Showing posts with label Operators. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Operators. Show all posts

Thursday, 19 April 2012

The concept of 'PDP Context Parking'




Access Point Name (APN) identifies a packet data network (PDN) that is configured on and accessible from the packet core (eg. GGSN). APNs are similar to a DNS name of the packet core and its composed of 2 parts.

• The APN Network Identifier which defines the external network or service that the user wishes to connect to via the packet core.
• The APN Operator Identifier which defines in which mobile network the packet core is located.

The APN that a mobile user is allowed to use is either programmed in the phone, or it could be sent over the air (OTA) via SMS. If an invalid APN is used then the PDP context request would be rejected with Invalid APN cause.

The networks of today are capable of handling any APN name and in fact recently I read some operator will allow any APN name to be used (PS: I cant remember details so please feel free to add link in the comment if you know). The reason for any APNs is that users use mobiles that were used on other networks which would have their APN settings, so the operator allows them to use any APN and then send OTA message to provide new settings.

The problem starts on these devices of today, even though you may say that you dont want to use operator data (especially while roaming), it still uses data and if the user does not have a good data plan then he may end up running a huge bill. See a discussion on this topic here and here.

From operators point of view, once they have sent setting OTA then they dont send it again. The users have come up with a workaround that they can use an invalid APN name and that would not connect to the operators network and incur data costs. The problem is that since the PDP Context request was now rejected, the device retries it when the device tries to use data again (mostly when there is no WiFi due to user being out and background apps are still running). This can cause loads of unnecessary signalling (for establishing PDP context).

In a situation like this, Martin Prosek from Telefonica, Czech Republic, mentioned that they have introduced 'PDP Context Parking'. They accept the PDP context request even though the APN is invalid but redirect the user to a default page where the user has many options like name of correct APN for someone using wrong APN by mistake, possiblity to buy 'bolt-ons' so they can use data over the mobile network and in some cases simply some free data allowance so that the users can get a feel of mobile data usage. This helped Telefonica O2, Czech Republic, reduce signaling and improve pdp connection success rate

I think this is a great idea and if someone has more information on this or personal experience, please feel free to add.

Tuesday, 10 April 2012

Mobile Energy Efficiency (MEE) Optimisation project

Recently read that Telefonica, Germany has identified that it can save €1.8 million per year with the help of GSMA's MEE Optimisation service. Here is a detailed case study from GSMA:

Also, found a presentation that explains a bit more about what MEE (Mobile Energy Efficiency) is:
Maybe a good idea for other operators to start looking into how they can be saving with this initiative as well.

More details on MEE here.

Wednesday, 14 December 2011

ETSI INT IMS/EPC Interoperability Standardisation: Motivation, Roadmap & First Results

INT = IMS Network Testing. ETSI INT website here. More details below the presentation:

This was presented by Giulio Maggiore, Telecom Italia, ETSI TC INT Chairman in the 2nd FOKUS FUSECO Forum 2011, Berlin 17-18 Nov. 2011

From the ETSI leaflet (note that this is quite old information but still on the ETSI website here):

IMS interoperability is a key issue for boosting IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) roll-out and more specifically network interconnection between operators. Only through thorough testing in practical scenarios can operators ensure operational excellence in a multi-vendor and multi-provider environment.


IMS comprises a set of specifications designed to enable network operators to implement IP-based networks that can carry services for both fixed and mobile customers simultaneously.


IMS was developed originally in the mobile world (specifically in the specifications created by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, 3GPP), and was adopted for fixed networks by ETSI’s TISPAN Technical Committee (Telecoms & Internet Converged Services & Protocols for Advanced Networks).


However this promise of advanced communications over the next generation network will only be delivered if those same networks can interconnect.


ETSI’s Technical Committee INT: IMS Network Testing


ETSI is bridging the existing gap between 3GPP IMS Core Network standards and the initial industry IMS implementations through the organization of IMS interoperability events in connection with ETSI’s Centre for Testing & Interoperability (CTI) and Plugtests™ interoperability testing service.


Our Technical Committee for IMS Network Testing (TC INT) is actively establishing close contact with a number of industry fora and organizations dealing with IMS interoperability, including 3GPP, GSMA, MSF (Multi Service Forum), IMS Forum and the ITU-T. TC INT develops IMS test specification according to conformance, network integration and interoperability testing methodologies. Other ongoing work includes development of tests for Supplementary Services based on regulatory requirements and IMS tests with legacy networks (e.g. SIP-I).


ETSI has already held two IMS interoperability events. The first examined interconnection aspects of 3GPP IMS Release 6, including such issues as basic call on the Mw interface. The second event had a wider scope that included the testing of 3GPP IMS Release 7 interworking, roaming, border control, and integration of application servers executing selected Multimedia Telephony supplementary services.


Future ETSI activities and events will go even deeper towards bridging 3GPP IMS standards and industry implementations. These will include the organization of further IMS interoperability events designed to boost the roll-out and take-off of IMS services and operators’ network interconnections.

Friday, 26 August 2011

Two interesting NGMN papers on Backhaul

There are some interesting blog posts on Broadband Traffic Managemenet on Backhaul. Here are few excerpts:

Traditional network management practice says that network element usage level should not exceed 70% of its capacity. If it does - it is time to do something - buy more or manage it better. So, according to a recent Credit Suisse report - it is time to do something for wireless networks, globally. For North America, where current utilization at peak time reaches 80% it is even urgent.

Phil Goldstein (pictured) reports to FierceWireless that - "Wireless networks in the United States are operating at 80 percent of total capacity, the highest of any region in the world, according to a report prepared by investment bank Credit Suisse. The firm argued that wireless carriers likely will need to increase their spending on infrastructure to meet users' growing demands for mobile data .. globally, average peak network utilization rates are at 65 percent, and that peak network utilization levels will reach 70 percent within the next year. .. 23 percent of base stations globally have capacity constraints, or utilization rates of more than 80 to 85 percent in busy hours, up from 20 percent last year .. In the United States, the percentage of base stations with capacity constraints is 38 percent, up from 26 percent in 2010"

And

The Yankee Group provides the following forecast for mobile backhaul:
Average macrocell backhaul requirements were 10 Mbps in 2008 (seven T1s, five E1s). In less than three years, they have more than tripled to 35 Mbps in 2011, and by 2015, Yankee Group predicts they will demand 100 Mbps.
There were 2.4 million macro cell site backhaul connections worldwide in 2010, growing to 3.3 million by [2015?]
Yankee's new research conclude:

"The market for wholesale backhaul services in North America will grow from $2.45 billion in 2010 to $3.9 billion in 2015, with the majority of this growth coming from Ethernet backhaul. Successful backhaul service providers will be those that can demonstrate price/performance and reliability, have software tools in place and can meet the specific needs of the mobile market.

