A Primer on LTE – link on wikipedia

Our post on “A Primer on LTE” is now referenced on wikipedia on the main LTE page :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Term_Evolution

Let us know your feedback. Thanks for the excellent feedback on a similar post on “Primer on WiMAX” and referenced on wikipedia on the main WiMAX page.

A Primer on WiMAX – see our post referenced on wikipedia

Our article on “A Primer on WiMAX” was liked so much that a link to it was created on wikipedia under Notes and References section of the main WiMAX page :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX

Thanks to the team or individual who put our post on wikipedia. So we have decided to create “A Primer on LTE”. LTE is the competing 4G technology and coming a little later than WiMAX. Stay tuned for the LTE primer on this blog.

4G still ways off

In spite of the massive 4G hoopla the world over, our estimate suggests that LTE-based 4G is still a good bit ways off. We expect 2011 when we see some sporadic strength in 4G business models where real money starts coming in with customer adoption. Although carriers like Verizon, Sprint, MetroPCS in USA and others in Europe and Asia are planning LTE based 4G launches beginning this year, customer adoption may remain low and return on 4G investment will take time. 2012 is a good bet where we see LTE 4G beginning to take hold.

Till then, the “other” 4G technology ie WiMAX does have a time to market advantage. We expect substantial uptake in WiMAX until LTE comes around. However, we think that ClearWire and Sprint (and telecom equipment makers) will ultimately find a way to marry WiMAX and LTE and in 5-10 years we may have either a single dominant standard or at least cooperating WiMAX and LTE environment where devices and networks communicate at the IP layer easily.

As to 3G, China has just now come out with 3G licenses and countries like India are way behind on 3G – the license auction for 3G in India got postponed to later this year due to economic turmoil and upcoming General Elections. So WiMAX and LTE on a mass scale still look like distant dreams. Fact is that 3G and HSPDA is very good for many high speed apps which the customers want today. The business models around 4G are not even visualized so far. Of course all our thoughts exclude countries like Japan and Korea – where wireless is generations ahead….

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.

Confusions over 3G Auctions in India

So many talks and discussions all over India and some parts of the world regarding 3G roll out in India. Some time back, one of the biggest mobile operators announced that they will roll out the spectrum by Dec’08 against speculations of Jun’09. Then came the news that due to global melt down, it will get delayed to Jun’09.

Just yesterday, I read that some minister has said that 3G auction won’t be delayed by global meltdown. This is again surprising as just before this news, I heard some highly placed telecom professionals say that India will not be able to roll out 3G until atleast end of next year. And also just after minister has said the above, there is yet another news from IANS that Indian telecom authorities are searching for better spectrum technology as the country looks to achieve its target of having a 500-million strong mobile subscriber base by 2010.

A top official from department of telecom, told IANS in Dubai recently that they are visiting the ongoing Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (Gitex)-2008, the largest technology show in the Middle East, and said that India needed better spectrum technology to boost its mobile subscriber base. ‘We are here in Gitex for two reasons. First, we are searching for better spectrum technology,’ he said. The other reason, according to him, is that the government wants to promote India’s telecom sector to potential investors in this region.

Somehow, I did’nt understand the meanng completely. Does this mean that India indeed is facing the brunt of global turmoil? If so, then how can 3G be rolled out with financial crunch? Will the operators be able to pay without allowance of paying the bid price in installments?

Quiet a confusion here…

Vishal

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

Generating Content Mobility…

A beautiful article from wireless week…

Social networking and the content shared among their users is coming to the mobile world.

With the proliferation of 3G networks globally, it’s possible now to take a video on your phone and send it to a social networking site like YouTube, Facebook or MySpace. As video-capable phones increase in number and wireless broadband networks expand, analysts believe user-generated content also will expand.

In fact, within the next five years, nearly 1 billion people could be using their mobile phones to send and receive user-generated content to each other and social networking sites on the Internet, according to estimates by Pyramid Research. The analyst firm estimates mobile social networking will start to take off in 2009, and by 2010 will reach 300 million users. By 2012, 18% of all mobile subscribers will be using phones to access a social network, or about 950 million people.

Social networking sites and user-generated content (UGC) are intrinsically tied together, with members of YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and their brethren posting blogs, photos, videos and music clips.

