WiMax feeling the heat, Is It slowing Down?

Ever since we started talking about LTE, WiMax was always discussed alongside LTE. Every whitepaper or article I read on LTE it has always been mentioned that WiMax in the major competitor and the one of the main motivation behind LTE.

LTE camp together with 3GPP is trying really hard to catch up with WiMax and if possible supersede it.

There is no doubt that WiMax was and is still far ahead of LTE in terms of technology. For years, WiMax has been held up as something of a panacea, a technology that would finally deliver ubiquitous and cheap wireless broadband, especially in emerging markets. WiMax camp had a great opportunity to commercialize the technology and claim it to be the technology for 4G. But in my view it’s taken so long to get off the ground that it’s in danger of being superseded specially by LTE.

I personally think that WiMax is one of the most hyped technologies in history. Please let me know if you disagree with my opinion. Every emerging technology always has some motivation and objectives behind it. WiMax is no different and one of the main objectives of WiMax was to provide consumers an excellent wireless service at a lower cost. The computer and telecommunications industries have long seen WiMax, a so-called fourth-generation (4G) wireless technology as a way of driving down telecom costs and bridging the digital divide in the poorer parts of the world.

As I mentioned above, for some reason I don’t see that WiMax camp has taken the opportunity to take the technology to its high. As cellular operators continue to ramp up their investment in 3G, the outlook for WiMax seems to be getting murkier. And the next generation of cellular technology, known as Long Term Evolution (LTE), is set to arrive in couple of year’s time, with broadband speeds many times higher than is possible on copper-based digital subscriber lines.
People might be mistaken when they think that LTE is still some time away which gives an upper edge to WiMax. This might give an indication that by the time LTE will be launched WiMax will be well developed and commercialized technology. But in this mean time mobile operators are upgrading their networks with HSPA technology which is also a good bet in terms of high speed.

Mobile operators MTN and Vodacom are already deploying 3G-based High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) networks capable of theoretical download of up to 7,2Mbit/s (nearly twice as fast as Telkom’s fastest broadband product). That is set to double again, to 14,4Mbit/s, in the next 12 months. And the 3G roadmap is promising speeds a few years from now of up to 42Mbit/s.
HSPA subscribers have grown from 11 million in August 2007 to 50 million today. HSPA subscribers are growing at a very faster rate connections per month. There are already estimated 191 commercial HSPA networks in the world and more than 740 HSPA devices.

Qualcomm has already claimed that it has placed an HSPA+ Release 7 data call at a transfer rate of more than 20 Mbps in a 5-megahertz channel.

Such a capability of telecomm giants achieving high speed would allow operators to double the data and triple the voice capacity of their networks once HSPA+ is installed. These figures are very encouraging for the industry and hence taken as a stepping stone by the operators towards commercial deployment of HSPA+ which is late this year or early next year.

These developments are definitely not very good news for WiMax and hence pushed the technology further behind. People are questioning that if we can achieve such a high data rates with HSPA+ and with LTE is round the corner then why favour WiMax, especially when WiMax seems to have more restrictions in mobility as compared to HSPA+ or LTE.

LTE, which is still some years from commercial deployment (analysts say it should start taking off in 2011 or 2012), will ultimately offer speeds of 300Mbit/s or more. If we consider all the above developments for HSPA+ and LTE don’t you think that WiMax is a little too late or is lagging behind to be a serious challenger to LTE on the mobile side?

Mobile operators invest huge amount of money when it comes to deployment of new wireless technology. People might still remember how billions were spend to gain 3G licenses. This leaves no doubt in my mind that mobile operators will influence strongly when it comes to considering the 4G technology.

WiMax camp might be optimistic as the no of subscribers is growing although at a slower rate, but it’s in 3G and later in LTE where the real action is likely to be. 3G and its related technology i.e. HSPA etc is sweeping rest of the world after already establishing itself in Europe and America. There are already commercial 3G HSPA networks in many African countries which include SA, Namibia, Angola, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Morocco and Egypt. Libya and Mozambique will follow soon.

Even Telkom has said it has plans to build a 3G HSPA network, a startling development given that fixed-line operators have typically preferred to look at WiMax for their wireless strategies. Telkom has a limited WiMax network.