And recently:

A Dell'Oro Group report forecasts that "Mobile Backhaul market revenues are expected to approach $9B by 2015. This updated report tracks two key market segments: Transport, which includes microwave and optical equipment, and Routers and Switches, which includes cell site devices, carrier Ethernet switches, and service provider edge routers .. routers and switches expected to constitute 30% of mobile backhaul market "

Shin Umeda, Vice President of Routers research at Dell’Oro Group said: “Our research has found that operators around the world are concerned with the rate of mobile traffic growth and are transitioning to Internet Protocol (IP) technologies to build a more efficient and scalable backhaul network. Our latest report forecasts the demand for IP-based routers and switches will continue to grow through 2015, almost doubling the market size of the Router and Switches segment in the five-year forecast period”

I have some basic posts on why Backhaul is important, here and here.

NGMN has timely released couple of whitepapers on the Backhaul.

The first one, 'Guidelines for LTE Backhaul Traffic Estimation' document describes how a model is developed to predict traffic levels in transport networks used to backhaul LTE eNodeBs. Backhaul traffic is made up of a number of different components of which user plane data is the largest, comprising around 80-90% of overall traffic, slightly less when IPsec encryption is added. These results reveal that the cell throughput characteristics for data carrying networks are quite different to those of voice carrying networks.

The purpose of second one, 'NGMN Whitepaper LTE Backhauling Deployment Scenarios' is to support operators in their migration from current architectures to new, packet-based backhaul networks. With the introduction of LTE operators need to look at how the backhauling network, the network domain that connects evolved NodeBs (eNBs) to MME and S/P-GW, is capable of adapting to the new requirements, namely the adoption of a packet infrastructure, without disrupting the existing services. This paper introduces some reference architectures, moving from a pure layer 2 topology to a full layer 3 one, discussing some elements to be considered in the design process of a network.

They are both long but interesting read if you like to learn more about Backhaul and the best way in future proofing the network deployments.

Friday, 1 July 2011

Summary of 'The Future of Wireless International Conference' #fwic

Here is a summary of the Future of Wireless International conference held in Cambridge on the 27th and 28th of June 2011. The summary is a compilation of my notes with the tweets sent using the #FWIC tag.

DAY 1

Roberto di Pietro, VP Product Marketing and Business Development, Qualcomm CDMA Technologies
• 26 million 3G connections being added every month
• 226% growth is seen in smartphones from 2010 - 2014
• Mobile as a single platform for developers.
• Devices smart enough to know which network to connect to
• Qualcomm arrived on the scene 6 months after everyone but they are the only ones with 4G, 3G and 2G multi-mode chips
• In 2012 they would be releasing the new System Architecture with Single / Dual / Quad cores upto 2.5GHz (Snapdragon next gen)
• Question: Will smartphones die in the future when people move to tablets for everything except for voice/sms and they get simpler phones for that
• Answer: Smartphones will co-exist as companion devices with the tablets and will continue growing for a while.
• In other discussions: QoS will be a big differentiator and offloading would certainly be needed. Femtocells are going to form part of any strategy.
• Network signaling load and need for developers to improve apps design noted in qualcomm keynote here in cambridge


Mr. BongGoon Kwak, Senior Vice President, The head of Mobile Business Fast Incubation Business Department Mobile Business Group in Korea Telecom.
• KT adding 0.5 million users every month.
• Mobile data predicted to grow 26 fold by 2015 (6.2 exabytes/month)
• E = MC^2. Where E = evolution, M = mobile and C = connectivity
• mobile banking users in Korea increased 100% to 18 million due to smartphones
• smartphone ARPU up 32% on feature phone
• KakaoTalk (http://www.kakao.com/talk/en) users have increased which has in turn reduced the SMS ARPU
• NaaS (Network as a Service) is a new trend

Mr. Edward Zhou, CMO of Western European Region, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.
• states they have 5300 people in Europe but only 65% are from local market
• No. 2 telecom solution provider with revenues of $28 billion
• has 110,000+ employees with 150 nationalities worldwide, more than half work in R&D
• By 2020 there will be 5.5B MBB (Mobile Broadband) users as opposed to 1.5B FBB (Fixed Broadband)
• 70% of companies (especially SMEs) will be using cloud based services.


Mr. R. Swaminathan, Senior Executive Vice President, Reliance Communications Ltd.
• Low cost mobile networks and devices helped drive innovation in low cost business models in Rural India
• Customisation is a mecessity for the rural market.
• One offering includes a fixed phone that uses Mobile as a backhual using the Yagi antenna
• 15 operators in rural India. Voice tariff went from 20cents to 1 cent. Entry cost reduced by 95%
• ARPU in rural India is $2.
• Telecom operators have done innovations to keep costs to minimum
• Phone to tablet is best evolution for Indian rural market, using visual images and txt to speech technologies not smartphones
• Good to have some text to voice and vice-versa apps
• Ends with saying that there are 870 million people in rural India and possible market size is $25 billion that can be exploited


Kanwar Chadha, Chief Marketing Officer and Board Member of Cambridge Silicon Radio
• Innovations in location-aware wire-free connected world
• Spoke on view of local business vs global, very entertaining perspective , assume nothing and be careful of interpretation
• Example is the initial GPS cost $3700 but was still successful in Japan because guys wanted to show it off to their dates.
• Maslow's hierarchy of needs dont work for India as its more important to have entertainment (TV) than roof.
• FM very succesful in India but nowhere else.
• Sat Navs will not succeed in India because addresses and maps not very well mapped. Things like coupons, sms will be very successful


Innovation Hothouse: Mr. Christian Leicher, Member of the Executive Board at Rohde & Schwarz GmbH & Co. KG.


