Alcatel-Lucent introduces technology to replace cell phone towers

Telecom network equipment maker Alctael-Lucent today announced the launch of a new technology along with Bell Labs to "avert the looming global gridlock in mobile communications".

It said the new product family, lightRadio, a new system that signals the end of the mobile industry's reliance on masts and base stations around the world, would remove the bottlenecks constraining mobile networks and help deliver universal broadband coverage.

Ben Verwaayen, CEO, Alcatel-Lucent, said in a statement, ''Today's and tomorrow's demands for coverage and capacity require a breakthrough in mobile communications.'' 

''lightRadio will signal the end of the base station and the cell tower as we know it today,'' he asserted.

lightRadio represents a new approach where the base station, typically located at the base of each cell site tower, is broken into its components elements and then distributed into both the antenna and throughout a cloud-like network.

lightRadio also shrinks today's clutter of antennas serving 2G, 3G, and LTE systems into a single powerful, Bell Labs-pioneered antenna that can be mounted on poles, sides of buildings or anywhere else there is power and a broadband connection.