A recent BMI-T research report, written by telecom consultant Martyn Roetter, has cast serious doubts on WiMax’s potential. Roetter says cellular rivals enjoy a considerable head start, especially in mobile broadband, and it will be difficult for WiMax operators to catch up.

What I see from the WiMax growth trends is that WiMax is doing well where 3G is still a distant technology. The chances of WiMax obtaining significant market share are greatest in countries that have not yet seen the widespread roll-out of 3G cellular technologies. But even then, it has a hope only where telecom regulators have moved quickly to allocate radio frequency spectrum.

Spectrum and coverage are ultimately more significant than the “quasi-ideological and generally confusing, self-serving, and misleading statements uttered by advocates in the vendor community”, Roetter says.

Despite all these some in the industry are still optimistic about WiMax and believes that WiMax is not falling behind. WiMax is being developed within the normal industry time frame for new technologies. One of the reasons for WiMax camp to be encouraged is that the price of WiMax devices is falling sharply and from next year the technology will be built into some Intel-based laptops.

Will that be enough to save it from obscurity?

Only time will tell, but there’s little doubt that WiMax has lost some of its early edge and the hype that went along with it.

New Tutorials available

Two new tutorials are available on 3G4G website:

# A look at NAS Timers

# Sending SMS using AT Commands

Lights, 8 Megapixel Camera, Action!

Samsung recently announced exclusive deals for its 8 Megapixel Camera phone Innov8 (Innovate ;) a.k.a. Samsung i8510 or GT-i8510.

Its a 3.5G Symbian smartphone with an 8 megapixel camera, WiFi and GPS, plus an advanced multimedia player and a whole host of other features that compete head on with the Nokia N96 and N95 8GB. The "8" in "Innov8" refers to the i8510's advanced 8 megapixel camera. This has autofocus and a dual LED flash, plus an image stabiliser, panoramic stitching, face detection and a number of other clever features lifted straight out of Samsung's dedicated digital camera range. Sometimes we have seen disappointing video capture quality with some rival phones, but not so with the Innov8 which is capable of recording VGA resolution video at 30 frames per second, or QVGA resolution at 120 frames per second. The Innov8 also has built-in video editing and an FM radio with RDS, plus stereo Bluetooth and a 3.5mm audio output socket.

More features, pictures, etc in Mobile Gazette website.

Note that Samsung has previously already released 10 Megapixel camera with 3x Optical zoom. The SCH-B600 was shown off in CeBit in 2006. Dont know if it was launched in Europe anywhere.

Reiter's Camera Phone report has some interesting statistics on Camera phones. One of the interesting bit of information was summary of Ofcom communication Market report 2007. Based on that 84% of the phones sold in UK now have camera and 38% of people surveyed said that they use their mobile camera regularly. Another article mentions that 40% of Japanese print camera phone photos. More Interesting bits on Reiter's camera phone report.

There is another set of statistics from wirefly.com (via Click Chic) for US:

• 63.8 percent of users ages 18-30 say they use their cell phone’s camera at least once a week, while 26.3 percent reported using it daily
• “Family events” and “scenery/sightseeing” remain the top reasons cited for using a camera phone, but social uses separated the younger adults from the over-30 crowd - 58.3 percent of cell phone users ages 18-30 report using a cell phone regularly “to document nightlife,” while just 29.9 percent of those over 30 made a similar claim.
• individuals ages 18-30 use their camera phones to publish photos to online social media four times as much as respondents over 30 years of age.
• 96.3 percent of adult cell phone owners report that they have a cell phone with a camera. (No surprise here, since most cell phones now come with a camera.)
• 19 percent of adults prefer to use their cell phone as their primary camera for all photography.
• 77.2 percent of photos taken remain stored in the phone, 45.4 percent are used as wall-paper and 38.6 percent are sent to friends via MMS.
• 20.2 percent of respondents say they have snapped a photo of an attractive man/woman, and 7.5 percent have photographed an unsuspecting stranger.
• 46.4 percent of all adults and two-thirds of adults age 18-30 say they use their cell phone to snap self-portraits.
• 19.8 percent say they have snuck a picture while pretending to do something else.

