50 mobile operators go IP with Nokia Siemens Networks

With the rapid, global, growth of mobile data traffic, increased peak data rates boosted by HSPA+ technology and the need to drive costs down, mobile operators must explore new cost-effective ways to manage the data growth in the transport network. IP/Ethernet mobile backhaul can provide a more scalable solution at a cost that can be less than half of TDM-based backhaul. It also offers a smoother evolution path to Long-Term Evolution (LTE).

“The transport migration starts in the base stations” states Markus Borchert, Head of Sales for Radio Access from Nokia Siemens Networks. “We have delivered IP-capable base stations to more than 130 operators and are currently seeing a lot of those operators asking us to migrate their transport networks to IP as the first step to LTE. We have the transport solution embedded within the base station and are able to perform this migration by software upgrade only.”

As part of the migration to IP, Nokia Siemens Networks has also delivered its IEEE 1588-2008 standards-based Timing over Packet solution to 13 live networks around the world. This solution provides the network synchronization needed all the way to the base station and eliminates other costly alternatives. Nokia Siemens Networks has been a pioneer in Timing over Packet, having started to work on it in 2006 and completing the world’s first live trial in early 2007. In September 2008, the company was the first vendor to publicly demonstrate IEEE1588-2008 in a live 3G environment, with commercial products, across a multi-vendor network.