Elisa (Finland) and Ooredoo (Qatar) Test Nokia's Centralized RAN for Faster Uploads

Nokia Networks announced the use of its Centralized RAN with two operators. "Centralized RAN reduces interference between neighboring cells and allows up to 10 times faster uploads at the cell edge. Battery life of smart devices last longer as they don’t need to transmit at high power to cut through the interference .. Nokia Centralized RAN technology is built on the company’s Flexi Multiradio 10 base Station .. The base stations work directly with one another over fiber optic, without the need for additional network elements":

Hartwall Arena

• Elisa and Nokia Networks have jointly conducted successful tests of Centralized RAN under extreme load conditions at the packed Hartwall Arena in Helsinki. Running on the operator’s live LTE network, the solution delivered data uploads more than two and a half times faster, while cutting smartphone power consumption by one third"
   See "Elisa, Nokia Networks boost speed of uploading content to web" - here. 

• "Nokia Networks and Ooredoo demonstrate, how uplink capacity can significantly increase with Centralized RAN. During large events in stadiums, there can be more uplink than downlink traffic as people upload pictures and videos. Nokia’s Centralized RAN links multiple LTE base stations to work directly with one another and doubles the average uplink capacity across a cell".
  
  See "Nokia Networks, Ooredoo show 10 times faster upload with Centralized RAN at ITU event in Qatar" - here
  

Elisa [Finland] Blocks Domains and IP Addresses of Pirate Bay

   

Elisa announced that " .. On 26 October 2011, the District Court of Helsinki ordered Elisa Corporation, under the penalty of a fine, to stop making copyright-infringing material publicly available through Pirate Bay. The court decision says that Elisa must remove the Pirate Bay service's domain names from Elisa's name servers and to block traffic to the IP addresses that the service uses .. Elisa will take the ordered action as of 9 January 2012 to Elisa and Saunalahti subscriptions. The blocking will not have an impact on other network traffic of Elisa's and Saunalahti customers"

Elisa's press release lists the blocked domains (e.g. thepiratebay.org, www.thepiratebay.org, depiraatbaai.be, www.depiraatbaai.be, piratebay.am, www.piratebay.am, piratebay.net, www.piratebay.net) and blocked IP addresses - 194.71.107.15, 194.71.107.18, 194.71.107.19.

See "Temporary blocking of Pirate Bay introduced in Elisa's network 9 January 2012" - here. 

Recently, a UK court issued a similar order to BT (here), and a bill ("SOPA") is proposed in the US for the same purpose (here). Ofcom, the UK regulator, said few months ago that "All site blocking techniques can be circumvented" - here.

At the end of Q3, 2011 Elisa had 4.1M mobile and 380K fixed broadband subscribers.

See also "Lightreading: Elisa is in RFP process for DPI/Policy Management" - here.

Lightreading: Elisa is in RFP process for DPI/Policy Management

Lightreading says today that Elisa is "which has nearly 3.3 million mobile customers in Finland, including more than 900,000 3G users, is looking to source deep packet inspection (DPI) and policy control systems to help manage its growing volumes of mobile data traffic" in an RFP process and "it's  not likely to be too long before Elisa's new policy management supplier is known, however, because the operator wants to select a vendor by the end of this year, according to Elisa's head of access networks Eetu Prieur"

Earlier this year, NSN announced that Elisa is using its radio gear for QoS based service differentiation
(here). Now the goal is to add policy management and the abilityto accurately identify applications, such as P2P.

Story by Michelle Donegan- "Euro Carrier Issues Policy Control RFP" - here.

DPI/QoS Deployments (13): Elisa (Finland) Uses NSN for Quality of Service Differentiation

    

Nokia Siemens Networks announced recently that Elisa Corporation (operating in the Nordic countries, the Baltics and Russia, with over 2 million consumers) is using "network features from Nokia Siemens Networks that provide flexible Quality of Service (QoS)". This refers to Elisa's mobile broadband service (Elisa offers both mobile and DSL broadband services)

See "Elisa customers first to enjoy more flexible mobile broadband" - here.

"This is the first commercial deployment of Nokia Siemens Networks QoS differentiation solution built by integrating multiple network elements, including its radio network and network management system. Elisa is using the QoS differentiation to prioritize time and resource critical traffic to ensure customers receive the service they have paid for even when networks are congested .. The Quality of Service differentiation solution takes effect in heavily loaded networks when requests to use the network can exceed its capacity. It enables the prioritization of data traffic, according to policies determined by subscription agreements, to fairly divide the available resources. Different priorities can be allocated to different user segments or applications and can be applied dynamically depending on the network load. Nokia Siemens Networks QoS aware scheduler also enables Elisa to change QoS priorities even during a data session and maintain a particular bit rate in simultaneous upload and download sessions."

  

Unfortunately, the release does not say which products are used to create the solution and whether they are made by NSN or by one of its technology partners. NSN's site has a section on the Quality of Service differentiation offering (in mobile broadband) - here, detailing the main benefits - without any reference to products.
 

Related post "NSN: "Radio capacity can be boosted further by applying QoS differentiation" - here. As application based policies are part of the above solution, it has to be more than just managing the radio network