Session on start-ups very interesting
• Augmentra talked of GPS based smartphone apps. Users can share and get paid when someone else download what they share. Their guidebooks, etc are trusted by half the search and rescue mountain teams
• Oxems have a solution for the new plastic pipes that are being deployed. The normal metal detectors cant detect these pipes so they have a RFID based solution.
• Pneumacare has a non-contact medicare solution that can be used to track people with respiratory problems
• MagicSolver.com has a unique app discovery solution that can reach upto 6 millions users in 90 different countries.
• Cambridge temperature concepts has a solution that can increase the chances of fertility without IVF to the same levels after 6 months use.


Interesting points from the breakout sessions:
• Mike Bowerman of Alcatel-Lucent: Soon we will see pricing based on time of day, location, etc. Infrastructure sharing lower costs but it means that coverage from some location can completely vanish.
• John frieslaar of Huawei talks about how many will be connected to networks and the cause of demand
• Stephen temple says industry must spur innovation not gov.agree but will gov let us?
• 75% of UK mobile data consumption is driven by BBC iplayer, YouTube and adult videos says Sam Leinhardt of Penthera
• Ed Candy, 3: Apps evolving from Handset Apps to Widgets to Intelligent Browsers based
• Content is king but context is queen
• O2 in UK started putting data caps and lost 7K customers in London. They were using 7% of network capacity so O2 happy to get rid of them


DAY 2
Stephen Baily, General Manager, BBC R&D
• BBC R&D iPlayer usage on tablets is 3million/mth 2% of total
• Dual screens being explored by BBC with a universal controller API. The proposal has been submitted to W3C.
• Working on Dual-Screen concept where iPad becomes a complimentary device to TV (See http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/40584/bbc-focused-ipad-dual-screen)
• BBC R&D iPlayer usage on tablets is 3million/mth 2% of total
• BBC is looking again at mobile broadcasting based on DVB-t2m standard
• 90% of broadcast os normal schedule than the time shifted one.

Dr. Tapani Ryhänen, Laboratory Director, heading Eurolab (Cambridge and Lausanne) of Nokia Research Centre
• Imagining tomorrow devices, creating technology today
• Morph concept video



• Nokia Research Center in Cambridge working in lots of futuristic technologies like Data driven Apps, Stretchable electronics, Bend to zoom, flexible phone and display
• Another video that I wasnt able to locate on Youtube


Few points from The "Can big wireless deliver on the promise of a big society?" Panel Debate
• Motorola's David Chater-Lea: "Due to spectrum needs we're going to see breakdown of barriers between commercial & private networks"
• Neul/Ofcom's William Webb: "To get a truely wireless society we need more small cells and increased backhaul. Then we need FTTH"
• Otherwise we're going to have situation where wireless will be held back by the wired network
• Public safety: should governments use private networks or commercial networks & give priority to emergency services over customers?



Graham Fisher, Former CEO of Orange Labs R&D, BathCube:
• Net neutrality doesn't work in a world of finite resources
• High end phones expectaions include screens that can work in sunlight, AR, 3D, etc.
• When it comes to retail price plans mobile operators are all in a bargain basement, they need to reintroduce value

Dan Reed, Corporate Vice President, Technology Policy and Strategy and eXtreme Computing Group at Microsoft
• The uber change happening is collision of computing/comms/content. We need to work out how to work together


Ken Blakeslee, Chairman of WebMobility Ventures:
• Digital natives vs digital immigrants
• Is mobile too inward looking?
• We're moving from hardware to software driven marketplace where communities are the new currency
• Users can be bought and bribed, communities can not


Interesting Obervation:
• Cambridge Wireless - run largely by women as an organisation but 95% of attendees at Future of Wireless conf #fwic are male


Poll of #fwic audience returns 50:50 re: whether mobile infrastructure should be common wholesale solution vs competitive between operators

Hopefully you have enjoyed this summary!

Sunday, 26 June 2011

Second hand report from the Femtocell World Summit 2011 (#FWS11)

Here is a summary from the Femtocells World Summit 2011 that I have compiled from different blogs and twitter. I was unable to be there, due to the expense, location and timing of this event it simply wasn’t feasible for me to attend. I am also disappointed that the organisers are not more welcoming of bloggers and do not understand how valuable our participation can be for the summit. Peronally, I would have taken a few pics of the exhibition, as I have done in the past, as it would have provided a better idea about the event to people in different parts of the world. Anyway, summay as follows:


DAY 1 began with Simon Saunders from the Femto Forum. Some of his points:

60% of consumers are interested in femtocells now Another interesting statistic was that there are now more 3G femtocells in the world than there are 3G macrocells, which again agrees with data stating that 60% of operators think small cells are more important than macrocells in the success of LTE.

According to the Ubiquisys blog: Simon’s thoughts are best summed up with a sort of rallying cry he came up with: “Our cells are small but our goals are not”!


This was followed by, Thilo Kirchinger, Principal Product Manager forVodafone Group. He discussed Vodafone’s operational stance on femtocells and small cells, and during which confirmed that Vodafone would indeed be launching LTE femtocells.

Thilo also spoke about how he sees femtocells integrating and being used by people in home environments. For example, instructions for home femtocells should be as simple, with as little technical information as possible, limiting potential confusion for the end user, while voice communications is still the biggest draw for this kind of residential femtocell (despite the fact that people tend to use a lot of data for things like app browsing when at home).
There are now 9 Vodafone subsidiaries with commercial femtocell service – almost a third of the total – and more are to follow shortly.
Research showed that some 34% of the UK either have insufficient or unsatisfactory indoor mobile coverage and Wi-Fi only partly solves the issue.
In summary, he'd like to see accelerated standardization of the Iu-h interface, for the femtocell supplier ecosystem to start engaging with the Connected Home industry and for femtocell costs to reduce further.
David Chambers of thinkfemtocell.com asked how operators, such as Vodafone, with strong brands of being the best mobile network and coverage could reconcile asking customers to pay for a box to fix poor coverage problems. Thilo felt that femtocells were complementary (especially for growing indoor use) and by offering both (ie great outdoor macrocell coverage plus great indoor femtocell service) it gave them competitive advantage. Another question related to 3rd party broadband internet – he reported that this hadn't been a problem, especially where customers conduct a speed test as part of the pre-sales process.


