When talking about mobile networks, we generally talk about disaggregation and virtualization of the RAN rather than the core. The 5G Core Network was also designed with disaggregation in mind, supporting service-based architecture (SBA) where Network Functions (NFs) are modular and can be deployed as microservices.
The 5G Core (5GC) is the foundation for Standalone 5G (5G SA) networks where the end users can experience the power of 'real' 5G. A newly published forecast report by Dell’Oro Group pointed out that the Mobile Core Network (MCN) market 5-year cumulative revenue forecast is expected to decline 10 percent (2024-2028). The reduction in the forecast is caused by severe economic headwinds, primarily the high inflation rates, and the slow adoption of 5G SA networks by Mobile Network Operators (MNOs).
While most people think of 5G Core Network as a single entity, in reality it contains many different network functions that can be supplied by different vendors. One way to select the vendors is based on grouping of NFs based on functionality as shown in the picture above. Here we have categorised them into User Plane & Mobility, Subscriber Data Management, Routing & Selection, and Policy & Charging.
An example of of this disaggregation can be seen in the image above where Telenor worked with partners to build a truly multi-vendor, 5G core environment running on a vendor-neutral platform. According to their announcement:
“The main component of 5G-SA is the 5G mobile core, the ‘brain’ of the 5G system. Unfortunately, most 5G core deployments are still single vendor dependent, with strong dependencies on that vendor’s underlying proprietary architecture. This single-vendor dependency can be a killer for innovation. It restricts open collaboration from the broader 5G ecosystem of companies developing new technology, use cases, and services that the market expects,” explains Patrick Waldemar, Vice President and Head of Technology in Telenor Research.
As an industry first, Telenor, along with partners, have established to build a truly multi-vendor, 5G core environment running on a vendor-neutral platform. The multi-vendor environment consists of best of breed Network Functions from Oracle, Casa-Systems, Enea and Kaloom, all running on Red Hat Openshift, the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform.
“To protect the 5G infrastructure from cyber threats, we deployed Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud Compute, and their Next Generation Firewall is also securing Internet connectivity for mobile devices. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is being used as a scalable automation system, while Emblasoft is providing automated network testing capabilities. The 5G New Radio (NR) is from Huawei,” says Waldemar.
In their whitepaper on "How to build the best 5G core", Oracle does a very similar grouping of the NFs like the way I have shown at the top and highlights what they supply and which partner NFs they use.
When the mobile operator Orange announced the selection of suppliers for their 5G SA networks in Europe, the press release said the following:
Orange has chosen the following industrial partners:
Ericsson’s 5G SA core network for Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg and Poland
Nokia’s 5G SA core network for France and Slovakia
Nokia’s Subscriber Data Management for all countries
Oracle Communications for 5G core signaling and routing in all countries
I was unable to find out exactly which NFs would be supplied by which vendor but you get an idea.
Finally, I have depicted four scenarios for deployment and which Cloud Native Environment (CNE) would be used. In a single vendor core, the CNE, even though from a third party, could belong to either the vendor themselves (scenario 1) or may be suggested by the operator (scenario 2).
In case of a multi-vendor deployment, it is very likely that each vendor would use their own CNE (scenario 4) rather than one suggested by the operator or belonging to the lead vendor (scenario 3).
If you have been involved in trial/test/deployment of a multi-vendor 5G Core, would love to hear your feedback on that as well as this post.
Since the industry realised how the 5G Network Architecture will look like, Network Slicing has been touted as the killer business case that will allow the mobile operators to generate revenue from new sources.
According to global technology intelligence firm ABI Research, 5G slicing revenue is expected to grow from US$309 million in 2022 to approximately US$24 billion in 2028, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 106%.
“5G slicing adoption falls into two main categories. One, there is no connectivity available. Two, there is connectivity, but there is not sufficient capacity, coverage, performance, or security. For the former, both private and public organizations are deploying private network slices on a permanent and ad hoc basis,” highlights Don Alusha, 5G Core and Edge Networks Senior Analyst at ABI Research. The second scenario is mostly catered by private networks today, a market that ABI Research expects to grow from US$3.6 billion to US$109 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 45.8%. Alusha continues, “A sizable part of this market can be converted to 5G slicing. But first, the industry should address challenges associated with technology and commercial models. On the latter, consumers’ and enterprises’ appetite to pay premium connectivity prices for deterministic and tailored connectivity services remains to be determined. Furthermore, there are ongoing industry discussions on whether the value that comes from 5G slicing can exceed the cost required to put together the underlying slicing ecosystem.”
