Is mobile eating the world?

Another interesting and thought provoking presentation by Ben Evans. His earlier presentation which was very popular as well, is here. The video and slides are embedded below.


How Mobile is Enabling Tech to Outgrow the Tech Industry from Andreessen Horowitz on Vimeo.

And a recent interview by Benedict Evans with Bloomberg TV on the same topic as follows:

LTE-Broadcast: Reality check

When I wrote my blog post about why the 'Cellular Broadcast may fail again' for the Cisco SP Mobility blog, I did not realise that this would become so popular and there would be so many people writing to me to tell me why and how my assumptions are wrong and how they plan to succeed. I have not yet received a successful reasoning on why people disagree with my article and where I am wrong.

In the Video Over LTE Summit just concluded, I did not get a chance to see all the LTE-B presentations but the ones that I saw, were not convincing enough, except for one by Erol Hepsaydir, of '3' UK, that I explain in the end.

Here is my presentation from that event:

LTE-Broadcast: Reality Check from eXplanoTech

The conclusion is not self-explanatory so here it is in my own words.

I am not opposed to the operators trying LTE-B out. I wish more operators do try and hopefully we can have a model where the technology can succeed. When operators succeed in a new technology, it benefits the whole mobile ecosystem directly or indirectly. The operators have to be prepared that they may not see any return. This should not discourage them because the learnings from this may benefit in something else. The customer and their loyalty is more important. We should try and provide them with a value addition rather than think of this as a new source of revenue. People are not interested in watching the same stuff they watch on the terrestrial TV on their small devices; unique and maybe tailored content would help. Finally, don't make the billing model too complex so the users shy away from trying this new technology.

The final presentation of the event was delivered by Erol Hepsaydir of the UK operator '3'. He said that from their point of view, they are trying to have eMBMS to create additional capacity in the network. If they know that many people watch news on different apps and websites, they can offer this as a free service over broadcast. What this means is that they have gained customer loyalty and also free up the capacity for other users who are doing other data related activities. I think this is a very clever approach. He did mention though that they are only in the simulation stages and have not tried it out practically. 

Internet Trends 2014, by Mary Meeker

Its June, time for the Internet Trends update by Mary Meeker, KPCB. Last year's update has crossed 3 million views on Slideshare. So many interesting slides, difficult to pick up some of the best ones to add here. I have selected a few that I really liked. The first being the growth in Smartphones and Tablets, as compared to PC's and Television's.

The other very interesting point to highlight is that the number of SMS's are decreasing and the number of OTT messages are rising. Just two days back, BITKOM, Germany released the news that SMS's are declining drastically in Germany. OTT's are taking over, rightly so.

Finally, with people doing too much multi-tasking, the above slide highlights what people are doing while watching TV.

Here is the complete set of slides:

KPCB: Mary Meeker Internet Trends 2014 @ July 2014 from Brian Crotty

Related news on the web:

• Forbes: Are We In A Tech Bubble? Not Really, According To Mary Meeker's Latest Report
• Business Insider: Mary Meeker's Stunning 2014 Presentation On The State Of The Web
• Quartz: Mary Meeker’s 2014 internet trends report: all the slides plus highlights
• Forbes: Mary Meeker's Web Video Love Affair
• Guardian: Mary Meeker: 2015 will be about 'findable data' and mobile sensors
• Business Insider, Australia: In 3 Big Slides, Here's Why Mary Meeker Is Optimistic About The Future Of American Healthcare
• Tech2: What Mary Meeker’s 2014 trends report says about India’s Internet usage

Mobile, Context and Discovery - Ben Evans

An Interesting presentation and Video from Benedict Evans, both embedded below:

There is an interesting Q&A at the end of the talk in the video. You can directly jump to 27:30 marker for the Q&A. One of the interesting points highlighted by him, that I always knew but was not able to convey it across is there is no real point comparing Google and Apple. I am too lazy to type down so please jump to 45:10. One of the comment on the Youtube summarises it well:

"Google is a vast machine learning engine... and it spent 10-15 years building that learning engine and feeding it data"

So true. It is not Apple vs Google; it is not about the present. It is about the future (see Google's recent acquisitions for context). As Benedict says, if Google creates beautiful, meaningful and unique experiences for users, why would they do it only for Android, they would also have it on Apple devices. 

