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Nokia (News - Alert) will showcase its Flexi EDGE Base Station during the two-day Nokia World conference starting today in Amsterdam. The “ground breaking” new product is said to facilitate the deployment of GSM/EDGE networks more economically and quickly.

The most compact base station in the market, Flexi EDGE utilizes Nokia’s expertise in electronics and system design.

The Nokia Flexi EDGE Base Station not only offers improved network coverage and capacity but it also makes base station siting faster. It reportedly delivers unparalleled radio performance which leads to superior coverage for wide and hot spot areas. As a result, fewer new sites are required. In addition, the small size of the base station ensures more efficient use of sites. The capacity of the base station is quite high and it can be easily upgraded if required. Additionally, the base station brings improved power efficiency.

Using the new innovation, operators can significantly cut down on installation and operation overheads while maintaining the quality of radio access networks. This, coupled with decrease in number of sites, leads to a reduction in the overall cost of owning a network.

Being weather-proof, the Flexi EDGE Base Station can be installed indoors as well as outdoors. Its lightweight and compact form makes it easy to carry and work with.

“The new Nokia Flexi EDGE base station is designed to further enhance operator revenue and to deliver superb operational efficiencies and capabilities,” said Ari Lehtoranta, senior vice president, radio networks, Nokia, in a press release. “In mature markets the new Nokia Flexi EDGE base station enables operators to strengthen their radio capacity and to ensure the service continuity for WCDMA networks. In new growth markets, Nokia Flexi EDGE base station supports fast and cost-effective GSM network rollout and deployment, both critical success factors for operators building businesses on mass market low ARPU customer bases.”

The new Nokia Flexi EDGE base station is the third model introduced by Nokia, the first two being Nokia Flexi WCDMA and Nokia Flexi WiMAX base stations. All the three variants are fashioned after the modular architecture designed by the Open Base Station Architecture Initiative (OBSAI).

The cutting-edge product is expected to hit the shelves in the second part of 2007.

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Divya Narain is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.