2G is Dead, Long live 3G

3G services may soon be allowed on the radio spectrum currently being used for 2G communications, after the European Commission officially backed the scheme.

Two bands of spectrum — at 900MHz and 1800MHz respectively — were set aside in the 1980s for use by the emerging 2G/GSM mobile-phone market. However, since 3G/UMTS became a reality earlier this decade, many users have switched over to the new standard, which operates at the higher-frequency 2100MHz.

This development has reduced the demand for the lower frequencies, and some mobile operators have been arguing for some time that those spectrums should "refarmed" for 3G services. Those operators have pointed out that lower frequencies allow the signal to be transmitted over greater distances and have suggested that, because 3G infrastructure has been deployed mainly in urban areas where the maximum return on investment can be made, refarming would allow greater use of 3G "mobile internet" services in rural areas.

However, one issue remains unresolved in the refarming debate. O2 and Vodafone use 900MHz for their GSM services, while T-Mobile and Orange use 1800MHz. The smallest UK operator, 3, has no GSM spectrum at all. Because lower frequencies transmit further, the EC's proposals have the potential to give O2 and Vodafone the chance to have greater 3G coverage, at a lower cost, than their rivals. 3 stands to be the most disadvantaged network as it has no GSM spectrum to refarm.

Neither Orange, T-Mobile nor 3 had responded to a request for comment on the EC's proposals at the time of writing.

Even more space could become available for 3G services next year when Ofcom auctions off 192MHz of spectrum around the 2.6GHz frequency. However, that spectrum could also be used for alternative mobile broadband services, like mobile WiMax. Pending a formal green light from the European Commission, Reding's proposals on refarming should be in place by the end of this year.

BT Movio ... going ... going ... gone

UK national telecommunication company British Telecom (BT) has closed its mobile broadcast branch BT Movio. The delivery platform developed by BT Movio supports the only mobile broadcast TV service in the UK. The service is retailed by UK largest mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Virgin Mobile. The operator declared that the service will carry on until the beginning of next year. BT has cancelled its contract with GCap Media which provided access to the Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) spectrum. GCap mentioned that the cancellation will take effect on 9 June 2008. GCap subsidiary Digital One which is in charge of the spectrum is currently seeking other partners to replace BT Movio.

Virgin had released only one handset — the HTC-manufactured "Lobster phone" — which supported the technology, and sales of that device were poor. The Lobster phone was seen by critics as an unattractive handset and, being based on Windows Mobile, it was not ideally suited to the consumer sector.

However, the final straw for BT was the recent backing given by the European Commission to the mobile broadcast technology Digital Video Broadcasting — Handheld (DVB-H). BT Movio was based on the rival Digital Audio Broadcasting — IP (DAB-IP) standard, which reused digital radio spectrum to deliver a handful of TV channels and a range of digital radio stations. DVB-H promises more channels, but spectrum availability for that technology had looked uncertain until it became apparent last week that the European Commission would force member states to adopt the standard.

According to screendigest:

Unicast mobile TV (i.e. distributed through 3G networks) has been relatively successful in the UK with three major operators launching services with more than 25 TV channels on average. According to Screen Digest, they were almost 450,000 mobile TV subscribers at the end of 2006. While unicast mobile TV can offer a wide range of TV content, the infrastructure can only sustain a limited number of users. In order to support mass market adoption mobile broadcast TV networks must be deployed. BT Movio launched the broadcast mobile TV service with Virgin Mobile in September 2006. The service showed poor uptake during the first 3 months with less than 10,000 subscribers. Factors blamed for the poor uptake include a lack of content and poor handset availability. The upcoming UK auction for L-Band spectrum could have given BT Movio the opportunity to increase the capacity of the current platform and improve the channel line-up. However, the BT Movio platform requires IP compatibility from the broadcast network technology. DVB-H, DAB and MBMS support IP encapsulation. T-DMB, the preferred technology for the L-Band spectrum auction, does not support IP. Therefore, BT Movio was stuck with a platform which cannot draw enough attention from mobile operators, handset manufacturers and inevitably mobile subscribers.

The UK operator '3' is keen to big up its own mobile TV and video services in the wake of BT's announcement. 3 UK says its customers have:

• Downloaded more than a million reality TV clips in the last year.
• Downloaded over a million SeeMeTV clips every month, with £100,000 being made by budding directors in the process.
• Last summer watched World Cup TV on their mobiles nearly 4 million times.

Among the live streamed channels 3 offers are BBC1, BBC3 and ITV1, with access starting at 49p a day. Its also allows customers to access TV from their set-top's with a Slingbox app.

HSPA in Latin America

From a press release by 3G Americas:

In the past few weeks, operators Personal and Movistar in Argentina, Movistar in Mexico as well as Movistar and Ancel in Uruguay have all launched UMTS/HSDPA commercial service in their respective markets in Latin America. In addition to the operators listed above, in the past seven months, UMTS/HSDPA has been launched by AT&T in Puerto Rico and Entel PCS in Chile, making a total of seven operators that offer UMTS/HSDPA in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The number of operator deployments of HSDPA has increased by 200% in the last year, from 42 HSDPA networks to 130 commercial HSDPA networks today in 61 countries. Today, there are 177 total deployments of UMTS technology in 74 countries and nearly 300 commercial HSDPA devices available worldwide. Informa Telecoms & Media estimates that there will be 190 million UMTS or HSDPA customers worldwide by the end of 2007.

