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.

The innovation coincides with growing demand for third-and-fourth generation mobile networks and devices, involving the mass adoption of wireless television services and other forms of broadband content. The total addressable market for the radio technology necessary to serve such networks and devices is expected to exceed €100bn[1] over the next seven years.

 According to Alctael-Lucent, the product addresses multiple issues that the telecom Industry is facing today:

• Light Radio reduces energy consumption of mobile networks by up to 50 per cent over current radio access network equipment. As a point of reference, Bell Labs estimates that TCO spent by mobile operators in mobile access in 2010 was 150 billion euros.
• By reducing the cell site to just the antenna and leveraging future advances in microwave backhaul and compression techniques, this technology will eventually enable the easy creation of broadband coverage virtually anywhere there is power (electricity, sun, wind) by using microwave to connect back to the network
• Reduces total cost of ownership (TCO) of mobile networks up to 50 per cent.
• In the eventual architecture for the lightRadio product family, applications are virtualized  in a ''cloud-like'' environment that will give service providers greater flexibility to scale up or down based on network demand

Wim Sweldens, president of Alcatel-Lucent's wireless division said, ''lightRadio will help mobile operators evolve their networks to address the mobile broadband deluge.''

The company expects governments and regulatory bodies  to welcome the technical development, as it would help meet targets for universal broadband access by laying the foundation to address the so-called ''digital divide.''

Alcatel-Lucent studies have concluded that the total addressable market (TAM) for Light Radio will be more than 12 B€ and represent 55% of the total wireless RAN market in 2014 (based on the need for converged technology platforms) The cumulative TAM will be over 100B€ from 2011-2018.