Digicel Antilles Completes Microwave Radio Network Rollout

Alcatel-Lucent says that it has successfully completed the deployment of a microwave packet radio network for Digicel Antilles. The end-to-end mobile backhaul solution deployed by Alcatel-Lucent is based on the 9500 Microwave Packet Radio (MPR) that can aggregate any type of traffic - TDM, ATM and Ethernet - over a converged Microwave Packet network.

"To meet the increase in traffic and satisfy the growing demand for high-speed mobile data services, we needed to progressively transform our infrastructure towards a simpler network architecture that could ensure the highest level of quality in all circumstances," said Franck ROGIER, Transmission Manager of Digicel Antilles French Guiana. "The Alcatel-Lucent microwave packet radio solution allows us to optimize our network's radio bandwidth, regardless of the propagation conditions, which is a particularly important factor in the island's latitude."

The product uses statistical multiplexing to optimize the transport network capacity and service driven adaptive modulation to adapt to variable propagation conditions, such as bad weather. Any traffic type (video, voice, data) is recognized and its transmission automatically adapted to guarantee the quality required by the various service types. This represents an implementation of Alcatel-Lucent's Mobile Evolution Transport Architecture (META), the industry's most comprehensive vision for the evolution of mobile networks from TDM to all-IP.

Under the terms of the contract, Alcatel-Lucent also supplied its 9400 AWY low and medium capacity short-haul digital microwave system. The entire Alcatel-Lucent solution is managed by the 1350 network management and also included network optimization, testing and project management services, as well as site studies, training and maintenance services.

Posted to the site on 12th April 2009