Latin America has become one of the worlds’ fastest-growing regions for GSM wireless service, as many operators have migrated their networks from other technologies (such as CDMA and TDMA) to the GSM evolution to take advantage of the tremendous scope and scale, as well as technology benefits, offered by EDGE, UMTS and HSDPA. There are an estimated 255 million GSM subscribers in Latin America and the Caribbean as of June 30, 2007, representing a 75% share of market. In addition, many operators in the region have deployed EDGE high speed wireless data services; in fact, there are 38 commercial EDGE networks in 21 countries today.

Erasmo Rojas, Director of Latin America and the Caribbean for 3G Americas commented, “EDGE delivers an excellent customer experience for wireless data, serving as a foundation for customer uptake of wireless data services and increasing revenues for all GSM operators. The next move is to UMTS/HSDPA mobile broadband. We expect many more launches of HSDPA in 2007 and 2008 throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.”

As GSM customers push for speed and applications to satisfy their demands for services such as web browsing, email, mobile payments, interactive gaming and video sharing, UMTS/HSDPA provides the solution with average downlink throughput data rates over 1 Mbps in favorable conditions and latency measuring at 70-100 milliseconds. +

Many more operators throughout Latin America and the Caribbean are planning their move to mobile broadband with HSDPA. Rojas continued, “However, some carriers need additional spectrum allocations before UMTS/HSDPA networks can be launched.”

Google jumps on the Femtocells Bandwagon

Ubiquisys recently announced that it has secured funding from Google for its ZoneGate Femtocell. This is an interesting move from the Internet Giant which has also been showing interest in Mobile Phones.

The Inquirer suggests that if Google is showing interest in Femtocells then they have become sexy.

Ubiquisys's Zonegate femtocell plugs into DSL and then provides access to WiFi, Ethernet, ordinary telephones and USB. But the most important thing is that it also acts as a local 3G base station. So Google has something in mind which can be done by providing Broadband in homes.

Dean Bubbly, writing in Seeking Alpha says that he is surprised by Google's move. He writes:

Yes, I know that Google's talking about pitching $4.6B for the US 700MHz spectrum... and yes, I know that there's a 700MHz standard for UMTS going through 3GPP at the moment. But I'd have thought that femtos at that sort of
frequency was fairly pointless, as the big attraction of 700MHz is that it's got great range and goes through walls easily.

The real advantage of 3G femtos, in my view, lies in 2100MHz 3G spectrum (i.e. most of the world today outside the US), and probably in the future in 2600MHz band. It's conceivable that Google might want to start bidding for those chunks of spectrum around the world, but I'm unconvinced that it's
going to follow the classic cellular path (i.e. 3GPP UMTS or LTE) rather than something more Internet-like.

There's an outside possibility that Google might, in fact, want to do something with WiMAX - but at present, Ubiquisys doesn't do WiMAX femtos, although chipset supplier PicoChip is certainly doing suitable silicon. Maybe that's what the investment's for . . .

What no one is talking about is, Is there some way of advertisement using Femtocells? I am sure if Google is going this way then there must be something on advertisement.

We will have to wait and see.

China trying to catch up on 4G

In a move to improve the nation's research and development (R&D) capability, top mobile phone operator China Mobile will promote more self-developed next-generation mobile network technologies that match international standards, an official at its research institute disclosed.

The Research Institute of China Mobile has started several projects for the next generation of mobile network technology.

Wireless internet protocol on internet service environment (WIISE), a technology designed to let mobile networks better manage their bandwidth capacity, is among the institute's key research projects. It is funded by the State.

"We do want to do more on this WIISE technology in the next two years with our proprietary intellectual property rights. We do also want to push this self-developed technology internationally," said Wang Xiaoyun, a deputy manager of the institute yesterday.

Ms Wang explained that the WIISE technology is not designed for present mobile technology but will be applicable to so-called 4G technology or technology even more advanced. "We do want to increase the network management power, which could lead to better use of our network resources," she said.

The Chinese government, in the form of its Ministry of Science and Technology, is also reported to be collaborating with its Swedish counterpart, in the form of the VINNOVA agency for innovation, in a 4G research project initially funded at nearly US$8mn. Public details of that collaboration are minimal (that is, none at this juncture).

China Mobile will host a conference jointly with the government later this year to discuss the issue of advanced technology.

The 4G mobile technology is expected to be in the market by 2010, with Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo having taken the lead in its development. The 4G systems are expected to be able to handle a wide range of data-supported rates of up to about 100 megabits per second for high mobility networks.

China Mobile would like to strengthen its network management system in the next-generation network as demand for bandwidth is increasing.
"The new mobile technology will be more compatible with the use of the internet on the move, whereas the existing 3G technologies still have some weakness with internet applications," Ms Wang said.
Some internet-based applications that occupy a lot of network capacity, such as the peer-to-peer (P2P) network, will be migrated to the mobile network in the future, she said.

As the world's largest mobile operator, China Mobile is bent on developing technology to enhance the mobile internet experience with a cost advantage.

Source: China Daily

Defining 4G (I mean IMT-Advanced)

3G Americas published a new white paper entitled "Defining 4G: Understanding the ITU Process for the Next Generation of Wireless Technology". The white paper provides the factual description of how IMT-Advanced or 4G will someday be defined by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). ITU is the internationally recognized authority that will produce the official definition of the next generation of wireless technologies beyond IMT-2000 or 3G.