I recently published IDC's first forecast on 5G network slicing services opportunity. Slicing should be an important tool for telcos to create new services, but it still remains many years away in most markets. A very complicated undertakinghttps://t.co/GNY4xiLFBV
Earlier this year, Daryl Schoolar - Research Director at IDC tackled this topic in his blog post:
5G network slicing, part of the 3GPP standards developed for 5G, allows for the creation of multiple virtual networks across a single network infrastructure, allowing enterprises to connect with guaranteed low latency. Using principles behind software-defined network and network virtualization, slicing allows the mobile operator to provide differentiated network experience for different sets of end users. For example, one network slice could be configured to support low latency, while another slice is configured for high download speeds. Both slices would run across the same underlying network infrastructure, including base stations, transport network, and core network.
Network slicing differs from private mobile networks, in that network slicing runs on the public wide area network. Private mobile networks, even when offered by the mobile operator, use infrastructure and spectrum dedicated to the end user to isolate the customer’s traffic from other users.
5G network slicing is a perfect candidate for future business connectivity needs. Slicing provides a differentiated network experience that can better match the customers performance requirements than traditional mobile broadband. Until now, there has been limited mobile network performance customization outside of speeds. 5G network slicing is a good example of telco service offerings that meet future of connectivity requirements. However, 5G network slicing also highlights the challenges mobile operators face with transformation in their pursuit of remaining relevant.
For 5G slicing to have broad commercial availability, and to provide a variety of performance options, several things need to happen first.
Operators need to deploy 5G Standalone (SA) using the new 5G mobile core network. Currently most operators use the 5G non-standalone (NSA) architecture that relies on the LTE mobile core. It might be the end of 2023 before the majority of commercial 5G networks are using the SA mode.
Spectrum is another hurdle that must be overcome. Operators still make most of their revenue from consumers, and do not want to compromise the consumer experience when they start offering network slicing. This means operators need more spectrum. In the U.S., among the three major mobile operators, only T-Mobile currently has a nationwide 5G mid-band spectrum deployment. AT&T and Verizon are currently deploying in mid-band, but that will not be completed until 2023.
5G slicing also requires changes to the operator’s business and operational support systems (BSS/OSS). Current BSS/OSS solutions were not designed to support the increased parameters those systems were designed to support.
And finally, mobile operators still need to create the business propositions around commercial slicing services. Mobile operators need to educate businesses on the benefits of slicing and how slicing supports their different connectivity requirements. This could involve mobile operators developing industry specific partnerships to reach different business segments. All these things take time to be put into place.
Because of the enormity of the tasks needed to make 5G network slicing a commercial success, IDC currently has a very conservative outlook for this service through 2026. IDC believes it will be 2023 until there is general commercial availability of 5G network slicing. The exception is China, which is expected to have some commercial offerings in 2022 as it has the most mature 5G market. Even then, it will take until 2025 before global revenues from slicing exceeds a billion U.S. dollars. In 2026 IDC forecasts slicing revenues will be approximately $3.2 billion. However, over 80% of those revenues will come out of China.
The 'Outspoken Industry Analyst' Dean Bubley believes that Network Slicing is one of the worst strategic errors made by the mobile industry, since the catastrophic choice of IMS for communications applications. In a LinkedIn post he explains:
At best, slicing is an internal toolset that might allow telco operations or product teams (or their vendors) to manage their network resources. For instance, it could be used to separate part of a cell's capacity for FWA, and dynamically adjust that according to demand. It might be used as an "ingredient" to create a higher class of service for enterprise customers, for instance for trucks on a highway, or as part of an "IoT service" sold by MNOs. Public safety users might have an expensive, artisanal "hand-carved" slice which is almost a separate network. Maybe next-gen MVNOs.
(I'm talking proper 3GPP slicing here - not rebranded QoS QCI classes, private APNs, or something that looks like a VLAN, which will probably get marketed as "slices")
But the idea that slicing is itself a *product*, or that application developers or enterprises will "buy a slice" is delusional.
Firstly, slices will be dependent on [good] coverage and network control. A URLLC slice likely won't work reliably indoors, underground, in remote areas, on a train, on a neutral-host network, or while roaming. This has been a basic failure of every differentiated-QoS monetisation concept for many years, and 5G's often-higher frequencies make it worse, not better.
