Mobile Voice Communications is neither Dying, nor Dead!

If you have been following the mobile industry for a long time, you could be forgiven for thinking that voice communications is dead. This 2013 article for example talks about the impending death of voice and this 2018 article talks about how smartphones have killed the art of conversation. These are just examples and I have read many similar articles in the last 5-10 years.

The thing is that a lot of unnecessary calls became SMS and messages once the price of SMS and data went down. Similarly, voice ceased to be a differentiator in many markets so they started offering unlimited voice and/or SMS locally. This does not necessarily solve my requirements for international calling so I moved on to Viber, WeChat and WhatsApp.

The annual TeleGeography Report and Database update (just released) estimates that international over-the-top (OTT) voice traffic reached 1 trillion minutes in 2019, compared to just 432 billion minutes of international carrier traffic.

Anyway, with the lockdown in many countries because of coronavirus COVID-19, people have re-discovered the use of voice communications again. While I prefer having meetings on the internet, sometimes it's just simpler to call using your phone. A friend discovered that while she has some 40 GB data allowance that was generally more than enough, working from home means that she is having to use her device as a hotspot that is using up all her data. Switching from OTT calling to unlimited voice calling in her package means that she doesn't have to worry about voice calls eating her data package.

She is not alone. Operators all over are reporting the rise in voice communications:

• 27 Mar 2020 - O2 UK reported, "Since March 16th we have seen approximately 57% more voice traffic at the busiest point of the day. Typically voice traffic increases 5% year on year, and in a week we have experienced an increase of voice traffic comparable to nine years of regular demand." (link)
• 26 Mar 2020 - Official numbers reported by CTIA from Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and U.S. Cellular stated that mobile voice traffic was up 24.3% while mobile data traffic was up 9.2% (see photo above - link)
• 24 Mar 2020 - Telenor Norwar tweeted, "Traffic has increased sharply since the coronary smith was seriously registered in this country. 50% increase in mobile voice, 25% increase in mobile data and 30-40% increase in fixed broadband"
• 24 Mar 2020 - T-Mobile USA released some interesting stats including gaming, etc. With regards to voice, their announcement said, "People are talking and texting more. Messaging is up dramatically, with a 26% increase in SMS (texting) and a 77% increase in MMS (pictures, multi-party texts, etc.). And, the amount of time people spend on calls has increased 17% nationwide." (link)
• 20 Mar 2020 - Telia in Denmark reported, "Thursday, March 12, the volume of speech in the network thus increased by 24% compared to the day before. Over the weekend 50% more was spoken - obviously due to a need to gain status on family and friends in the new situation. In the past working week, about 60% more has been spoken on the phone than on a normal week in March." (translated from original)

Is voice important for an operator? Probably not very much in the developed markets where users pay a good amount for data packages. In developing countries, voice is still a good source of revenue. At the TIP summit last year, Malaysian telecom giant Axiata said that ""every gigabyte costs about $1.40 to manufacture...generates only 80 cents in revenue...The 2G voice business currently funds any losses". This is not a long term sustainable model for these operators.

Of the 1000 people surveyed, top 5 things people in the USA want from 5G:
• Faster data speeds
• Improved coverage – fewer dead spots
• Clearer voice quality 🤔
• better battery life
• lower cost servicehttps://t.co/aK4ym25seW

— Zahid Ghadialy (@zahidtg) March 23, 2018

Funnily I just remembered that in a survey of over 1000 people in the USA regarding what they want from 5G, the third most important thing was "clearer voice quality". If you want to understand how voice quality is measured that see this tweet below

How do you measure voice quality! pic.twitter.com/a9aNBVMa9L

— 3G4G (@3g4gUK) May 2, 2017

We may keep on seeing a boom in voice traffic as more lockdowns occur and they are even stricter. We will have to wait and see of this habit of talking sticks or it's just for this unusual situation.

Related Posts:

• The 3G4G Blog: A quick starter on 4G voice (for beginners)

Real-life 5G Use Cases for Verticals from China

GSMA have recently published a series of reports related to China. This includes the 'The Mobile Economy China' report as well as reports on ‘Impacts of mmWave 5G in China’, ‘5G use cases for verticals China 2020’ and ‘Powered by SA case studies’. They are all available here.

