Telkomsel Launches CloudAir2.0 with Huawei

Indonesian operator Telkomsel has deployed Huawei’s CloudAIR2.0 solution in its LTE network to address spectrum bottlenecks and enhance the 4G experience for its customers.

CloudAIR2.0 cloudifies an air interface to efficiently share spectrum, power, and channel resources, Huawei said. With this solution, mobile operators can enhance air interface utilization, while allowing for flexible network deployment and improving user experience.

This solution is the result of the collaboration of Telkomsel with Huawei’s Joint Innovation Center 2.0, which was inaugurated Wednesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Telkomsel’s vice president of technology and system Indra Mardiatna said the operator has been experiencing rapid growth.

According to Mardiatna, Telkomsel has deployed LTE technology in 2300-MHz, 2100-MHz, 1800-MHz and 900-MHz simultaneously. However, the high frequency band uplink signal becomes a coverage bottleneck due to a high propagation, a high penetration loss and a limited transmitting power of the terminal.

This situation results in poor user experience at the cell edge, especially in indoor areas, and threatens a coverage bottleneck on the high frequency band uplink signal due to a high propagation, a high penetration loss and a limited transmitting power of the terminal.

In response to those issues, Telkomsel has teamed up with Huawei to introduce the CloudAIR 2.0 solution, which successfully solved the problems through two technologies: spectrum cloudification (dynamic spectrum sharing) and channel cloudification. 

Citing the results of the trials conducted on Telkomsel’s LTE network in Jakarta, Mardiatna said this solution has significantly enhanced the mobile broadband usage experience for the operator’s customers.

The solution has boosted LTE downlink speed throughput by 116% from 50Mbps to 108Mbps. In addition, outdoor area coverage has been improved by 21.4% as well as two to three times user experience improvement for indoor areas.

"If the traffic is high on 4G, Telkomsel can allocate, for example 20 MHz, specifically for 4G as needed," said Mardiatna during the presentation.

Edward Ying, director of planning and transformation of Telkomsel, said the deployment of CloudAir2.0 will not only allow Telkomsel to maximize its spectrum resources but also help it maximize opex by eliminating the need to install more base stations.

“Spectrum is finite and expensive, and it’s not easy for us to meet the growth of such significant demand for 4G mobile data,” Ying said. “The CloudAIR 2.0 solution has enabled us to achieve a convergence of the multi band network that maximizes capacity and coverage requirements and enhances the user experience effectively.”