Alcatel-Lucent and Etisalat Deploy UAE First Femtocell

Alcatel-lucent and Etisalat have teamed up to deploy the UAE’s (United Arab Emirates) first femtocall project. The project is to enhance the quality of mobile broadband connectivity for people living in remote areas of the UAE, and increase mobile bandwidth for high traffic areas.  According to Estisalat, femtocell has the potential to support the increase growth in data usage and consumption of data services.

As the Middle East leading telecommunications service provider, Etisalat offers mobile broadband services together with consumer devices, such as Estisalat’s HSPA+ routers and 3G USB modems. UAE customers have access to the regions fastest connection speeds of up to 42.2Mbs on the HSPA+ network. They also provide the widest 3G network coverage of up to 99% of the country’s populated areas.

“This technology has the potential to support increased growth in the usage and consumption of data services and can play a crucial role in satisfying the explosive growth of mobile broadband usage in the UAE," said Khalifa Al Shamsi, senior vice president of Marketing at Etisalat.

About Alcatel-Lucent Small Cell: The Alcatel-Lucent Small Cell portfolio currently consists of the 9361 Home Cell and the 9362 Enterprise Cell.  Alcatel-Lucent's Small Cell approach benefits from the company's unique expertise in bringing together wireless and IP technologies into a single, coherent network. It is an integral part of Alcatel-Lucent's Application Enablement vision - building on its High Leverage Network(TM) architecture to deliver wireless IP services. Alcatel-Lucent is leading in small cells with an unrivalled end-to-end portfolio that includes innovation from Bell Labs such as support systems for customer care and self-organizing networks (SON).