“Video is where it’s at,” says Nick Desai, CEO of Juice Wireless, which is launching JuiceCaster 6.0 at the CTIA Wireless 2008 show. JuiceCaster is a mobile social-networking application and service that allows phone users to share videos, images and messages between devices and to online social networking sites. The upgrade allows users to create content like videos on their phones and send it as a status update to their friends.

Desai says people who belong to social networks expect to be able to use their phones to access them. Since the mobile phone is becoming the primary communications device, he says, it only makes sense to use it and take advantage of its real-time, and location, capabilities.

Publishing Videos
One of the main reasons people sign up for JuiceCaster is because they want to be able to use their phones to capture video or photos and publish them instantly to their social networking site (SNS). “We make that an easy, 1-click process,” he says, because JuiceCaster works within the camera application on the phone.

JuiceCaster is offered through Cricket, Midwest Cellular, U.S. Cellular, T-Mobile USA and two Puerto Rican operators. Other deals with Tier 1 operators are expected to be announced soon. Desai says the service has 70,000 users, some of whom have a free WAP version and others who subscribe to be able to use the integrated camera feature.

Juice also has a mobile video search service which allows members to search the JuiceCaster network for videos by subject.

A California company named eMotive Communications also is eyeing the mobile UGC space. It already offers push services including songs, images and video through a deal with Skype, but CEO Anthony Stonefield says it will get into mobile uses soon.

eMotive is developing the ability to provide user-generated content as a kind of ringtone, which could include text that vibrates the phone, animation, video, a song clip or a voice recording. The service is most appropriate for 3G or 4G networks because of the bandwidth needed and because it works in an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture.

“We have more carrier trials requested than we can keep up with,” says Stonefield, because ringtone sales revenue has flattened. Personalized, user-generated content can change that, he says.

User-generated tones
User-generated and commercial ringback tones are part of the portfolio of LiveWire Mobile, a division of NMS Communications. LiveWire’s service provides 10,000 songs as part of Virgin Mobile USA’s ringback service, which has 100,000 subscribers.

Social networking and the content shared among their users is coming to the mobile world.

With the proliferation of 3G networks globally, it’s possible now to take a video on your phone and send it to a social networking site like YouTube, Facebook or MySpace. As video-capable phones increase in number and wireless broadband networks expand, analysts believe user-generated content also will expand.

In fact, within the next five years, nearly 1 billion people could be using their mobile phones to send and receive user-generated content to each other and social networking sites on the Internet, according to estimates by Pyramid Research. The analyst firm estimates mobile social networking will start to take off in 2009, and by 2010 will reach 300 million users. By 2012, 18% of all mobile subscribers will be using phones to access a social network, or about 950 million people.

Social networking sites and user-generated content (UGC) are intrinsically tied together, with members of YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and their brethren posting blogs, photos, videos and music clips.

“Video is where it’s at,” says Nick Desai, CEO of Juice Wireless, which is launching JuiceCaster 6.0 at the CTIA Wireless 2008 show. JuiceCaster is a mobile social-networking application and service that allows phone users to share videos, images and messages between devices and to online social networking sites. The upgrade allows users to create content like videos on their phones and send it as a status update to their friends.

Desai says people who belong to social networks expect to be able to use their phones to access them. Since the mobile phone is becoming the primary communications device, he says, it only makes sense to use it and take advantage of its real-time, and location, capabilities.

Publishing Videos
One of the main reasons people sign up for JuiceCaster is because they want to be able to use their phones to capture video or photos and publish them instantly to their social networking site (SNS). “We make that an easy, 1-click process,” he says, because JuiceCaster works within the camera application on the phone.

JuiceCaster is offered through Cricket, Midwest Cellular, U.S. Cellular, T-Mobile USA and two Puerto Rican operators. Other deals with Tier 1 operators are expected to be announced soon. Desai says the service has 70,000 users, some of whom have a free WAP version and others who subscribe to be able to use the integrated camera feature.

Juice also has a mobile video search service which allows members to search the JuiceCaster network for videos by subject.

A California company named eMotive Communications also is eyeing the mobile UGC space. It already offers push services including songs, images and video through a deal with Skype, but CEO Anthony Stonefield says it will get into mobile uses soon.

eMotive is developing the ability to provide user-generated content as a kind of ringtone, which could include text that vibrates the phone, animation, video, a song clip or a voice recording. The service is most appropriate for 3G or 4G networks because of the bandwidth needed and because it works in an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture.

