Current Version
Company
Company activity Type of company
Product history
OEMs and global stategic partnerships
Market share
Hardware Recommendations Language
Atoll 2.8 Forsk (founded in 1987, have been developing RF planning tools since then). Company structure stable, same core development team for a long time who know the software very, very well. Fast business growth in past 2 years Profitable every year since foundation, consistent and stable company Focussed on Radio Planning software since 1987. Original developers of Atoll Private company still owned and managed by founders Forsk started development of Atoll since 1996. First Atoll released in 1997. Atoll was the first commercial UMTS RF planning tool in the market (Y2000) Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Vodafone, Motorola, Nortel. Atoll is now the only RF planning tool with OEM relationships with equipment vendors. Atoll LTE used by all major LTE equipment vendors 50% market share in Europe (Turkey included) #1 in Europe and Asia Pacific Increasing market share in USA #1 in UMTS, CDMA, WiMAX and LTE Recent important replacements of Aircom CPU: dual-core or better RAM: 2GB or more Free hard disc space: 10GB + Good support of both English and non-English languages
User friendliness / Ease of use
Users report high satisfaction with ease of use
GIS
Developed by Forsk. Specially optimized for RF calculations and fast change of views Supports a lot of digital map formats, including MapInfo, Planet, bil, ArcView
Setup file size and installation process
Single file, about 50Mb. Easy and quick installation (less than 5 mins)
Supported RF technologies
GSM/GPRS/EDGE/EDGE+ UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA/HSPA+ CDMA2000 1xRTT/EVDO Rev0/EVDO RevA WiMAX 802.16d/802.16e LTE TD-SCDMA Microwave Links Microwave Links can be planned standalone or together with main network
Atoll Ease of project data transfer
Easy. Project data, path loss matrices, prediction studies and simulation results, even digital maps can be embedded in one single .ATL file.
Model calibration
Support of both CW measurement and Test Mobile data
Path loss matrices
Calculation resolution can be defined on each sector basis. Up to 2 path loss matrices (with individual resolution, radius and propagation model) supported for each sector
Platform and APIs
Open platform with a lot of APIs (general APIs to read/write Atoll tables, propagation model specific API, AFP specific API). Ease of integration of 3rd party modules/tools. Large variety of thoird party tools supported: the most in the industry
Supported RDMS （Relational Database Management System)
Oracle, MS SQL Server, MS Access and Sybase are all supported. But separate database is NOT required for standalone usage.
Support of up to 8 threadings per computer. Only one license/computer is consumed in Parallel and case of multi-threading and multi-core distributed calculation workstation. Support of distributed calculation Support of RF technology evolution
Policy of considering these as RF technology module upgrade (i.e. no extra module fee is needed as long as license in maintenance
Support of ACP
Integration of Atoll ACP module for GSM, UMTS, WiMAX and LTE Also support of 3rd party ACP tools, including Capesso/Aurad, Arieso, Actix WiNES, Schema etc. Capesso Greenfield supported
Very strong regional support office based in South China, has been supporting Atoll for Support Organisation more than 6 years. Additional support centre being created in Delhi, India
Planet 5.2
Current Version
Company
Mentum has patchy profitability over last few years and have builkt their radio planning tool business by acquisitions, not organic growth
Company activity
Radio Planning software only recently (bought Planet business from Ericsson). Background in transmission planning software
Type of company
Substantially owned by Venture Capital
Product history
Once the leading GSM RF planning tool, but very slow development in the past years since the change of owners: MSI->Marconi->Ericsson->Mentum
OEMs and global stategic partnerships
None
Market share
Exact status not known, but has been damaged in recent years by uncertainty surrounding company
Hardware Recommendations Language User friendliness / Ease of use
GIS
Setup file size and installation process
CPU: 3GHz RAM: 2GB Free hard disc space: 200GB(1GB/5 sites) Chinese not displayed properly ==> How about other languages? Users report generally not very easy to use MapInfo. ==> - Not efficient on big scale of networks - slow correction of bugs on GIS. - direct support of MapInfo .grd and .grc formats. Need external and manual conversion if Planet format maps. A lot of files. Total size >200MB. MapInfo installation is included. (But if there is MapInfo already installed, MapInfo has to be removed before installation of Planet)
GSM,UMTS and CDMA2000/EV-DO/WiMAX/LTE supported in v5.2. Supported RF technologies Microwave Links plannning is supported by another Mentum product ==> planning with RF BSs is not possible
Ease of project data transfer
Planet A lot of result files, difficult to manage and transfer to another computer. For example, if using a site table (created on computer A) on computer B, the user has to delete all the .xml and .xml.dat files in the site table folder first.
Model calibration
Only support of CW measurements
Path loss matrices
Only one calculation resolution for all sectors in the project. Only one path loss matrix for each sector.
Platform and APIs
Development toolkit and some API capability available in v5. But the integration of 3rd party tool with Planet is less easy than with Atoll (comment from the 3rd party tool supplier)
Supported RDMS （Relational Oracle and MS SQL Server Database Management System) Support of multi-core workstation. Parallel and Can't find document describing the distributed distributed calculation calculation
Support of RF technology evolution
Apparently not the same policy as Forsk. For instance EVDO needs extra license additional to CDMA licence
Support of ACP
Only support of Capesso/Aurad. Symena Greenfield not supported
Not known exactly. Mentum have offices in Hong Support Organisation Kong and Australia but level and experience of support resources in these offices not known