China currently has 1.65bn subscribers (Excluding licensed cellular IoT) which is expected to grow to 1.73bn in 2025. The report quotes 1.20bn unique mobile subscribers that is expected to grow to 1.26bn by 2025. With a population of 1.44 billion, this would be assuming everyone over 10 years has a smartphone. 2G and 3G is being phased out so only 4G and 5G will be around in 2025. This would be different for IoT.

The 5G Use Cases for Verticals China 2020 report is comprised of 15 outstanding examples of 5G-empowered applications for verticals, ranging from industrial manufacturing, transportation, electric power, healthcare, education, to content creation, and zooms into the practical scenarios, technical features, and development opportunities for the next generation technology. Every use case represents the relentless efforts of 5G pioneers who are open, cooperative, and innovative.

1. Flexible Smart Manufacturing with 5G Edge Computing (RoboTechnik, China Mobile, Ericsson)
2. 5G Smart Campus in Haier Tianjin Washing Machine Factory (China Mobile, Haier)
3. Aircraft Surface Inspection with 5G and 8K at Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac, China Unicom, Huawei)
4. Xinfengming Group’s Smart Factory Based on MEC Technology (Xinfengming, China Mobile, ZTE)
5. SANY Heavy Industry 5G and Smart Manufacturing (Sany, China Mobile, China Telecom, ZTE)
6. Xiangtan Iron & Steel's 5G Smart Plant (Xisc, China Mobile, Huawei)
7. The Tianjin 5G Smart Port (Tianjin, China Unicom, ZTE, Trunk)
8. 5G Intelligent Connected Vehicle Pilot in Wuhan (China Mobile, Huawei, et al.)
9. 5G BRT Connected Vehicle-Infrastructure Cooperative System (China Unicom, DTmobile, et al.)
10. 5G for Smart Grid (China Mobile, Huawei, et al.)
11. Migu's "Quick Gaming" Platform (China Mobile, et al.)
12. 5G Cloud VR Demonstration Zone in Honggutan, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province (Besttone, China Telecom, Huawei)
13. 5G Cloud VR Education Application Based on AI QoE (China Telecom, Nokia, et al.)
14. China MOOC Conference: 5G + Remote Virtual Simulation Experiment (China Unicom, Vive HTC, Dell Technologies, et al.)
15. 5G-empowered Hospital Network Architecture Standard (CAICT, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Huawei, et al.)

They are all detailed in the report here.

I have written about 5G Use Cases in a blog post earlier, which also contains a video playlist of use cases from around the world. Not many from China in there at the moment but should be added as and when they are available and I discover them.


Related Posts:

• Operator Watch Blog: China Allocates Shared Spectrum for Indoor Use, CBN gets Third Spectrum for 5G Network
• The 3G4G Blog: Examples of 5G Use Cases & Applications
• The 3G4G Blog: 5G Private and Non-Public Network (NPN)
• The 3G4G Blog: 5G and Industry 4.0
• The 3G4G Blog: What is Industrial IoT (IIoT) and how is it different from IoT?
• 3G4G: M2M, MTC & IoT
• Operator Watch Blog: China's Synchronized 5G Launch

How Cellular IoT and AI Can Help to Overcome Extreme Poverty in a Climate-resilient Way

The Democratic Republic ofthe Congo (DRC) is the second largest country in Africa and it has a significant potential for agricultural development as the country has more land (235 million hectares) than Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia, combined, of which only 3.4% is cultivated.

Despite this, around 13 millions of Congolese live in extreme food insecurity, among them 5 millions acutely malnourished children. Current assessments show the trend is increasing.

In the southern provinces formerly known as "Katanga" the needs in maize for human consumption sum up to 700,000 tons per year, while the local production barely amounts to 120,000 tons per year. This means the provinces have to resort to importing food from neighboring countries, which represents a huge burden on the region's economy.