“We have more carrier trials requested than we can keep up with,” says Stonefield, because ringtone sales revenue has flattened. Personalized, user-generated content can change that, he says.

User-generated tones
User-generated and commercial ringback tones are part of the portfolio of LiveWire Mobile, a division of NMS Communications. LiveWire’s service provides 10,000 songs as part of Virgin Mobile USA’s ringback service, which has 100,000 subscribers.

John Orlando, marketing vice president for LiveWire, says the next step for ringback tones will be to make it possible for users to create their own tones. “We have operators asking for it, and we believe that we can deliver it by the end of the year or the first quarter of 2009,” he says.

Yospace, a British company, developed a user-generated content site called SeeMeTv which is available through the carrier 3 U.K. SeeMeTv lets users upload their own video clips and gain revenue when someone downloads it. Orlando says LiveWire is looking at doing much the same thing for user-created ringback tones.

All of the social networking sites have some ability to link to mobile phones. As an example, YouTube launched a mobile interface last June, although only a small portion of the YouTube videos were available on phones. YouTube also has made select videos available through Verizon Wireless’ V CAST service. It recently opened its access even wider and now estimates more than 100 million mobile subscribers can access YouTube. Users also can upload videos from their phones but only through a 3G network.

“People want to participate in the YouTube community in a way that fits their individual lifestyles, so to that end, we’ve built a mobile service that will allow partners to seamlessly integrate YouTube videos into their offerings,” a spokesperson says. “Our goal is to support users being able to access their media from wherever they are. We want to extend the social aspects of YouTube to mobile devices – sharing, rating and interacting with content.”

The YouTube spokesperson says most mobile phones, even those with video capabilities, still don’t provide an optimal experience because of latency issue. Consumers also often don’t realize their phone’s capabilities.

Ryan Burke, an analyst with Compete, says the Holy Grail for most social networking sites is the ability to use location information, so friends can share location-based content in real time. That’s the big attraction that mobile UGC can offer, he says, so he believes mobile social networking and UGC will take off when location is built into the content that is shared.

“User-generated content and social networking are proven models [on the Internet],” he says. “Consumers like to create their own content and share it with their friends. There’s no reason mobile user-generated content won’t take off.”

WiMAX rises from the dust

WiMAX got a new lease of life yesterday in the developed world. Sprint announced a breakthrough agreement with ClearWire of Kirkland, Washington to create a joint venture under the name ClearWire but with 51% stake owned by Sprint, 27% by ClearWire investors and the remaining by some other high profile investors. Sprint is the third largest US wireless operator and is betting on WiMAX in 4G race as opposed to AT&T and Verizon, the two biggest US mobile operators, who are betting on GSM version of 4G called LTE or Long Term Evolution. WiMAX has the unique advantage over LTE as WiMAX equipment is available now and LTE is 2 years behind WiMAX.

The deal with ClearWire is a complex transaction with an alpha-soup list of investor firms participating including Comcast, Intel, Google, and cable operator Bright House Networks. Why are these firms interested ? Intel needs a new chip wave now that Centrino is everywhere already. Plus Intel has been investing in WiMAX chip development as the next evolution of the WiFi enabled chip. Google is the preferred search provider on ClearWire WiMAX devices and its Android platform will find a big network partner. Comcast and Bright House are looking for a way to expand into high speed mobile services and wireless broadband – now that AT&T and Verizon are beginning to erode cable market share with their own high speed TV offerings and innovative quad-play bundling of wireless, wireline, TV and internet. Essentially bundling is the new mantra for getting customers and cable providers need a wireless channel partner to cover this one missing piece in the cable package.

With this WiMAX deal, Sprint has one less thing to worry as it was coming from low cash liquidity position and needed money to launch a 4G offering – it got its wish fulfilled by getting some partners with big pockets to invest in its nascent 4G endeavour. Now it can go back to focusing or investing in its core CDMA business and in time make it attractive enough to sell to interested parties, eg Deutsche Telekom at a good price. Sprint Xohm service, its WiMAX trial launch service, is all but dead or in essence, will be merged into ClearWire. Sprint is taking a non-operating role in ClearWire and is talking about having ClearWire manage itself independently with separate wireless assets and separate management structure.