Secondly, there is no mature machinery for buying, selling, testing, supporting. price, monitoring slices. No, the 5G Network Exposure Function won't do it all. I haven't met a Slice salesperson yet, or a Slice-procurement team.
Thirdly, a "local slice" of a national 5G network will run headlong into a battle with the desire for separate private/dedicated local 5G networks, which may well be cheaper and easier. It also won't work well with the enterprise's IT/OT/IP domains, out of the box.
Also there's many challenges getting multi-operator slices, device OS links to slice APIs, slice "boundary controllers" between operators, aligning RAN and core slices, regulatory questionmarks and much more.
There are lots of discussion in the comments section that may be of interest to you, here.
My belief is that we will see lots of interesting use cases with slicing in public networks but it will be difficult to monetise. The best networks will manage to do it to create some plans with guaranteed rates and low latency. It would remain to be see whether they can successfully monetise it well enough.
For technical people and newbies, there are lots of Network Slicing resources on this blog (see related posts 👇). Here is another recent video from Mpirical:
Jim Morrish, Founding Partner of Transforma Insights has kindly made an in-depth Edge Computing Tutorial for our channel. Slides and video is embedded below.
"Ovum
now forecasts that there will be 111 million 5G mobile broadband
subscriptions at end-2021, up more than fourfold from Ovum’s previous
forecast of 25 million 5G subscriptions at end-2021"
"1
Billion Users of 5G by 2023, with More Than Half in China",
"broadly similar path to 4G LTE technology...more than one in every five
mobile connections."
If we just look at 2025/2026, the estimates vary from 500 million to 2.6 billion. I guess we will have to wait and see which of these figures comes true.
I wrote a post earlier titled '4G / LTE by stealth'. Here I talked about the operators who still had 3G networks while most people had 4G phones. The day the operator switched on the 4G network, suddenly all these users were considered to be on 4G, even if they didn't have 4G coverage just yet.
I have a few questions about what 5G features are necessary for the initial rollout and when can an operator claim they have 5G? In fact I asked this question on twitter and I got some interesting answers.
Question: How many 5G sites does an operator have to deploy so that they can say they have 5G?
Just having a few 5G NR (new radio) sites enough for an operator to claim that they have deployed 5G? Would all the handsets with 5G compatibility then be considered to be on 5G? What features would be required in the initial rollouts? In case of LTE, operators initially only had Carrier Aggregation deployed, which was enough to claim they supported LTE-A. Would 100MHz bandwidth support be enough as initial 5G feature?
While we have been discussing IoT these last few weeks, here is another one that I came across. This picture above from a recent Rethink research shows that Wi-SUN is going to enjoy more growth than LoRaWAN or Sigfox. Another recent report by Mobile Experts also makes a mention of this IoT technology.
I am sure most of the readers have not heard of Wi-SUN, so what exactly is Wi-SUN technology?
From Rethink Research, The Wi-SUN Alliance was formed in 2011 to form an organization to push adoption of the IEEE 802.15.4g standard, which aimed to improve utility networks using a narrowband wireless technology. The peer-to-peer self-healing mesh has moved from its initial grid focus to encompass smart city applications (especially street lighting), and we spoke to its Chairman, Phil Beecher, to learn more.
Beecher explained that the non-profit Alliance set about defining subsets of the open standards, testing for interoperability, and certifying compatible products, and soon developed both a Field Area Network (FAN) and a Home Area Network (HAN), which allowed it to move into Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS) in Japan – a country that is leading the curve in HEMS deployments and developments.
As can be seen in the picture above:
Develops technical specifications of Physical Layer (PHY) and Medium Access Control (MAC) layers, with Network layer as required
Develop Interoperability test programs to ensure implementations are interoperable
Physical layer specification is based on IEEE802.15.4g/4u/4v
MAC layer may use different options depending on the application
Profile specifications are categorized based on application types
Picture source for the last three pics, Wi-SUN presentation here.
A new whitepaper from Wi-SUN Alliance provides comparison of Wi-SUN, LoRaWAN and NB-IoT.
A recent presentation by Dr. Simon Dunkley in Cambridge Wireless is embedded below:
Few weeks back in the LTE World Summit 2013, I heard someone from Ericsson mention that internally they think that by 2030 there will be 500 Billion Connected devices on the planet. The population projections for 2030 is somewhere around 8.5 Billion people worldwide. As a result the figure does not come much as a surprise to me.
