World’s most powerful base station controller helps GSM operators save on energy costs

Nokia Siemens Networks has introduced a new Flexi BSC (base station controller) that offers up to 80% reduction in energy consumption along with a 40% increase in capacity over existing base station controllers.

The new Flexi BSC also provides operators the ability to move to all-IP for communicating among the base station, base station controller and mobile switching center with two new flexible and cost-efficient transport features – Packet Abis and A over IP*. Maximum cost savings can be achieved using IP over Ethernet transport, the common transport technology for GSM, 3G and LTE.

“Higher voice capacity with fewer base station controllers reduces energy consumption, a major cost for operators, along with simplifying operations and maintenance resulting in lower OPEX,” said Prashant Agnihotri, head of GSM/EDGE product management, Nokia Siemens Networks. “We are committed to driving scalable products that maximize operators’ investment and provide a clear roadmap to all-IP. Whether it is greener networks, capacity, functional evolution or transmission, the new Flexi BSC is a milestone product.”

Flexi BSC is future-proof, providing for the first time in the industry a handling capacity of 4,200 transceivers and over 25,000 Erlangs in a compact and single cabinet. This implies that, with the new Flexi BSC configuration, operators can replace up to 32 existing base station controllers in the field and enjoy high efficiency in building and operating GSM networks. With the benefits of an optical interface, fewer connections are required, which translates to reduced installation effort, faster rollout, and lower maintenance costs. The new Transcoder TCSM3i configuration also offers 40% more capacity while maintaining the compact size.

Flexi BSC also provides an evolution path to Nokia Siemens Networks’ Multicontroller BSC that can be used to extend the capacity of Flexi BSC. The latest software for Flexi BSC and Transcoder TCSM3i is based on 3GPP Release 8 and the commercial deliveries are in progress.