Indonesia, the largest archipelago country with the fourth largest populations, boasts a booming telecommunications market. Its four leading operators have deployed CloudAIR, Huawei's cloud-based air interface solution, across multiple frequency bands. CloudAIR helps operators cope with rising network traffic pressure from the development of mobile broadband (MBB) services. It also can substantially unleash network potentials and facilitate the implementation of the Indonesia national broadband plan.

More than 40 percent of Indonesia's population of nearly 270 million people is aged between 15 and 40, and has high data service requirements. Indonesia's government launched the National Broadband Plan (2014–2019) in 2014, aiming to achieve 100% MBB coverage in all urban areas by 2019. The plan has led to the rapid development of data services, such as video, gaming, and social media services, greatly impacting Indonesian's daily life. However, as most residents of the country live across 17,000 islands due to geographical conditions, their mobile internet needs are greater than users in most countries.

By the end of 2018, 2G and 3G users accounted for more than half of Indonesian's 180 million MBB users, while the proportion of 4G users in the country rose from 26% to nearly 40% over the past year. Currently, there are more than five mainstream operators that provide 4G services in Indonesia, and spectrum resources are insufficient. In order to cope with fierce industry competition and mounting network operation costs, operators are now focusing on developing LTE data services to increase revenue. Coordinating the development of multiple radio access technology (RAT) services on limited spectrum resources is one of the main challenges faced by operators.

Huawei's CloudAIR provides a unique cloud-based air interface solution to this problem. CloudAIR dynamically allocates spectrum resources between different RATs on demand, meeting operators' need to efficiently operate multi-RAT networks on limited spectrum bands. Compared with traditional technologies, CloudAIR enables more spectrum resources to be shared with LTE networks in earlier phases while ensuring that 2G and 3G services remain intact. With more spectrum resources available, LTE bandwidth is expanded to deliver better MBB user experience.

Four leading Indonesian operators have conducted CloudAIR scale deployment or trials. Feedback from these operators indicates that CloudAIR has unique value to them and the improvement of LTE coverage and network capacity has met their expectations. More importantly, the solution has helped them provide better LTE services nationwide. Currently, in Indonesia, CloudAIR spectrum sharing has been enabled for GSM<E, GSM&UMTS, and UMTS<E on the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz bands. CloudAIR has been deployed across 15,000 sites in most regions of Indonesia. By the end of 2019, CloudAIR is expected to have been deployed across 25,000 sites in the country.

You Qianwen, CTO of Huawei Indonesia Rep Office, said: "Huawei always prioritizes customers' needs and is dedicated to coming up with the best solutions to address their challenges. CloudAIR is the best option for operators in Indonesia to coordinate development of their 2G, 3G, and 4G services especially since spectrum resources are limited. Over the past year, operators witnessed the CloudAIR-enabled LTE coverage and capacity in Indonesia, leading to a boom in MBB services."

Globally, Huawei has contracts to deploy CloudAIR on 100+ networks, and by 2019, that number will exceed 200. To embrace the upcoming 5G era, Huawei is continuously improving CloudAIR to support the LTE/5G-oriented all-band evolution, and is committed to contributing to a greater MBB success in Indonesia and beyond.

MWC 2019 will be held from February 25 to 28 in Barcelona, Spain. Huawei is showcasing its products and solutions at booth 1H50 in Fira Gran Via Hall 1, booth 3I30 in Hall 3, the Innovation City zone in Hall 4, and booth 7C21 and 7C31 in Hall 7. For more information, please visit http://www.huawei.com/mwc2019/.