In the end, comparing Apple and Google is like comparing Apple(s) and Oranges :)

The Rise and Rise or '4G' - Update on Release-11 & Release-12 features

A recent GSMA report suggests that China will be a significant player in the field of 4G with upto 900 million 4G users by 2020. This is not surprising as the largest operator, China Mobile wants to desperately move its user base to 4G. For 3G it was stuck with TD-SCDMA or the TDD LCR option. This 3G technology is not as good as its FDD variant, commonly known as UMTS.

This trend of migrating to 4G is not unique to China. A recent report (embedded below) by 4G Americas predicts that by the end of 2018, HSPA/HSPA+ would be the most popular technology whereas LTE would be making an impact with 1.3 Billion connected devices. The main reason for HSPA being so dominant is due to the fact that HSPA devices are mature and are available now. LTE devices, even though available are still slightly expensive. At the same time, operators are taking time having a seamless 4G coverage throughout the region. My guess would be that the number of devices that are 4G ready would be much higher than 1.3 Billion.

It is interesting to see that the number of 'Non-Smartphones' remain constant but at the same time, their share is going down. It would be useful to breakdown the number of Smartphones into 'Phablets' and 'non-Phablets' category.

Anyway, the 4G Americas report from which the information above is extracted contains lots of interesting details about Release-11 and Release-12 HSPA+ and LTE. The only problem I found is that its too long for most people to go through completely.

The whitepaper contains the following information:

3GPP Rel-11 standards for HSPA+ and LTE-Advanced were frozen in December 2012 with the core network protocols stable in December 2012 and Radio Access Network (RAN) protocols stable in March 2013. Key features detailed in the paper for Rel-11 include:

HSPA+:

• 8-carrier downlink operation (HSDPA)
• Downlink (DL) 4-branch Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antennas
• DL Multi-Flow Transmission
• Uplink (UL) dual antenna beamforming (both closed and open loop transmit diversity)
• UL MIMO with 64 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (64-QAM)
• Several CELL_FACH (Forward Access Channel) state enhancements (for smartphone type traffic) and non-contiguous HSDPA Carrier Aggregation (CA)

LTE-Advanced:

• Carrier Aggregation (CA)
• Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (MBMS) and Self Organizing Networks (SON)
• Introduction to the Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) feature for enabling coordinated scheduling and/or beamforming
• Enhanced Physical Control Channel (EPDCCH)
• Further enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (FeICIC) for devices with interference cancellation

Finally, Rel-11 introduces several network and service related enhancements (most of which apply to both HSPA and LTE):

• Machine Type Communications (MTC)
• IP Multimedia Systems (IMS)
• Wi-Fi integration
• Home NodeB (HNB) and Home e-NodeB (HeNB)

3GPP started work on Rel-12 in December 2012 and an 18-month timeframe for completion was planned. The work continues into 2014 and areas that are still incomplete are carefully noted in the report.  Work will be ratified by June 2014 with the exception of RAN protocols which will be finalized by September 2014. Key features detailed in the paper for Rel-12 include:

HSPA+:

• Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) Heterogeneous Networks (HetNet)
• Scalable UMTS Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) bandwidth
• Enhanced Uplink (EUL) enhancements
• Emergency warning for Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN)
• HNB mobility
• HNB positioning for Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA)
• Machine Type Communications (MTC)
• Dedicated Channel (DCH) enhancements

LTE-Advanced:

• Active Antenna Systems (AAS)
• Downlink enhancements for MIMO antenna systems
• Small cell and femtocell enhancements
• Machine Type Communication (MTC)
• Proximity Service (ProSe)
• User Equipment (UE)
• Self-Optimizing Networks (SON)
• Heterogeneous Network (HetNet) mobility
• Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Services (MBMS)
• Local Internet Protocol Access/Selected Internet Protocol Traffic Offload (LIPA/SIPTO)
• Enhanced International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced (eIMTA) and Frequency Division Duplex-Time Division Duplex Carrier Aggregation (FDD-TDD CA)

Work in Rel-12 also included features for network and services enhancements for MTC, public safety and Wi-Fi integration, system capacity and stability, Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC), further network energy savings, multimedia and Policy and Charging Control (PCC) framework.

