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Feb. 19, 2010

At this week’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) event in Barcelona, Kyocera show cased what it claims is the industry’s first LTE (long term evolution) micro base station.

Kyocera also claims the unit is also the world’s smallest, lightest and most efficient. The disclaimer is that those claims were based on Kyocera’s research as of Feb. 1, and there's no third-party verification on such claims.

The prototype displayed at the show was an all-in-one unit that the company says is targeted as a complement to a traditional network build allowing wireless carriers to fill in any coverage gaps as well as to provide additional capacity on installed LTE sites.

Kyocera added that its prototype unit weighs in at twenty-six-and-a-half pounds and would be made available probably in late August or early September.

In addition to its small (read: micro) unit, Kyocera also displayed a macro LTE base station unit that was only slightly larger than the micro model sporting a claimed weight of just less than forty pounds.

Kyocera claims its macro unit is significantly more energy efficient than traditional LTE designs because of its all-in-one architecture.

Both LTE base units are specifically designed to support the same number of users per site, approximately 450 data sessions or about 825 voice sessions, with the main difference being in size, power consumption and physical range.

Overall, Kyocera is better known for its wireless handsets in the North American market. Nevertheless, the company says its mobile service infrastructure division has more than 634,000 PHS base stations installed worldwide.

Two years ago, Kyocera announced that it was acquiring Sanyo Electric’s handset and wireless infrastructure business for $375 million.

Now with all of what's happening at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, things can change very rapidly, and it is largely expected that other companies will come forward with similar LTE products and base stations.

It will be in fact be interesting to see.

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Source: Kyocera.