San Francisco, 13 September 2017 – Global connectivity supplier Huber+Suhner is highlighting the importance of densified networks at this year's Mobile World Congress Americas in San Francisco. Andy Hollywood, president and general manager of Huber+Suhner, remarked on how many industry representatives at the event said they saw the concept of Centralized Radio Access Networks (C-RAN) as key to enable successful preparation of the future network for implementation of 5G applications and services.
“As 5G emerges we need to ensure that we accommodate the massive data expansion without any issues, and that operators are able to cater for expanding capacity needs,” said Hollywood, speaking ahead of the conference. “With C-RAN, the huge bandwidth demand needed for 5G applications can be managed economically and rollout speed of new network elements can be significantly improved.”
Using centralized baseband units (BBUs) in a C-RAN architecture, multiple remote radio heads can be connected from one place, reducing the need for decentralized infrastructure and therefore operational cost.
“By adding new base stations to the network to increase capacity and integrate new 5G services, manageability of the network will decrease, which is a major concern for network operators," added Hollywood. "With the introduction of C-RAN, operators can manage this in a cost and energy efficient way with significantly reduced operational complexity, long-term,” he said.
Huber+Suhner is promoting C-RAN by launching a range of solutions at Mobile World Congress Americas this year. It covers all aspects of efficient and scalable fiber management in the central office, addressing fiber exhaust issues in the access network and reliable connectivity at cell site. On top of it the solution adds the ability for future remote reconfiguration to the optical layer of the network.
Hollywood concluded, “Huber+Suhner’s strength in offering scalable and reliable solutions and our expertise gained in many cellular network roll-outs worldwide are of utmost importance when selecting the appropriate partner for introducing this technology. We cover all of the critical aspects needed to provide physical layer solutions for the entire C-RAN architecture in the network for our customers, and this is a fundamental necessity for network operators to ensure the smooth ride to 5G.”