Whitepaper: 4G Mobile Broadband Evolution: 3GPP Release 11 & Release 12 and Beyond from Zahid Ghadialy

2014 Mobile Internet Prediction Survey

Interesting presentation by Chetan Sharma listing what we can expect in 2014. Slide 9 as shown in the picture above highlights the breakthrough categories. Good to see that LTE-B ('B' for broadcast) has not made it into this list. My guess is that connected cars and wearable computing will be in the news constantly throughout the year.

The complete presentation as follows:

Mobile Video Offload using Wi-Fi is the only solution in the coming years

A very interesting infographic from Skyfire some months back highlighted some very valid issues about Video on mobiles.

Personally, I do watch quite a bit of video on my phone and tablet but only when connected using Wi-Fi. Occasionally when I am out, if someone sends me video clip on Whatsapp or some link to watch Video on youtube, I do try and see it. Most of the time the quality is too disappointing. It could be because my operator has been rated as the worst operator in UK. Anyway, as the infographic above suggests, there needs to be some kind of an optimisation done to make sure that end users are happy. OR, the users cn offload to Wi-Fi when possible to get a better experience.

This is one of the main reasons why operators are actively considering offloading to Wi-Fi and have carrier WiFi solutions in place. The standards are actively working in the same direction. Two of my recent posts on the topic of 'roaming using ANDSF' and 'challenges with seamless cellular/Wi-Fi handover' have been quite popular.

Recently I attended a webinar on the topic of 'Video Offload'. While the webinar reinforced my beliefs about why offload should be done, it did teach me a thing or two (like when is a Hotspot called a Homespot - see here). The presentation and the Video is embedded below. Before that, I want to show the result of a poll conducted during the webinar where the people present (and I would imagine there were quite a few people) were asked about how they think MNO will approach the WiFi solution in their network. Result as follows:

Here is the presentation:

Video Offload -Six trends you NEED to understand! from Zahid Ghadialy

Here is the video of the event:

The Relentless Rise of Mobile Technology

Mobiles have been rising and rising. Couple of weeks back I read 'Mobile is considered the first and most important screen by nearly half of the 18- to 34-year-old demographic, according to research commissioned by Weve.'

The finding placed mobile ahead of laptops or PCs (chosen by 30.6 per cent) and way ahead of TV (12.4 per cent) as the first and most important screen in the lives of people between the ages of 18 and 34. 

Just 5.8 per cent of those surveyed in the age group chose a tablet as their "first screen".
The research also found that 45 per cent of 18- to 34-year-olds consider their mobile their first choice of device when interacting with online content, placing the platform just ahead of laptops and PCs, which scored 43 per cent. 

Among the wider 18 to 55 age group surveyed, a PC or laptop was seen as the "first screen" with 39.8 per cent naming either computer as their most important screen, while smartphones came second on 28 per cent. 

TV was in third place with 27 per cent of people naming it as their most important screen. Five per cent of the total group said they considered a tablet their "first screen". 

Only a quarter of the 18 to 55 age group said mobile would be their first choice platform if they wanted to access the internet, while nearly two thirds preferred to use a PC or laptop.

Tomi Ahonen has always been referring to Mobile as the 7th Mass Media.

So when I saw this above picture (and there are more of them) in Ben Evaans slide deck (embedded below), it just reiterated my belief that Mobile will take over the world sooner or later. Anyway, the slides are interesting to go through.

500 Billion devices by 2030, etc...

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.

Friday rant: OTT, Viber, Roaming, etc.

The same old story, mobile operators are seeing that their revenue is not growing, even though they are upgrading their networks and introducing new features / technologies. The following is from Total Telecom:

The global telecom services market generated revenue of €1.12 trillion in 2012, although at 2.7% growth was slower than in the previous year, according to the 2013 DigiWorld Yearbook published by IDATE on Thursday.

The "DigiWorld" as a whole - which also includes telecoms hardware, software and computer services, computer hardware, TV services, consumer electronics and Internet services – recorded revenues of €3.17 trillion last year, up 2.8% on 2011. By 2016 that figure will have risen to €3.66 trillion, IDATE predicts, with telecoms services contributing €1.25 trillion (see chart).

