Indonesia’s Telkomsel Commercially Launches CloudAIR 2.0 Solution with Huawei

Indonesia’s Telkomsel announced the successful commercial deployment of CloudAIR 2.0 Solution at the 2018 Mobile Word Congress (MWC 2018). The solution is the result of Telkomsel and Huawei’s work at the Joint Innovation Center 2.0 (JIC2.0), aimed at reshaping the air interface with the concept of cloudification to efficiently share air interface resources such as spectrum, power and channel. Implementation of this solution will improve the air interface efficiency and enable operators to have more flexibility to deploy networks and provide a better user experience.

From the verification in Telkomsel’s live network, it is clear that the solution increases the mobile broadband cell edge user experience significantly. The application of spectrum cloudification technology increases LTE user downlink speed throughput by 116% from 50Mbps to 108Mbps. In addition, the implementation of channel cloudification technology improves the carrier aggregation coverage for outdoor areas by 21.4% as well as two to three times user experience improvement for indoor areas.

As the number of Telkomsel 4G subscribers grows, many 2G subscribers will migrate to 4G. At the same time, many 2G subscribers will remaining for some time, making this an obvious long-tail phenomenon. Therefore, Telkomsel faces a challenge to maximize spectrum efficiency in a limited spectrum by scheduling 2G and 4G resources based on demand.

Furthermore, to meet the rapid development of 4G business, Telkomsel has deployed LTE technology in 2300MHz, 2100Mhz, 1800MHz and 900MHz at the same time. However, the high frequency band uplink signal can become a coverage bottleneck due to high propagation, high penetration loss and a limited transmitting power of the terminal. This results in poor user experience at the cell edge, especially in indoor areas. Consequently, it is also challenging for Telkomsel to fully use the spectrum resources in high frequency.

In response to those issues, Telkomsel and Huawei worked together in the Joint Innovation Center to introduce the CloudAIR 2.0 solution, which successfully solved the problems through two technologies: spectrum cloudification (dynamic spectrum sharing) and channel cloudification.

The spectrum cloudification technology realizes the deployment of different Radio Access Technologies (RAT) in the same spectrum. This solution can dynamically allocate and adjust spectrum resources according to the changes of traffic and avoid the legacy RAT to occupy the golden spectrum in in the long term to maximize spectrum efficiency.

Meanwhile, channel cloudification technology combines the advantages of larger downlink bandwidth of high bands and better uplink coverage of low bands. The high band is selected as the uplink at near point and midpoint for capacity, while the low band is selected as the uplink at the cell edge to compensate the coverage limitation of high band. The coordination between LTE high band and low band channel cloudification can significantly improve the coverage of high band and improve the cell edge user experience, especially for LTE indoor coverage areas.

Director of Planning and Transformation at Telkomsel, Edward Ying said, “We have been committed to technology innovation and to build mobile broadband networks to provide the ultimate user experience for our subscribers. The CloudAIR 2.0 solution has enabled us to achieve a convergence of the multi band network that maximizes capacity and coverage requirements and enhances the user experience. We will continue to carry out joint innovation projects with Huawei, looking forward to JIC3.0 to achieve even greater success.”

Network Director of Telkomsel, Bob Apriawan said, “Huawei’s CloudAIR 2.0 solution has helped Telkomsel improve spectrum utilization efficiency by 47% and accelerate LTE 20MHz deployment within 1.5 Years. There is a 21.4% improvement for high band carrier aggregation coverage and 2-3 times user experience improvement for the cell edge scenario.”

Dr. Peter Zhou, Chief Marketing Officer at Huawei’s Wireless Solutions said, “We are delighted to provide an innovative solution for Telkomsel, the largest mobile network operator in Indonesia. Our focus is on improving the efficiency of air interface, enabling Telkomsel to deploy services more flexibly and, of course, enhancing the experience of Telkomsel’s millions of subscribers.”