John Cunliffe from Ericsson is widely credited for making the statement 50 Billion connected devices by 2020. Recently he spoke in the Cambridge Wireless and defended his forecast on the connected devices. He also provided us with the traffic exploration tool to see how the devices market would look up till 2018. Here is one of the pictures using the tool:
In terms of Cellular connectivity, we are looking at 9 Billion devices by 2018. The interesting thing to notice is that in 2017, there are still some 4 Billion feature phones. While in the developed world our focus is completely on Smartphones, its interesting to see new and existing SMS/USSD based services are still popular in the developing world. Some months back I heard about Facebook developing SMS/USSD based experience for Feature phones, I am sure that would attract a lot of users from the developing world.
One thing missing from the above is non-cellular connections which will make bulk of connectivity. Wi-Fi for example is a major connectivity medium for tablets. In fact 90% of the tablets have only WiFi connectivity. Bluetooth is another popular method of connectivity. While its mostly used in conjunction with phones, it is going to be a popular way of connecting devices in the Personal Area Network's (PAN's). So its no surprise that we will see 50 Billion connected devices but maybe not by 2020. My guess would be around 2022-23.
Nokia Corp., the world's largest maker of mobile phones, reported Thursday a 69% drop in fourth-quarter profit as demand for its handsets fell sharply during the key holiday season, particularly in China, and as it lost market share in the lucrative high-end segment.
The European tech bellwether also lowered its dividend, slashed its 2009 forecast of global demand for phones and said it would cut roughly 1,000 jobs to keep a lid on expenses.
The results mark a reversal of fortune for the Finnish company, which earlier this year seemed to have all but crushed even its nearest competitor with its stronghold on emerging markets, efficient cost control and extraordinary distribution power.
Quarterly sales declined 19% to 12.66 billion euros, missing forecasts calling for a top line of 13 billion euros, as demand for phones dropped sharply.
The number of handsets shipped in the latest three months fell 15% to 113.1 million units. Sequentially, shipments slipped 4% -- an unusual development considering the fourth quarter is customarily the strongest one for phone makers.
Phone makers have been suffering in the past few months as consumers rein in their discretionary spending. In developed markets, many are delaying replacing their old mobile phones. In emerging markets, handset users often simply aren't buying new ones.
Underscoring this, Sony Ericsson, the phone-making joint venture of Japan's Sony Corp. (SNE) and Sweden's L.M. Ericsson (ERICY), posted its second straight quarterly loss last week and warned the market would deteriorate further in 2009.
Also last week, Motorola Inc. (MOT) said it would report a fourth-quarter loss and slash 4,000 jobs after its sales collapsed over the holiday season.
And on Thursday, Nokia lowered its outlook for global industry mobile-device volumes, saying it now expects them to fall 10% in 2009, compared to an earlier forecast of a 5% drop.
The projected decline would be sharper in the first half than in the second half, with volumes dropping more sharply than is customary between the fourth and the first quarter, Nokia said.
Higher profile for digital mapping
Among Nokia's individual divisions, the handset business suffered the most, with sales down 27% to 8.1 billion euros. The sharpest decline in the number of handsets shipped happened in China, which registered a 36% drop, followed by the Middle East and Africa, with a 23% fall.
Nokia estimated its market share at 37% in the quarter, down from 40% a year ago and 38% in the third quarter. It said it lost ground in the Middle East and Africa, North America and China. It also lost ground in the high-end, smart- phone category, which worried investors.
Nevertheless the phone maker said it expects to maintain its market share at 37% in the first quarter.
The average selling price of a Nokia handset slipped to 71 euros from 72 euros in the third quarter, even though many new handsets, such as the 5800 XpressMusic, hit the shelves in time for Christmas. The decline put pressure on gross margins, which narrowed to 33.8% from 36.5% in the third quarter.
The division's operating profit decreased 70%, to 766 million euros, in the latest quarter.
At the Nokia Siemens networks joint venture, sales fell 5% to 4.3 billion euros.
The division, half owned by Siemens (SI) of Germany, achieved most of its targeted cost savings but reported an operating loss of 179 million euros while it broke even in the same period last year.
At the Navteq digital mapping business, sales jumped 31% sequentially to 205 million euros. The unit's operating loss shrank to 73 million euros from 80 million euros in the third quarter.
In the year just gone i.e. 2008 we saw some unprecedented economic situations. I can clearly say that I have never seen anything like that but then I’m too young to say that anyway -:))
Talking to more experienced people in the industry I came to the conclusion that this recession indeed one of the worst one.
