Amdocs helps telcos accelerate LTE network rollouts

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 21 February 2012 08:42

Business IT - Technology

Amdocs has introduced a software tool designed to accelerate the rollout of LTE networks by automating the process of designing and configuring LTE base stations and their associated backhaul networks.

Amdocs says that a typical Tier 1 service provider has in excess of 10,000 new base stations to design, build, test and commission when rolling out an LTE network.

It claims that its Single Click Network Rollout software can cut network design times by up to 90 percent by using pre-configured, automated design processes; reduce capital expenditure by up to 10 percent by providing an optimised design that maximises data capacity and reduce redesigns by up to 50 percent by automatically validating the installed base station against plan.

Other claimed benefits include reducing the time to revenue generation by up to 13 percent, and reducing fault analysis work by up to 50 percent The software is claimed to be vendor agnostic and to support 3G, 3.5G and LTE network technologies and to "work well with almost all cell-site and transmission equipment."

However it is not a tool for designing the radio network: network operators must use other tools to decide where base stations are to be located and the amount of traffic each will have to handle in order to achieve the depth of coverage and throughput they wish to achieve.

Joe Frost, VP marketing in Amdocs' OSS division, told ExchangeDaily "It is designed to completely automate the planning and design of the ethernet backhaul and the IP stack along side it."

He added: "We have considerable experience helping wireless operators build out 2G and 3G networks and we found that the majority of operators we work with have very little automation: there are a lot of manual, spreadsheet driven processes."

He said this approach did not scale well into the LTE world. "Not only is LTE brings a significant upgrade, but most of the operators are planning to significantly increase in the number of cell sites.