Telecoms operators are experiencing flat growth, while over-the-top (OTT) providers are seeing revenues increase by 15% a year, Vincent Bonneau, head of IDATE's Internet business unit, told attendees at the DigiWorld Yearbook launch in London earlier this month.

Another interesting piece of news was that Viber has launched a desktop application which means it can now rival Skype fully.

Guess what, I would think that operators have more to worry from this news than Skype. I have stopped using Skype for some time now due to many issues I have with it and have moved to Viber for a few months.   If you are a regular reader to this blog then you would have read my recent post complaining about the global roaming rates. When I am travelling abroad, I make sure there is WiFi and use Viber as a substitute for Voice and SMS. In fact I can send MMS and emoticons using Viber which would cost a fortune over cellular otherwise.

Sometimes it feels like the operators are sleepwalking into their own destruction by not innovating enough and fast to be a challenge for these OTT services. Not entirely sure what the solutions are but there are quite a few ideas around to start thinking in that direction. An interesting presentation by Dean Bubley I posted here is a good starting point. Another one from him and Martin Geddes is embedded below, which is quite interesting and intutive.

Enough of my rants, what do you think about this?

Internet Trends by Mary Meeker at #D11

The last time I posted the presentation by Mary Meeker was back in 2011 but the things have moved on and its amazing to see some of the things that have changed. I think the slide that summarises what I mean is as follows:

Nomophobia and FOMO are a big problem and I see this day in day out working in this industry.

The slide pack which was actually posted yesterday has already crossed 550K as I write this, in just 1 day. So you can understand how eagerly awaited event this has become every year.

To download the above, click on the Slideshare icon and then you can save from Slideshare site.

If you want to watch the video of her presentation, its available on All things digital website here.

Around the World with Mobile Global Insights - via @TomiAhonen

Next month we will reach the milestone where the number of active Mobile devices is equal to the number of people in the world. There are many people with more than one active mobile device and there are others who have no devices so the number of active devices will still keep rising for some time to come.

Embedded below is a presentation by Tomi Ahonen in MMAF 2013, you can see all the presentations from the event on Slideshare here.

'Small Cells' Analyst Forecasts

Interesting discussion, courtesy of Think Small Cell



If you just want to view the slides quickly, available below:

Data growth from 0.6EB/Mo to 10.6EB/Mo by 2016 (18x)

A slightly old slide that I found while looking for some information but worth putting up here.

1 EB (Exabyte) = 1000000000000000000B = 1018 bytes = 1000000000gigabytes = 1000000terabytes = 1000petabytes

As we can see, Cisco predicts (and I agree) that the mobile data consumption will increase from 0.6 exabytes per month to 10.6 exabytes per month by 2016. What is really debatable is what actually is a mobile device and how much of this data will go through the operators network.

If for example a tablet contains SIM card but you use your own home/work WiFi. Does this qualify as a mobile device and is this data included. What if its exactly the same scenario and the device does not have a SIM card then would you say this is a mobile device? What happens when the operator allows you to use an Operator WiFi which is secured via login/password and you use the tablet without SIM card on an operator WiFi. Would you count this data, is the device considered as a mobile device.

The bottom line is that data usage will continue to grow but probably not on the mobile networks. WiFi would be a prime candidate for offloading, due to it being mostly free (or costing much less - except in the hotels). Some of the recent pricing by the operators make me feel that they do not want the users to use their network for every day use, only for important work.

See Also:

• Operators strategy for supporting the ‘Mobile Data Explosion’
• Cellular or WiFi: Which is the preferred network access?
• Data Consumed by Different Streaming Applications
• A Twitter discussion on 'Data Tsunami' myth
• How Mobile Broadband users use their data allowance
• Understanding smartphone traffic

Opportunities for reshaping the future of your industry?

Another one from FWIC

Opportunities for reshaping the future of your industry? from Zahid Ghadialy

You can also view the webcast here.

