Page 34 - AIB | The Chanel | Issue 1 2013

Nick Johnson, the founder and CTO
of ip.access, looks at how small cell
technology plays a key role in
delivering first-time coverage and
communications in some of the
world’s most remote areas
he thing that most
people don’t realise
about wireless
mobile phone
networks is: just
how much they
rely on wires. In the
developed world, the complex
network of mobile phone “base
stations”, regardless of whether
they are mounted on masts in rural
areas or on buildings and lamp‐
posts in city centres, are connected
and – quite literally plugged in to –
a national wired telecommunications
grid.
BACKHAUL
Getting the radio signal from the
mobile phone handset to the
nearest base station is only the
beginning of the journey for the
typical mobile phone call. From the
base station it travels across the
operator’s national telecommunication
grid and is routed to its destination.
Chances are that for a good part of
that journey, the “wireless” call is
being carried on a wire. This part of
the call’s journey is known in the
telecoms industry as “backhaul”.
But in rural areas of the
developed world, and in the more
remote parts of the world, wired
backhaul infrastructure to support
mobile telephone calls either does
not exist, or maybe does not have
the bandwidth and speed to
support the traffic that mobiles can
generate.
In the developed world, mobile
phone masts with microwave
transmission links help to deliver
traffic from a rural backwater to the
heart of the national network –
some of these links delivering those
mobile phone signals over a
distance of as much as 30 miles
back to a network hub.
But in the world’s more remote
regions – even 30 miles doesn’t get
you very far. And while microwave
links can be used as a cheaper and
more secure way of providing
backhaul over a small number of
hops, the cost of providing a “daisy
chain” of microwave links to reach
the truly remote is enormous – and
that’s without factoring in that each
of those units would require a
constant power supply.
SMALL CELLS
At ip.access we were one of the first
companies in the world to design,
develop and manufacture what are
now known as “small cells”. Our
compact units contain in a box
about the size of a laptop computer
all that is required to deliver a
mobile phone signal over a radius
of a few hundred metres. Originally
designed to improve indoor
coverage in offices and busy public
locations such as train stations and
airports, the units require relatively
little power and don’t need to be
mounted on large towers.
Those last two characteristics
also make the small cells ideal for
deployment in remote locations
lacking the infrastructure of the
developed world – a simple diesel
generator or a solar panel can easily
run the small cell base station for
example.
But of course, that still leaves the
issue of needing to provide a
backhaul solution to get the mobile
phone signals back to the nearest
national grid and link to the
internet worldwide. And that’s
where the small cells’ ability to link
to a small satellite terminal helps to
create a simple, low‐power, deploy‐
almost‐anywhere, combined mobile
phone base station and backhaul
solution.
FIRSTWAVE
Earlier this year, in partnership
with pan‐African satellite experts
RascomStar QAF, we developed
and began deploying a number of
these small satellite supported
mobile phone base stations in some
of the most remote parts of the
Republic of Congo. The units even
included a fixed phone to act as
village phone box as well as
provide standard mobile phone
coverage.
The first wave of deployment
will see around 50 remote sites in
the Republic of Congo receive the
ip.access base stations all linked by
satellite back to the nation’s capital
city and from there to the
worldwide phone network and of
course the internet.
The next phase will see the
service spread to as many as ten
more central African countries
during 2013. RascomStar‐QAFʹs
CEO Faraj Elamari stresses that the
service was developed to provide
affordable universal access to
telephony services in rural and
remote areas – itʹs a service that
meets the needs of a region
underserved by mobile and indeed
fixed telephony.
So while the eyes of many in the
world of telecoms are on the role of
the small cell in future fourth
generation mobile networks, it is
marvellous to see the technology
playing a role in delivering first‐
time coverage and communications
to remote and hard to reach
locations that would otherwise lack
the infrastructure and ability to
take part in the internet age. ■
T
RURALANDREMOTE
CELLULAR
The first
small
satellite
supported
mobile
phone base
stations
were
deployed
in the
Republic
of Congo
“
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34 | ISSUE 1 2013 | THE CHANNEL
www.ipaccess.com