Company is also launching operator app stores in Europe
Ericsson will launch new products in the RAN, IP networking and network management space at Mobile World Congress 2011. The company told journalists at a pre-MWC briefing that it will also focus on its managed services capabilities and provide operators with app stores and the management of network APIs to app and content developers.
Jan Häglund, vp of the networks business unit, said that the company will be launching a next generation evolved packet product, as well as a next generation SGSN/MME product. MME is the node that handles signalling for LTE. The next gen MME will be available in the second quarter of 2011, Häglund said.
The vendor will also be launching a new network management product for IP transport, Häglund added. There will be other launches in the RAN and IP core area, but we can’t tell you about them yet because Ericsson has emgargoed them, something we’ll respect.
In the RAN, Ericsson will be pushing the capabilities of its products to combine within an overall operator-managed environment to form a heterogeneous network, the Hetnet – combining multi-modular RAN products, SON/OSS capabilities and EvoRAN backhaul.
This will include products extending down to picocells, all of them manageable within operators’ existing network management and operating systems, Haglund said. There will be a focus on the SON capabilities of the Hetnet, with products combined within an “operator controlled environment”, Häglund said. Ericsson’s competitors such as Alcatel-Lucent and NEC, talk of metro femtocell within their heterogeneous network product line, but Ericsson famously avoids the f-word as it has no femtocell product line.
Häglund added, “Picocells operate within an operator controlled environment, using the same resources to combine traffic management and management algorithms. Femtocells tend to be viewed as a more laissez-faire environment, self-deployed in an uncontrolled environment.”
In truth, there is perhaps little difference between what other vendors call metro femtocell, with its built-in SON characteristics and standardised management interface, and Ericsson’s vision of network elements with automatic monitoring, neighbour relations, interference management and SON.
Aside from network equipment, Ericsson looks set to major on its managed services capabilities, focussing on the agility and flexibility such an approach can give an operator. It will also continue to focus on its experience in enabling network sharing, something that Mead sees increasing in all areas of the world, driven by different business needs.
Managed Services
Bradley Mead, Head of Operations for UK and Ireland, told Mobile Europe that operator drivers for the outsourcing of management and network operations had moved from cost reduction to giving them “thinking space” as they work out how to transform their networks. He said that over the past five years, 20,000 operator employees have been insourced to Ericsson’s managed services division, from top designers and planners, to engineers in the field.
App Stores
Finally Ericsson will be tiptoeing into the tricky area of how operators can take a “piece of the pie” from the applications and content space. Sanjay Kaul, VP and Global Head of Ericsson’s Multimedia business unit, said that operators have “relevant stuff that they can monetise – huge assets that are not being utilised”. To do this operators will need to “expose their assets” to third parties through network APIs – something Ericsson thinks it can help process and manage, to help the creation of what Kaul termed “network-enabled applications”.
Ericsson is also delivering operator app stores through its E-Store product. “We are delivering app stores to a number of operators in Europe and Asia Pacific, based on our E-Store,” Kaul said. “We see that as being in line with the strategic goals of the Wholesale Applications Community.”