Taking a leap forward in enhancing its 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) offering, Finnish kit manufacturer Nokia is expanding its portfolio by presenting two new innovative solutions, collectively known as FastMile, designed to augment indoor and outdoor coverage and speeds. These offerings will be made accessible from early 2024.
In the great outdoors, Nokia employs high gain antennas accompanied by receivers that evade wall attenuation. In simpler terms, wall attenuation refers to the loss of radio frequency brought about by wall materials. These receivers play a significant role in augmenting coverage to the cell edge without overlooking the convenience of self-installation by end-users.
Intelligence location identification further extends this goal. According to the vendor, research implies that operators may lose almost 60% of network capacity influenced by the gadgets employed, and location. However, by simply positioning the receivers at optimal locations, radio capacity conservation can surge by 30%. For assisting users in identifying these ideal locations, intuitively designed, user-friendly mobile apps have been introduced.
The high gain antennas used in the FastMile 5G receiver have the potential to extend up to a range of 10 dBi. At its peak, the receiver capitalizes on a technique known as four component carrier aggregation, that enhances mobile data usage, utilizing up to 300MHz of bandwidth.
On the other hand, the second offering designed for usage indoors, namely the 5G Gateway 7, implements antennas with a gain of up to 8 dBi, merging carrier aggregation of up to 200MHz of spectrum. Using dual-band WiFi 7, it integrates both 4G and 5G radio and is compliant with 3GPP release 17.
“As the FWA market continues to evolve and grow, operators increasingly need technology options that can maximize the capacity of their network, are easy to install and are capable of delivering the ultimate user experience,” shared Jamie Lenderman, Research Manager at Omdia. “Solutions like Nokia’s new FWA 5G indoor and outdoor devices check a lot of these boxes for those operators looking to deploy FWA services.”
Dirk Verhaegen, Nokia’s VP of Broadband Devices, stressed on capacity being the key factor for FWA services. He emphasized that only by managing this capacity, operators could connect more fixed subscribers while offering high-quality experiences for both mobile and fixed users. He added, “Our new outdoor Receiver and Wi-Fi 7 Gateway are unique in the industry bringing high gain technology together with ease of use features that deliver the best broadband experience while conserving radio resources.”
FWA is being acknowledged increasingly in the industry as an alternative to other fixed technologies. 5G FWA often becomes a topic of vigorous debate against fibre broadband revolving around aspects of consumer affordability, economic viability for operators, and facilitating access in hard to reach or remote areas.