Things have changed since Nokia became the biggest Camera manufacturer. Over the last couple of years the resolution of phone cameras have improved and at the same time the quality has improved as well. The are now coming with much better equipped cameras with professional quality lens.

Martin pointed out in his post earlier that Flickr maintains live statistics of the cameras being used to upload photos. In his post in January he mentioned that Nokia N95 has just overtaken N73 but I can see that Iphone is now the leader as can be seen above.

Phone Cameras is one area that is being seriously thought about in search for Killer applications.

Thumbs up to NFC in London trial

Guardian reported, Passengers on London Underground could be using their mobile phones to get through the ticket barriers and even pay for their lunch within the next two years, after a successful trial of technology in the capital by O2 and Transport for London.

The mobile phone company integrated Oyster card technology and a Barclaycard Visa card into a Nokia 6131 handset and gave it to 500 testers who spent six months using the phone as a mobile wallet.

From Nokia's press release:

• 78% want to use contactless services on their mobile phone
• Nine out of ten trialists were happy using NFC technology on a mobile phone
• Interest in having Oyster on their mobile phones was particularly strong with 89% of trialists saying they were interested in taking this up
• Over two-thirds of trialists also said that they would be interested in having the Barclaycard Visa payWave feature on their mobile in the future.
• Having Oyster on their mobile phone actually increased trialists use of public transport. One in five (22%) trialists using Pay as You Go Oyster reported that they increased the number of journeys they made on public transport during the trial.
• Overall, almost 50,000 tube journeys took place using the O2 Wallet during the six month trial.
• 67% said that they found it more convenient to use than a standard Oyster card.
• 87% said that availability of the service would be likely to influence their purchase of a new mobile phone.

From Guardian again, In Japan, such phones have been in use for more than four years. The Japanese railway network has been using the technology since 2001 and millions of cards have been issued. But the technology used in Japan is based on Sony's FeliCa chip technology, which is different from that used in the O2 trial and by Transport for London for the Oyster card.

Philip Makinson, at industry experts Greenwich Consulting, said mobile wallets had fallen down in the past because of the number of people needed to make any system viable.

"It requires cooperation, not just between handset manufacturers and network operators but third parties such as Visa or Mastercard and banks and retailers. To reach critical mass you really need to have at least three of the big operators to be involved or there is not enough in it for the likes of Transport for London or Nokia," said Makinson.

Several of the UK's five mobile phone networks are understood to be interested in mobile wallets.

"There does seem to be consumer demand for it, people are saying they want to carry less stuff around with them," said Makinson.
The results of the O2 trial show that people like using a mobile phone to do more than send texts and talk.

NRS, ENUM and NGN

The way most of mobile savvy people work is that they have bundles of free minutes on their mobile which they use for calling people locally/nationally and then they have VoIP based clients like Skype they use for calling people on similar services locally/nationally/internationally. There is a constant juggle between Mobile numbers and VoIP numbers. What if we were able to use our number with VoIP client so regardless of whom you are calling, if they have a similar VoIP service on their side, you get free call and if they dont have this VoIP client then you use your inclusive minutes or get charged. ENUM will be able to solve this.

According to a Yankee Group report titled "ENUM Will Be Reinvented as a Strategic NGN Element", In spite of its early struggles, ENUM, short for Electronic Numbering or Telephone Number Mapping, is well positioned to provide a fundamental underpinning of the Anywhere Network™ as it relates to the efficient routing of any IP-based service across operator domains. It is in this new role that ENUM evolves from its rather meager beginnings to a strategic role in the transition to IP.

I wrote about ENUM sometime back as that was mentioned as magical entity in one of the conferences. Since then I have managed to find the Nominet presentation which was discussed in the conference. Infact there was a conference in London on ENUM organised by Nominet. If you are not clear about ENUM from my earlier Blog then please check Technology Inside Blog here.

We can discuss again here, why ENUM is important:

Imagine the NHS has 500 telephone numbers that it operates as 0800 freephone numbers to allow customer (patients) to contact various local departments. The cost of each minute of every call is borne by the NHS so ultimately by the British taxpayer. Now the NHS also has VoIP connectivity and decides to advertise their 0800 numbers through DNS using ENUM. Subsequently, every time someone using VoIP decides to call any of those 0800 numbers their VoIP provider will find the 0800 number in the ENUM DNS listings for the NHS and will connect the caller to the medical department using VoIP alone - at no cost to either party (usually).

