3GSM: Lucent releases one-box radio network

BARCELONA, SPAIN--Lucent Technologies has managed to cram a base station, a radio network controller and core network router into a single box, effectively creating a single-element network. Lucent unveiled the Base Station Router (BSR) at the 3GSM World Congress this week, promising carriers that its new “flattened” architecture would take much of the complexity and cost out of upgrading to 3G networks.

Mike Iandolo, president of mobility access solutions at Lucent, said that the new architecture took years to develop in Bell Labs and represents a new shift in network design. By eliminating the separate components, carrier save on installation, space and transport costs. And because the router terminates directly into the IP cloud, requiring no additional interfaces and protocols, latency improves dramatically improving overall network efficiency and speed, Iandolo said.

“We’ve been working on this for a while,” Iandolo said. “While the concept is very simple, it was a very complicated process.”

Iandolo said that Lucent believes the router will give it an edge with carriers that Lucent currently has no business with. Because the router contains all edge elements, Lucent doesn’t have to worry about interoperating with another vendor’s access infrastructure, allowing Lucent to install it in an incumbent footprint, Iandolo said. And since Lucent is the first to produce such an architecture, Iandolo said, carriers wanting the router’s benefits are likely to take a closer look at Lucent than before.

The BSR architecture comes in both UMTS and CDMA 1X EV-DO flavors, but Lucent is launching its first product as a UMTS micro base station, which it had in a closed off demo area at the World Congress.