Another aspect of the problem is that 80% of the local production is made by women farmers, and the biggest challenge they face is the lack of daily agronomic monitoring and guidance. There is only a limited amount of agriculture experts in the region and without assistance, the farmers’ average output is at best one ton per hectare. However, field trials have proven that by using smart farming technology they can easily produce up to 6 tons per hectare year over year with the right sustainable approach and support. Artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data analytics underpinned by mobile connectivity can even do more. They bring significant potential for capturing carbon, optimizing water, pesticide and fertilizer usage, and reducing soil erosion. Thus, African women can not only provide the solution to the local food gap/insecurity but also become the primary protectors of their environment.

The basic technical concept is not new. Back in 2016 Ooredoo Myanmar launched Site Pyo, a mobile agriculture information service for smallholder farmers. At its core Site Pyo is a weather forecast app that was enhanced with weather-dependent advice for ten crops, from seed selection to harvesting and storage. In addition the app displays the actual market prices for these crops. GSMA as a co-funder of the project celebrates Site Pyo as a big success, but it seems to be limited to Myanmar. Why?

„A lot of customization needs to be done to adapt the application functionality for a particular region“, says Dieu-Donné Okalas Ossami, CEO of „e-tumba“, a French Start-up specialized in smart farming solutions for Sub-Sahara Africa. His company partners with iTK, a spin-off from CIRAD, the French Institute for tropical agronomy. The iTK crop-specific predictive models are based on years of agronomic data, but have originally been designed for big farmers. To meet the demands of women in Katanga requires more granular data for both, input and output.

As in case of Site Pyo weather predictions are important, but in addition there are data feeds from sensors on the spot. Weather stations measure constantly temperature and rainfall while sensors in the soil report its saturation with water, nitrogen and potassium.

„A typical real-time advice that our software provides is to delay the harvest for some additional days to maximize the yield“, explains Okalas Ossami. „However, even for two neighboring fields the particular advices are often different.“ 

Also the communication channels need to be taylored. Many women farmers are illiterate. For them the advice must be translated into the local language they speak and transmitted to their phones as a voice message. Those who can read and write will receive the notifications through short message service.

The mobile connectivity that links all elements of the system is realized by the mobile network operators present in the region.

Infographic: The Technical Environment Behind the Project

„Actually NB-IoT would fit to our use case“, says Okalas Ossami, „but it is not available. And there is neither LoRa nor SigFox.“ Hence, the sensors are using data connections of 3G and 4G radio access technology. In case of network outage or missing coverage a local field technician must collect the sensor data manually and transfer it to the data center through alternative channels.

It is the same field technician who installs the sensors. The woman farmers receive a basic training to understand how the system works, but they do not need to care about technical components - except keeping their mobile phones charged.

Here comes another important aspect into the game: How can the women trust this technical environment?

In case of Site Pyo the operator Ooredoo observed a quickly increasing user community measured by the number of app downloads. However, there was no indication to which extend the Myanmar farmers really used the app. The e-tumba solution addresses this gap by partnering with the non-government organization „Anzafrika“.

Anzafrika is present in the villages where the people live. One of its major targets is to overcome the extreme poverty by developing the regional economy. A key factor for this is that the smallholder farmers do not just see the market prices for their crops, but get real access to large, stable and long-term markets where these prices are paid. Anzafrika is brokering contracts between the woman farmers and large multinational corporations committed to the Economics of Mutuality, growing human, social and natural capital. The business model behind this concept was outlined by Bruno Roche and Jay Jakub in their book „Completing Capitalism:Heal Business to Heal the World“. Instead of focusing on greenhouse gas emissions (output) they insist that climate-resilient business models must measure the input needed for manufacturing goods. As an example: For one hot cup of coffee the greenhouse gas emissions are extremely low, but 3.4 liters of water are needed (most for packaging, processing and drinking) and 12 gram of top soil will be eroded. These are (among others) the expenses paid by the planet that are not taken into account by a carbon tax.

Coffee plantations are monocultures with all the known disadvantages resulting form this kind of farming. In the past the Congolese women farmers have grown maize as a monoculture. Now, with advice from Anzafrika and e-tumba they transitioned from an „all-maize“ sustenance crop to a semi-industrial „maize-sorghum“ production. This helps to minimize the top soil erosion and thus, to remunerate the natural capital involved in the process.  

