Announcing North America’s Most Advanced Radio Access Network Solution by GCI in Collaboration with Altiostar

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Feb. 21, 2018 -- GCI, Alaska's largest telecommunications provider announced today that it has selected Altiostar to supply virtualized RAN (vRAN) technology to support GCI’s LTE-Advanced network deployment and to lay the foundation for 5G and IoT. The technology will allow GCI to expand network coverage and improve capacity, and thus enhance end-user experience. Over the last 12 months GCI has been conducting field trials in Anchorage and Fairbanks with this solution from Altiostar, and this contract award is the result of this validation of the vRAN technology.

Altiostar will introduce its LTE-Advanced technologies such as 4x4 MIMO and Multi-band Carrier Aggregation to significantly enhance end user experience for data applications and better voice quality using Voice over LTE (VoLTE). LTE 4x4 MIMO enables better mobile broadband coverage and data throughput for GCI subscribers, and increased spectral efficiency for GCI.  GCI customers will benefit from faster speeds and more responsive applications.

The solution leverages latest innovations in the networking industry such as carrier-grade OpenStack and KVM for NFV. The virtualized baseband from Altiostar runs as VNFs providing scalability, high availability, capacity, programmability and performance that are foundational aspects for 5G. Moreover, Altiostar’s pioneering Ethernet Front Haul was deployed during the field trial by GCI on its existing Ethernet backhaul transport network to enable deployment of LTE-Advanced features while demonstrating the ability to reduce costs by centralizing the baseband functionality and improving performance and providing for capacity gains.

Beside the ability of deploying a forward-looking solution in its network, GCI gains from the substantial cost savings of NFV ecosystem, utilizing commercial-off-the-shelf hardware to run baseband.

“The vRAN solution from Altiostar has been validated in our commercial macro cellular network and it has successfully demonstrated the promise of virtualization in the Radio Access with increased capacity, robustness and performance at a lower cost. GCI is proud to be the pioneer of network transformation and advanced 5G services in North America by deploying this solution from Altiostar,” said VP of Engineering, Ben Benton.

GCI and Altiostar will work together to execute a smooth rollout of this advanced network by replacing the existing LTE solution in Anchorage, Alaska.

“Altiostar is honored to have been selected by GCI for its network evolution towards 5G. We worked with the GCI team to evaluate and benchmark vRAN performance. There has been excellent collaboration between the two companies. We applaud GCI for making the choice to adopt the right technology for scaling its business for LTE and laying the foundation for tomorrow’s 5G,” said Ashraf Dahod, President & CEO of Altiostar.

About GCI:

GCI delivers communication and technology services in the consumer and business markets. Headquartered in Alaska with additional locations in the U.S., GCI has delivered services for more than 35 years to some of the most remote communities and in some of the most challenging conditions in North America. Learn more about GCI at http://www.gci.com

About Altiostar:

Altiostar is the Pioneer in virtualized RAN (vRAN) with Ethernet fronthaul. Its unique software-intensive eNodeB solution is designed to improve quality of experience, enhance spectral efficiency and significantly reduce Total Cost of Ownership. The vRAN solution is the foundation for evolution towards 5G in the near future. It provides elastic scalability, low-risk innovation, with a common NFV+SDN enabled platform. This provides significant cost savings, using commercial-off-the-shelf hardware. The vRAN solution provides the most effective platform for running software intelligence for mobile edge computing.

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