Chris Pearson, President of 3G Americas, stated, "The ITU is currently establishing criteria for IMT-Advanced and will be screening various technologies for inclusion in the IMT-Advanced family. Only then will we understand what is and can be rightly and credibly called 4G.” He continued, "Any claim today that a particular technology is a so-called ‘4G technology’, in reality, is simply a marketing spin, creating market confusion and deflating the importance of the telecommunications industry standards. Technologies should be verified against a set of agreed-upon requirements in order to qualify as 4G, and this will happen in the future when the requirements are outlined by the ITU."

Significant progress has been made by the Radiocommunication Sector of the ITU (ITU-R) in establishing an agreed and globally accepted definition of 4G wireless systems, and ITU-R is close to releasing a full set of documentation for this definition. Working under a mandate to address systems beyond 3G, ITU-R has progressed from delivering a vision of 4G in 2002 to establishing a name for 4G in 2005 (IMT-Advanced). In 2006, ITU-R set out the principles for the process of the development of IMT-Advanced. The work of the ITU encompasses the important elements of business success in the wireless industry, especially the balance of a market and services view, a technology view, a spectrum view and regulatory aspects. In early 2008, ITU-R will translate the vision into a set of requirements by which technologies and systems can, in the near future, be determined a part of IMT-Advanced and in doing so, earn the credible right to be considered 4G.

During 2008 and 2009, ITU-R will hold an open call for 4G (IMT-Advanced) candidates as well as an assessment of those candidates' technologies and systems. The culmination of this open process will be a 4G, or IMT-Advanced family of technologies. Such a 4G family of technologies, in adherence to the principles defined for acceptance into this ITU process, is globally recognized to be one which can grow to include all aspects of a marketplace that will arrive beyond 2010.

“Third generation technologies are growing immensely in the marketplace, but they too once started out with a vision and requirements from ITU,” stated Pearson. “The evolving wireless marketplace and its customers will be well served by the current ITU process for the next generation of wireless services.”

As can be seen in the picture above, the main requirements for 4G are as follows:

• Peak data rate of 100Mbps for high mobility applications such as mobile access
• Approx. 1Gbps for low mobility applications such as nomadic/local wireless access

A very important point in the report is what i have been saying for years:

The communications industry is witnessing significant posturing about wireless technologies and systems that are claiming to be “4G.” Any claim that a particular technology is a 4G technology or system today is, in reality, simply
a market positioning statement by the respective technology advocate. Such claims must be verified and substantiated against a set of requirements in order to qualify as 4G.

3G FDD Operating Band Frequencies

FDD reference frequencies for Operating Band 1

UL 1922.6 MHz - 1977.4 MHz

DL 2112.6 MHz - 2167.4 MHz

This is also known as WCDMA 2100 and is used mostly in Europe and Asia. Core band for region 1 with many deployments

FDD reference frequencies for Operating Band 2

UL 1852.6 MHz - 1907.4 MHz

DL 1932.6 MHz - 1987.4 MHz

This is known as WCDMA 1900 and is used mainly in North America. Alternative to core band, which is not available in region 1. Existing GSM deployments use 850 or 1900. Service providers are seeking agreement torefarm this spectrum

FDD reference frequencies for Operating Band 3

UL 1 712.6 MHz - 1 782.4 MHz

DL 1 807.6 MHz - 1 877.4 MHz

This band has got Interest from regions 2 and 3, especially for the refarming of existing GSM spectrum

FDD reference frequencies for Operating Band 4

UL 1712.6 MHz - 1752.4 MHz

DL 2112.6 MHz - 2152.4 MHz

Paired bands are of interest in region 2 and Japan. This is being used by T-Mobile in USA

FDD reference frequencies for Operating Band 5

UL 826.6 MHz - 846.4 MHz

DL 871.6 MHz - 891.4 MHz

Used in North America and Australia. Alternative to core band, which is not available in region 2. Existing GSM deployments use 850 or 1900. Service providers are seeking agreement to refarm this spectrum

FDD reference frequencies for Operating Band 6

UL 832.5 MHz - 837.5 MHz

DL 877.5 MHz - 882.5 MHz

Used in Region 3, Japan

FDD reference frequencies for Operating Band 7

UL 2502.6 MHz - 2567.4 MHz

DL 2622.6 MHz - 2687.4 MHz

Designated by the ITU as the global expansion band, so far with limited interest for UMTS/HSxPA, although WiMAX lobbying for access

FDD reference frequencies for Operating Band 8

UL 882.6 MHz - 912.4 MHz

DL 927.6 MHz - 957.4 MHz

Interest from all regions, especially for the refarming of existing GSM spectrum

FDD reference frequencies for Operating Band 9

UL 1752.4 MHz - 1782.4 MHz

DL 1847.4 MHz - 1877.4 MHz

Region 1, USA and Japan

FDD reference frequencies for Operating Band 10

UL 1712.6 MHz - 1767.4 MHz

DL 2112.6 MHz - 2167.4 MHz

SMS! Still the killer application

Portio Research’s new report ‘Mobile Messaging Futures 2007 – 2012’ on SMS says that while SMS revenue growth won’t match the growth of SMS volumes as a result of declining prices, by 2012 global SMS revenues will reach US$67 billion driven by 3.7 trillion messages.

What’s contributing to the success of SMS services, says Portio, is that it’s a very fast means of peer-to-peer mobile communication and an ever- growing base of new subscribers.

Case in point is Asia Pacific.