Regarding the human and social capital Anzafrika monitors how the overall situation in the villages  is improving. The focus is on progress in well-beeing, satisfaction and health not just for the women farmers, but for their entire communities.

In 2019 smart farming technology have been tested and deployed with a group of 150 women in the province of Lualaba. Now, in 2020, their number is expected to rise to 500 and after 6 years the stunning target of 100,000 participants shall be met. A look at the download numbers of Site Pyo (206,000 in the course of one year) shows that these numbers are not over-optimistic.

The partnership between Anzafrika, e-tumba and iTK is now considered as a best international practice, as indicated by Patrick Gilabert, UNIDO Representative to the European Union in Brussels. It fully aligns with the development of new comprehensive strategies for Africa that aim at creating a partnership of equals and mutual interest through agriculture, trade and investment partnerships.

UNIDO, as the UN convener for the implementation of the “Industrial Decade for Development of Africa” (IDDA 3) is always ready to join forces with innovative partners.

How LTE RRC (4G) and NR RRC (5G) Protocols are used in Parallel in EN-DC (5G NSA)

Last week I had a fruitful discussion with a fellow blogger on the web, Martin Sauter (@mobilesociety) regarding a post in which he compared features of LTE RRC (3GPP 36.331) and NR RRC (3GPP 38.331).

It was Martin's impression that the NR RRC protocol is primarily designed to be used in the 5G standalone mode. However, as I wrote in a comment to his post the NR RRC protocol is already used in EN-DC radio connections.

The reason is that the UE must be informed about Hundreds of lower layer 5G parameters (physical, MAC, RLC) that are needed for the payload transmission over 5G frequencies. Indeed, when it comes to user plane data transmission the gNB works almost independently and the UE must handle LTE and NR radio links in parallel.So it has two different radio units (even if combined into a single radio chip set). This double-functionality is also one important reason why 5G smartphones are quite expensive. It is a lot of software and know-how that sits inside these chips.

How much surplus code is really necessary to enable 5G technology becomes visible when looking at trace data using a state-of-the-art protocol test and monitoring tool.

When reading the 3GPP 36.331 (LTE RRC) standard document one might have the impression that just a few 5G parameters have been incorporated into this protocol to support EN-DC connections.

However, when looking into the details of e.g. the nr-SecondaryCellGroupConfig-r15 it turns out that some this single information element is indeed a huge block of NR information (total size: 1111 Byte)

It is an entire 5G RRC message (rRCReconfiguration) that is piggybacked by the LTE rrcConnectionReconfiguration message, because in 5G non-standalone mode this is the only way to transmit 5G signaling information to the UE. And as highlighted in the upper part of the screenshot there are a couple of NR RRC messages transported in so-called NR-RRCContainers* during the EN-DC Establishment Procedure.

And what about 5G standalone mode? For this radio access technology the 3GPP 38.331 Rel. 15 protocol is suitable as well. Hence, some parameters mentioned in the standard paper will never be seen in EN-DC. A perfect example is S-NSSAI (Single Network Slice Selection Assistance Information), because network slicing requires the connection with a 5G core network as a prerequisite. 

(click on image for larger version)

* This is not an 3GPP term, but coined by the developers of the decoding engine.

A Look into 5G Virtual/Open RAN - Part 1

Although it is understood in general that virtualization and increasing complexity are inherent characteristics of 5G networks many people are surprised when they realize the significant differences of 5G RAN architecture and signaling procedures compared to what they know from LTE or UTRAN.

In this blog post series I want to highlight some details that are not immediately visible when reading the 3GPP specs.

Figure 1 shows a virtualized gNB and the protocols it uses to communicate with its internal entities as well as with the UE and peer entities in neighbor network elements/functions.

