Showing posts with label Vodafone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vodafone. Show all posts

Saturday 31 March 2012

Joyn = SMS v2.0?


'Joyn' is the brand name for the RCS services that have been around in the name for a long while. Yesterday someone sent this link for the Fierce Wireless article that had the link to the above Vodafone video.

In theory this sounds great but in practice it may be a bit difficult for operators to sell. One of the selling point for this service is that it is going to be part of the standards so independent of the platform. Android and iOS are the two most popular platforms and more and more users are adopting them. The OTT apps are now available on both these platforms, meaning that it will have mass market adoption. If some other platforms have to succeed then they have to make these most popular apps available on their platform or they will not survive. Microsoft has been rumoured to have paid Rovio to develop the first Angry Birds for the WP platform and they may have to do the same again since the new Angry Birds space is not available on the Windows mobile platform.

In any case, Joyn may be good and it can provide enhanced services but I have a feeling that it may be a bit too little and too late to succeed.

Monday 25 July 2011

Femto Hacking in UMTS and LTE

Couple of weeks back, The Hacker’s Choice (THC) made available some documents about how the Vodafone's (UK) Femtocell (a.k.a. SureSignal) is unsecure and can be hacked. Everyone seemed to jump on this bandwagon with some news articles even sounding like the whole Vodafone network has been hacked and hackers may be sending messages and making calls via your phone number.

In the end it came to light that the problem was fixed over a year back when Vodafone was made aware of this problem. THC is still arguing that there is an architecture fault and the Femto can be compromised.

As a result I decided to think about what could happen if the Femtocell is hacked.

Lets take case of UMTS Femtocell. A simple network architecture with femtocell (oficially known as Home NodeB) is as follows:

As you can see, the signalling over the air interface is encrypted and integrity protected. If a hacker is able to get into the Femto and able to listen to all the packets using some tool like WireShark, he would be able to get hold of the Ciphering and Integrity Keys as they come in cleartext in the RANAP Security Mode Command message.

It wouldnt be difficult to have a device that can listen to the conversations once provided with this keys. In fact if the hacker is able to listen to the messages, there is no reason he cannot stick his own messages at the right interval (when a voice call is ongoing) to send SMS and would appear that the message actually went from the phone number. Note that this message would be inserted in the Home NodeB and would be a NAS message. The end user would generally never find out that a message has been sent on behalf of his phone.

One thing that should be remembered though is that the phone would have to be in the range of the Femtocell and connected successfully to the network (via the Femto). One question someone may have is that can I not reverse engineer the key so that I can clone the SIM card. Fortunately for us, this is not easily possible. There are multiple levels of protection and generally it would be difficult to get the algorithms for generating the key. Also it should be noted that the authentication algorithms are confidential and only the operators know the algorithm.


Now lets look at the LTE Femtocell (a.k.a. Home eNodeB) as shown below:

One of the differences you may notice is that the signalling from Femto to the Core Network over S1 is encrypted and Integrity Protected. In case of the LTE Femto, there are multiple keys and only the required key (Kenb) is provided to the Femto. See the key hierarchy below:

Source: RedYoda

This would sound like an ideal protection from the end user perspective but some of the problems still remain. If the hacker can get hold of the Kenb which is sent in cleartext over the S1 interface via Initial Context Setup Request message then he could easily use it to listen to the packets. Since there is no voice support as of yet in LTE, it would only be the packets that the hacker can listen to.

As you may notice, there is now an Integrity and Ciphering on the S1 interface for the UE messages, the hacker cannot get hold of the Kasme or the master keys K, CK and IK. This means that he cannot insert rouge messages that would for example send unsolicited SMS on behalf of the user as he would be able to do in case of UMTS.

There is a small caveat though. There are multiple Ciphering and Integrity algorithms defined in the standard. No ciphering is defined as eea0 algorithm. In Release-8 of LTE, there was no possibility to have Integrity switched off as there was no eia0 algorithm defined. In Release-9 though, the new eia0 has been defined which means that the network can set the Integrity to NULL. I am sure that the network would not want to do so as it makes absolutely no sense but the hacker can force it to do so.

When the Network requests the UE to send the capability information, the hacker can force it to say that it only supports eia0 and eea0 which would mean that the integrity and ciphering in the call would be off. To be honest, this is quite a difficult thing to do in real time and also the network would not accept a UE that does not support other Integrity and Ciphering algorithms.


3GPP has already forseen these kind of threats that could be affecting the networks in the future when they roll out the Femtocells. As a result they have produced 3GPP TR 33.820 that lists all the possible threats and the best practices that can help to minimise the chances of the network being compromised. If that document is too big and technical, you can go though this presentation as it summarises some of the problems.

Feel free to comment or correct any mistakes that you think I have made.

Monday 23 May 2011

LTE World Summit 2011 - Pics and Notes from Day 2

Continuing my notes for the 2nd day of #LTEWS.

Mark Newman from Informa reminded us that there have been lots of hype in the early days of 3G about the revenue, etc. and nowadays he is seeing similar hype about M2M.

CTO of Vodafone Germany, Hartmut Kremling spoke about their their LTE launch that was in Dec. 2010. They launched the LTE in 800MHz band and it has been convenient for them as they are reusing the existing GSM infrastructure.

Since they already support other technologies and spectrum, he was worried initially that LTE 800 was be the 5th network and LTE 2.6GHz will be their 6th network but due to the use of SDR and Integrated antennas in the network that support GSM/UMTS/LTE, they have managed to keep the cost and complexity down.

With LTE, Speed is the killer as the users can get high speed access to their services. Right now they have 20K customers that are using LTE.

