In the demonstration, an Ericsson GSM Pico base station, RBS 2409, will be connected via satellite to a base station controller located in Kista, Sweden.
 

Nils Viklund, head of Product Line GSM Radio Access Networks at Ericsson, says: "There will be several terminals for attendees to use, so they can get firsthand experience of the huge difference it makes in the quality of their call as we swap between local switching and the normal way of backhauling traffic.
 

"They will understand how end users will benefit from the superior quality that LCF offers with the absence of the kind of delay associated with the use of satellite-backhauled base stations."
 

LCF will be introduced across Ericsson's base-station portfolio, and is scheduled for commercial release in mid-2008. The solution allows local calls originating and terminating at the same base station, or cluster of base stations, to be switched locally in the Ericsson GSM radio network.
 

This reduces operators' transmission costs because there is no need for the backhaul network that traditionally carries mobile voice and data traffic from radio base stations to the nearest switching node.
 

The solution will help bridge the digital divide and bring telecommunications to locations that currently lack mobile coverage.
 

Ulf Ewaldsson, head of Product Area Radio at Ericsson, says: "In overcoming the expense of backhauling and significantly lowering the total cost of ownership for operators, Ericsson is removing a key financial hurdle to achieving profitable network expansion in remote areas.
 

"Our vision of an all-communicating world means making affordable telecommunications available to everyone, everywhere. Ericsson's Abis local connectivity feature represents a significant breakthrough in reducing communications costs, and makes it profitable to bring mobile communications to people throughout the world."
 

Viklund adds: "Of course, the size of operators' savings will depend on how much traffic is local, but the low-income population in developing countries tends to make mainly local calls, so the potential savings are substantial."
 

This feature has other applications, too. Viklund says: "It can be used by operators to reduce transmissions costs for base stations located at enterprises that are using mobile telephony only."
 

Although the LCF switches calls locally, operators retain centralized control of their network architecture. Areas such as subscriber management and network charging will continue to be managed via mobile softswitches and base station controllers. The Abis LCF is the latest addition to Ericsson's Packet Abis solution. With Packet Abis, Ericsson brings IP technology to GSM radio networks, making it possible for an operator to share investments across GSM, WCDMA and LTE, and paving the way to true network convergence.