Siemens have a very good presentation that shows different uses of ENUM.

Clearly with this approach there is scope for financial savings. That said, there remains considerable work needed to achieve even this small goal, let alone the potential options further down the road.

In case you were wondering, ENUM is an international standard being implemented by individual countries separately through their respective Governments. The UK Government, through regulator OFCOM, has assigned the design, implementation and ongoing administration of the project to UKEC who, in turn, have contracted much of the work to Nominet. Nominet administer and maintain the .uk gTLD - when you buy any domain ending .uk it is ultimately sold by Nominet although almost always through a reseller (”registrar”) like GoDaddy.

GSMA and NeuStar have been working with leading operators to provide a standards-based solution to this problem. This solution is the Number Resolution Service, or NRS.

NRS is a GSMA Managed Service operated by NeuStar. The service facilitates IP interoperability by translating telephone numbers to IP-based addresses. Interoperability is particularly important in facilitating the uptake of emerging services such as MMS, IMS and Packet Voice.

Based on Carrier ENUM, NRS is available to mobile operators, fixed network operators, and related service providers. The service is currently being piloted with a number of operators, with commercial availability scheduled for the autumn of 2008.

As next generation IP-based services proliferate, operators can utilise NRS to position new services behind the telephone number already used by subscribers. Whenever a telephone number is used to identify an end user, the NRS service will facilitate the discovery of URI containing information specific to the service being provided.

NRS is provided as an off the shelf managed service, interoperable on a global basis, providing all the facilities and features necessary to implement an operator’s interconnect policies. Pricing is based on a cost effective “pay as you go” model with no up front capital investment required. NRS thus helps lower the entry barrier for new services and promotes innovation by simplifying the product development and implementation process.

ENUM is going to be hated by the CPs because it will lower their per minute revenue which they are getting at the moment but they it is definitely going to provide new opportunities (and competetion). At the same time the customers will love it because they will get loads of free calls and dont have to worry too much about installing different VoIP clients on their phones. At present it is still in the initial stages with everyone waiting for others to adopt it first but ENUM is here to stay.

Abbreviations:

• ENUM - tElephone NUmber Mapping (I have also seen Electronic NUMbering)
• CP - Communications Provider
• SBC - Session Border Controller
• NHS - National Health Service (in UK)
• NRS - Number Resolution Service
• GSMA - GSM Association

Femtocells With LTE and their commercialization

Over the past few months LTE is gaining real momentum and the LTE camp is expanding. Companies who have decided to consider LTE as their 4G technology are doing everything possible to make LTE a big success.

Femtocells is another one of the most talked technology these days. In the past one year itself Femtocells has gained lots of strength and they are already in the process of commercialization. Giants like Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint have already announced their offering of femtocell products and service plans sometime this year. A few big announcements like this in the femtocell arena should give Femtocell market some good momentum. Some of you might already be aware that Qualcomm made a significant yet unknown investment in ip.access' Oyster 3G systems, which uses the residential broadband connection to deliver a 3G signal in the home. The move is seen as validating the femtocell concept, especially since Qualcomm is so adept at making the right technology investments.

With the work on LTE in full progress and femtocells strengthening its ground, industry is very comfortable with the idea of having Femtocells in LTE.

Analysts consider LTE as a major boost to the future success of femtocells. In order to take femtocells further with LTE and to make them big success the joint testing of a reference design against the LTE standard was proposed.

Considering the proposal seriously the joint testing was conducted by picoChip, a U.K based femtocell silicon developer; mimoOn a German-based SDR specialist; and the test equipment vendor Agilent Technologies. The objective behind the test was to verify that the femtocell reference design met the requirements of the LTE standard as measured by the recently developed 3GPP LTE modulation analysis option from Agilent.

The above joint testing triggered enough confidence in the industry and hence the idea of having Femtocells on LTE. Based on the joint testing picoChip and mimoOn, which have been co-operating on the reference design for the past 12 months, recently announced the availability of what they suggest are the first LTE femtocell and picocell reference designs, the PC8608 Home eNodeB and PC8618 eNodeB respectively. The design is based upon the same hardware platforms as picoChip's WiMAX products.