They have also launched Easy Box that contains Voice and Integrated services. They have received positive feedback and the download speeds is generally 5-6 Mbps.

Yegor Ivanov of Yota, Russia spoke about how they moved their existing infrastructure from WiMAX to LTE. They already have 1million+ customers on their WiMAX network.

Yota is going to build a shared infrastructure for all the big 4 russian network operators. He is expecting to have 70 million people covered by 2016. Right now the LTE revenues are 4 times lower than their existing 3G revenues.x

Finally, Andrea Folgueiras from Telefonica Germany had an interesting presentation and sense of humour. When she started her presentation she mentioned that she has been with them for 20 years. So as to not give her age, she said she started with them when she was 10 :)

Telefonica believes in LTE for best mobile and data experience. They have 800MHz which would be used for national rollout and also 2.6GHz that would be used for dense areas. They will prioritise the services based on different QoS.

Finally they think that the paradigm has changed from 'Always on' to 'Always in touch'

There is more information available on the twitter conversations.

Wednesday 6 April 2011

Mobile Phone Antennas and Networks

We all remember the so called 'Antennagate' where the iPhone 4 loses coverage due to the way its held. As can be seen from the above picture, there are a lot of antennas already in the phones and yes they are on the increase with LTE and other technologies being added all the time.

Apple admitted the fault and claimed to have fixed the problem but its well known in technical circles that the fix is more of a software hack which doesn't really fix the problem just pretends to fix it. That is why the networks dread it and you can find awful lot of information on the web about the problems.

In a recent Cambridge Wireless event, I heard an interesting talk from Trevor Gill of Vodafone and one of the slides that caught my attention was the impact of these poorly designed phones on the network. The slide is embedded below.

It is estimated that the RF performance of iPhone4 is around 6dB worse than most other 3G phones. What this means is that you may be getting 4 bars of reception on your other phone where iPhone4 may be having only 1 or 2 bars or reception. So if the reception is poor with 1 or 2 bars, iPhone4 may have no reception at all.

To fix this problem, either the networks can increase the number of base stations to double the existing amount which is a huge cost to the networks and extra radiation or the phones can fix it themseles by having an extra antenna. In fact as the slide says, extra antenna on each phone would translate to increase in network capacity by 20-40%, cell area by 30% and cell edge throughput by 40-75%.

One final thing that I want to mention is that testing (RF, RRM, Conformance, etc.) are mandated by the networks for most phones but they overlook the testing procedure for phones like iPhone. What this means is that they do get a lot more new customers but they get new sets of problems. If these problems are not handled well, the impression they give is that the particular network is rubbish. Another thing is that the devices use a certain build/prototype for testing but the one that they release may contain other patches that can cause chaos. One such problem was Fast Dormancy problem that I have blogged about here.

Hopefully the networks will be a bit more careful and will put quality before quantity in future.

Tuesday 1 February 2011

6th ETSI Security Workshop

6th ETSI Security workshop was held last month. There were some very interesting areas of discussion including Wireless/Mobile Security, Smart Grids Security, etc.
All presentations are available to download from here.

Friday 22 October 2010

IMB and TDtv (and DVB-H)

Its long time since I blogged about TDtv. Its been quite a while since I heard about TDtv. Apparently its been superseded by IMB, aka. Integrated Mobile Broadcast.



IMB is used to stream live video and store popular content on the device for later consumption. This results in a significant offloading of data intensive traffic from existing 3G unicast networks and an improved customer experience. The multimedia client features an intuitive electronic program guide, channel grid and embedded video player for live TV viewing and video recording. All IMB applications can be quickly and cost-effectively adapted to support all major mobile operating systems and different mobile device types, including smartphones, tablets and e-readers.

IMB was defined in the 3GPP release 8 standards, and was recently endorsed by the GSMA as their preferred method for the efficient delivery of broadcast services. In June 2010, O2, Orange and Vodafone – three of the five major UK mobile operators – announced that they have teamed up for a three-month trial that will explore IMB wireless technology within a tranche of 3G TDD spectrum.

This spectrum already forms part of the 3G licenses held by many European mobile operators, but has remained largely unused because of a lack of appropriate technology. Currently, 3G TDD spectrum is available to over 150 operators across 60 countries, covering more than half a billion subscribers. IMB enables spectrally efficient delivery of broadcast services in the TDD spectrum based on techniques that are aligned with existing FDD WCDMA standards. This enables a smooth handover between IMB and existing 3G networks.

Issues that previously limited uptake of IMB, or IPWireless' tdTV system, have now all been addressed. Namely, the standard now allows for smooth handover between IMB and unicast delivery; has the potential to be integrated onto a single W-CDMA chip rather than requiring a separate chip; and has resolved interference issues with FDD W-CDMA, at least for spectrum in the 1900MHz to 1910MHz range.

IP Wireless already had a trial at Orange and T-Mobile in the UK (which have just agreed to merge), but in that pilot each 5MHz segment only gave rise to 14 TV channels per operator. The new standard could support 40 separate TV channels if two operators shared their TDD spectrum.

The GSMA announced its support and is backed up with additional support from both IPWireless and Ericsson as well as operators Orange, Softbank and Telstra.

There have been recently quite a few bad news for DVB-H and on top of that IP Wireless has announced that Samsung is going to be releasing phones with IMB support so it may be that we will see IMB sometime next year.

The GSMA paper that details IMB service scenarios and System requirements is embedded below:

Thursday 16 September 2010

Against the Limited "Unlimited" data plans

Once upon a time the Mobile Operators had loads of bandwidth and not enough data users. So they decided to lure the poor users into buying the 'unlimited' data plans. They were sure that the devices are quite rubbish and no one can use enough data. Just for the precaution some clever operators added a small print where unlimited meant 1 or 2GB. The operators thought that the users will never reach this amount.