Telecom Italia’s Ferruccio Antonelli took the third slot of the day with a presentation focusing on the company’s commercial trial and proposed launch of femtocells in Italy.

Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM to the locals), has always been a bit of a trendsetter in the mobile industry and is one to watch. They have the highest penetration rate and smartphone takeup of any European country. They will launch femtocell services next month (the precise date is commercially withheld), with Alcatel-Lucent providing two sizes of femtocell (seems very similar to Vodafone products).
It won't be mandatory to use Telecom Italia broadband – any third party wireline/cable broadband can be used. While the pricing also can't be revealed, their billing system will be flexible enough to offer different prices when customers are using their "femtozone" at home.
It sounds like it’s been a time of experimentation in Italy for femtocells thus far, but signs are looking good, with Ferruccio stating that femtocells will see launch in the second half of 2011. There was also some discussion on Twitter stemming from Telecom Italia’s idea of a ‘femtozone’ tariff or simply keeping pricing the same.
A major issue for their implementation was the regulatory requirement to know if the femtocell has been moved (so that emergency services go to the right address) – this is checked by ensuring that at least one external macrocell ID is the same as when the unit was first installed and/or that the Telecom Italia broadband IP address matches.
Unusually, TIM want to have SIM cards to authenticate their femtocells – so for example faulty femtocells can be replaced and by swapping the SIM card would automatically reconfigure for that customer.

Some insights from South Korea was provided by Samson Tae-Yong Kim from SK Telecom, whose presentation focused on using femtocells for data offload.

Of particular note was the disparity raised by Kim in terms of data usage between different types of phone. For example, some smartphone users are consuming as much as 1 gig of data on an ‘all-you-can-eat’ plan in the same amount of time that it would take a feature phone user to consume 10 megs. It’s also worth mentioning at this point that 20% of mobile phone users in South Korea have smartphones, and this number is sure to grow.
South Korea Telecom (SKT) plan to deploy some 10,000 public hotspots before the end of the year, many equipped with both Wi-Fi and cellular. They've previously used a lot of repeaters to ensure excellent (voice) coverage, but now need to bring in heavy additional capacity and higher speeds.


Alcatel Lucent: Steve Kemp looked at how data usage is now ballooning – indeed, that we are now “nearing the practical limits of information theory” –
This is a generation that is watching 2 billion Facebook videos a month and 2 billion YouTube videos a day.
Alcatel-Lucent expects mobile traffic growth to be in the order of 30x in the next five years.
Just look at the iPad – users consumer twice as much data (and signalling) as the average iPhone user.
What’s the problem? Signal to noise. As Claude Shannon at Bell Labs in 1948 theorized, a network is limited intrinsically by the noise generated by the media and the users. As you get more users, it degrades the overall capacity of the network.
LTE, despite being more spectrally efficient than 3G, has a theoretical capacity limit, under Shannon’s Law, of 3.5 mbps per hertz.
The answer to this inescapable fact is to make the cell size smaller so that spectrum is more efficiently used. And use beam forming to focus spectrum where you need it, away from interference
Kemp then moved onto the business case for femtocells. You need initially to improve customer retention because keeping customers is a whole lot easier than gaining new ones.
Femtocells result in a 60% downlink improvement, and a 26% uplink improvement. With lower latency, customers are happier with their voice calls at home and churn less. You can build a business case for home femtocells on this alone.
Metro femtocells have even more compelling business case. The more traffic is offloaded onto small cells, the users on macro cell also see a service improvement.
Steve also raised a point that kept reappearing through the morning: iPads (and tablets in general) are far more data hungry than iPhones/smartphones, which is certainly food for thought when considering the sudden surge in popularity of these devices.
Alcatel-Lucent also announced their femtocell application developer kit, which is based on the recently published Femto Forum femtocell API specification. Already 23 developers have signed up to use it, with the first application to be made available by Telecom Italia when they launch.



As the morning progressed, it was the turn of Nigel Toon, CEO at Picochip, to present his thoughts and findings on the impact of femtocells on network performance and capacity.

Nigel noted that voice communication is still one of the most important reasons why people select a carrier. Nigel also raised the point that no one really knows by how much mobile data traffic usage is expanding (or due to expand), with various different proposals raised during day one of FWS 2011 alone.
Mobile data traffic exploding – you guess by how much. Is it 30x, 50x or even 1000x ?
Problem is carriers capex can’t grow at 1000x
Currently carriers spend, on average, 20% of their revenues on capex. And the cumulative amount of capex is increasing 8% year on year).
Need to serve customers more efficiently and at a lower cost.
Today a user in the middle of macrocell might only experience 40kbps. Tomorrow, with femtocells, the user can enjoy 8mbps while increasing the performance (less crowing on the macro) to 170 kbps.
The key to low cost deployment is self-organizing, self-configuring, interference management and remote management.
Picochip reaffirmed the issue of replacing repeaters with additional capacity, suggesting that rationing wasn't the right answer for customers who have grown to love data access. The web will only increase reliance on data connectivity and network operators will need to respond by building out a new network layer to meet demand.


Nitin Bhas from Juniper Research discussed the principals of mobile data offload and onload, where ‘offload’ means data migration from mobile to fixed, and ‘onload’ vice-versa. The spectre of tablets such as the iPad and smartphones being data hogs was once again raised during Nitin’s presentation, as was the important of the ‘offload’ of data due to this very reason.Mobile data traffic from smart phones, tablets and other devices to grow to 14,211 petabytes by 2015. This will be equivalent to 18 billion video downloads. By 2016, 63% of this will be offloaded to Wifi or femto.


Bill Chang, chief planning and strategy officer, UMobile explained that UMobile is a new challenger in Malaysia, challenging three well entrenched incumbents Digi (leader in price), Maxis (leader in products) and Celcom (leader in coverage.)
Malaysia has 120% penetration, expected to rise to 150% within 5 years. 28 m population.
70% of market revenues come from 8% coverage area. Highly urbanised. So when UMobile launched in 2007, made sense to target where 70% of the revenue was coming from.
Currently has 1200 node Bs and roaming onto 2G partner network.
Price is in decline in Malaysia, ARPUS are falling for voice. The market has reached revenue saturation.
Operators need data centric growth and they need it to be low costs business case. Makes sense to use femtocells. (In Malaysia, smartphones make up 65% of new phone sales)
Umobile has limited capex, so trialling femtos with Alcatel-Lucent. Using home and hotspot femtos.
Plan to launch femtos commercially. Will improve indoor coverage, data offload, reducing roaming costs (because they have to pay their 2G partner) and bundled services.
Malaysian govt has target of 75% BB penetration by 2016.
“Its a no brainer for us to give away femtos for free”
However their strategy is somewhat hampered by a local regulation (tax) of around US$600 per cellsite – not really significant for macrocells, but a serious problem for thousands of femtocells.


