Telefonica UK  (also behind the O2 (News - Alert) brand) has selected Ruckus Wireless to deliver high-capacity small cell products for high-speed wireless services, available throughout London.

Popular areas like Trafalgar Square, Parliament Square, Leicester Square, Regent Street and Oxford Street already are making full use of the high-speed wireless service, through the Ruckus SmartCel 8800 device.

Apart from its low-profile design, SmartCell 8800 sees benefit in being the first carrier-grade, modular multi-radio system to incorporate patented adaptive antenna array technology, accompanying numerous licensed and unlicensed radio technologies such as high-speed dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi, small cell 3G/4G radios and 5GHz wireless backhaul.

"For O2, it's all about us providing customers with fast and reliable connectivity where they need it," said Derek McManus, chief operating officer for Telefonica (News - Alert) UK. "Our vision is for Wi-Fi to be simply another access layer to our mobile core. Customers don't really care about the underlying technology; they care about getting connected, fast and reliably. The introduction of small cells helps us to support these requirements and completely complements our mobile strategy by letting us push capacity closer to users in locations where it makes the most sense."

"In telecoms, there is now a mad race to the lamppost, and the first one there wins," said Selina Lo (News - Alert), president and CEO at Ruckus Wireless. "A big barrier in small cell deployment is simply securing the physical locations with the requisite power and backhaul to support small cells. Once physical assets secured, it becomes important for operators to exploit them with as much technology as they can. This means multi-function, carrier-grade products that are simple deploy, unobtrusive and massively scalable. SmartCell is one of those products and O2 is one of those operators taking a lead in this race."

Telefonica UK also solves the problem of backhaul traffic by amalgamating traffic over extremely reliable 5 GHz Wi-Fi mesh links between nodes using Ruckus Smart Mesh technology.

The problem is further combated by using self-organizing network (SON) principles with Ruckus-patented adaptive antenna arrays (BeamFlex) and predictive channel management techniques (ChannelFly).

"Ruckus Smart Mesh technology is proving to offer a cost-effective, reliable and flexible alternative to conventional approaches," said Joyce. "With Smart Mesh, we are running fiber to just one of every five nodes. This has proven to be a huge benefit in reducing capital and operational expense with the added bonus of reducing the time to market."

Want to learn more about the impact and potential future of White Spaces? Then be sure to attend the Super Wi-Fi Summit, collocated with ITEXPO West 2012 taking place Oct. 2-5 2012, in Austin, TX. Co-sponsored by TMC (News - Alert) Partner Crossfire Media the Super Wi-Fi Summit will address the opportunities, challenges and technical issues surrounding the use of White Spaces for wireless broadband services. The event will cover all aspects of the White Spaces market including, results and next steps for recent technical trials, White Spaces backhaul opportunities, database issues, White Spaces Devices, Spectrum (News - Alert) Issues, Standards and more. For more information on registering for the Super Wi-Fi Summit click here.

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