, the webinar explores the LTE landscape from Asia to Europe to North America.

Related articles
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- November 30, 2012