Then came the iPhone and changed the whole world. People actually started using the data on their devices. The operators started panicking. Android just compunded this problem. So the operators now have started advocating against these unlimited plans.



The CEO of Vodafone , Vittorio Colao , has told attendees at this year's Nokia World 2010 event that he welcomes the end of "unlimited" Mobile Broadband data plans. Colao also warned consumers that "data pricing has to adjust", thus signalling a greater focus on tiered pricing models.

He added: "The principle here must be that, a bit like motorways or hotels, every class of service needs to have its own price and customers must be able to pay for the level of service [they want]. Pricing should be adjusted to reflect the usage and load. We are approaching the end of the free era."

The cowboy salesmen are still fooling the average Joe when it comes to unlimited plans. People sue the operators but dont succeed.

We are begging to see the return of those bad old days when WiFi was the only option in conferences, etc and they were really expensive. Now instead of WiFi we have got our dongles that may not work well anyway inside the conferences or hotels due to the structure or location but when they do, you again have to think about the costs.

In Korea, KT Telecom had to introduce unlimited plans because the other rival introduced one. This is probably because they still have spare bandwith available. Once that gets used up then they will either be running for caps or advocating against the unlimited plans.

I have been against the unlimited plans from the beginning but I advocate that the operators become a bit wise in the way they charge us, the end users.

If I have 4 devices I dont want limited data on all devices because I dont want to keep track of which devices use how much data or have an allowance. Maybe what I need is a data bundle that I can use across devices and maybe share with my family members. Wallmart has recently come up with something similar in US. Wallmart is a MVNO using T-Mobile network. Though their data plans are expensive compared to T-Mobiles plans just because they allow data sharing and rollover, people may go for them.

Rollovers are available on Pay as you go plans but not on Pay monthly which makes the pay monthly (generally on contract) people seem stupid. Operators should encourage this, maybe keep a maximum that can be rolled over.

Finally, there is this net neutrality and QoS discussions are going on. Eventually some kind of QoS or destination based speeds, etc will come but for the end user they will go where they will get what they want. The operators should remember this.

Saturday 17 October 2009

Vodafone Access Gateway (VAG) femtocell setup

I blogged about ALU and Vodafone Femto earlier. Here is an Interesting Video showing unboxing, setting up and using the Femtocell.

Wednesday 9 September 2009

HSPA+ is everywhere...



EMobile Ltd. , Japan's smallest mobile operator, has deployed HSPA+, also known as HSPA Evolved, in the country's major cities, including Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, and Nagoya.

This deployment is based on equipment from Ericsson AB, which supplied the core network and core systems integration services as well as the majority of the radio access network. It builds out the geographical coverage for HSPA+ that EMobile has already established using Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. equipment in a number of Japan's other cities, including Hokkaido, Sendai, Niigata, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, and Nagasaki.

Japan is a market with a reputation for being first with new technology, but HSPA+ has been passed over, most notably by market leader NTT DoCoMo Inc., which has focused on moving to Long-Term Evolution (LTE) as fast as possible.

The No. 2 player, KDDI Corp. , is similarly pushing toward LTE, although from a CDMA base that takes HSPA out of the equation, while Softbank Mobile Corp. is known to have run HSPA+ lab trials and has also said it will move to LTE when it gets the necessary spectrum.

EMobile is by far the smallest of Japan's operators, with just 1.67 million subscribers at the end of the second quarter, compared to DoCoMo's 54.86 million, KDDI's 31 million, and Softbank's 20.96 million customers, according to Wireless Intelligence .

You can check out the HSPA+ features in Rel-7 and Rel-8 here.

Zapp, mobile operator of Romania, has launched the first stage of its HSPA+, the upgraded mobile broadband service in the capital city of Bucharest. With this service, the subscribers can enjoy peak download speeds of 21.6Mbps, while upload speeds will increase by up to 15 times, from 384Kbps to 5.8Mbps. According to a report, Zapp contracted Chinese firm ZTE to deploy the network, which will run parallel to the cellco’s second phase 3G rollout, expanding its UMTS services to 63 cities nationwide.


O2 Germany is currently running a friendly user test in Munich where O2 Germany's technology partner is Huawei. Beside being O2's network partner for the overall HSPA-network upgrade, Huawei is also O2 Germany's major vendor for UMTS sticks and therefore O2 Germany is using Huawei equipment for the HSPA+ test as well. The used Huawei E182E stick is a slide-out USB stick, supporting quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE as well as quadband UMTS/HSDPA up to 21.6 Mbps and HSUPA up to 5.76 Mbps. Furthermore the stick is MIMO ready.

Spanish mobile network operator Vodafone Spain has announced it will begin deploying HSPA+ technology across its network in the autumn of 2009. The cellco says the upgrade will allow its infrastructure to achieve theoretical download speeds of up to 21.6Mbps, while uplink speeds would increase to up to 5.7Mbps. Initially Vodafone expects to launch the increased speeds in seven unnamed ‘major’ cities, with further expansion to follow. In addition, Francisco Roman, president and CEO of Vodafone Spain, has announced that the operator plans to further extend its provision of ADSL services across the country, although it has not given any specifics for areas it plans to extend its reach to.

­Swiss network operator, Swisscom says that it is deploying a HSPA+ (HSPA Evolution) upgrade, with the first areas completed in time for the ITU Telecom World 2009 in Geneva. The upgrade will offer a peak rate data transfer rate of 28.8 Mbps - although the more realistic average is no higher than 8Mbps. The network has launched a HSPA 14.4Mbps service at the beginning of this year.

