Top Trends in Mobile Space

Next 2-3 will see radical changes happening in mobile space, making smartphones, netbooks and yet-to-be introduced devices even more indispensable parts of our lives. Here I am quoting ( from CIO Zone) some of the developments in US and will also try to give my views from India’s persective that will power this next phase of evolution?

Long Term Evolution (LTE)

The so-called fourth generation of mobile (4G) is expected to be rolled out across North America over the next three years, making it possible for corporate users to run business applications on their devices simultaneously with Voice over IP (VoIP) capabilities. Where as in India 3G is yet to roll out for masses. People are eagerly waiting for the same as slowly people are switching on to smart 3G phones.

WiMax

As LTE and WiMax networks are deployed in the U.S. through 2012, expect to see more netbooks and laptops equipped with built-in radio frequency identification (RFID) and wireless support. We sometimes get queries in India for development of applications in healthcare etc. but simple are not able to serve these clients due to unavailability of wimax infrastructure India wide.

3G & 4G interoperability

Sprint has developed a dual mode card which will enable mobile device users to work on both 3G and 4G networks. Other carriers are expected to follow suit.

Smartphone applications

Third-party software vendors will increasingly make enterprise applications available for smartphones, including inventory management, electronic medical records management, warehousing, distribution and even architectural and building inspection data for the construction industry.

GPS

Global Positioning Systems will increasingly be used to identify end users by their whereabouts and also to analyze route optimization for delivery workers and service technicians.

Security

As new and different types of mobile devices are introduced, corporate IT departments will find it increasingly challenging to identify and authenticate individual end users. As such, expect to see a combination of improvements in both Virtual Private Network (VPN) software and hardware-based VPNs to support multiple device types.

Tody, I was in Nokia Forum and there I came to know that last year, they had selected an pplication in International level competition where in with the use of cell-phone, you can convert your television into a touch screen device. These are the kinds of technologies that will change the world and bring all kinds of functionality of operating virtually anything, right in the hands of the mobile device owner.

Road-Traffic Chaos in Indian metros to decrease by end of 2009

Yesterday, I was in EmTech India-2009, the first MIT conference in India. They have launched their first Indian edition by the name of  “Technology Review India” yesterday in New Delhi.

As part of this conference and launch, many speakers from various technologies presented their views on new and emerging technologies in many concurrent sessions. The topics ranged from cloud computing to biotechnology to technology in healthcare sectors and varied others.

In one of the sessions, Mr. Vishy Poosala, Head of Bell Labs from Alcatel-Lucent Technologies India told about a new traffic management system that they are working on and have recently test tried in Mumbai, India. It looks like an amazing system with combination of many technologies like femtocells, wifi, bluetooth etc. One may imagine that the solution will be quite costly but it will cost merely about US$ 250-300.

I was talking to Mr.Vinay Chopra from GVC Systems in the evening in the same conference and he told me that they are test trying systems to manage traffic lights in day to day manner effectively by wireless technologies. Initially, test trials and few deployments have been done just for alert system where if any traffic light stops functioning, the concerened maintenance department will be alerted by SMS system. Some deployment has also been done in North East India in one of the railway stations where a system controlling a set of lights will be operated through SMS. A patent has already pending for this technology. It also seems similar to my earlier post on lights control system through SMS in Germany.

All this and many other similar technologies suggest that India is going to see great improvements in all kinds of traffic and infrasrtucture management in near future with the use of wireless technologies.

World’s First Commercial 3G Femtocell Service launched in Singapore

­Singapore’s Starhub has launched the world’s first commercially-available 3G femtocell service. StarHub is making all local outgoing voice, video calls and SMS free for customers using the ‘Home Zone’ service, ensuring that users, who make frequent mobile calls and SMS from home, can enjoy significant cost-savings on their mobile phone bills.

This kind of plans will surely make anybody fall for femtocells. May be this is a bait for subscribers to switch operators and become addicted to these services before they are made to pay for the same maybe only some miniscule amount but which will add to huge sums overall for the operators. And when these plans and services become the norm, it may lead the operators to start reducing infrastructure costs as given in my earlier post here.