Portio estimates that every five minutes now and over the next six years 2,267 people will purchase their first mobile phone that will likely only include standard voice and SMS service. Asia Pacific could potentially produce an additional 1.4 billion new subscribers with a new SMS traffic. In 2011, the emergence of smartphones and wireless Internet services in North America, which was initially slower to adopt SMS services, could be the driving factor of why MIM (mobile instant messaging) could potentially replace SMS as a messaging service by 2011. Still, wireless operators, says Portio, will have to be careful to not cannabilize their SMS revenues by striking a balance between SMS and MIM pricing.

How much do you love your mobile

Got this from Tomi Ahonen's post in Oxford Forum

BBDO has done another survey of 3000 customers around the world and released findings from that research, but that was already in April of 2006. Still the findings have lots of insights into mobile phone users. Juicy tidbits:

81% of youth aged 15 - 20 sleep with their mobile phone turned on.

Women in Japan have daytime and evening phones just like they have daytime and evening handbags.

96% of people screen their incoming calls.

76% of Australians and 76% of Spanish have already responded to mobile marketing campaigns, ie interacted with a brand via mobile.

In China if forced to choose between retrieving a forgotten wallet or retrieving a forgotten phone, 69% will go get the phone rather than the wallet.

And 63% of the phone owners will not lend the phone to anyone else.

So yes, the research is a year old but still very valid today.

Whoa! 40Gbps Broadband (wireline, ofcourse)

Found this very interesting:

A 75 year old woman from Karlstad in central Sweden has been thrust into the IT history books - with the world's fastest internet connection.

Sigbritt Löthberg's home has been supplied with a blistering 40 Gigabits per second connection, many thousands of times faster than the average residential link and the first time ever that a home user has experienced such a high speed.

But Sigbritt, who had never had a computer until now, is no ordinary 75 year old. She is the mother of Swedish internet legend Peter Löthberg who, along with Karlstad Stadsnät, the local council's network arm, has arranged the connection.

"This is more than just a demonstration," said network boss Hafsteinn Jonsson.

"As a network owner we're trying to persuade internet operators to invest in faster connections. And Peter Löthberg wanted to show how you can build a low price, high capacity line over long distances," he told The Local.

Sigbritt will now be able to enjoy 1,500 high definition HDTV channels simultaneously. Or, if there is nothing worth watching there, she will be able to download a full high definition DVD in just two seconds.
The secret behind Sigbritt's ultra-fast connection is a new modulation technique which allows data to be transferred directly between two routers up to 2,000 kilometres apart, with no intermediary transponders.
According to Karlstad Stadsnät the distance is, in theory, unlimited - there is no data loss as long as the fibre is in place.

"I want to show that there are other methods than the old fashioned ways such as copper wires and radio, which lack the possibilities that fibre has," said Peter Löthberg, who now works at Cisco.

Cisco contributed to the project but the point, said Hafsteinn Jonsson, is that fibre technology makes such high speed connections technically and commercially viable.

"The most difficult part of the whole project was installing Windows on Sigbritt's PC," said Jonsson.

300 Mbps with 'Super-FOMA'

NTT DoCoMo, Inc. announced that this month it began testing an experimental Super 3G system for mobile communications. With this experiment, DoCoMo will seek to achieve a downlink transmission rate of 300Mbps over a high-speed wireless network.

For people who are unaware, LTE is being branded as Super-3G as this term is more appealing as compared to LTE which would mean nothing to ordinary people.

DoCoMo will begin with an indoor experiment to test transmission speed using one transmitting and one receiving antenna. The company will then expand the experiment to examine downlink transmission by employing up to four Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antennas for both the base station (transmission side) and mobile station (receiving side); the goal is to achieve a downlink transmission speed of 300Mbps. MIMO is an antenna technology for wireless communications in which different data streams are spatially multiplexed using multiple antennas for both transmission and reception on the same frequency. Also to be examined is the "handover function" — switching of the connection between two base stations.

NTT DoCoMo's Super-3G timetable is available here

The reason i am calling this setup as Super-FOMA is because going back to when 3G was being introduced, DoCoMo wanted to be the first with 3G. As a result, they adopted a 3GPP Release version that wasnt stable and released it as FOMA. Now they are doing the same with LTE. LTE wont be stable in that timeframe so they might end up with Super-FOMA instead of Super-3G.

The company has also been aggressively pursuing 4G system development. In late December, the carrier came close to hitting a 5Gbit/sec. data transmission speed from an experimental 4G system to a receiver moving at 10 kilometers per hour.

Possibly it may be the first one with a 4G system and it might end up as Hyper-FOMA :)

Truly open broadband network

The FCC's auction for 700-MHz bandwidth, scheduled for later this year, is gearing up to be an epic sale that could have a major impact on the world of wireless technology, especially with FCC Chair Kevin Martin now calling for an "open broadband network," one that will open the door to a lot of innovative wireless services.

You buy a cell phone, load any software you want on it, then choose your carrier. This vision of expanded consumer choices in the wireless world might be a little closer today than it has ever been, especially with reports that the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is circulating an "open platform" proposal for the upcoming auction of the 700-MHz band.

FCC Chair Kevin Martin told USA Today on Monday that "whoever wins this spectrum" will have to provide a "truly open broadband network -- one that will open the door to a lot of innovative services to the consumer."

He said an open network would mean a consumer could "use any wireless device and download any mobile broadband application, with no restrictions," except for illegal or malicious software. USA Today and other news outlets are reporting that Martin has sent or is about to send a draft proposal to his fellow commissioners.

Martin noted that, in some other countries, consumers usually take their unlocked devices with them when they change carriers, as opposed to in the U.S., where cell phones typically are locked for use only on a given carrier's network.

