The document summarizes products and solutions seen by the author at Mobile World Congress 2018. It provides information on 29 different companies offering small cells, backhaul solutions, and other connectivity products. While trying to be comprehensive, it notes that coverage of large, established vendors is limited and the presentation does not evaluate the relative strengths or market positions of the companies.

1. Small Cells, Macrocells, Backhaul, Infrastructure
and other connectivity solutions from Mobile
World Congress 2018 (#MWC18)
@3g4gUK

2. Approach
I spent the entire duration of Mobile World
Congress 2018 going to different booths
and looking at different products, demos
and solutions to learn about what’s on
offer. This presentation is a summary of that
research. Even though I am looking mainly
at mobile connectivity solutions in this
presentation, I am ignoring the big 5
vendors. You can read more about what
they were offering on 3G4G blog here.
- Zahid Ghadialy (@zahidtg)
©3G4G

3. Disclaimer
This presentation is intended to show the different vendors and their products to highlight what
has been occurring, and which direction the industry has been moving in.
While we have tried to cover a lot of ground in this summary presentation, this is not an
exhaustive list and we have surely missed out some big and small companies.
One of the issues you will notice with this deck is that it gives equal visibility to a wide variety of
companies at different stages of product evolution/capabilities. There are some mature/big
names missing simply because they didn't have a booth or have been overlooked. This probably
gives a sense that there are lots of different vendors vying for business and activity going on but
its not equitable with those who are most likely to win business. It also doesn’t highlight just
how much of a stranglehold the big 5 (Huawei, Nokia, Ericsson, ZTE & Samsung) have on the
business.
For each of the pictures shown, we’ve provided a few bullet points but they don’t necessarily
include the scope or categorization of each company.
©3G4G

4. Vendors Covered (Alphabetical Order)
Acceleran
Action Technologies
Airspan
Altiostar
Azcom
BaiCells
BravoCom
CBNL
CCS
Ceragon
Comba Telecom
Commscope
Fingu
Gemtek
IP.Access
JMA Wireless
Kleos
MitraStar
NuRAN
Parallel Wireless
Polaris Networks
Qualcomm
Qucell
Raycap
Ruckus
SOLiD
SpiderCloud
Vodafone
Zinwave
©3G4G

5. Accelleran
(TAGS:SmallCells,CBRS,NeutralHost,FWA)
• Indoor and Outdoor Small Cells
• E1000 Series Small Cell Portfolio
for Fixed Wireless Access, Mobile
and Private LTE Applications,
including 3,5GHz, CBRS, TDD and
FDD Bands.
• Carrier Grade V-RAN featuring our
cloud native control plane VNF.
• HQ: Belgium (Website)
©3G4G
I missed them at MWC.

6. Action
Technologies
(TAGS:Antennas,Picorepeater,combiner)
• Repeaters, Combiners, Antenna
Solutions,
• HQ: China (Website)
©3G4G

7. Airspan
(TAGS:Femtocells,SmallCells,Relays,Indoor,Outdoor)
• Small Cells (Outdoor, Indoor)
• Backhaul solutions (including 5G)
• “Best Mobile Technology
Breakthrough” award with Sprint
at GLOMO 2018 Awards (Link)
• HQ: USA (Website)
©3G4G

8. Airspan Products
©3G4G

9. Airspan Products
©3G4G

10. Altiostar
(TAGS:MEC,vRAN)
• Multi-Access Edge Computing
(MEC)
• Virtualized RAN (vRAN)
• HQ: USA (Website)
©3G4G

11. Azcom
(TAGS:HSPA+,LTE,PrivateNetworks,Outdoor Small
Cells,C-RAN,NIB)
• Small Cells
• C-RAN
• Network In a Box (NIB)
• Evolved Packet Core (EPC)
• HQ in Milan, Italy (Website)
©3G4G

12. Azcom Private LTE Networks & Small Cell
©3G4G

13. Azcom LTE Network Solutions
©3G4G

14. BaiCells
(TAGS:FWA,Indoor,Outdoor,SmallCells)
• Complete portfolio of Femtocells,
Picocells, Indoor and Outdoor
Small Cells
• HQ: China (Website)
©3G4G