Figure 1: Virtual Network Functions and Protocols in 5G RAN
(click on the image to see full size)

The core of the whole thing is the gNB-Central Unit for the Control Plane (gNB-CU CP). This function communicates directly with the UE using the NR RRC protocol. It also "talks" to the 5G Core Network represented by the AMF using the NGAP, a protocol very similar to the S1AP known from E-UTRAN. Neighboring 5G base stations are contacted using the XnAP, neighboring eNBs can be reached by using X2AP.

The other virtual functions of the gNB are the Central Units for User Plane (gNB-CU UP) and the Distributed Units (gNB-DU). While the gNB-CU UP is responsible for handling the transport of payload the gNB-DUs deal with all the allocation of radio resources, especially the scheduling. As a result the lower layer radio interface protocols, especially RLC and MAC terminate in the gNB-DUs.

For the RAN monitoring tools and the 3GPP Minimization of Drive Test (MDT) feature this means that RRC and Logged Measurement Reports sent by UEs will be available at gN-CU CP while all uplink radio quality measurements and call-related user plane metrics is only available at the gNB-DU - see figure 3.

Figure 2: Distribution of un-correlated RAN measurement tasks among different gNB virtual functions
(click on the image to see full size) 

And today, there is no 3GPP-standardized procedure to correlate this measurement information collected by different virtual gNB functions.

The full impact of the 5G RAN virtualization becomes even more evident when looking at Figure 3. It shows a single gNB-CU CP in charge of controlling several gNB-CU UPs and gNB-DUs.

In a live network deployment a single gNB-CU CP will control hundreds of gNB-DUs and maybe several gNB-CU UPs. This is why it is misleading to compare the connectivity of a gNB-CU CP with that of a LTE eNB. Rather it could be compared with a UTRAN RNC controlling a similar number of 3G base stations.

Figure 3: 5G RAN Connectivity
(click on the image to see full size)

Looking back into figure 1 we see that the F1AP is used for communication between gNB-CU CP and its gNB-DUs while the E1AP is the protocol that connects the gNB-CU CP with surrounding gNB-CU UPs.

Call-related control plane procedures of F1AP and E1AP are very similar to what is known from NGAP. There is a UE context established between the gNB-CU CP and the gNB-DU. On F1-U a GTP tunnel is established for user plane transport. At the same time an E1 Bearer Context in gNB-CU CP and gNB-CU UP keeps track of the most relevant user plane transport parameters.

All in all for setting up a single subscriber connection in the virtualized 5G RAN there are significantly more signaling transactions necessary than in E-UTRAN. Figure 4 shows a practical example.

Figure 4: 5G RAN Call Trace in NETSCOUT Session Analyzer
(click on the image to see full size)

The volume and complexity of signaling information is increasing when the UE moves or is redirected to virtual functions within one gNB e.g. due to load balancing.

The next blog post of this series will dive deeper into details of such call scenarios.

Stay tuned...

Related Posts:

• The 3G4G Blog: A Look into 5G Virtual/Open RAN - Part 2
• 3G4G: Open RAN, OpenRAN and O-RAN

5G Private and Non-Public Network (NPN)

Private Networks have been around for a while and really took off after 4G was launched. This is due to the fact that the architecture was simplified due to the removal of CS core and also the advancements in silicon, storage, computation, etc. allowed creation of smaller and more efficient equipment that simplified private networks.

While private networks imply an isolated network for selected devices that are allowed to connect on to the network, Non-Public Networks are much broader in scope. Chief among them is the ability of certain devices to be capable of working on Private as well as Public Network or roaming between them.

I recently ran a workshop on 'Introduction to Private 4G & 5G Networks' with a well known Industry analyst Dean Bubley. One of the sections looked at the Network Architecture based on the 3GPP standards. This tutorial is a part of that particular section. Slides and video embedded below. There are also some interesting videos on YouTube that show how and why Private Networks are needed and some use cases. The playlist is embedded in the end.

Advanced: Private Networks & 5G Non-Public Networks from 3G4G

Playlist of Private Networks Use Cases.



Related Posts:

• The 3G4G Blog: 5G and Industry 4.0
• The 3G4G Blog: What is Industrial IoT (IIoT) and how is it different from IoT?
• 3G4G: M2M, MTC & IoT