Writing on Forum Oxford, Ajit Jaokar called this as the 'carterphone principle'

And the news gets better...

Writing Tuesday on its public policy blog, Google Telecom and Media Counsel Richard Whitt applauded the reports of Martin's proposal. Whitt, hired by Google a few months ago, formerly headed up MCI's regulatory department.

Google, which said it has not decided whether it will participate in the auction, sent a letter to the FCC on Monday, according to Whitt, urging that winning bidders be required to adopt several types of "open platforms."

A key part of open platforms, Google contends, is that consumers would be able to use any combination of devices, software applications, content, or services. In addition, the company maintains, resellers should be able "to acquire wireless services from a 700-MHz licensee on a wholesale basis," and ISPs should be able to interconnect "at a technically feasible point" to a 700-MHz licensee's wireless network.

However, Current Analysis analyst Bill Ho identified potential issues with these ideas, notingthat interconnection and the use of any device could require some uniform or encompassing technological standards, rather than the competing standards that now exist.

The auction for bandwidth, scheduled for later this year, is gearing up to be epic. The sale will include spectrum in the 700-MHz band that has been used for analog television since the beginning of that medium, as U.S. TV is going completely digital by mid-2009.

The 700-MHz spectrum is particularly valuable because it penetrates walls and various obstacles more effectively than other frequencies, and the FCC is now developing the rules for the auction.

A 108-MHz block of bandwidth will become available after the analog TV stations complete their transition. Of that 108 MHz, 60 MHz will be auctioned in January 2008, public safety officials will receive 24 MHz, and 24 MHz already has been sold.

Estimates indicate that the auction could yield $20 to $30 billion for the government.

Motorola sales decline, but still clueless

Motorola looks in danger of losing its position as the world's second-largest mobile phone maker after reporting a collapse in sales during the second quarter of the year. With the Korean manufacturer Samsung gaining ground on the American technology company, pressure is building on Motorola to develop a new hit phone to replicate the success of its wildly popular Razr handset. The company's decision to pull out of the race to sell low-end handsets in emerging markets has boosted its average selling price but hit its volumes.

Motorola sold up to 35 million handsets in the second quarter of the year, 21 per cent lower than the 45 million it sold in the previous three months and 31 per cent lower than a year ago. After missing its sales and profit targets over the period, the company said it no longer expects to make a profit from its mobile phones sales this year.

This makes me wonder, why is Motorola in such a situation? Some years back when it brought RAZR, its sales were up and they started getting recognition they have been looking for. 'But' poor interface design and very poor GUI has been always there to haunt them. Also, they do not seem to care too much of UE stability and Phones freezing and crashing have been common problems.

Combined with all of the above, there are too many political problems and their habit of looking for short term gains (laying off people so that the share prices dont go down too much) rather than long term aims is hurting their innovation.

Meanwhile, Nokia, the Finnish group that transformed itself from a forestry company and a producer of rubber boots into the world's largest handset maker, is thought to have taken substantial market share from its US rival over the past three months, with Sony Ericsson and Samsung also expected to gain ground. Amid the hype around Apple's entry into the mobile phone market with its top-end iPhone, Nokia has been forging ahead with a number of high-end handsets and a strong position in emerging markets.

The joint venture between Sweden's LM Ericsson and Japan's Sony Corp. said net profit rose 54% to 220 million euros ($303 million) from 143 million euros in the same period last year.

Sony Ericsson seems to have done well with its Walkman-branded music and camera phones, where Motorola had a bad time with the ROKR, famously produced in association with Apple. Motorola has also been the leading proponent of Linux-based phones, but there's no indication whether this helped or hindered either sales or profits.

Femto-Mania catching on

Recently there is a lot of activity that is going on, on the Femtocell front.

It is an excellent concept as it would now be possible to have small (see figure on left) base stations in your house that will give you a reliable coverage even in your basement.


The most high profile announcement was by Nokia-Siemens Networks who plan to launch the technology commercially by Q3 2008.

According to Wireless Week, DSL box developer Thomson have partnered Nokia-Siemens to develop 3G devices for in-home wireless broadband access.

“Our novel Femto Home Access solution meets what the market really needs. It is a strong combination of telecommunications end-to-end expertise, femto cell know-how and consumer mass market understanding,” says Ari Lehtoranta, Head of Radio Access, Nokia Siemens Networks. “We are driving a network solution with standard and open interfaces to enable open innovation and variety of supply for the Femto customer premises equipment.”

The Nokia Siemens Networks 3G Femto Home Access solution introduces a new network element, Femto Gateway. Femto Gateway does not require changes in the operators’ existing core network, as it connects to the core network over a standard interface. Furthermore, by extending this standards-based approach towards the Femto Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) at homes, the Femto Gateway will allow customer equipment from multiple vendors to be connected to it. The Femto Gateway will support any Femto CPE certified by Nokia Siemens Networks to conform with the interface. Nokia Siemens Networks will co-operate with Femto CPE vendors to ensure interoperability of their equipment to the Nokia Siemens Networks interface.

Femto CPE’s use IP broadband backhaul and are easy to install at home in the same way as xDSL/WiFi modems. The Femto cell functionality can be packaged to the operator-specific home gateway devices together with other functionalities, like WiFi, Ethernet routing or storage.

On the operator side, O2 has previously expressed interest in the technology, while Orange and Vodafone are assessing the potential of femtocells. The Japanese operator Softbank has also talked about launching the technology commercially.