15. BaiCells NeutralCell & Fixed LTE
©3G4G

16. BaiCells Indoor & Outdoor CPE
©3G4G

17. BravoCom
(TAGS:Femtocells,SmallCells)
• Outdoor Small Cells
• Home Small Cells
• Distributed Small Cells
• HQ: China (Website)
©3G4G

18. BravoCom Small Cell Products
©3G4G

19. Cambridge
Broadband
Networks (CBNL)
(TAGS:Backhaul,mmWave)
• Mobile and Small Cells Backhaul
Solutions
• HQ: Cambridge, UK (Website)
©3G4G

20. CCS
(TAGS:Backhaul,mmWave)
• Launched Metnet 12Gbps 60GHz
mmWave system (Link)
• HQ: Cambridge, UK (Website)
©3G4G

21. Ceragon
(TAGS:Backhaul,Outdoor)
• Number 1 Wireless Backhaul
Provider
• HQ: USA (Website)
©3G4G

22. Comba Telecom
(TAGS:MIMO,SmallCells,Indoor,Ourdoor
• Massive MIMO / Beamforming
Technology and 5G Digital DAS
• Small Cells
• Indoor / Outdoor Solutions
• HQ: Hong Kong (Website)
©3G4G

23. Comba Telecom Products
©3G4G

24. Comba Telecom Products
©3G4G

25. CommScope
(TAGS:In-building,CBRS,C-RAN,DAS)
• Antennas, Cables, Connectors and
other Infrastructure provider
• In-Building solutions
• Microwave antennas
• C-RAN antennas
• OneCell C-RAN small cells (Link)
• HQ: USA (Website)
©3G4G
CommScope Mini-Macro

26. Era™ All-digital C-RAN Antenna System (Link)
©3G4G

27. Fingu
(TAGS:Infrastructuresharing,combiners)
• Combiners
• Outdoor Small Cell
• HQ: China (Website)
©3G4G

28. Fingu Products
©3G4G

29. Gemtek
(TAGS:LTE,CPE,Femtocells,Opencellular,TIP)
• Cat-12 LTE CPE
• LTE Enterprise Small Cells
• OpenCellular Small Cell
• HQ: Taiwan (Website)
©3G4G

30. Small Cells from Gemtek
©3G4G
Cat 12 8R Indoor CPE, 4x4 Entry Single Mode Indoor CPE
LTE Enterprise Small Cell
OpenCellular Small Cell (TIP / Facebook)

31. IP.Access
(TAGS:SmallCells,5G)
They did not have a booth at MWC. Here are some
announcements from them around MWC
• Collaboration with Imaginet to deploy disaster response
network (link)
• Strategic vision for 5G – effectively highlighting it has
products in 3.5GHz band (link)
• Boost indoor mobile coverage with Telenet, Belgium (link)
HQ: UK (Website)
©3G4G

32. JMA Wireless
(TAGS:vRAN,5G,DAS)
I missed them at MWC. Here are some of their
announcements:
• JMA Wireless Launches XRAN Fully Virtualized Adaptive
Baseband Software to Radically Change the Game for In-
Venue Wireless (Link)
• Collaborative work between TIM and JMA Wireless for
future 5G RAN mobility innovation (Link)
• HQ: USA (Website)
©3G4G

33. Kleos
(TAGS:Macrocell,5G)
• 5G-Ready Base Station
• HQ: UK (Website)
©3G4G

34. MitraStar
• LTE Indoor/Outdoor CPE
• Enterprise Grade LTE Small Cell
• Mesh Wi-Fi
• NB-IoT Gateway
• LTE V2V communication module
• HQ: China (Website)
©3G4G

35. NuRAN
• 2G & 4G low cost small cell for
Facebook’s Telecom Infra Project
(TIP)
• HQ: Canada (Website)
©3G4G

36. NuRAN Small Cells
©3G4G

37. Parallel Wireless
(TAGS:SmallCells,Enterprise,Macrocells,PublicSafety
LTE,2G,3G,4G)
• Outdoor high power small cells 2G,
3G & 4G
• Enterprise Small Cells
• Mobile Small cells for public safety
• Won Aegis Graham Bell Award For
Innovation In Telecom
Infrastructure (Link)
• HQ: USA (Website)
©3G4G

