Technology giant Ericsson and Bahrain operator Batelco, part of the technology company Beyon Group, have announced the expansion of Batelco’s mobile broadband network to enhance its 4G and 5G capabilities by strengthening its network coverage and capacity across Bahrain.
As part of this expansion, Batelco says it has deployed Ericsson's latest radio access network (RAN) products, such as massive MIMO antennas, and modernised its Ericsson Core network infrastructure to the latest network function virtualisation infrastructure (NFVI) release, incorporating capacity expansions to meet the growth in both voice and data traffic.
By integrating innovative and energy-efficient solutions such as dual-mode triple band radios and Interleaved AIR 3218, Batelco says it can reduce the overall space required and load on its towers with up to 20% energy savings, while enhancing overall network performance.
Batelco has also modernised Ericsson Mediation (mediation is a key telecom node) to the latest cloud-native technology, which is designed to improve operational efficiency and meet the increasing data demands of consumers.
Mediation systems filter out non-relevant data, aggregate partial data records and transform the data to the format required by data consumers.
The enhanced mediation capabilities support various applications, including Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G standalone use cases, providing the flexibility and scalability needed for reliable and future-ready network services.
The new cloud-native Ericsson Mediation platform will enable Batelco to streamline operations and optimise resource utilisation. The partners say that this future-proof platform supports modern interfaces and data attributes while accelerating the development of data pipelines, ultimately ensuring a rapid time to market.
