Huawei announced a partnership with Ukraine's leading telecom operator lifecell for the deployment of its Easy Macro 2.0-based PoleStar site solution in the tourist city of Lviv.
Huawei noted that lifecell is first operator to deploy Easy Macro 2.0 commercially. Expanding on the Easy Macro 1.0 solution, Easy Macro 2.0 offers support for a wider range of radio access technologies (RATs) and higher power, and is designed to enable more flexible installation and provide more uniform coverage to help operators' address the difficulties of site acquisition and reduce site construction costs.
Huawei stated that Lviv attracts an estimated up to 200,000 tourists per day, creating high demand for network capacity. Ukrainian operator lifecell aims to provide a quality network and enhanced services for Internet access. However, with growth in data traffic network capacity restrictions cannot be addressed where spectrum resources are limited. As a result, lifecell is experiencing strong demand for site additions.
Huawei stated that the installation of traditional macro base stations presents challenges in terms of site acquisition, a lengthy site approval period, and site construction costs.
Integrating radio and antenna elements, Huawei's Easy Macro 2.0 product is designed to be small and light, and to allow the use of power pole resources present in urban areas for site deployment. The solution is therefore designed to resolve the issue of site acquisition for operators and enable faster site deployments.Huawei's Easy Macro 2.0 offers concurrent support for GSM, UMTS and LTE, while also offering greater large power and significantly extended coverage area compared with the previous generation solution. The product additionally supports horizontal installation and features adjustable vertical beam width (VBW) to optimise coverage in high-rise buildings. The new version also supports centralised transmission and power supply to help reduce site deployment costs.
Huawei claims that using Easy Macro 2.0 lifecell has been able to increase network coverage by 8.73% while the release of suppressed network resulted in voice traffic increasing by 24.93% and the data traffic by 22.08% per cluster compared with the existing network. In addition, the company claims that deployment efficiency for a single site improved by 94% and the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the site was lowered by over 30%.
