10 year deal signed by Vodafone to Arqiva’s CityCell solution. Vodafone’s 2G and 3G coverage will be enhanced via Arqiva’s fully managed distributed antenna system (DAS).To improve their conventional network coverage, Vodafone will operate across 10 Arqiva CityCell nodes - discreet, low power antennas specifically designed for urban use.Vodafone signed a 10-year deal with Arqiva to provide a fully managed 2G and 3G solution, encompassing design, implementation and maintenance. To provide fast and secure connectivity, CityCell’s street-level antennas connect back to a central base station ‘hotel’ through an existing fibre-optic network. Capacities for data application services such as mobile internet and email, as well as video and music services have been added due to demand.“We’ve seen an increasing demand for 3G services since the launch of the technology and we are committed to delivering improvements to our customers,” said John Townsend, Vodafone.“We have worked closely with the mobile operators to provide a practical and highly cost-effective solution to enable high-quality network coverage and capacity. By centralising all base-station equipment, network capacity can be increased within hours and managed in real time. Above all, we aim to deliver simplified access to expandable 3G coverage,” commented Bob Slorach, Arqiva.The quality of service for both mobile operators and their customers is enhanced by Arqiva’s multi-operator solution. Mobile users will benefit from fewer dropped calls and seamless coverage whilst roaming round the city, by simplifying the handover between cars. As a way to decrease the deployment time and cost of providing good quality indoor coverage the CityCell system can be easily linked to Arqiva’s InBuilding systems.