[Shenzhen, China, April 13, 2017] At the 2017 Huawei Global Analyst Summit (HAS), Huawei released its 2017 Small Cell development strategy. Focusing on indoor mobile broadband markets, this strategy aims to help operators grow the indoor digital economy and seize new opportunities for business growth by enabling xGbps-level user experience, redefining full-scenario indoor digital ecosystems, and expanding businesses to the B2V markets for operators.

According to a recent survey of urban activity time distribution by Huawei X Labs, a principal part of social and economic activities take place in enclosed areas. Over 70% of urban activities are performed in homes, offices, shopping malls, and sports stadiums. Similarly, a recent mobile network analysis shows that 80% of data traffic is generated indoors. This proportion is still on the rise as heavy-traffic services, such as high-definition videos, are increasing tremendously. At the same time, existing indoor mobile networks are facing mounting challenges.

Using outdoor macro base stations to cover indoor areas or deploying a distributed antenna system (DAS) has proven unable to ensure consistent Gbps-level experience between indoor and outdoor environments. Data traffic increases rapidly due to heavy-traffic service growth without generating an expected revenue growth, leaving operators no choice but to significantly reduce per-bit costs. Besides, operators are already seeing a slow growth in B2C markets. Existing indoor networks do not ensure smooth evolution to 5G, representing another grave challenge for operators in the journey ahead.

In 2017, the strategic focus of Huawei Small Cell is to enable indoor digital economies to promote indoor mobile broadband digitalization and serve as the catalyst for operators to explore new business opportunities.

New Experiences: Upgrades indoor service experience from 1Gbps to xGbps.

Huawei's new-generation LampSite3.0 makes a big breakthrough by removing the industry's long-standing major RF bottlenecks. This breakthrough makes it possible for digital network sharing among multiple operators in indoor settings. LampSite3.0 offers flexible support for a number of innovative features, including multicarrier aggregation, distributed MIMO, virtual 4T4R, and 256QAM. With these features, indoor MBB capacity can tangibly increase while cutting per-bit costs significantly for data traffic. LampSite adopts 5G-oriented capacity design to help protect network investment for operators.

New Ecosystems: Redefines indoor MBB industry chains and builds win-win business ecosystems.

Huawei's LampSite3.0 solution is the first in the industry to realize a 240 MHz full-bandwidth capability. This capability further enhances digital MBB network sharing among operators and allows more business partners to participate in indoor digital infrastructure construction. In the future, Huawei will continue its efforts to enhance cooperation with global leading industry partners, including indoor network designers, site providers, and indoor network integrators, to build new win-win business ecosystems.

New Boundaries: Extends business from B2C to B2V markets and accelerates indoor digital connections to drive service development.

By using LampSite to build indoor digital infrastructure and Service Anchor to enable network capability openness and mobile edge computing (MEC) innovations, operators can realize digital service innovations in vertical industries. For example, operators can launch such new services as precise positioning over indoor cellular networks, big data analysis, video acceleration, and local break-out (LBO) in shopping malls, sports stadiums, and transportation hubs, as well as large and medium enterprises. Expanding services to vertical industries contributes to building smart shopping malls, smart sports stadiums, smart transportation, and smart enterprises. This service boundary expansion will also help operators improve their business efficiency and increase revenues while growing new services.

Ritchie Peng, President of Huawei Small Cell Product Line, said:

"Enabling a brand-new indoor experience, building new indoor ecosystems, and extending businesses to new markets for operators are the key strategies for Huawei Small Cell in 2017. By releasing this strategy, our goals are to bring together industry partners to explore new business opportunities in indoor networks. We hope to work with partners to promote indoor MBB development and create a new indoor digital economy."