‘Proximity Marketing’ and ‘Location Based Services’ (LBS) using ‘Small Cells’

‘Proximity Marketing’ and ‘Location Based Services’ (LBS) using ‘Small Cells’ from Zahid Ghadialy

Quick summary of the 'Operator Mindshare' session from Small Cells Global Congress

We had quite a few interesting discussions in the Small Cells Global Congress, Operator Mindshare session. Here are some of the things that were discussed:

Licensed v/s Unlicensed deployments:

Many operators are now deploying WiFi in the unlicensed spectrum. This can help in the short term to alleviate the capacity problems but as more and more of this unlicensed spectrum nodes get deployed, they create interference between each other and make them unusable for anyone. An example was provided about Tokyo where in some areas, too many free WiFi hotspots means its unusable for anyone. One solution is to have one operator do all the logistics for the deployment and other operators can pay to use the service. Who (operator) would be the first one to go through the process of deploying everything first? Everyone would prefer wait and watch approach.

Providing free WiFi: 

The consensus was that the free WiFi provided by operators don't give any additional benefit to them and there isn't much of a business case. 

Consumer awareness for residential Femtocells:

Globally, not much effort is being done by the operator to make the end users aware of residential Femtocells and this is hampering the take-up  A point was made about when Vodafone launched their product, Vodafone Access Gateway (VAG), it was perceived as negative thing because the ads show that if the coverage was poor you can install this to improve coverage. From a users perspective, it showed that the network had poor coverage. Still consumer awareness is important, how to do it?

Placement of Small Cells:

Where should the public small cells (metrocells) be placed. The Biggest challenges are:

* Site Acquisition is the biggest problem. - This is a bigger problem if lap posts are sought to deploy on public locations

* Rent

* Planning

* Installation

* Power - Lamp posts are centrally switched off, so small cells on laamp posts may need alternative sources

* Power meter if used in a shared location

* Bullet proof (especially in the US)

* Backhaul - especially is non line of sight case.

* Health concerns (if visible)

* Visual appearance

* Opex

Backhaul:

Operators should be clearer in what they want. Right now the vendors are pushing the solutions that operators not necessarily need and not giving what the operators want. The Backhaul should be more flexible and future proof. It should be able to cater for upcoming technologies like Carrier Aggregation, CoMP, etc.

Shared v/s Dedicated carrier for 3G Small Cells:

Dedicated carrier is ideal but is not easily possible for most operators. When shared carrier is used it causes interference and handovers are not easy. 

Interoperability in the new hardware equipment for support of small cells:

Certain vendors are still not creating the the networks that can interwork with other vendors equipment. As we are moving towards LTE, this seems to be a much bigger problem. Sprint for example has 3 completely different networks in the US with no interoperability between them. Standards are not helping either as they do not dictate implementation. 

Some Interesting discussions on Case studies, Business Cases, etc.

Mosaic Telecom:
* Deployed residential Femtocells
* Deployed for coverage purpose
* Dont have handover capability yet
* Want to be able to deploy Microcells/Small Cells on Highways, around 1-2Km radius
* Their typical Microcells use 40W output power
* The cost of deployment if Macro using cabinet, antenna, etc is roughly 100K per site.

Telefonica, O2 trials in UK
* To get access to council lamp posts, it was required that the bidder offer free WiFi
* O2 set a high bar by paying lot of money to the councils in London, but this is not a sustainable model

A Business case for carrier neutral WiFi on light pole in Lima, Peru
* Each light pole can have 3 different locations
* The retail business case is to get the user to usse the offering and maybe offer the operator services, tempting to move to this operator from current one
* There can be a wholesale case of selling the WiFi capacity in bulk to companies, organisations

Some interesting statistics thrown up:

* WiFi cell radius is 30m in South America

* 83% of people in US think that operators should provide free WiFi because of lousy coverage of the mobile network.

* The first 4000 customers of a WiMax operator were using an average of 750 MB per day, 22.5GB per month.

* Some fixed Internet operators are now thinking of putting a cap on unlimited offering at 350GB per month.

There were no consensus and conclusions for many items so feel free to write your opinion in the comments.

#LTEAsia 2012 Highlights - via Alan Quayle

A summary of LTE Asia 2012, slides and highlights via Alan Quayle blog.