Chunghwa Telecom, the Taiwanese mobile operator has reportedly selected Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) to upgrade its wireless infrastructure with HSPA+ technology. The operator intends to launch its HSPA+ and 3G services by 2010, boosting mobile broadband download speeds to up to 21Mbps. Initially, devices able to utilise the HSPA+ service will include data network cards, USB dongles and wireless modules before it is extended to cover smartphones, netbooks and notebooks.

ZTE Corp has completed the interoperability test (IOT) of its 3GPP R7-based HSPA+ MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) solution, conducted in conjunction with mainstream terminal chip platform manufacturers, in July 2009.

The MIMO solution, realized with its SDR-based next-generation base station, has reached a theoretical speed limit of 28.8Mbps in both cable connection and wireless environment tests. The trials included data download services for UDP (User Datagram Protocol) and FTP (File Transfer Protocol), as well as various IOT item tests.

All the test results indicated stable and fast data download performance. The successful IOT testing confirms that ZTE's MIMO solution is now ready for large-scale commercial deployment worldwide.

Wednesday 15 July 2009

Vodafone R&D people start a blog on LTE & Mobile Broadband


Its good to see R&D people from Vodafone starting their own blog. Vodafone has been very active with R&D and they also do very interesting lectures. I covered about one such lecture in Telecoms area here. Few months back I also attended an interesting lecture on Mobile Healthcare about which I blogged here. I am sure this is going to be an interesting blog with lots of useful information and insights.

You can check the blog out at: http://witherwire.betavine.net/

Monday 6 July 2009

LTE activity gathering pace


Wireless internet access is going to be a better, richer experience than fixed link access Professor Michael Walker, group R&D director at Vodafone told Wireless 2.0 conference in Bristol, organised by Silicon South-West.

“People think wireless can’t compete with fixed link, but it can”, said Walker, pointing out that the 100Mbit/s of FTTH is the same as the theoretical maximum throughput of LTE.

“LTE capacity on 20MHz is an order of magnitude higher than HSPA,” said Walker. He said that, “in the first real field trials,” average downlink speeds of 15Mbit/s, with 4.5 spectral efficiency, were achieved. “Wimax takes three times more spectrum”, he said.

“We decided with LTE that we would make sure the technology works before we buy spectrum,” said Walker.

To that end, Vodafone has been working with China Mobile and Verizon to make sure LTE has compatible standards.

Walker regards talk of a killer app as silly for LTE as it was for 3G. “LTE is just about access,” he said.

He predicted the gradual relative demise of the person-to-person phone calls, referencing data that showed 11 times more wireless traffic is being generated by community chatting than by person-to-person calls.

Ericsson, one of the world’s leading suppliers of mobile phones and related network solutions, has warned that it could be 2012 before the first true next generation Mobile Broadband networks gain a good foothold in the UK. The deployment of Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology (aka - 4G), which could deliver download speeds of 150 to 1000Mbps, is being hampered by problems with releasing the needed 900Mhz spectrum.

Presently both O2 and Vodafone own some of the older 2G (900MHz) spectrum, which Ofcom is seeking to have redistributed to rival operators ( Orange , T-Mobile and Three (3) ). This could then be converted for use by 3G/4G voice and Mobile Broadband technologies, such as HSPA and LTE .
Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), although providing WiMAX solutions for Taiwan operators, plans to launch commercialized LTE (Long Term Evolution) solutions in 2010, Mike Wang, NSN's general manager for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

NSN has already received LTE solution orders from Japan-based NTT DoCoMo, which is expected to start offering LTE-based services in 2010, Wang stated.

In addition, NSN has also landed orders for the installment of LTE trial networks for T-Mobile and Singapore-based service provider Mobile One, he added.

LTE-enabled chipsets are expected to hit the market starting in the second half of 2009, followed by LTE USB modems and network cards in 2010 and other LTE CPE such as handsets, PDAs, tablet PCs in 2012, Wang predicted.

Japan's DoCoMo is reported to be planning an investment of ¥ 343 billion (US$3.4 billion) for the investment, while KDDI and Softbank Mobile have budgeted ¥ 515 billion and ¥207.3 billion, respectively. According to the Nikkei newspaper, among the four, LTE services are forecast to attract around 36 million subscribers, with DoCoMo projecting 17.74 million LTE customers.
The total investment will top ¥1 trillion (US$10 billion)

DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank Mobile expect roughly 30% of their existing customers to switch to 3.9G services. DoCoMo is also reported to be expecting to upgrade or deploy some 20,000 LTE enabled base stations by 2014. The network should cover 50% of the population and commercial services will start in 2010.

LTE provides downlink peak rates of at least 100Mbit/s, 50 Mbit/s in the uplink and RAN round-trip times of less than 10ms. Fujitsu recently announced that, in collaboration with NTT DoCoMo, they had successfully completed field testing for LTE, using 4x4 MIMO technology, which resulted in data transmission speeds in the range of 120 Mbps (using 10 MHz bandwidth) in Sapporo's urban environment.

NTT DOCOMO has selected Alcatel-Lucent' Ethernet transmission solution to provide the backhaul network of its Long Term Evolution (LTE) service. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Alcatel-Lucent said its packet optical gear will provide NTT DOCOMO with cost-effective and flexible Ethernet-based aggregation and transport from the base stations to the core network. Specifically, the Alcatel-Lucent solution, based on the 1850 Transport Service Switch (TSS) and its universal switching technology, will provide multipoint Ethernet connections between cell sites supported by strong operations, administration and maintenance capabilities, as well as carrier-class protection and network management.