Forget Cell Towers…

Yes, you read it right…

Forget Celltowers… This will be the mantra of companies for reducing the company costs of deployment and maintenance of huge celltowers.

World is undergoing a recession…many well established companies are going and many have already gone bankrupt like the most recent Lehman Brothers. Also, many companies around the world are cutting costs by cutting down their man power around the world…

Seeing all this, it is very clear that in times to come, telecom companies too will follow the same route with continually decreasing voice and data rates and thus, decreasing margins.

In my opinion, to reduce costs, telecom companies would some how like to pass on more and more costs to the consumers and what better way will there be, then to pass on the cell tower costs to consumers. WHAAT??? Cell tower costs to consumers…Am I joking here!!! NO…I am not. It’s easily possible…

HOW? Ofcourse by using femtocells technology that will be used when 4G comes into play provided by LTE (Long Term Evolution). Now people may ask…What is that??? For this…you may like to see one of my earlier posts in this blog on femtocells and additionally…you may want to read the white paper on Femtocells written by our company experts.

To tell you briefly…how it will minimise the cost to companies, I would like to mention that femtocells will eradicate the network costs and also eliminate some, if not all, problems of backhaul that stymie 4G networks. It seems theoretical now, but when LTE comes in…people will be able to get whooping speeds of upto 150Mbps. Femtocells are small devices which can be installed by a group of houses or even a single house as a stand alone unit. It costs miniscule in comparison to a celltower and maintenance costs too are almost nill.

It’s already being deployed in US, Europe and since recently, idea is being explored by Russians too and looking for good vendors to supply them the same so that they don’t get left behind. Even I came in contact with some people who are looking to deploy these femtocells asap…mainly because of these reasons i.e. costs less, give better connectivity and last but not the least can be great where houses are in congested spaces and tower signals there, are weak or compeletly missing.

But inspite of having said all of the above…I do feel that it will remain a complimentary technology in 4G and not all countries will be able to shift so fast to femtocells…so we will still see the cell towers for some years to come…

Vishal

Wireless Carriers will always need Internet as a Savior…

Yes, This is a fact considering the current scnario. Major chunk of revenues the wireless carriers are generating, is coming from web browsing on mobiles.

People around the world are increasingly becoming busier day by day and thus everybody wants to be able to check mails or other stuff while they are on the move so that they can concentrate on more important things when they are at their work places. Hence, they are increasingly using web on their mobiles.

Verizon, which leads U.S. wireless operators with its 60 percent 3G subscriber penetration, saw the most growth in 3G usage and the most data revenue — $2.6 billion for the quarter. However, AT&T the exclusive provider to the Internet-friendly iPhone, had only 25 percent 3G subscriber penetration but also saw its data sales come close to Verizon’s at $2.5 billion, proving that the Internet on the phone is a powerful driver of data revenue.

If you want deeper insight on this post…you may want to check out a related blogport here.

Vishal

Sprint all set to launch its own Femtocell Base Station…AIRAVE

Sprint is providing some subscribers with an update of the release plans for their Airave Femtocell Base Stationon August 17th. Sprint AIRAVE™ is a device that creates a CDMA signal for your mobile phone (like a miniature cell tower). AIRAVE provides enhanced and reliable mobile phone coverage in your house or office even if your existing wireless coverage is poor. This works with any Sprint phone (Nextel style excluded) with some important quirks:

Sprint Airave Base Station

1. No EVDO data (only s-l-o-w Vision data is supported)
2. Cannot seamlessly transfer from normal cell tower to Airave.
3. Only works where Sprint has native coverage (it checks via GPS)
4. Supports only 3 simultaneous users (according to Sprint email)

Vishal

3G iPhone creates buzz

The new 3G iPhone is creating substantial buzz. Check out Om Malik’s interview with Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility.

http://gigaom.com/2008/06/09/att-mobility-ceo-new-3g-iphone-game-changer/

One of the concerns is that increase in mobile data usage for social networking, LBS or streaming video apps is going to cause a lot of network congestion on AT&T wireless network. Mr de la Vega is confident that AT&T network can handle it. For more power users of mobile data, the hope is that they are smart enough to use WiFi connection on the iPhone to download large data files instead of congesting the wireless network. A future filled with FMC devices like Femtocells only makes sense here. Femtocells will allow bandwidth hogging home wireless to pass on broadband wireline connections allowing the wireless network to remain somewhat available.

