SINGAPORE, 25 JUNE 2009—Singapore’s smallest mobile carrier by market share MobileOne Ltd (M1), will upgrade its existing network infrastructure through a tie-up with Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), according to a statement from the network technology provider.
The network enhancements are meant to reduce M1’s capital and operating expenditure, and boosting M1’s competitiveness in the saturated Singapore mobile communications market, NSN executives said.
According to Patrick Scodeller, chief technical officer, M1, the updates to M1’s network include making sure the infrastructure is capable of supporting Long Term Evolution (LTE) when the technology is ready. LTE is a recently developed high speed mobile network technology, capable of supporting high bandwidth applications such as video streaming and online gaming.
“We wanted to look at flattening our architecture, to go all-IP and prepare a good foundation for LTE so that we can provide a good early commercial service when LTE is ready,” said Scodeller.
Deployment
The network upgrades include deploying an NSN product known as the Flexi Base Station, which allows the transition to LTE from the existing WCDMA/HSPA networks via a software change, without the need for additional hardware investment.
Two older mobile switching service centres are also expected to be changed, along with Nokia hardware at 1,200 sites, which will be replaced with NSN’s Flexi base transceiver stations. M1 is expected to utilise less floor space as the 33 current base station controllers will be replaced with just four newer models.
Upgrading works should start next month, and take place over the next three years, said NSN executives.