China Mobile Ltd., recognizing that future growth of its 3G services is not yet certain, is looking to secure its future with a nearly parallel development of Long Term Evolution (LTE) capabilities, according to its annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently.

High on the list of limitations TD-SCDMA imposes are the availability, functionality, and price of terminals, and the support for international roaming. The latter particularly impacts China Mobile's high-end and business customers.

China Mobile remains committed to TD-SCDMA, but at the same time it's going all out to develop converged time division duplex (TDD) and frequency division duplex (FDD) products for LTE, the proto-4G wireless technology set to be deployed by mobile operators worldwide.
Developing a simultaneous LTE strategy will enable China Mobile to limit the time it is dependent on TD-SCDMA, and also help it counter the constraints it's currently experiencing as a result of the TD-SCDMA sector's limited ecosystem.

The Chinese vendors have labored too long under the market perception that they deliver low cost equipment, but can't do cutting edge. To fight this image and enhance their position among tier one carriers, Huawei and ZTE are throwing everything - including their huge credit lines for vendor financing - at gaining early LTE trials, which puts them in the spotlight even if commercial roll-outs are often two years or more away. The latest points go to ZTE, which has won field trial contracts with Telefónica in Spain and CSL in Hong Kong.

This comes shortly after Huawei highlighted its LTE deal with Netcom of Norway, and the Chinese duo are, early market estimates indicate, coming close to Ericsson in terms of their penetration of stage one LTE trials - and ahead of Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens.

Telefónica confirmed reports by Light Reading that ZTE's trial will take place in the third quarter. While success at the Spanish firm may not translate into meaningful revenue any time soon (and Ericsson has already conducted LTE trials with Telefónica too), it will still be a major boost for the vendor. It has not been as successful in getting tier one western carrier deals as its compatriot - although its overall wireless equipment market share grew at a similar rate to that of Huawei in the past 12 months, its base is far more concentrated on the lower margin developing markets.

By contrast with Telefónica, CSL is already a major customer for ZTE and one of the first commercial users of its software defined base station platform, which it is currently rolling out in an IP-based HSPA+ network across Hong Kong. In a recent interview with Telecoms.com, Tarek Robbiati, CEO of the Telstra subsidiary, said: "Further consolidation will come in the next three to five years. In the end there will be only three [infrastructure vendors] left, and two of them will be Chinese. The European vendors are just too slow."

With LTE firmly at the top of the hype curve in 2009, WiMAX is somewhat overshadowed in the headlines, but did make a strong impression at last week's CommunicAsia show in Singapore, highlighting how the technology has gained a higher profile in Asia than in Europe - because of the importance of the Taiwanese ODMs and vendors like Samsung, as well as a large number of deployments in countries like Japan, Vietnam, Korea and Taiwan.

Tuesday 23 June 2009

ALU and Vodafone hit the first goal in Femtocell World Summit

We have been hearing this for over a year now about Alcatel-Lucent Femtocell being trialled by Vodafone and finally we had this good news in the Femtocell World Summit.

Vodafone has announced the Femtocell World Summit today that its launching the first commercial Femtocell based service on the 1st of July.

Many European and Asian operators have trialled the tiny indoor base stations, and have been forceful in driving standards, but commercial deployments have so far been confined to the US, where Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel are live with limited function CDMA devices and AT&T is to follow soon, using fully blown products from Cisco and the UK's ip.access. Now Vodafone, which has conducted a range of trials in various territories and with different suppliers, has delivered its always hefty endorsement by leapfrogging rival triallists like Telefonica/O2 with a live offering.

Vodafone 's move is important for the sector not because it is supporting any groundbreaking applications in the first stage - the launch is firmly focused on improved indoor signals - but because it quietens the major source of nervousness about femtos, that they are not sufficiently tried and tested for mass consumer roll-out. This has led some suppliers to argue that operators will not move beyond trials for at least another year and possibly longer, delaying the payback for vendors and other involved parties.

Vodafone is understood to be using femtocells from Alcatel-Lucent, probably the most prominent tier one wireless vendor to offer its own devices rather than badging those of a specialist supplier. ALU's products run on the architecture of UK-based picoChip, which also supplies the silicon for ip.access and others. Live roll-outs by Vodafone and AT&T will be valuable for the credibility of the whole segment, and for the sustainability of the specialist start-ups like picoChip.

I have been in the past been involved with IOT testing on ALU Femtocells so I am feeling quite pleased about this.

The Vodafone Access Gateway (VAG) as its being called will be sold for £160. Customers who pay £15 or more per month on contract will get it free.

Monday 22 June 2009

Vodafone's Lecture series on Mobile Telecom and Networks


This compilation brings together the transcripts of the third of a series of lectures on the subject of Mobile Telecommunications and Networks. The lecture series was established by The Royal Academy of Engineering and Vodafone to celebrate the enormous social and economic benefits that mobile communications have given us – a success story brought about and maintained by excellence in communications engineering. The three lectures in this series were given over the period between March 2008 and February 2009. All three were exceptionally well attended and generated enthusiastic and lively debate and discussions.

The series was opened by Professor P R Kumar, Franklin W Woeltge, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, at the University of Illinois. His lecture addressed the converging worlds of communications, computation and control – described through infrastructure - free wireless networks, and illustrated with fascinating films of model systems created at the University of Illinois.

The bedrock of all wireless communications systems is radio frequency spectrum, and this was the subject of the second lecture, given by Professor Linda Doyle of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Dublin. She entered into the debate of how one should allocate and manage spectrum, covering approaches from classical ‘command and control’ to dynamic ‘grab what you need when you need it’. Her lecture gave rise to the most lively debate we have had during the Questions and Answers sessions.