Continuous Computing launched their "Femtotality" software product. No longer limited to just the protocol stacks, they've invested an additional 150 man years in their application layer (I believe this figure includes an acquisition, otherwise their 200 staff would have been working a lot of overtime) and now offer SON (Self Optimisation), remote management and configuration features too.


NTT DoCoMo was able to restore cellular service after the earthquake/tsunami in just 6 weeks after 4,900 cellsites were put out of service in the Tohoku region alone - femtocells were part of the solution. They plan to switch off their 2G service next year and have already launched LTE. They intend to deploy LTE femtocells as soon as possible.


Finally, Broadcom’s Shlomo Gadot gave a provocative presentation where he outlined a compelling vision for femtocell technology. He sees no reason why Wi-Fi hardware should be cheaper than femto in future, and named integration as a key trend. Following this trend, Shlomo gave more details of the forthcoming integrated WiFi/Femto/ADSL residential gateway, the first of its kind, announced by Ubiquisys earlier that same day.


DAY 2

Dr Alan Law of Vodafone Group talking about femtocells beyond the home.

Vodafone’s vision started with consumer cells, and great things are happening both at home and abroad with this arm of their femtocell operation. But where do you take femtocells when looking beyond residential?
Vodafone has been trialling its enterprise and rural cells, and some interesting information emerged when Dr Law recounted some statistics from their rural and enterprise test deployments. The amount of dropped calls noticeably decreased when voice and data was offloaded onto the femtocell – which means better quality of service for Vodafone’s customers. There are still some challenging aspects to rural deployment such as IP transport and power locations, but on the whole results were positive.
Vodafone’s enterprise femto trials have also been successful, with data services noticeably enhanced in enterprise environments when femtocells were brought into the mix. The company’s ‘Metrozone’ concept would provide extra network capacity for data offload in denser urban areas.


Next there was a fascinating presentation from Rick Vergin, CEO of Mosaic Telecoms. He represents a rural telco, and outlined the problems of serving customer who live predominately in farmland or forest. It is desperate to deploy femtocells to not just plug gaps, but create coverage for the first time. Cellular coverage is the chief concern: macrocells can provide coverage to population centers (towns over 200 people) and microcells can support where people gather regularly (schools, for instance). But thousands live outside this coverage area.

First problem is geography: most of Mosaic’s customers live towns with 200 people up to a small city with 9000. But the 9000 square mile coverage area within its 3G license, comprises mostly farmland or forest – and potentially 100,000 people.
Mosaic runs 3G in band IV, a relatively underused part of the spectrum from a global perspective. This has caused unprecedented problems with femtocell vendors, with Airvana, Technicolor and Arcadyan all contracted only to subsequently drop out one at a time. Finally, with the guidance of Nokia Siemens, Ubiquisys was selected.
Farmland is not so bad, but forest is very challenging for the Mosaic’s 35 macro cell sites. CEO Rick Vergin lives 200m from a main road, and 2 miles from the nearest macro cell. On the road, he has line of site and 4 bar coverage, at home he barely has 1 bar coverage. Many of the potential customers in their licensed area have no coverage.
The femtos will bring coverage to people with currently little or no coverage. Moscaic has no intention to use femtos to create ubiquitous coverage – that would be way too expensive. But what they can do is give subscribers coverage most of the time: at home, at school, at the cafe. It will only be on the journeys between that they may have no bars.
The rural customers of Mosaic will also benefit from LTE because it will be used to backhaul the femto traffic and also provide broadband access for the first time (remember many of these properties will be far away from an exchange and may not use satellite or microwave. Mosaic will use the 750MHz LTE for residential broadband access, and bundle VoIP and femto/cellular with it. (750MHz is much more spectrally efficient than its 1700/2100 MHz 3G spectrum).
This is a great case study for not just the 1000 rural US telco but for any operator that either operates in the rural segment or has universal access obligations.



Peter Agnew of Colt Telecom took to the stage to present his views on what it takes to overcome the barriers to launching a femtocell service through fixed and mobile collaboration. If that sounds like a bit of a mouthful, all will become clearer in a minute!

Colt Telecom is a large pan-european fixed line operator, working in 21 countries with organisations such as major banks. Peter proposed that in working together with a fixed line operator such as Colt, mobile operators will have an ally in femtocell deployment, aiding connectivity, quality of service and increasing the mobile operator’s access to enterprises.
In essence, what Peter and Colt are proposing is ‘femto-as-a-service’ (‘FaaS’), which was met with some figurative nods of approval on Twitter. Peter finished his presentation by noting that for something like FaaS to work, self-organising network technology would almost certainly need to play a role in such a deployment.
It’s an important development for operators wanting to take their first steps in femto, which often starts with the low-risk bit low-volume enterprise route. This solution is the first to remove the barrier of high up-front gateway and integration costs, and the subsequent reliance on volume in the business case.
Another approach, and its not one that COLT said it would necessarily be offering, is to provide in-building installs (as long as there is not radio planning). It makes sense for a business telco with experience of firewalls, LANs and so on to assist both enterprise and mobile operator in this area.
In dense metropolitan areas, most subscribers are sitting within an office. It makes sense to bring coverage closer to these users, and not charge the enterprise for this (either for the access points or in-building cabling). It improves the coverage of the enterprise subscribers and for everyone else in the macro – both are sufficient incentives for the mobile operator to foot the bill.
However, more bandwidth available means more consumed. COLT asks, do mobile operators have the fixed-line infrastructure and core-network to cope with the increase in backhaul requirement?


