7/27/2019 Yannick Dupuch Interview for Small Cells World Summit June 2012

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Small Cells World Summit

Interview with Yannick Dupuch on home and enterprise small cellsDate: June 19, 2012

Q: What are the key differences between small cells serving the home, office and public areas?How has the story evolved?

Small cells are solving several distinct issues in the field. primarily coverage and capacity. In the home,femto first introduced the concept of simple-to-deploy low-cost cells. They provided automatedprovisioning and incorporated the first intelligent SON features that could adjust to their environment in asemi-dynamic way. These cells were also deployed outside the home as dedicated-coverage solutions forsmall businesses. That step resulted in a drive to increase the capacity and performance of the earlyfemto home cells, enabling dedicated small cells for larger enterprises. Now, small cells are oftenoperator managed to satisfy SLAs for performance, and they are deployed in groups. To support thisevolution, Alcatel-Lucent has expanded SON functionality, which allows groups of small cells to worktogether, providing coverage and capacity, with mobility between the small cells and the surroundingmacro cells.

Following the success of these initial solutions, we have moved into public access solutions, in shoppingmalls, train stations, subways and other indoor hotspots. Open to all subscribers, these solutions arefocused much more on solving capacity issues, primarily by offloading macro networks onto small cells

that are located where end users require high-throughput data capabilities. The global market realizes thevalue of small cells for solving the impending capacity crunch. The latest solution will use the samearchitecture, derived from early residential femto cells, but with improved capacity and speciallydeveloped SON and mobility algorithms, as a means to add capacity to struggling macro networks.

Q: The whole market started as a subscriber-retention tool. How has the business benefitsdeveloped for operators?

Deploying small cells has proven to decrease churn rates and increase end-user stickiness. Thats a veryimportant driver for the growth of residential small cells and a wonderful retention tool for our customers.As a result, operators are now integrating small cells into residential gateways and set-top boxes, so theycan deliver the hardware capability to their existing fixed subscribers and provide an additional aspectof mobile service to their existing triple play and quad play offerings.

There are a number of business benefits, including a lower overall cost to serve subscribers. Operatorscan also deliver a better user experience, such as improved download data rates, while utilizing lower-cost wireline backhaul. Another benefit is that, by offloading traffic to small home and enterprise femtocells, capacity at the macro is freed for users who are roaming, rather than remaining stationary at a caf

7/27/2019 Yannick Dupuch Interview for Small Cells World Summit June 2012

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or in their homes. Finally, small cells allow operators to know the location of end users very accurately,which can be used to offer innovative services or contextually relevant advertisements.

Q: How do you see the technology progressing in the small cells market, and how is thatmatching industry demand?

Whenever you initiate a new technology, it inevitably takes time to reach a level of maturity. Alcatel-Lucent now has an extremely strong, field-proven, end-to-end solution. We ve significantly improved howit integrates into our customers networks. We have developed the technology, and we can deliverenhanced performance in a number of key areas. This includes better techniques to mitigate the effectsof interference and provide more reliable mobility between the macro network and small cell layer.Because hardware integration has also improved over time, we can now offer more capacity in the small

cell itself, along with more throughput, a better integrated platform supporting W-CDMA, carrier-gradeWi-Fi and, soon, LTE with our lightRadio small cell product family.

As a leader in small cells, Alcatel-Lucent continues to drive the evolution of small cells and hasmaintained market leadership. With better radio KPIs, enhanced mobility and improved interferencemitigation, customers are benefitting from increased end-user quality of service and reduced churn. So Ithink its fair to say that small cells are really coming into their own.

As a result of these performance improvements, our industry is now in a better position to tackle theoutdoor sector. For this market, we have added robust algorithms from our macro cell technology,enabling really powerful, high-performing solutions. The advantages of small cells are becoming moreand more interesting to more and more customers.

Q: Can you tell us more about the Alcatel-Lucent small cell software licensing program, includinghow it meets operator demands in the consumer space?

Our goal has always been to enable customers to realize new business models. With the softwarelicensing program, we can deliver the cost benefits of an ODM business model, along with the benefits ofour rich portfolio, to help customers compete more effectively in consumer markets. We add tremendousvalue through our small cells software, including automated provisioning, intelligent SON and strongmobility algorithms. Now, as we evolve to a software-licensing model, we can license our femto softwareapplication to CPE partners to integrate with their hardware. This enables our customers to buy small cellhardware with embedded Alcatel-Lucent software from our CPE partners. This approach offers anextremely competitive commercial model, which combines the reliability of the Alcatel-Lucent small cellsolution with the flexibility and choice of access points from a wealth of potential CPE partners.

Last year, we announced an important agreement with Broadcom, and our technology is now embeddedin their chipsets and available to any hardware manufacturer. This software-licensing model offers a veryattractive solution for the residential small cell market, because it enables volume deployments. We arealready seeing a number of successful applications of software licensing, which will surely beimplemented by many of our customers. For public access markets, we will continue to stronglydifferentiate the hardware and software functionality in our own product portfolio.

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Q: What do you think makes Alcatel-Lucent competitive in this market?

First, we are very well-positioned in the small cells market because we were one of the very first to startdeveloping products in this area. For example, we enabled Europes oldest and most successful femtocell deployment, the award-winning SureSignal offering by Vodafone. Our vision of a flat-IP architecturewas key to the success of that early entry, so you could say that we were one of the first believers. Thatfirst-mover advantage has translated into commercial success, and today we have a base of nearly 40customers. We also have a comprehensive portfolio and unparalleled experience in the field. Thisincludes our deep understanding of all the deployment issues and our experience in resolving backhaulQoS problems which is crucial for this kind of technology Our strengths in end-to-end integration,turnkey solutions, OEM and network management have been honed by listening to our customers in thefield, refining our offering and developing a complementary portfolio that ensures we can tackle any kind

of market.

Q: Finally, whats your vision for the industry?

Small cells will be an integral part of all mobile operators network strategy, giving them a means todeliver the capacity and QoE required by subscribers increasing appetite for data. .We will continue tolead this market with new innovations, build the right partnerships and enable the right business models.Building plug-and-play solutions is clearly paramount. Our customers are requesting fully automated, low-touch provisioning and self-optimizing products that can be deployed on-site with a minimum of support...Its a huge driver, and the industry really needs to understand this.

Overall, we are at a very exciting point in the market. Smaller cells are now accepted as the way to satisfythe needs of dedicated coverage and the insatiable demand for capacity. Residential volumes will

continue to grow, and with the introduction of public access cells into mobile networks, we most definitelysee a successful future for the small cell industry.