Most lectures on mobile communications nowadays are concerned with subjects like broadband access, convergence, mobile widgets or the phone as a computing device, so it was refreshing that in the final lecture of the series Professor Peter Vary of the University of Aachen returned to basics – voice communications. In a fascinating lecture he covered the history of and contemporary research on speech coding for mobile communications, providing great insight into what is the most important function of the phone.

The transcript is available here.

Thursday 14 May 2009

Vodafone (JIL) to release new APIs to third parties


Vodafone is set to announce a standard set of APIs, allowing third parties to create applications integrated with Vodafone servers around the world, including tapping the operator's billing system for micropayments.

It's also worth noting that these new APIs are coming out of the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL), so should be applicable to the other JIL members in time - adding Verizon and China Mobile would put the JIL in charge of applications provided to more than 700 million mobile-phone users.

Vodafone is unveiling a set of standard APIs that will work in every region in which the operator has a presence. This will allow developers to create applications and roll them out around the world, as long as they don't mind their market being limited to Vodafone's 289 million customers.

Operators have long allowed third parties access to internal services, particularly SMSC's for messaging and often with access to billing systems, too. But this has generally been on a case-by-case basis and only sharing limited functionality. Not only does that require developers to work with each operator in turn, but platforms are often fragmented even within the same operator - particularly where international expansion has been managed through acquisition - so developers often have to negotiate, and code, for every operator, in every region.

Not that today's announcement is the first attempt to address this problem: Vodafone makes much of the new API's ability to bill for small transactions, allowing developers to include the "insert coin to continue" functionality they've been hoping for. But Vodafone is also part of the "PayForIt" consortium, which provides the same functionality across multiple networks. PayForIt operates though gateways that take a cut of the money, so developers will have to decide on the value of being cross-network.

Obviously applications will need to be certified to have access to the APIs, something the JIL was already planning along with on-device APIs to allow (suitably signed) widgets with access to local, and network, resources - all of which should be revealed over the summer.

Friday 1 May 2009

Mobile Healthcare: More on TeleHealth


There are some major developments going on in the field of Mobile/Wireless healthcare. Sometime back I happen to attend a lecture organised by IET Berkshire where Prof. Lionel Tarassenko gave an overview of what developments are going on in this area. Unfortunately I could not get hold of the presentation but there is enough info on the web about it.

Vodafone has been field-testing neurosurgical telemedicine applications using third generation (3G) technology in Germany. Scientists in Denmark have successfully used text messaging to collect diary data from asthma patients in a pilot study to determine whether increased remote support improves clinical outcomes. Previous studies using home PCs to send the same diary information proved disappointing, with users rejecting the application after a short while.

Researchers from the Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine in Tromso studied parent-child interaction using a mobile and wireless system for blood glucose monitoring, and concluded that, whether or not the health outcome is improved as a result, the peace of mind provided by such a system may make it a commercial proposition.

In Finland, Medixine has been promoting home care by integrating diagnostics and patient diaries before sending results via a PC based web-link to health professionals. The company is now offering the same functionality using hand-held mobile PCs.

Researchers in the UK have, however stolen a march. When scientists from Oxford University set out to determine whether a system based on automated transfer of data, real time analysis and immediate feedback to the patient could improve glycaemic control for young adults with type 1 diabetes, they adopted the mobile approach.

The substantive difference between their work and others cited in the literature is that, with the help of funding from the charitable Vodafone Foundation, professors Andrew Neil and Lionel Tarassenko were able to conduct randomised clinical trials.

For the first time, the use of mobile telephone technology was proved to have a significantly beneficial effect and resulted in demonstrably improved clinical outcomes.

The system involved in the trials, which has subsequently been made commercially available under the “t+ diabetes” brand, uses a glucose meter linked by Bluetooth to a GPRS-enabled mobile telephone. (GPRS allows a handset to communicate with a remote server without the user having to dial in manually.)

After the patient has taken a reading in accordance with the advice he or she has been given by a GP or practice nurse, they spend around 10 seconds adding essential diary information about diet, exercise and general health via the telephone’s keypad. The system is intuitive and easy to use.

The information, together with the reading, is sent by the handset to a central computer which responds within seconds, providing patients with personalised feedback in easy-to-read graphical format delivered to their mobile’s display.

The number crunching done by the remote computer uses sophisticated algorithms to help negate the effects of occasional rogue readings and deliver a consistently meaningful result to the patient’s mobile.

This presentation here gives the motivation for the need to have a mobile based healthcare system.

  • In the UK there are 17.5 million people with a long-term condition (mainly diabetes, hypertension, asthma or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease).
  • Diabetes is the fastest growing disease in the Western world as a result of poor diet and obesity.
  • £5.8 billion is spent per year by the NHS on diabetes and its related complications (2002 figures).
  • Asthma affects 3.7 million adults and 1.5 million children in the UK (70,000 hospital admissions for asthmain 2002).
  • 80% of primary care consultations relate to long-term conditions and patients with such conditions or their complications use over 60% of hospital days.

The key to minimising long-term complications is to empower patients to take more responsibility for the management of their condition.

The economic driver is reduction in unplanned hospital admissions.

Lot of time of healthcare professionals and bed space in the hospitals are wasted for the routine procedures that can be avoided by remote monitoring of the patients

Why Mobile Phones?