Cisco’s Mark Grayson, spoke about mobile offload architectures. One of Mark’s main points that resonated with the Twitter audience following the #FWS11 hashtag was that the cost for networks is dealing with the non-uniform peaks in mobile internet demand.
In their previous experience with large sporting events like the Superbowl, Cisco noted that the volume of traffic leaving the stadium was greater than the volume entering – all thanks to social media services such as Facebook, YouTube, etc. with people sharing content, something that Intel’s Steve Price raised later on.
Mark suggested that the move to small cells will require a change in mindset, and put forward a suggestion for using converged Wi-Fi/femto architectures for macro offload of indoor traffic – and he also noted that cellular small cells would need to prove themselves at the high densities already deployed with WiFi.


Ubiquisys’ CTO and Founder Will Franks, with a presentation on the next generation of small cells.

Will started things off with a brief discussion on the evolution and naming of small cells, describing how things have progressed from early residential femtos, all the way to some of the especially advanced outdoor and rural models.
The building blocks for the next generation of intelligent small cells, Will stated, are 3G, LTE and Wi-Fi. This, combined with the continuous adaptive behaviour offered by our self-organising network technology, helps Ubiquisys small cells to form part of the recently discussed ‘Edge Cloud’ – something also raised in Intel’s presentation.
Will went on to describe how small cell hotpots will be deployed in the real world, and broke down small cell technology into layers. Starting with the hardware platform (featuring Texas Instruments’ simultaneous dual-mode 3G/LTE), through continuous self organization and self organizing networks, and on to edge cloud computing platforms (Intel) and cloud control systems.
Ubiquisys reported that Softbank Japan have been able to deploy rural femtocells in just 3 days using satellite backhaul. Their "self optimising femto grid" even works for clusters of rural femtocells at 2km range.



Competitive operator Network Norway, thinks it has the answer for small businesses in Norway.
Combine mobile centrex with femtocells. Norway is a country that was at the leading edge of fixed-mobile substitution.
According to Network Norway, 64% of all calls originate on a mobile and 79% of call minutes terminate on a mobile. This is a very mobile friendly country and, believed Network Norway, businesses would be very receptive to mobile centrex.
The problem is buildings: all that concrete, glass and basements make ditching the desk phone an impossibility unless you can bring the mobile network indoors. DAS (distributed antennae systems) are too expensive for most small businesses. Femtocells are not.
Network Norway launched a small business femtocells to make their Mobile Centrex service more compelling. The mobile PaBX service offers hunt groups, stats on attendant function, private number plans, conferencing etc.
What is interesting to me is that they have built smartphone apps (for Ovi, iPhone and Android) which allows users to set up conferences and see presence/availability in contacts (which comes from femtocells).
In other nomenclature, this is called “collaboration”. Or even unified communications, if you use the IM, email and SMS functions on your smart phone.
So benefits for small businesses: flexible communications, collaboration, guaranteed coverage in the office, seamless experience, no capex.


The last presentation day 2 featured Steve Price of Intel, with a look at how to ‘differentiate the small cell user experience with an intelligent, application enabling architecture’.


The internet and mobile internet are both growing rapidly, with the “Gigabit Generation” particular fixated on social networking, which now has a considerable impact on network traffic at large. Service providers are now presented with a great opportunity, Steve said, as they can now take advantage of the fact that they are directly involved in the process.
The next step is to make sure that intelligence is present throughout the network – and just as important is its location. These intelligent services ensure that the user will be getting a better experience in the end.
The two key trends identified by Intel were cloud RAN, with China Mobile named as an example, and edge cloud, where the Intel-Ubiquisys collaboration was given as a prime example.



Individual Contribution: Tom Lismer
Residential Femtocell Access Point Design and Technology Innovation: Picochip
Non-residential femtocell access point design and technology innovation: Alcatel-Lucent
Femtocell Network element design and technology innovation: ip.access
Femtocell Application: New service or technology: Alcatel-Lucent
Progress in commercial deployment: Huawei
Commercial deployment – Marketing Campaign: Vodafone
Commercial Deployment – technical implementation: Vodafone
Contribution to Femtocell Standards: Nokia Siemens Networks
Enabling Technology: Texas Instrument
Social Vision: NEC
Judges Choice: Rakon

Complete Details on Femto Forum Website here.


DAY 3

Surprisingly there wasnt much coverage from Day 3. My observation is that by the third day, the people get really tired and its just the analysts who are still around learning, discussing and participating as much as they can. The only summary I found is from the Think Femtocell blog. Here are few interesting points:

The femto vendor community seems to be frustrated by the slow rollout of Femtos by the network. The technology has been proven and from what I see, if a network is rolling out Femtos, they are getting good reviews and reception from the user community, even though they may have to shell out a few bucks.

Verizon reported tremendous success when using their femtocell (the Verizon Wireless Extender) to reduce churn. They've also successfully offloaded heavy users from their macro network in Chicago, by sending them a free femtocell – both improving speeds for those high users as well as releasing capacity on the macro network for others to benefit from. Their femtocell solution works well and they're very happy with it. You still can't buy a femtocell in a Verizon store because It doesn't fit with their corporate branding of having the best network.

In contrast, Vodafone don't seem to have suffered any loss of brand image by promoting Sure Signal – their network brand remains strong and is arguably strengthened by saying they are the only one who can truly guarantee full service indoors anywhere (assuming there is a DSL line to connect with). Vodafone Ireland jokingly apologised for the lower approval figure than Vodafone Greece during their femtocell trials - only 96% (against 98% in Greece) would recommend them to their friends and family. They explained how they had carefully crafted their marketing message to celebrate the positive aspects of their customer's individual homes (thick woods, stone buildings, basement flats etc.) and how simple it was for them to have 5 bar coverage.

Comcast have built out a lot of Wi-Fi hotspot capacity in addition to their wireline/cable services. They believe in the long term, the usage mix of traffic on wireless will be a similar profile to wireline today – say 50% entertainment (including video), 20% web surfing; a total of 13GB/month. Comcast has deployed some 5000 WiFi hotspots so far, and plan to build out 100K over the coming years.

Wi-Fi has some new features coming – the new HotSpot 2.0, which Comcast will be trialling later this year. Greater use of the 5GHz spectrum will help reduce congestion in high traffic areas. Sports stadiums seem to be the biggest challenge – many users wanting to watch video at the same time, with others trying to use Mi-Fi (cellular to Wi-Fi adaptors) at the same time/in the same spectrum.