Some of the interesting findings from the conference include:

• TD-LTE is gaining momentum, and its beyond WiMAX operators and China mobile, many APAC operators are considering it for unpaired spectrum and to efficiently meet the asymmetric capacity requirements of mobile broadband which is mainly download
• Software defined radio and self-organizing networks are proving critical to manage operational costs
• Single RAN is proving the best way to manage network performance
• Signaling is in a mess - what is the good of standards when it creates such a mess?
• IMS gaps continue - what is the good of standards when it doesn't meet basic migration needs?
• The SS7 guys have reinvented themselves as the Diameter guys
• Business model innovation - LTE is not just for mobile devices, LTE is for quad play and an interesting array of business applications
• The 3G network of many operators is congested - forcing the move to LTE
• CSFB (Circuit Switched Fall Back) works
• VoLTE testing / roaming / network issues remain - given voice remains by revenue the core service, our industry should be ashamed we're having so many problems with VoLTE
• A belief on OTT partnering, but not quantification on the OTT's willingness to pay for QoS (Quality of Service)
• Many operators have a question mark on the use of WiFi off-load - its not a technology issue rather one of economics and customer experience, LTE-A and small cells in hotspots appears to be the focus.

Briefly reviewing the slides shown below:

• LTE Data Points
• 96 Commercial LTE deployments mainly in the 1.8 and 2.8GHz bands
• APAC has 40% of LTE subscribers, likely to be the high growth region
• Drivers for LTE: Throughput, efficiency and low latency
• TD-LTE: 12 commercial deployments, 24 contracts and 53 Trials
• Streaming video dominates traffic on handheld devices, with YouTube being the top traffic generator at 27% of peak traffic
• South Korea Data Explosion
• South Korea has seen OTT explode, Kakao Talk 51 mins of usage per day
• 20 times smartphone growth in 2 years (28M in June 2012, 53% penetration)
• 60 times mobile data growth to 37TB per month in 2 years, 32% is from LTE devices
• LTE subs use 2.9GB per month compared to 3G sub on average use 1.2GB
• LTE subs reached 10M, 141% monthly growth
• Customer drive for LTE is speed (37%) and latest device (31%)
• Challenge Jan 2010 and Jan 2012 ARPU fallen from $48-$35 while data use risen from 180MB to 992MB
• Focus beyond voice, messaging and data into VAS: virtual goods (Korean thing), ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and cloud services / solutions (focus on enterprise)
• HK CSL Migration to LTE
• 3G is congested, LTE is not
• Key is LTE devices available, unlike the early 3G days
• Migrating customers away from unlimited plans to family and shared plans that deliver value
• LTE sub uses 2-5 times the data of 3G subs
• CSFB works
• Average speed seen is 20 Mbps
• Using Software Defined Radio, Single vendor RAN, Self-Organizing Networks
• Migration to LTE-A, small cells and WiFi where appropriate
• Starhub's migration to LTE (they launched LTE at the event)
• 50% of voice traffic is still on 2G
• Using AMR to re-farm 2G spectrum to LTE
• Site access is critical - drive to software defined radio to avoid site visits
• NTT DoCoMo's VoLTE Evolution
• 70% devices in portfolio are now LTE
• All smartphones support CSFB
• Drive to VoLTE is simply to switch off 3G voice (2G already off)
• BUT IMS has missing functionality / standards - migration from 3G to VoLTE is not easy - example of failing in standards on basic issues
• Yes: Example of innovative converged 4G operator in an developing market that uses web principles for service delivery
• Role of Mobile Identity in BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
• BYOD is as significant a trend if APAC as any other market
• Provides a nice review of the approaches in managing BYOD
• LTE Quad-Play in Emerging Markets: TD-LTE case study
• Smartphone growth implications: Review of the signaling problem and mitigation strategies across 3G and LTE.  Highlights challenge current standards process 

Read the complete post here.

10 Billion out of 50 Billion - The Connected World

Remember the mantra of 50 Billion connected devices (blogged here and here) but 202x, apparently 10Billion are already here. The above slide is from a latest presentation by Chetan Sharma Consulting (embedded below). There are already 7 Billion mobile devices (phones + dongles) and 3 Billion others. The number of others will increase with M2M being the main focus and is touted as the next big thing, especially with LTE. 3GPP is focussing very heavily on standardising the MTC and is working on new features in upcoming releases.

Coming back to the topic of connected world, the presentation is embedded below and is a good read.

Smartphones Integrated into our daily lives

Very interesting to see how we use Smartphones in our everyday lives