It's not known which operators will be the first to undertake trials, said Nick Johnson, chief technology officer of IP Access, one of several companies that makes femtocells, the small 3G base stations that enable the improvement.

Mobile phone company Vodafone Group PLC has issued a request-for-proposal to femtocell vendors, said Stuart Carlaw, research director for ABI Research. "When you get to an RFP, it's pretty serious stuff," he said.

Sprint Nextel Corp. and Softbank Corp. in Japan are also out in front, with Softbank demonstrating femtocells earlier this week in Tokyo.

IP Access demonstrated its Oyster 3G home access femtocell deep in a London wine cellar on Friday (6th July), transmitting a video conference call between two mobile phones.

The technology will compete with other carriers' Wi-Fi coverage, which enables UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access), a way to make call over a Wi-Fi hotspot that's plugged into a home DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) connection and have them billed to a mobile phone account. UMA is used in offerings such as BT Group PLC's Fusion service.

Femtocells hold an advantage in that they can be used by 3G mobiles, while only a few models support UMA and Wi-Fi, Carlaw said.

Carriers will likely end up subsidizing the cost of a femtocell, which is probably now around US$120 to $130, or bundling it as part of a service package, Carlaw said. "A consumer is not going to pay," the analyst added.

Ubiquisys, a leading femtocell vendor, expects trials to begin in Europe this year. Martin McNair, a general partner at Advent Venture Partners, which has backed Ubiquisys, said that the technology would provide customers with better reception than a digital cordless phone, and will benefit mobile phone companies by stimulating more usage indoors, where most mobile phone calls are made. He said that mobile phone companies are likely to subsidise the mini base stations - which will be about the size of a small router and plug into a broadband connection - to benefit from higher mobile usage and increased customer loyalty.

PicoChip expects to triple revenues this year, and triple them again next year to about $15m a quarter, the level the firm has identified as suitable for an IPO, according to CEO Guillaume d'Eyssautier. "We expect to get to $15m a quarter in between 18 to 24 months," d'Eyssautier told EW. Driving a large part of the anticipated revenue growth is the adoption of femtocells by the wireless carriers.

Recently FemtoForum has been formed. Holding their first plenary Monday (July 2) in London ahead of the first Home Access Point and In-Building Conference that opens Tuesday (July 3) , the group has revealed the names only of seven of the founding members of the Forum. "We have about 40 members and sixty companies will be represented at the plenary, but some prefer for now to keep their powder dry as regards membership", Simon Saunders, an independent consultant who will chair the Forum told EE Times Europe .

Those going public now include femtocell technology pioneers such as picoChip, ip.access, Ubiquisys, Airvana, Netgear, RadioFrame, and Tatara.

ABI predicts around 52,000 femtocell units will ship this year, with around 1 million in 2008 when deployments become more widespread. However, femtocells are not likely to replace Wi-Fi, as some carriers already have huge investments in that technology.

(3G) Civil War in US?

Interesting article from Telecom Magazine

In US Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless fly the flag for CDMA2000, while AT&T and T-Mobile USA spearhead the W-CDMA charge.

So far, CDMA2000 clearly has taken the high ground. Verizon laid claim to about 60.7 million CDMA2000 customers by the end of March 2007, while Sprint Nextel said it had captured 53.6 million. The W-CDMA operators, by comparison, could muster just 2.5 million customers between them.

The CDMA Development Group (CDG), which lobbies for CDMA2000, attributes this gulf to a technology lead. CDMA2000 operators, it notes, have deployed enhancements like EV-DO Revision A, which can deliver speeds of up to 3 Mbps for VoIP and multimedia applications. W-CDMA, in stark contrast, is still unavailable in many parts of the U.S. Even where it has been deployed, it typically is capable of a far less impressive 384 kbps.

W-CDMA, however, is definitely on the march. AT&T and T-Mobile USA are planning rollouts using HSDPA, a W-CDMA enhancement that offers speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps. More importantly, while W-CDMA’s customer base of 2.5 million appears low when judged alongside CDMA2000, it has grown from just 350,000 late last year.

“AT&T uses a higher frequency [than its CDMA2000 competitors], which is a disadvantage,” explains Allen Nogee, a principal analyst with In-Stat.
Generally, U.S. operators have deployed CDMA2000 using spectrum in the 800 MHz or 1900 MHz bands, while AT&T is rolling out W-CDMA using 2100 MHz spectrum. The lower frequencies have better propagation characteristics, allowing CDMA2000 operators to serve a wider area using fewer base stations.

“AT&T is also in a transitional phase,” Nogee adds. “Although it can advertise its new HSDPA network, that network has not been rolled out everywhere yet.”

Meanwhile, T-Mobile USA, the fourth largest operator in the U.S., plans to launch a W-CDMA service using the 2110 MHz to 2155 MHz spectrum it purchased in last year’s auction for advanced wireless services. Although it did not respond to requests for an interview, T-Mobile USA previously issued a statement on its 3G intentions in which it says the company will transition to a next-generation technology, which may include W-CDMA/UMTS with HSDPA, in the next two-to-three year timeframe.

And finally we cannot have a discussion without looking at the future (4G?):

Although W-CDMA is still in its early days in the United States, operators already are thinking about the next generation of mobile technology.
While a 4G standard is not yet defined, marketing departments are applying the label to some technologies already in development.

For W-CDMA operators such as AT&T and T-Mobile USA, the technology typically viewed as 4G is called long-term evolution, or LTE. It represents the destination on their journey through upgrades to HSPA, but will use a different air interface called OFDMA and require more work. Theoretically LTE will deliver downlink speeds of 100 Mbps and uplink speeds of 50 Mbps.

