CASE STUDY SK TELECOM: The perfect balance of cutting edge innovation and pragmatism Getting out in front of the market – known as leapfrogging – is a tricky business. To be sure, it takes innovative and winning technology. But is also requires a sound business case that accounts for the investment, go-to-market timeline and management of existing assets. Not to mention ability to achieve return on investment through operational e ciencies and development of new revenue streams. SOLiD empowers leapfrogging.

8 Klein Road Suite  Plano, TX   solid.com 888. . [email protected] As a global provider of Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS), Optical QUICK FACTS – Network Transport and Passive GANGNAM STYLE: Optical LAN solutions, SOLiD was Benets: founded on the principle of innovat- Reduced time to market and capital costs ing technology to solve industry Support for multiple small cells on a single problems in new and pragmatic ways. ber strand This was evident when SK Telecom Reduced operating expenses deployed its LTE network with an innovative fronthaul-backhaul Increased reliability architecture from SOLiD. Rather than Flexibility to support both licensed and build a new backhaul network from unlicensed RAN solutions scratch, SKT was able to leverage the existing 3G backhaul network to support the new LTE deployment, the hub site, where all the heavy A single fiber ring simulataneously thereby cutting capital expense and equipment is, SOLiD transports the supports 2G/3G, 4G and WiFi traffic: the time to launch LTE services. SKT signaling and transmission over CPRI/OBSAI is used to support LTE calls the new architecture SCAN a distance span and facilitates linear traffic, Ethernet supports WiFi, and which stands for Smart Cloud Access add/drops from the single fiber to E1/T1 is used for the legacy 2G/3G Network. Small Cell site locations. The linear network. Up to 30 remote radio What is unique? add/drop simultaneously handles heads can be supported per base Enabling sophisticated all-IP both backhaul and fronthaul. station node. communication services such as SOLiD’s flexible optical transport TIME TO MARKET joyn.T (RCS) and HD Voice (VoLTE) solution ensures that changes are SK Telecom’s SCAN network took requires an equally sophisticated and made quickly by adding ONTs to the approximately 12 months to deploy. robust network infrastructure capable fiber rings to support additional RAN The company attributes the acceler- of addressing LTE and Mobile Internet capacity as needed. The SOLiD ated time to market to the ability to Application traffic data surges. fronthaul architecture supports a reuse part of the existing 2G/3G fiber “Deploying Remote Radio Heads broad range of services including network. Officials estimate that it (RRH) makes maximum use of Ethernet, CPRI and OBSAI so opera- would have taken three or more existing fiber infrastructure to reduce tors can deploy both licensed and years using a traditional architecture time to market and capital costs,” says unlicensed RAN solutions – for with new fiber. Saeed Anwar, CTO at SOLiD. instance, LTE and WiFi RAN – on the COSTS “Because RRH architecture physically same system. Operating expenses having been splits the radio from the baseband, COST-SAVINGS reduced in the first year by approxi- operators benefit greatly from the By doing more with existing fiber mately five percent and by 2014, SK flexibility to provide capacity and assets, multiple small cells can be Telecom expects 50 percent savings. coverage in specific locations.” supported by a single fiber strand. Savings have been realized through A key underlying concept is And since small cells must be placed reduced building lease and rental fronthaul which is relatively new in exactly where they are needed to costs, reduced utilities, reduced commercial mobile network deploy- address capacity ‘pain points’, the link maintenance and fewer truck rolls. ments architectures: it connects between the cell and existing fiber Through innovation and pragma- Remote Radio Heads to the aggre- runs can be minimized because a tism, SOLiD enables leapfrogging. gated base band units which may be new fiber strand is not required to located in a central office or data support each and every cell. As such, center. The traffic is then backhauled both capital and operating expense from the base band units to the IP savings can be achieved since the core or EPC. Multiple RRH and small need for new real estate is reduced. cells can be fronthauled on a fiber ring to provide redundancy. What was achieved? SCALE Why SOLiD? Across South Korea as a whole, ENABLING FRONTHAUL SKT has used SOLiD fronthaul Because the cost of laying architecture to support approximately additional fiber runs can be cost- 12,000 base station nodes and 80,000 prohibitive, the use of existing strands remote radio heads. The base station is paramount. SOLiD is an innovator nodes (or ‘digital units’) are located in of DWDM (Dense Wavelength- centralized COTs (Central Office Division Multiplexing) technology Terminal) or DU Centers. This which channelizes a single fibe centralization reduces the complexity r strand into multiple bi-direction of the network as well as maintenance channels. With a single strand from and operating costs.