Going further PicoChip unveiled its first reference designs for LTE femtocells and picocells, which will enable the company's existing femtocell customers, which include ip.access and Ubiquisys, to upgrade to LTE.

3GPP is well aware of all the developments in the femtocells and is busy in developing the specifications with regards to femtocells in LTE.
To end the squabbling The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has adopted an official architecture for 3G femtocell home base stations and started work on a new standard for home base stations.

The 3GPP wants to have the new standard done by the end of this year, which appears to be an aggressive time schedule given the fact that vendors had various approaches to building a femtocell base station.

The agreed upon architecture follows an access network-based approach, leveraging existing standards, called IU-cs and Iu-ps interfaces, into the core service network. The result is a new interface called Iu-h.

The architecture defines two new network elements, the femtocell and the femtocell gateway. Between these elements is the new Iu-h interface. This solution was backed by Alcatel-Lucent, Kineto Wireless, Motorola and NEC.

However with every new standard the old or existing architecture comes under review. With this new standard all of the femtocell vendors who had their own design in place, must go back and change their access point and network gateway equipment to comply with the new standard interface. I think in doing so vendors can bring themselves in line with the global standard.
All femtocell vendors will have to make changes to their access points. Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, NEC, and those that already use Kineto's GAN approach, such as Ubiquisys, will have the least work to do. Ubiquisys has already announced that it will have products ready that support the new standard by December of this year.

Now as the standard is been decided companies can work on their designs based on the standard and can think of introducing the products in the market.

T-Mobile is moving fast in that direction and it has chosen two German cities, Cologne and Bonn to test the commercial feasibility of 3G femtocells. The operator will be the first to conduct trials of the technology in Germany, albeit that numerous trials have already taken place elsewhere in Europe.

While T-Mobile demonstrated femtocells at the giant CeBIT exhibition earlier this year, this trial is aimed at testing how consumers react to the plug-and-play characteristics of femtocells. Having achieved positive feedback from earlier tests, T-Mobile is now continuing to explore the area of deep indoor coverage and enhance in buildings femtocells coverage for UMTS and HSPA (High Speed Packet Access). This will definitely boost both data transmissions and telephony.

T-Mobile’s earlier results from the above tests suggest there might be a limited commercial deployment of femtocells later in the year. T-Mobile is reported as seeing femtocells having 'a lot of potential'.

Femtocells are widely perceived as a solution for mobile operators to boost in-building 3G coverage without the high costs associated with increasing the size of their macro networks. Femtocells are very much the hot topic of the mobile industry at present and are expected to have a high profile at the forthcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Femtocell does present another front for revenues and companies are investing in femtocells.
In March of this year the T-Mobile Venture Fund made a strategic investment in Ubiquisys, a developer of 3G femtocells, joining Google and original investors Accel Partners, Atlas Venture and Advent Venture Partners.

Cisco and Intel recently invested in femtocell company ip.access and Qualcomm has put money into Airvana.

T-Mobile said it plans to test Ubiquisys' femtocell technology in trials in Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. in the coming months. Meanwhile, its U.S. subsidiary is using WiFi hotspots in the home as an alternative to a femtocell solution to improve coverage in the home. Once T-Mobile launches its 3G network in the U.S. we could see both femtocells and WiFi.
However I am not sure whether T-Mobile in its latest trial in Germany used devices provided by Ubiquisys.

The commercial deployment of femtocells has taken another step forward following the adoption by the Femto Forum of a worldwide standard that defines the real-time management of femtocells within households. Members of the Forum have agreed to implement the Broadband Forum's TR-069 CPE WAN management protocol standard which is already in use with around 30 million devices having been defined in 2004 for the broadband community. The basis of the TR-069 standard is to enable CPE devices to be easily deployed and configured reliably but, more importantly, in high volumes, something that has worried operators planning to position the femtocell as user installable.The Femto Forum claims that TR-069 has proven itself to provide consumers with a method of easy installation and self provisioning, while enabling the operator to run diagnostics and conduct remote firmware and service upgrades with millions of end-user devices, in a cost-effective manner. The two groups now plan to define extensions to TR-069 to add additional femtocell capability to the standard.
It is an exciting time for the femtocell industry with commercialization in sight. The industry hopes are even higher with femtocells in LTE will provide even better services to the customers.