CDMA2000 operators also have 4G in their sights in the shape of EV-DO Revision C. Like LTE, Revision C promises vast improvements over the current crop of wireless standards. Allen Nogee, a principal analyst with In-Stat, thinks both LTE and Revision C could see commercial deployment by 2010.

In the meantime, Sprint Nextel has been vocal about another 4G technology. Last year, it earmarked US$2.5 bn for investment in a nationwide deployment of WiMAX, using 2.5 GHz spectrum it already owned. WiMAX proponents have made some bullish claims about its capability (promising up to 70 Mbps on the downlink), but the technology has not evolved from other standards—unlike LTE and Revision C—and will lack any scale economies when it is launched next year.

Chris Pearson, president of 3G Americas (a lobby group for W-CDMA), is unconvinced by the WiMAX business case. “It’s a wild card. In our view, most subscribers will be using W-CDMA and EV-DO for years to come.”

3GPP Release 8 = 3GPP IMS + ETSI TISPAN

Interesting development that happened last month at the 3GPP plenary meeting in Busan, Korea earlier this month, an agreement was reached on how to proceed with Common IMS to meet the needs of fixed, mobile, broadband and wireless users.

In cooperation with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has re-chartered a services group tasked with common ETSI-3GPP development of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) Version 8.

Both standards bodies hailed the early June agreement, reached during a meeting in Busan, Korea, as an effective way to keep 3GPP IMS and ETSI Telecoms & Internet converged Services & Protocols for Advanced Networks (TISPAN) work.

Both IMS and TISPAN comprise next-generation network standards efforts designed to forge a higher signaling and control plane infrastructure layer to support delivery of content and applications to subscribers across any fixed or mobile network or device.

“ETSI TISPAN has taken the first steps in migrating fixed IMS requirements to 3GPP in a co-operation that will prevent fragmentation of IMS standards,” Dr. Walter Weigel, ETSI Director-General, said. “A Common IMS, developed in one place, is a big step forward and will bring enormous economies of scale and reductions in capital and operational costs.”

Common IMS developments will form part of 3GPP Release 8, which is expected to be functionally frozen by end 2007.

“Over the next few months we must stabilize the Release 8 requirements and absorb the incoming Common IMS work,” Stephen Hayes, Ericsson Inc., 3GPP TSG-SA Chair Stephen Hayes of Ericsson Inc., said. “3GPP has a history of successfully meeting challenges and I have no doubt we will meet these challenges as well.”

AIPN Scenarios

AIPN or All-IP Network is being introduced part of 3GPP Release 7. TS 22.978 shows some scenarios where AIPN will play a big part

USE CASE 1 (see left in the daigram): Bob has his own Personal Area Network (PAN). While at home, this network is composed with the Home Area Network using WLAN, which in turn connects externally with a local hotspot service, which in turn connects to a cellular network. Bob's PAN, Bob’s Home-WLAN, the local hotspot service and the AIPN cellular access system are under different administrative domains. Still, if Bob moves outside coverage of his Home-WLAN, his PAN will communicate with the outside world via the local hotspot service. If he moves outside coverage from the hotspot service, his PAN will communicate with the outside world via the AIPN cellular access system.

USE CASE 2: The user is driving a car. While being under good radio coverage, he starts an IMS session with several media. The car goes through a tunnel where there is no radio coverage, and comes out of the tunnel into good radio coverage a minute later. Connections using disruption resilient transport protocols are automatically re-established and these protocols restore the communication to the point they were before the interruption.

USE CASE 3: Alice has a mobile device and Bob has a fixed one. Both devices have equal audio but different video capabilities in terms of screen size, number of colors and video codecs supported. Alice establishes a multimedia connection with audio and video components to Bob. The terminal capabilities are discovered and it is realized that Bob's terminal has better video capabilities than Alice. The terminal informs the network that it is unable to support new the new video codec and the AIPN then introduces a video transcoder in the path of the video media to adapt the video signal (stream, codec, format, etc) to the video capabilities and bit rates available on each side of the transcoder.

Enhanced Services should be possible with AIPN:

• Support for advanced application services
• Support for group communication services, e.g. voice group call, instant group messaging, and multicast delivery. In some cases, a group may include a large number of participants.
• Support for integrated services, e.g. a service including a mixture of services among SMS/MMS/Instant Message, or a service including voice call/video call/voice mail.
• Provision of seamless services (e.g. transparent to access systems, adaptable to terminal capabilities, etc) Users should be able to move transparently and seamlessly between access systems and to move communication sessions between terminals.
• Support ubiquitous services (e.g. associations with huge number of sensors, RF tags, etc.) ... see right side of diagram above.
• Improve disruption-prone situations when network connectivity is intermittent.

Disruption-free network connectivity may not be cost effective, or even feasible, in all cases (e.g. cell planning for full radio coverage for all services, disruption-free inter-access system handovers, disruption-free IP connectivity in all network links). An AIPN should consider solutions for making services as resilient to temporary lack of connectivity as possible.

Introduction to All-IP Network (AIPN)

The All-IP Network (AIPN) is an evolution of the 3GPP system to meet the increasing demands of the mobile telecommunications market. Primarily focused upon enhancements of packet switched technology, AIPN provides a continued evolution and optimisation of the system concept in order to provide a competitive edge in terms of both performance and cost. Moreover, it is important that developments of the 3GPP system are compliant with Internet protocols. The AIPN is not limited to consideration of only the transport protocol used within the 3GPP system but adheres to the general concept of a network based upon IP and associated technologies, able to accommodate a variety of different access systems. Although, it is possible to use a variety of different access systems to connect to the AIPN, the AIPN provides an advanced, integrated service set independent as far as possible from the access system used.