  • Equality of care – 90% of UK population owns a mobile phone
  • Real-time feedback, with two-way information flow
  • Communication with remote carer based on shared data
  • Economic model based on reduction in unplanned hospital admissions makes mobile phone solution a financially viable proposition
  • Interactive tool to promote self-managementRegular support from remote nurse (based on real-time data)

What kinds of problems are being looked at:

  • Asthma: 3 published clinical studies, 1 recruiting for Asthma UK
  • COPD: 1 trial at Bristol Royal Infirmary published in Thorax
  • Diabetes Type 1: 1 RCT at OCDEM published in Diabetes Care 4 trials in progress in Dundee, Eire, Dubai and Oxford 2 studies pending with UK NHS and Singhealth in Singapore
  • Diabetes Type 2: 1 published clinical study for Lloyds Pharmacy
  • Cystic Fibrosis: 1 published clinical trial (data submitted to NICE)
  • Cancer: 1 study at Churchill Hospital published in Annals of Oncology
  • Drug Titration: 1 study at Corbeilles-Essonepresented at Alfadiem and 1 trial recruiting in Oxfordshire GP Practices
  • Hypertension: 1 trial recruiting in Oxfordshire GP Practices



You can read more about the tools and applications being developed here and here.

There is also a very good and detailed study of Asthama that can be seen here. There is a diary at the end that shows how readings are entered in the phone, etc.

Monday 23 March 2009

Recession is affecting Mobile giants big time.


In November 2008, Nokia cut 600 jobs in Finland, Britain, the United States, and Singapore. According to its final quarter trading statement of last year, Nokia’s operating profits slumped 80% to €492m on the back of a 19 per cent fall in sales to €12.7bn.

As a result, Nokia is cutting another 1,700 jobs around the world, including an undisclosed number in the UK and China. The handset group plans to shed staff across its divisions, including sales and marketing, research and development and its corporate offices. Nokia, which runs UK offices in London, Farnborough and Cambridge, said it was determined to cut costs to weather the recession.

In China, the company has put forward a voluntary resignation plan in February 2009, encouraging employees to resign on a voluntary basis. It was learned that Nokia China would make termination payments to the first 1,000 employees who are willing to resign between March 1 and May 31, 2009. The company says it hopes to reduce human resource costs and avoid involuntary redundancy through this measure. In addition, Nokia is also encouraging its staff to take unpaid leave this year.

Last week, Sony Ericsson plunged the mobile phone industry into crisis , issuing a disastrous profits warning as it revealed that it expected the world to buy 10 per cent fewer handsets this year. This quarter, it is expected to ship about 14 million mobile phones, for sale at, on average, €120 (£113) each. By contrast, it shipped 24.2 million phones at €121 in the previous three months. Sony Ericsson warned that weak demand from consumers, as well as destocking, meant it would lose up to €390m in the first three months of its financial year.

It will be the company's fourth consecutive quarterly loss. The company, which has already announced plans to cut 2,000 staff has so far refused to rule out further job losses. A spokeswoman said 1,000 employees have already left the business, with 1,000 more to follow soon in an attempt to achieve €300m in cost savings by the second-half of this year. However, at the end of January the company announced a further €180m cost-cutting drive, which "will have an additional impact on jobs". The business employs about 500 staff in the UK. One site in Manchester is already earmarked for closure.

Now, Vodafone, the mobile phone giant which is set to post profits of nearly £12bn for the year to March, has scrapped pay rises for all its 10,000 UK staff, ditched bonuses and told its sales reps to keep their cars for longer, as it attempts to trim £1bn from the firm's costs.

Less than one month after Vodafone said it was axing 500 jobs in Britain, a confidential email from Guy Laurence, the chief executive of the firm's UK business, was sent to everyone in Vodafone UK detailing the pay freeze, described by Laurence as a "tough decision to make, but a responsible one".

In the memo, Mr Laurence says: "If we had agreed to a salary rise it would have forced us to increase the number of redundancies in the recent announcement." Vodafone would be "asking company car drivers and those with job requirement cars to keep their cars for longer," he said.

Changes would also be made to "bonus plans for the next financial year", with the incorporation of new targets based on profit shares.

Vodafone said last month that job cuts at the telecoms group were necessary to allow it "to compete more effectively in the UK market". Retail staff were unaffected by the cuts, which largely fell on staff at the firm's Newbury headquarters, with 170 being made redundant.

By the way, According to Telegraph, Motorola, the fifth biggest player, is thought to be on the verge of bankruptcy.

Monday 16 March 2009

£300/min: The cost of mobile broadband while roaming

Trying to keep his young son entertained in the evenings on a skiing holiday, Will Pierce decided to download a few episodes of their favourite TV shows.

He had assumed that he could use his £25 Vodafone data card - which gives him access to mobile broadband while overseas - without incurring any unexpected costs.

But when he returned from the five-day break in Meribel, he was sent a phone bill for nearly £21,716.

Mr Pierce and his son Louis, eight, had gone for a 'boys' holiday' with another father and his son, also eight.

The group rented an apartment, but it did not have any English-language TV channels. With the boys too young to spend evenings out in the resort, Mr Pierce was anxious to keep them entertained.

So over the course of the stay he downloaded several shows - mostly Top Gear for the boys and Kavanagh QC for the grown-ups - on to his laptop computer using the data card.

He was charged according to the number of megabytes used, meaning one show lasting less than 18 minutes cost him £5,132 - almost £300 a minute. Downloading the same size file in the UK would not have cost Mr Pierce anything under most broadband tariffs.

Mr Pierce did not deal directly with Vodafone, instead addressing his complaint to DRD Communication Services, the European network operator.


DRD agreed to waive its fees, bringing the bill down to £16,500, but Vodafone initially insisted that the usage was 'valid' and refused to back down.