38. PW Outdoor CWS & Enterprise Femtocells
©3G4G

39. Polaris Networks
(TAGS:PrivateLTE,PublicSafetyLTE,5G)
• Enterprise NetCell: Integrated eNB
+ EPC solution for private LTE
network
• liteCore5: Lightweight 5G core,
3GPP Rel-15 compliant
• Metro NetCell: Integrated eNB +
EPC for Mission Critical LTE
Networks
• HQ: USA (Website)
©3G4G

40. Qualcomm
(TAGS:5G,SmallCells)
• Many different announcements
related to 5G, IoT, etc. (Link)
• Qualcomm chipsets are used
extensively by many femtocell and
small cell manufactures
• HQ: USA (Website)
©3G4G

41. Qualcomm Small Cells
©3G4G

42. Qucell
(TAGS:Residential,Enterprise,Femtocells,IoT,CBRS)
• Quite a portfolio in Femtocells
• Residential, Enterprise , Outdoor
• TDD, FDD, CBRS, etc
• Support for eMTC & NB-IoT
• HQ: South Korea (Website)
©3G4G

43. Qucell Products
©3G4G

44. Raycap
(TAGS:InfrastructureSharing,Enclosures)
• Custom enclosures for indoor or
outdoor applications, cable and
cable accessories, and lightning
surge protection and cable
connectivity solutions for Remote
Radio Head (RRH) network
equipment located on towers, at
rooftops and in shelters.
• HQ in Cyprus (Website)
©3G4G

45. Ruckus Wireless
(TAGS:In-building,Enterprise,Wi-Fi,CBRS)
Announced CBRS-band LTE Access
Portfolio (Link)
HQ: USA (Website)
©3G4G
Video link for CBRS use cases from Ruckus TV

46. SOLiD
(TAGS:In-building,DAS)
We did not manage to see their booth
SOLiD GENESIS DAS and the Middleprise – YouTube video by
RCR Wireless
• DAS and other In-Building
Solutions (Link)
• HQ: South Korea (Website)
©3G4G

47. SpiderCloud
(TAGS:EnterpriseSmallCells,CBRS,LAA)
They did not have a booth but here are some announcements
from around MWC time
• Opencell and Vodafone launch the UK’s first centralised 4G
indoor mobile signal solution (Link)
• SpiderCloud engineers a comprehensive LAA enterprise
small cell solution (Link)
• SpiderCloud wins a Big Innovation Award for Accelerating
Deployments with a Zero Touch Provisioning System (Link)
• Part of Corning (Link)
• HQ: USA (Website)
©3G4G

48. Vodafone
(TAGS:CrowdCell,OpenCellular,TIP)
• Vodafone was showing the
CrowdCell concept that it
successfully tested and is now
bringing an open version to
Facebook’s TIP (Link)
• HQ: UK (Website)
©3G4G

49. Vodafone’s Open Cellular (OC) Base Station
©3G4G

50. Vodafone’s Open Cellular (OC) Base Station
©3G4G
Picture Source: Michael Thelen Picture Source: TelecomInfraProject

51. Zinwave
(TAGS:In-Building,DAS,CBRS,5G)
• DAS and other In-Building
Solutions (Link)
• Launched UNItivity 5000 3-6GHz
DAS that can work with CBRS and
5GNR (Link)
• HQ: USA (Website)
©3G4G

52. We are grateful for information and help from David
Chambers, ThinkSmallCell.
ThinkSmallCell has compiled an excellent summary of Mobile
World Congress 2018 on their website. Link.
©3G4G

53. Thank You
To learn more, visit:
3G4G Website – http://www.3g4g.co.uk/
3G4G Blog – http://blog.3g4g.co.uk/
3G4G Small Cells Blog – http://smallcells.3g4g.co.uk/
Operator Watch - http://operatorwatch.3g4g.co.uk/
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