The high level objectives of introduction of the AIPN are to realise:

• universal seamless access
• improved user experience
• reduction of cost (for AIPN operators)
• flexibility of deployment.

There are also a number of motivations and drivers for the introduction of the AIPN which include but are not limited to:

• diversification of mobile services
• need to satisfy user experience of early adopters
• anticipation of PS traffic to surpass CS
• desire to encompass a variety of access systems
• need for increased system efficiency and cost reduction (OPEX and CAPEX) and
• advances of next generation radio access systems and broadband wireless IP-based networks.

The key aspects of the AIPN can be summarised as follows:

• Support for a variety of different access systems
• Common capabilities provided independent to the type of service provided with convergence to IP technology considered from the perspective of the system as a whole
• High performance mobility management that provides end-user, terminal and session mobility
• Ability to adapt and move sessions from one terminal to another
• Ability to select the appropriate access system based on a range of criteria
• Provision of advanced application services as well as seamless and ubiquitous services
• Ability to efficiently handle and optimally route a variety of different types of IP traffic including user-to-user, user-to-group and ubiquitous service traffic models
• High level of security and support for user privacy e.g. location privacy, identity privacy
• Methods for ensuring QoS within and across AIPNs
• Appropriate identification of terminals, subscriptions and users
• Federation of identities across different service providers

Further Reading:
3GPP TS 22.258: Service Requirements for the All-IP Network (AIPN);
Stage 1

3GPP TR 22.978: All-IP Network (AIPN) feasibility study

Wireless and Mobile All-IP Core Networks and Services

Next Generation Mobile Systems: 3G & Beyond

C-Mobile: 3GPP MBMS for systems beyond 3G

Came across the C-Mobile website, searching for some information and the site caught my eye.

The strategic objective of C-MOBILE is to foster the evolution of the mobile broadcast business by providing enhancements to the 3GPP MBMS for systems beyond 3G.

Having worked with MBMS for some time and having completed atleast 4 trainings, the topic definitely holds my interest.

C-MOBILE will help to understand how best to organise and schedule MBMS content from the BM-SC through the core network, radio access, to the end users. Since this is multimedia content, interactions with the 3GPP IP Multimedia Subsystem are expected and C-MOBILE will explicitly investigate how best MBMS can make use of capabilities provided by the IMS.

The current concept of group communication is narrow within Release 6 MBMS specification.
C-MOBILE will research, investigate and define ways to use multicast technology to support personalized services and in particular the concept of multicast content community where users also contribute to the multicast service.

Key market and business requirements for multicast-broadcast services will be identified to aid defining research directions, leading also to new business models involving the various players.

To that end it is critical to understand the needs of multicast-broadcast users, network operators, and content providers.

The project intends to make important contributions to the standardisation bodies and to prove experimentally or via system level simulations innovative concepts.

There are no high profile names with C-mobile yet but there is Qualcomm and 3 UK in the participants list.

Some documents of interest are available here.

Push-to-share over MBMS

During one of my MBMS trainings last month in Anritsu, i set everyone a task of defining a service based on MBMS. One of the services mentioned was Push to Talk (PTT) over MBMS.

Theoretically it should be possible to use MBMS for PTT. The voice in the UL is sent via a normal CS RAB. On the Downlink the data is Broadcast using MBMS. Since we would like the data to be sent to a particular set of users, it would be Multicasted rather than Broadcasted. Also this would mean that only the users in a particular Service Area will be able to receive this.

From operators point of view, Service Area should be big enough so that the user is seamlessly able to move a wide geographical area. At the same time it should not be too big because localised services (and adverts) can generate more revenue.

A bit of Googling and i came across some patents that are trying to do the same. Following is an extract from a patent Fresh Patents:

[0009] Use of a PoC application server together with a multimedia
broadcast/multicast service (MBMS) server for providing multicast transfer of
data in the downlink direction has been suggested. In the uplink direction PoC
typically uses Real Time Protocol (RTP) traffic unicast. In the uplink PoC
clients send speech data to the PoC application server, which then directs the
speech data packets either to the MBMS for the downlink leg to those
participants who receive the speech via multicast service or directly to those
recipients who prefer to receive via unicast directly from the PoC server. Use
of multicast in downlink direction improves the spectral efficiency in the case
of group communications with great number of participants. In addition, without
multicast it may not be possible to support large group sizes, if the
participants are located geographically in the close proximity.

Another was a patent on free patents:

0032] Herein, the MBMS service refers to a service for transmitting the same
multimedia data to a plurality of recipients through a wireless network. In this
case, the recipients share one radio channel, thereby saving radio transmission
resources. For example, the MBMS service includes a stock information service,
sport broadcast service, Push-to-Talk (PTT) service, and the like.

In fact C-Mobile is working on something similar. One of their documents highlight the limitations of the current MBMS architecture and suggests how we can improve the architecture in future for B3G Architecture.

My personal feeling is that till the Architecture is eveolved enough, PTT may not be very practical over MBMS but we should be able to use Push-to-share over MBMS. Some interesting short video clip or Breaking News Clip or maybe personal Valentine messages, etc can be shared using MBMS. It now needs to be seen if some operator picks on this idea and how soon.