Avea and NEC boost indoor mobile connectivity in Turkey

NEC provides reliable indoor mobile connectivity to increase workplace productivity and customer satisfaction levels

Tokyo & Barcelona, March 2, 2015 – NEC Corporation (TSE: NEC 6701) announced today that Avea – Turkey's most innovative mobile operator – is helping customers boost their mobile connectivity at home and work with NEC's market leading small cell gateway solution. The company has also begun pilots of an innovative solution that dramatically reduces the cost of enterprise-grade multi-mode 3G and 4G connectivity to boost workplace productivity.

Mobile users often face challenges using their mobiles due to the signal blocking properties of the concrete, stone, steel and tinted glass used to construct many homes and offices. This problem is compounded by the fact that higher frequency, shorter range 3G and 4G signals have lower indoor penetration capabilities than previous generations of technology.

Avea will use NEC's small cell gateway – which sits between the operator's network core and the Internet Service Provider's broadband network – to manage tens of thousands of residential femtocells and enterprise-grade indoor small cells to address this issue. It aggregates indoor small cell networks into a standardized lu interface connected into the mobile core network to streamline deployment and management activities for the operator.

Avea has successfully completed pilot testing of the innovative Enterprise RAN (E-RAN) solution from NEC and SpiderCloud to provide innovative multimode LTE and 3G connectivity for enterprises. Using an enterprise's existing Ethernet infrastructure, E-RAN avoids the expense, and lengthy disruption of coaxial cable installation works, CAT6/7 Ethernet re-wiring and specialist indoor radio planning. As it uses only a fraction of the power of a Distributed Antenna System (DAS) by removing the need for dedicated air-conditioning units, operating costs are dramatically reduced.

Avea Network Technology Group Service & Product Director Cemal Baki said,

"We're seeing a new competitive battlefield emerging in the mobile market. People are no longer just concerned about price and the scope of an operator's outdoor network coverage. They also want excellent coverage indoors, where they predominantly use their mobile phones, and the peace of mind of great customer service whenever they need it. We're pleased to work with a market leading partner like NEC to roll out new residential small cell service and initiate enterprise-grade pilots to help meet this demand."

Avea was founded in 2004. As the youngest operator of three in Turkey, Avea has brought a new competitive environment to the market. It promotes its ‘Spirit of Innovation' brand message and is constantly investing in technology and infrastructure to keep up with user demands.

E-RAN provides a platform to overlay intelligent, cloud-based applications at the network edge, enabling the delivery of new converged IT and communications services. By integrating the small cell server with an enterprise's existing on-premises or hosted unified communications and PBX solution, employees can use their smartphones like a desk phone with advanced functions, such as hunt groups to route calls to an available team member, free internal transfers and least cost routing for international calls. This scalable, future-proofed platform can also be used to extend in-building employee presence and location-based messaging services to any smartphone or offer tiered Quality of Service levels for video or VoIP content.

Martin Guthrie, Business Development Director at NEC said,

"NEC has shipped over a million of our award winning femtocell access points around the world. We're now seeing rapid growth in the enterprise space which is a fast growing market for carriers. NEC has a rich enterprise communication service application ecosystem to enable carriers to provide converged fixed and wireless mobile and broadband services to boost workplace productivity."

NEC recently made an investment in SpiderCloud for an undisclosed number of shares in the company. The deal is designed to help NEC and SpiderCloud accelerate its programme to create an end-to-end platform to enable operators to provide enterprises with mobile connectivity, in addition to communication applications that boost workplace productivity.

NEC's small cell solutions will be featured at Mobile World Congress in Hall 3 on stand #3N10 on 2-5 March 2015.