It's a very tough economic climate out there and there an every chance that no one will be reprieved by its effect. What I men by that and even if you haven't been touched by the downturn thus far, you will be. There is an argument that IT or technology shop has some advantage over other departments which makes sense as well as I can rarely think of a business these days which doesn’t use telecoms these days. Nevertheless, it would be unthinkable not to be wearing your flak jacket at all times.
Jos losses have started to happen in telecoms now with the likes of Motorola, Nortel already involved in this procedure. More than 50,000 tech workers lost their jobs before the financial meltdown hit, and more jobs may soon be axed.
Everyday we see ourselves into more gloom and doom with more bad news coming our way. Even India is getting affected by this and especially after what happened Satyam. The Satyam scandal had shocked India specially the IT world. This has definitely not helped to boost up the confidence with some of the IT companies shares plunging. The Satyam scandal what many has labeled as India’s Enron has put a big doubt into investor’s mind which is a very serious concern. In way this scandal has done woken up many and will do some good in the future. Telecom companies are working feverishly to get their balance sheet right and hence already started taking drastic measures. I view it like this where everybody is anticipating a tsunami and to save themselves from high waves they are already moving onto high grounds.
I myself is involved in the situation where the salaries of the staff are frozen for at least one year. I believe any measure taken now although painful is a right thing to do. So when tsunami comes the high waves may not do the much damage and if doesn’t then it’s even better. Companies are in the mindset of not spending in the coming months and plans to invest only in what it call key projects but with an increase of only 1 or 2 percent in the next 12 months. LTE is considered as one of the key area of development but at the same time provide immense dilemma as well. Companies are no doubts thinking of concentrating on the current projects which guarantee a source of revenue but then want to spend in LTE product as well so that they are not behind when the good times begin.
People with high skills especially in wireless and VoIP may have got good chances of just clinging on to their jobs.
Remember everybody would need the skilled people when good times come back so it’s in companies interest to freeze the salaries instead of making make people redundant.
It's important, above all, to keep your skills at top form and be flexible with an employer going through tough times.
In the end I will mention the line from Judi’s blog which is “Remember, don't panic. The trains cannot run without you”
1. Wallet: This would be quite cool when available. Have been hearing about this for years now. Apparently very popular in Japan and S.Korea where people are not using credit cards anymore and instead using Phones.
A much better idea would be to have a universal recognition kind of chip which i can use as Credit card, Smart Card for Trains (In london we have Oyester cards) and then i can use this for accessing company door, garage door , etc. This would be a real killer app but doesnt look like will happen in near (or far) future
2. Internet: In December, ABI Research said that almost 50 million people used social-networking sites on their mobile phones. That number is expected to grow to 174 million by 2011. It would be cool to be able to browse using your phone. Mosst of the sites i use (including mine) are not mobile friendly and this is the thing that is turning people off the net.
3. Location: Already too many phones supporting GPS and A-GPS. The chips are becoming cheaper with cost of around $5 so the manufacturers should have no problem. In future we will get disscounted packages where we will have to receive adverts which would be location specific. Nokia has some applications which can compete with TomTom for getting directions, etc.
4. Search: Hardly anything needs to be mentioned for this.
5. TV: Have written enough on Mobile TV already. IMS Research forecasts that by 2011 there will be more than 30 million mobile TV subscribers in the United States. The firm also predicts that almost 70 million handsets capable of receiving mobile TV will be shipped in the U.S. in 2011.
6. Simplified surfing: From the Cnet article
Ever notice how many clicks it takes to find the one thing you're looking for on your phone? It's worse than counting how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop. But handset makers and mobile operators are hard at work trying to make phones easier to navigate and simpler to use.
The upcoming
iPhone from Apple is a perfect example of how user interfaces will be improved. Apple fans are confident that the company has come up with another slick and intuitive design, just as it did for the iPod.
One aspect of the iPhone's interface that has been publicized is its use of sensory technology to detect when the device is rotated. This allows the phone to automatically render pictures on the screen in portrait (vertical) or landscape (horizontal) format. That allows the user to determine which format is best for viewing whatever is on the screen, be it a Web page, video, or photo.
In the future,
motion-sensing technology, similar to that used in the Nintendo Wii game console, will also allow people to navigate their cell phone menus or the mobile Internet with a flick of their wrists.