Well – the ClearWire deal looks interesting on the face of it and Sprint does have one less thing to worry about now that its WiMAX / 4G path is clear. But in reality, the challenges remain. With an alpha-soup combination of ClearWire investors, this firm will be chauffeured by multiple backers with sometimes varying agendas. Historically speaking, such complex deals have a high failure rate. Plus it remains to be seen if Sprint core CDMA service ends up competing with its WiMAX offering. We think success of ClearWire depends on letting it be a truly independent company with dedicated management and letting it compete openly.

In any case, WiMAX got a new lease on life. Now with this announcement, it will trigger a chain reaction and network equipment vendors like Nortel, Samsung, AirSpan, Lucent etc will make hay by selling WiMAX equipment. Intel will sell chips for WiMAX – PCs with WiMAX-enabled chips will be hot. More PC software will be sold.  Google gets a mobile momentum on next generation wireless network. Cable firms have a high speed mobile partner. Nokia and other device makers will sell high end WiMAX phones. Consumers get truly personal mobile broadband everywhere, on their cellphones and laptops. They can potentially ditch their wired DSL or cable modems and replace it with wireless broadband. Everybody is happy at the end of the day. Lets see if this theory works or not. Regardless, the ClearWire announcement may trigger a larger WiMAX adoption in other developed countries. So far WiMAX growth story was limited to developing countries in Asia, Sprint announcement is a big boost to this technology in the western hemisphere.

MT 

Sprint – Nextel + Deutsche Telekom

Today, there is a shocking news report which states that Sprint is considering spinning off Nextel business unit. Sprint acquired Nextel with great fanfare for $35 billion dollars and today’s announcement indicates that essentially that strategy has been a monumental failure. This is a glaring example of how large mergers in technology seldom work. The two technologies CDMA and iDEN from Sprint and Nextel were never fully integrated and Sprint tried hard to move the Nextel subscribers to the Sprint network, a strategy which failed not only due to technology integration issues but also due to completely different employee cultures in the two firms. Now Sprint is giving up on the integration challenge and considering spinning off Nextel, perhaps to make itself more attractive to potential bidders.

Sprint may also spin off Nextel into a separate company. Separately, Deutsche Telekom is mulling a bid for Sprint and wants to combine its US carrier unit T-Mobile with Sprint, in effect combining the third and fourth largest US wireless operators to create the largest one ahead of AT&T and Verizon. We feel that this is a no-go to begin with – this would not pass the muster with US Antitrust department. Not sure how Deutsche Telekom can imagine a run for Sprint knowing fully well that it is a difficult antitrust case.

Yet another angle to the Sprint saga involves a complex WiMAX transaction with ClearWire. The combined entity is looking for funding and Google, Intel etc are supposedly interested.

With so many big endeavours, Sprint management and their CEO Dan Hesse have their work cut out. Lets see where this one ends. To us, it had seemed that a combination with Comcast would have made a more logical sense for Sprint.

MT

Mobile Backhaul Network

Attended a webinar today on Mobile backhaul networks conducted by Wireless Week magazine (www.wirelessweek.com). There is plenty of debate on what kind of backhaul works best for emerging 4G wireless techs ie WiMAX or LTE. Folks from Juniper and France Telecom/Orange and some others argue that an IP/MPLS (Multi-protocol Label Switching) backbone is a great solution for a broadband mobile backhaul. Their reasoning :

• MPLS is good mobile back haul for 2G, 3G,  LTE and WIMAX with both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic
  • Supports flexible connectivity and configuration models
• MPLS is future proof due to its flexibility
  • Can support whatever 4G networks come up with
• Mobile backhaul requires flexibility due to other reasons as well
  • Many technologies co-exist
  • Multiple deployment scenarios co-exist

MPLS has delivered in landline networks. It is adaptable and hence a good candidate for mobile backhaul. One does not know how mobile backhaul evolves so it is better to position a flexible tech like MPLS for mobile backhaul to accommodate the various configurations which 4G folks come up with.

Our take – Juniper and similar firms have invested heavily in MPLS equipment, so this standard fits them naturally. If we talked to the WiMAX equipment folks, they would like a wireless WiMAX-based backhaul. Fiber manufacturers would like a predominance of a fiber-based backhaul. Really, all of these are viable backhaul solutions.

MT