Contela explained how they use femtocells in Korea to offload data traffic. Unusually, the system deals with voice and data traffic differently – switching voice calls to the normal macro network while handling as much data traffic as possible through femtocells and Wi-Fi.

TOT, Thailand, a relatively new entrant to mobile explained how they can install femtocells at public payphone booths as a quick way to find sites with backhaul connectivity (using DSL) and power. Getting the height of the unit is important – it needs to be slightly out of reach. They also showed their disaster recovery solution – which uses femtocells + satellite backhaul and can be rapidly deployed. In these situations, providing a fixed/wireline phone service isn't useful – most people now have all their phone numbers held in their mobile phone and not written down. Mesh backhaul, linking clusters of femtocells to each other using wireless and aggregating the backhaul to a few egress points, is also a useful option – a maximum of 5 "hops" using a so-called spine and rib architecture matches urban street layouts.

Stuart Carlaw from ABI Research. Growing number of employees have more than one phone they use in the office (one corporate + one personal). Both phones have mixed voice/data use. After some retrenchment in 2009, voice has continued to grow and is now 779 minutes average for corporate users. Video and picture messaging are being used by enterprise users (on their corporate liable phone) more than ever before. The growing demands of employees are giving their IT departments a major headache, for which enterprise femtocells will be a major part of the solution.

The Femtocell Application developers toolkit from Alcatel-Lucent isn't locked into their solution. Applications developed and tested using their SDK should also work with any other femtocell system that also conforms to the Femtocell Application API.

There were a number of operators present at the conference who are clearly there in an active capacity. Most were pretty tight lipped about their plans, but all seem to acknowledge that femtocells will play some part in the story.


Some Final thoughts from the Ubiquisys Blog.

The latest Informa femtocell market status report, produced for the Femto Forum this week, confirms the strong growth trend with nine new commercial launches in the past quarter alone.

Both operators and vendors alike were talking about femto technology being used in public-space small-cell hotspots to provide a capacity boost in high demand areas. At least half of the presentations touched on this topic in one way or another. Is it because the growth in data demand is beginning to be felt? Or is it that the low opex and backhaul costs of femto are making a strong business case? In any case, many of the questions about public space small cells were mentioned, such as interoperability with the macro layer and how the necessary high density deployment of small cells will be achieved. The questions were mentioned, but solutions were not – a sure sign of innovative work in progress.

Colt Telecom unveiled femtocell infrastructure as a service. Because many operators want to make their first femto launch into a low-risk segment, they often opt for SME (small business) rather than consumer segments. Yet the lower volumes in SME can damage the business case, because the upfront costs of the core gateway and systems integration are shared between fewer customers. By offering an incremental managed service cost, fixed line provider Colt might just have made it easier for mobile operators to start femto services.

Broadcom unveiled a fully integrated femto residential gateway, Texas Instruments won an award for their powerful new 3G/LTE SoC, and Intel presented a future powered by compute platforms in both cloud RAN and edge cloud environments.

There was a degree of consensus that LTE will be seen first in small cell hotspots, the same hotspots that need to deal with a deluge of 3G data demand over the next few years. Several speakers mentioned that this calls for small cells that can run 3G and LTE simultaneously, like those new SoCs from TI.

A few years ago you would have seen quite a few femto vs. Wi-Fi presentations, but no more, which is quite a relief to us, as we have been behind combined femto-Wi-Fi devices since 2008. There was much discussion of harmonisation in home and business environments. In public spaces, the idea of tri-mode small cells replacing Wi-Fi hotspots was raised. These would maintain the Wi-Fi capability, but add 3G and LTE cellular, opening the possibility of using cellular’s invisible “login” to replace Wi-Fi’s usual usernames and passwords.


Sources:

Pics Source - Ubiquisys Blog

Report compiled from:

Monday, 20 June 2011

Roaming with the IP eXchange (IPX)


From Wikipedia:

Traditionally, voice traffic interconnection between different operators has utilized the international SS7/TDM networks. However, lately the all-IP paradigm with VoIP is being rapidly introduced by different operators in various forms, such as IMS. In order to minimize the number of conversions between packet-switched voice and circuit-switched voice there is a clear need to deploy an IP based NNI (Network-to-Network Interface) and therefore an IP based interconnection network.

It is also evident that a large number of IP based services (such as Presence or IM) simply cannot be interconnected using a SS7/TDM network, further increasing the need for evolution into an IP based interconnection network.

Since the year 2000 GSM operators have been using GRX (GPRS Roaming Exchange) network for routing the IP based commercial roaming traffic between visited and home operators. Mainly 2.5G and 3G data roaming has been using GRX. GRX is a private IP network (separated from internet) consisting of multiple different GRX carriers that are connected to each other via peering points. However, GRX is limited only to GSM operator community and not all GRX's are capable of meeting the demands of real-time services.

Even though the GRX environment is not entirely suitable as a common IP network for interconnection and roaming, it offers a good starting point for the development of IPX. IPX development has been done in various GSM Association projects and working groups since 2004.


The following presentation is from LTE World Summit:

Monday, 6 June 2011

Billing based on QoS and QoE

With Spectrum coming at a price the operators are keen to make as much money as possible out of the data packages being provided to the consumers. The operators want to stop users using over the top (OTT) services like Skype thereby losing potential revenue. They also want the users to stop using services that are offered by the operator thereby maximising their revenue.

A valid argument put forward by the operators is that 90% of the bandwidth is used by just 10% of the users. This gives them the reason to look at the packets and restrict the rogue users.

As a result they are now turning to deep packet inspection (DPI) to make sure that the users are not using the services they are being restricted to use. AllOt is one such company offering this service.

The following presentation is from the LTE World Summit:



They also have some interesting Videos on the net that have been embedded below. They give a good idea on the services being offered to the operators.



Finally, a term QoS and QoE always causes confusion. Here is a simple explanation via Dan Warren on twitter:

QoS = call gets established and I can hear what is being said, everything else is QoE

Sunday, 22 May 2011

LTE World Summit 2011 - Pics and Notes from Day 1

Here are few pics and discussions from the day 1 of LTE world summit 2011. They are quite brief and I will try and add some info from the tweets as well.

