ExteNet platform and Nokia radios enable shared infrastructure

Sprint plans to extend its service footprint in northern New England through a reseller agreement with Great Northwest Woods Wireless, which plans to offer seamless roaming service to Sprint customers in rural New Hampshire and to build new towers to support the service. The company will also market the Sprint network service to consumers through a traditional wireless reseller agreement. GNW CEO Robert Parsloe said the service will bring LTE to many people for the first time.

GNW builds, owns and operates wireless networks and leases spectrum from nationwide carriers. The company is an affiliate of Wireless Partners, which leases 700 MHz and AWS-1 spectrum from Verizon Wireless and offers LTE service to customers in rural Maine through participation in Verizon’s LTE in Rural America program.

In New Hampshire, GNW plans to deploy remote radio heads on its towers and connect them by fiber to base station equipment, which in turn will connect to ExteNet Systems’ mNet switch in a central office location. The company is using the ENodeB solution developed by Alcatel-Lucent, now part of Nokia.

Sprint will be the first carrier on the system, but GNW hopes to add other operators in the months ahead. ExteNet’s solution is said to allow GNW to host multiple carriers on a common infrastructure, but time will tell whether the nationwide carriers will be willing to share infrastructure through GNW. Parsloe said he is confident other carriers will join the system.

ExteNet said its distributed evolved packet core has the ability to support LTE, integrated LTE and Wi-Fi networks, neutral-host small cell networks and “internet of things” applications. The solution uses a software-defined networking architecture that ExteNet said is compatible with other Wi-Fi and LTE radio technologies. ExteNet markets its services as a turnkey solution for operators.

“ExteNet’s track record with distributed networks speaks for itself,” said Parsloe. “This approach gives us great flexibility over the longer term for the opportunities we plan to address in our region.” Parsloe said he has plans to expand the network to other nearby states in the months ahead.

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