HSPA: Milestone and bold predictions

GSMA announced last week that the number of HSPA mobile subscribers has reached 50 million. The number of HSPA subscribers last year at around this time was 11 million.

An old slide predicting the rise of HSPA subscribers can be seen above. I dont think that the number of subscribers reached 20 million in 2007 as predicted but they will definitely be more than 60 million by the end of 2008. Around 4 million people are converting to being HSPA subscribers every month.

GSMA also have a site dedicated to HSPA where they also maintain a live counter of the number of HSPA subscribers worldwide.

Finally, here are some HSPA related statistical facts from GSMA website:

• 267 operator commitments in 111 countries
• 191 commercial deployments in 89 countries
• All EU countries have commercial HSPA deployments
• 747 HSPA devices from 114 suppliers including:
  > 281 mobile handsets
  > 68 data cards
  > 120 notebooks
  > 40 wireless routers
  > 72 USB modems
  > 39 embedded modules

GSMA has also claimed that mobile will reach speeds of 100Mbps before landline will. This was in response to BT announcing FTTx technology to be available in 10 million homes by 2012. With the Fibre technology though the initial speeds will be 40Mbps, rising to 60Mbps later on. Sometime (quite far) in future it will eventually achieve 1000Mbps though.

Finally, Global mobile broadband connections in the first quarter of this year rose by 850% from the same period last year, according to Herns Pierre-Jerome, director for wireless broadband technologies of Qualcomm. The rapid growth, he said, illustrated how mobile broadband had become a mainstream data application of third-generation (3G) mobile phone technology, driven primarily by evolution-data optimised (EV-DO) and high-speed packet access (HSPA) systems.

The number of 3G subscribers globally totals 670 million in a market of 3.5 billion mobile users. The figure is forecast to reach 1.6 billion over the next four years, fuelled by declining costs of network equipment and devices. Telecom vendors and operators are expected to realise revenue of US$114 billion from 3G equipment and $394 billion from 3G services. Qualcomm earned $10 billion in revenue in 2007, out of overall industry revenue of $352 billion.

Data revenues can go even higher

Over the past few years the telecoms world has experienced number of emerging technologies with a great degree of innovation coupled with intensive research. In the year 1999 when I completed my engineering in electronics and communication, most of the telecomm companies in India were only interested in GSM/GPRS. At that time I had no idea how the technology will evolve, as it has over the period of time.

Initially it was GPRS and then it lead to the major shift towards 3G. Once the 3G found its place further developments were carried out in terms of improving the user experience while on the move. This sole idea of giving the user the best, lead to the emergence of new technologies like HSDPA, HSUP. HSPA+ and LTE. Clearly improved data rates were the key factor for introduction of each technology from GPRS to LTE.

Everybody in the industry realised that if they have to win the customers and to compete with the fixed technology then they have to provide better data rates while the user is on the move. Till today the vendors and operators together with 3GPP has worked very hard to come forward with technologies like HSPA+ etc which can serve plenty of mega bytes per second to the users.
Although the wireless operators insist that we are still in the early stages of wireless data adoption but the data revenues are already playing the major part in the overall revenues of the companies. Recently when the operators announced Q2 data revenues they reported that data revenues account for nearly 25 percent of their average revenue per user (ARPU). Verizon Wireless is the prime example of the above fact which is the data leader in US, with 24.4 percent of its $51.53 ARPU coming from data. AT&T is a close second with 22.9 percent of its ARPU coming from data.

During the earnings calls with analysts, both the above operators together with the likes of Vodafone talked about the continued growth potential for data. There is a clear trend that operators are leaving no stone unturned in order to provide as high data rates as possible to their users. Operators are working feverishly to upgrade their network and the competition is intensifying for the better user experience. Youth and businesses are the main targets for the companies which are always in demand of high data rates for their own reasons.