AT&T is taking some hits on its earnings estimates due to the lowered iPhone price and Apple is taking a hit as well as AT&T will no longer share the subscription revenue. But overall sales volume is expected to increase dramatically with the lower price and that is expected to more than compensate for the lower price on the device.

The new iPhone is loaded with good stuff. The App Store will allow for a slew of cool consumer and enterprise apps. The enterprise support is great with MS-Exchange integration. GPS is cool for LBS accuracy.

Nokia and RIM need not fear however. iPhone will only increase smartphone penetration increasing the size of the market for everybody. We feel the smartphones will cannibalize the non-smartphone cellphone market to some extent.

MT

White paper on Femtocells

As promised, there is a white paper published by CellStrat team on Femtocells, their advantages and limitations. This paper along with other CellStrat’s rich white papers are available at :

http://www.cellstrat.com/whitepapers.html

Hope you enjoy reading these papers. Do let us know any comments.

MT

Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) – Femtocell vs WiFi Access Points

Fixed Mobile Convergence refers to the idea that there is only one phone for home and mobility. The mobile handset replaces the wireline device without causing wireless network congestion. The handset uses the wireline broadband for in-home or in-building calls. FMC can be done in various ways, prominent techniques being Femtocells and WiFi dual-mode handsets.

Femtocells

Femtocells are essentially compact, personal cellular base stations that plug straight into the internet connection at home or in building. On the promise of Femtocells, one can think of them as essentially “mobile taking on WiFi”. Femtocells essentially route mobile calls on the IP network.

Typically Femtocells pack high-speed 3G technology or High Speed Download Packet Access (HSPDA) inside, which can have download speeds of upto 7 Mpbs, similar to many home broadband offerings.

According to ABI research, by 2011, there will be 102 million Femtocell users.

Advantages of Femtocells

Advantages for wireless operators :

a) Free wireless network and reduce network congestion
b) New revenue opportunities for operators.
c) Reduce cell towers capital expenditures.
d) Create buddy lists in Femtocell (list of authorized Femtocell users) to share the Femtocell base station with the designated user base.

Advantages for customers :

a) Better coverage
b) Make free calls by routing wireless traffic onto the internet.
c) Home Zone pricing (discounted compared to regular wireless pricing)
d) Works with all mobile handsets – no need for expensive dual-mode WiFi handsets.

Femtocell vs WiFi Access Point

	Femtocell	WiFi (Dual Mode Handset)
Typically Used In	Homes, Hotels, Buildings, Basements where cellular signal is weak or non-existent	Any location where WiFi is available
Equipment	Femtocell Base Station	WiFi Access Point or WiFi router
Backhaul	IP network	IP network
Handsets	All handsets	Dual-Mode Handsets
Pros	Better cellular coverage. Works with all handsets, create buddy lists – drive VAS and social aspect	Widely deployed technology
Cons	Signal interference with macro towers, handover to macro tower not robust, multiple standards	Needs expensive dual-mode handsets
Equipment Cost	Expensive Femtocell Base Stations	Cheap WiFi Access routers. Dual Mode handsets may be expensive.
E-911 support	Available. But needs GPS attachments to Femtocell for location broadcast to back office.	Industrial-grade solution not available
Availability	In USA, Sprint has deployed Femtocells; AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are also testing Femtocells.	Widely deployed

 

Look out for a white paper from CellStrat for more on the topic of Femtocell and FMC solutions.

MT