But motion sensing is just one piece of the puzzle. Operators such as Verizon Wireless are redesigning their content menus to reduce the number of clicks users must endure to find what they want. Ryan Hughes, vice president of digital media programming for Verizon Wireless, said he believes that user interfaces will be customizable so that users can decide for themselves which applications will be displayed on their phones most prominently.
Motorola is already offering a customizable interface on the Razr 2, which the company claims will make searching for contacts, accessing applications, and messaging much easier.
7. Brainier radios: Maybe in future SDRs (Software Defined Radios) may become more common and popular and yes the technology will become feasible. Also multiple radios on the chpset would mean Handovers will be possible from 3G to WiMax, Wifi, etc.
8. Personal Cell: Everyone seems to be talking of Femtocell. Where we will have a small 3G base station in our home. We could use it for Voice or High Speed data. No need for the POTS and use mobile for everything. This will still take some time as the operators dont fully understand the benefits of offering cheap data.
9. Perfect Camera: Today roughly 41 percent of American households own a camera phone. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to buy a phone today that doesn't have a camera. By 2010 more than 1 billion mobile phones in the world will ship with an embedded camera, up from the 589 million camera phones that are expected to be sold in 2007, according to market research firm Gartner.
10. More music on the phone: Mobile phone users around the globe are expected to spend $32.2 billion on music for their handsets by 2010, up from $13.7 billion in 2007, according to Gartner. This can only happen when Music Video/Audio becomes cheaper though. Personally i would prefer listening to FM Radio rather than music but i am not sure how much demand there would be and ofcourse the operators dont gain anything.
China is getting serious with its TD-SCDMA standards and would like some major players in 3G to signup and appreciate the standards. The Chinese government is keen to have a standard made in China to be used (atleast in China). The government is holding off the auctoning of 3G spectrum untill they are sure that TD-SCDMA is ready and there are enough handsets available for the people.
'Foreign companies need to get serious about TD-SCDMA as they are less likely to get anywhere with WCDMA and CDMA 2000 in the near future,' warned Haofei.
This is despite the fact that 2 weeks back Bloomberg had an article stating that China has adopted WCDMA and CDMA2000 as two other official 3G technologies except TD-SCDMA. The popularity of these two would depend on the success of TD-SCDMA.
China's 3G handset sales are projected at 22 mln units by 2010, Zhao Hong, a senior official with the TD-SCDMA Industry Alliance and an executive director with Lenovo Mobile Communications said at a conference.
Zhao said that handsets configured for China's homegrown TD-SCDMA standard are expected to account for 50 pct of 3G sales, while WCDMA handsets will hold 40 pct and CDMA2000 handsets will account for 10 pct.
Nearly 300,000 LTE Base Transceiver Stations will be installed by 2014, according to a new study from ABI Research. While LTE will encounter competition from other mobile broadband technologies, its supporters extol its potential to unify the mobile infrastructure market.
LTE brings to the market 25 years of operating experience using TDM and CDMA technology. It aims to use that, combined with OFDM, and other techniques, to provide the best of both worlds, perhaps stealing WiMAX’s thunder. This also takes the industry from the current two-network approach of circuit switching for voice, and packet switching for data to a single IP network for both services.
“LTE faces competition from other broadband wireless technologies and it will need to demonstrate clear technical and economic advantages to convince network operators,” says ABI Research analyst Ian Cox. “The mobile variant of WiMAX will start to appear in 2007 as the WiMAX Forum Certification program ramps up. The industry is also working on HSPA+, which could offer the same performance in a 5 MHz bandwidth. Without additional spectrum, operators could face a difficult choice.” Cox further comments that, “LTE is the NGN for the mobile industry and is being standardized by 3GPP with the full support of operators via the NGMN Group.”
Long Term Evolution (LTE) of 3G technologies is about to benefit from Release-8 of the 3GPP standard, planned for the third quarter of 2007. The potential rewards of LTE are simplicity of operation, a “flat” architecture offering low latency, and spectrum flexibility. Backwards compatibility and roaming with 2G and 3G networks are added bonuses, along with lower power consumption and improved performance, . LTE could also unite the W-CDMA and CDMA communities because of its spectral flexibility.
For vendors, LTE will allow development of a new market to replace declining 3G revenues.
For users, says Cox, LTE will enable broadband services, including VoIP, to be offered over SIP-enabled networks. Each service will be IP-based, offering high data rates and low latency, with on-line gaming becoming a reality along with mobile network data speeds comparable to those of fixed networks.
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