However, a spokesman for Vodafone said yesterday that the company would waive the full amount.

She added: 'Such bills are exceptionally rare and we have an investigation under way.'

Thursday 12 March 2009

HSPA+ to become more widely available in 2009


According to 3G Americas press release, 100 million new connections were added last year. On a worldwide basis, GSM totals 3.5 billion of the nearly 4 billion mobile subscriptions or 89% share of market at the end of December 2008. With 278 UMTS-HSPA networks in service in 121 countries, there are 290 million UMTS-HSPA subscriptions as of the end of 2008 compared to 186 million a year earlier—more than 100 million new 3G connections. UMTS-HSPA subscriptions are expected to more than double in 2009, according to Informa’s forecasts, and reach 455 million connections by the end of this year.

A survey last year by GSA showed that over 1000 HSPA devices have already been launched. Remember HSPA device could be HSDPA device only or HSDPA and HSUPA device. According to Dell'Oro group, Worldwide total mobile infrastructure market revenues grew 5% in 2008, driven by the nearly doubling and quadrupling of revenues of the WCDMA and WiMAX markets, respectively.

The focus is now moving towards HSPA+ (Release 7). HSPA+ is already becoming everyones favourite as it now has the potential to compete with LTE. The HSPA+ data rates will soon be able to rival that of LTE. No new spectrum will be required and enhancements will now allow multiple bands to be used at the same time thereby reducing the need to move to LTE for gaining higher data rates by use of higher bandwidth.

O2 Germany is planning to upgrade its network to HSPA+ by mid 2009. Vodafone also plans to upgrade its network to HSPA+ when more devices are available. Hong Kong operator CSLNWM is working with China's ZTE to upgrade their network to SDR based HSPA+ network that could easily be upgraded to LTE. Australia's Telstra has already announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that it is the first in the world to offer mobile broadband service with peak rates of 21 Mbps made possible through HSPA+ technology.

On the devices front Huawei has E182E HSPA+ slide USB stick supporting 21.6Mbps DL and 5.76Mbps in UL. Novatel surprisingly has the same specs for its MC996D modem. Qualcomm meanwhile has released a range of new HSPA+ capable chipsets. The MSM8260 supports 3GPP Release 7 HSPA+ for data rates of up to 28 Mbps. The MSM8660 adds support for 3GPP/3GPP2 multimode, and the MSM8270 adds support for Release 8 dual-carrier HSPA+ for even higher data rates of up to 42 Mbps. All three products offer full backward compatibility to previous generation networks and are pin-, software- and functionally-compatible.

Its just a matter of time before we will all be able to experience the HSPA+ speeds on our mobiles and mobile connected Laptops.

Sunday 26 October 2008

Femtocells may not be that close to deployment yet


Recently Zahid Ghadialy in his blog mentioned about the first deployment of Femotcells by NEC and Ubiquisys. Since then you must have thought that the femotcells will pick up and will be commercialized very soon. I am not hundred percent sure this is the case though as I have come across few articles which suggest that operators are no way near to the launch of femtocells for various reasons.

While the enthusiasm for femtocells continues unabated, several of the mobile operators that have once taken the lead are having second thoughts due to unresolved technical issues and unclear business cases.

These concerns came to the surface during the Femtocell Europe 2008 conference when SFR said it had delayed selecting a femtocell supplier because of undefined industry standards. The company said that the expected deployment of the technology now would not commence until sometime next year.

SFR, of which Vodafone Group owns 44 per cent, participated in Vodafone's group-level request for proposals for femtocells last year, but it also issued its own RFQ separately. "We're assessing another technology in parallel," said Thierry Berthouloux, network solutions director at SFR. "However, we have decided to extend that assessment period and have put this process on hold to give equipment suppliers time to consolidate roadmaps. There's no point making a decision today."

In my view it is very important that if femtocells have to be a success then there should be agreed standard so that there is no confusion as such towards the technology. When I say confusion what I mean is that if there is a set and agreed standard then most of the questions or doubts will be answered. According to those close to the situation, the issue for the major operators in agreeing to a standard is the need for clarity on 3GPP status and the lack of resource being provided by the larger femtocell vendors to achieve this.

Although the above scenario does present a bleak picture but all is not lost for femtocells commercialization. Some operators although having some concerns have not given up on femtocells and are continuing with their trials and testing.

Once of such operator is Telefonica O2, which having already conducted consumer and equipment trials earlier this year, is now looking to another femtocell pilot early next year. Although this retesting will mean O2 will miss its earlier forecast of a commercial femtocell launch during Q1/09 but at the same time it does presents a hopeful image for O2’s commercial launch of femtocells.
The femtocells developer Ubiquisys, which took part in O2's trial this year, said a phased approach should not be unexpected and would be typical of the way operators evaluate new technologies and products, such as femtocells.

But in my view O2’s retrial itself is not enough and I firmly believe that if femtocell technology has to be a success then other operators must join O2 as well, given that O2 has been a firm advocate for the technology anyway. It is true that there are operators other than O2 who might be interested in the technolgy and hence will be interested in the deployment of femtocells. But the delay in O2 plans might draw a conclusion for these other operators that the business case for 3G home access points and services remains in question. This might also bring into doubt reports that 2010 would be the year of significant deployments for femtocells in Europe.

Whatever is the outcome I do hope that the industry gets their acts together and work their socks off towards the success of femtocells?

The femtocell market is primed to grow in 2008 and hence the global revenues generated by the femtocell equipment vendors are forecast to grow as well. Whatever the discrepancy over the market size, the perception of significant growth in femtocells illustrates the potential opportunity both technically and commercially.