Adrian Scrase from 3GPP said that as there are already over 200 operators committed to LTE, its the fastest growing mobile technology ever.

Bart Weijermars from TMobile Netherlands said future growth will be data centric fuelled by appealing terminals, new usages, broadband and ubiquity.

Future challenges include Network sharing, required to keep the cost under control; everyone allowed to roam freely everywhere; all the content is stored in the cloud and voip is the only option for voice.

New services will be possible with the advent of '4G' but care has to be taken because background apps are already using up a lot of capacity.

There is still work that needs to be done on Spectrum, Smartphone challenges and Network of networks.

Huawei has been one of the main sponsors of the event and the award and Ying Weimin spoke on how LTE is the way to more competitive Mobile Broadband.

According to him, wireless solution is a personalized solution and will go everywhere you go.

Spectrum is the main concern though as a combination of low and high frequency will be needed. Hetnets are coming and they will be the future of the networks.

The way forward is to start the LTE with data only and build on top of that. The network should be simple evolution and will contain of cloud baseband, wideband RRU and AAS.

Pocket Wifi is definitely going to be a killer device and Innovative LTE business and Apps will be needed in the long term like Instant LTE broadcast, Wireless Video surveillance, etc.

LTE is faster than expected and this is the reason there are so many operator commitments. Huawei has 40+ LTE contracts and 10 have already been launched. This is just the beginning.


Seizo Onoe from NTT Docomo spoke about Crossy. In fact during Christmas the employees were wishing each other 'Merry Crossy'. Docomo believes that the users dont care about HSPA or LTE so the Crossy is a service they are selling to the users.

Docomo are getting 75Mbps max DL speeds (using 10MHz band). The phones are capable of 100Mbps though (category 3).

Docomo has recently announced 24 new devices. 2 are Wifi routers. Unlimited data plans on the LTE network cost 5000 yens.

On the spectrum side they are expecting the LTE network to co-exist with UMTS and will be using the 2.1GHz band. In fact Docomo thinks that 2.1GHz should be the universal band that all devices should support so In future when the networks are deployed all these existing devices start working without problems.

The RRE equipment that Docomo has been deploying works with both HSPA and LTE.

Japan has already shutdown its 2G PDC networks but other cannot do the same for GSM. Onoe-san believes that we should stop the evolution of 2G as EDGE has still been evolving and we should focus all the energy into LTE evolution.

Onoe-san did emphasise that LTE is 3.9G and not 4G.

I did check with Onoe-san later that as FOMA was not compliant to the '3G' standards completely, is Crossy compliant to the LTE Specs completely and he said it is.

Onoe-san also said that ETWS was very helpful in the recent tsunami in Japan and services like these should be standardised quickly as they will be useful for someone or the other.


Thomas Wehelier from Informa presented the survey results of LTE ecosystem.

In 2011, the LTE deployments will quadruple but 2012 will have most deployments. Spectrum fragmentation is still prevalent but the core bands for LTE are 800MHz, 1800MHz and 2.6GHz. Capacity still cited as a big driver for the deployments.

TD-LTE represents a new market and new opportunity. In fact Ericsson bills this a year of TD-LTE.


Chris Kimm from Verizon spoke on their 2020 vision.

In Dec. 10 Verizon were covering 110 million people in the US by 2013 the plan is that 290 million will have LTE coverage. In fact LTE was launched in new cities on the day. At the moment though only 250K users are using LTE.

The rate of change is breathtaking and as a result CIO has changed from Chief Information officer to chief innovation officer.

In the Q&A, Chris said that they will deploy voice in 2012 using VoLTE. OTT voice will also be ok.
Tommy Ljunggren from Teliasonera spoke of their LTE deployments.

Last year they had 2 'kids' (as he called their networks) but now they have 4 more. Norway and Sweden got their LTE network in 2009. Network in Finland was launched 30th Nov. 2010. Then on 9th Dec 2010 network in Denmark was launched followed by Estonia on 17th Dec. 2010 and finally Lithuania on 28th April 2011. In fact in Estonia the network was launched 6 minutes after the auction.

Their deployments are in 800/1800/2600 MHz band. This will give them capacity and coverage.

In Sweden the downlink speed is over 20Mbps. In Nordics and Baltics the end users can roam without borders.

Once consumers are using 4G they dont want to go back to 3G. During the royal wedding on Stockholm last year, LTE was used by a TV station to transmit from 6 movable cameras without the need of satellite or any other connection. The transmit was without jitters and a revolution. Nippon TV used LTE to transmit the Noble Peace prize live from Sweden to Tokyo. In fact a bank uses 4G connection as a backup.

TeliaSonera plans to make money by having data caps in place, monthly fees, etc. VoIP would be charged. Right now the charges are €60 for 30GB allowance on LTE.


Cameron Rejali from BT Wholesale spoke on whether the future of mobile was fixed.

According to him WiFi offload is just the start as whenever the speed of the network increases the data usage increases as well.

The network has to do a balancing act. Greater user experience versus network complexity and seamless mobility.

Finally with LTE we will have true convergence at last. The future of mobile is fixed and that of fixed is mobile.

Panel Discussion:

Adrian Scrase brought up the topic of Global Roaming. As there are already 30 bands specified for LTE, do we need a roaming band that should be standardised. Should this band be an Industry initiative or will it be market driven?

The consensus was that this will be market driven.

Question was asked if LTE will be more profitable than previous technology.

NTT Docomo believes that LTE as a technology cannot generate new revenues but the services around it can.

Adrian Scrase asked the question that a lot of Services are defined by the standards but most of them do not get deployed. Does NTT DoComo think ETWS has been defined correctly as per the standards.

Onoe-san from NTT Docomo said that this service has been of utmost importance in the recent tsunami disaster. Even though the service was implemented and available on the phones, it was not used so people were not aware of it. So when the disaster struck everyone was surprised to receive this message. Now everyone knows about this service. Docomo has been using meteorological data since 2009 for this service.

In response to another question Tommy from TeliaSonera said that they will have CSFB next year for voice and VoLTE later. I asked similar question to Onoe-san about the voice support in crossy devices and he said that they will support CSFB. Someone did mention in the panel discussion that VoLTE is not needed and CSFB is enough.

That was my summary of the first day of #LTEWS. You can read the twitter conversations that have much more information.