These days one can easily get access to mobile broadband with reasonable amount of monthly payment. There are so many competitive deals available in the market in order to lure the customers towards browsing and emailing while on the move. There is no doubt that operators are successfully adding the customers and hence increasing their revenues mostly generated by data use. Verizon's data revenue grew 45 percent year over year. AT&T's data revenue grew 52 percent year over year. Vodafone and T-Mobile’s data revenue too grew by more than 50% over the last couple of years. But I'm wondering how high the data revenues can really climb. Is this strong growth rate sustainable?

Executives from the telecomm giants like Vodafone, AT&T etc predict there are still much more growth to come as consumers upgrade to integrated devices and smart phones that can take advantage of the 3G network. The companies say that nearly 20% of their customers has either upgrade or are in the process of upgrading to an integrated device. Meanwhile, Verizon recently said that 60 percent or 40.5 million, of its retail customers have upgraded to 3G data-capable devices.

Analysts believe that the likes of Vodafone, T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon are the clear leader in monetizing data and that it will continue to lead the industry in data ARPU as it increases the number of data applications and data-centric devices.

I think the key to sustaining this growth rate lies not in the number of data-capable devices in consumer hands but in the availability of compelling data applications at reasonable price points. Without the continued push for better, more user friendly applications, data revenues are not going to be able to sustain this current growth trajectory.

Vodafone for example is already taking the necessary steps in that directions and it is looking to boost the usage of 3G data. Vodafone has announced an agreement with the laptop vendor Lenovo that will see its new X200 computer pre-installed with a Vodafone SIM and supporting software. The broadband connectivity comes at no extra cost and, when activated by the purchaser of the laptop, will offer the user a 30-day free trial. "The connection manager will ask for your name and email, but no bank details," said Alec Howard, head of PC connectivity at Vodafone. "Users will be prompted to take out a contract at the end of the free trial and the prices are around £12 a month for broadband, with automatic roaming in Europe at £8.50 a day. But like any other products this also has a disadvantage. Users dissatisfied with the Vodafone service will struggle if they want to connect to another mobile operator thus installing a new SIM and downloading and configuring a new connection manager instead of using the built-in software which only works with Vodafone.

I certainly believe that this embedded 3G initiative would significantly lower the cost of built-in mobile broadband technology across the entire range of laptops. I myself have used a dell laptop with an embedded data card.

Where you just have to put the right SIM and then connect to wireless broadband with the help of a connection manager. I think embedded modems are cool and are fun to use. There is no doubt in my mind that the use of embedded modems for mobile broadband connectivity is set to increase rapidly in the next few years, with sales estimated to grow at a rate of well above 80% per cent from 2008 to 2012. Laptops with an embedded modem are one of the data applications which will enhance the user experience and hence lead to the increase in ARPU.

Most of the vendors are also working in the direction where they can enhance the handset architecture with enhanced multimedia functionalities. Nokia surprised analysts with its Q2 revenues with better-than-expected second-quarter earnings. Nokia thinks inline with some of the operators and firmly believe that the global handset market could grow more than its previous estimate of 10 percent in 2008.

For the new devices, Nokia concentrated a lot on the services front, and hence enriched customers with the handsets supporting next generation multimedia services e.g. supporting Sony BMG Entertainment with Music service. The Nokia Music Store is now available in 10 markets and the company expects to have 14 stores open by year-end. In addition, N-Gage mobile games service, which became available during the quarter, has had more than 406,000 downloads.

So in my view if the companies are innovative just like Nokia has, then there is every possible chance to push the data rates to new high. Vendors with their excellent architecture and high degree of data applications can definitely push the data throughput and hence contribute in high data revenues.

As everyday passes by we are seeing new handset with amazing designs and new architecture. These handsets are designed to perform faster and can support very high data rates. Today’s youth can play online games on these devices, can watch live TV, send and receive multimedia messages and so many other things. The business users can exchange email while on the move. The installation of HSPA+ by vendors will further enhance the experience of the data users. The number of HSPA sunscribers is growing many folds i.e. at the rate of 4 million subscribers a year. Companies like At&T are aggressive towards their HSPA roll out plans and it looks to rollout the HSPA together with the 3G iphone.

Very high speed of up to 20 Mbps in a 5 Mhz channel is already achieved by HSPA and Qualcomm is one of the many to prove this.

At the moment things looks very promising and I strongly believe that industry will keep coming out with bright ideas to generate the increased data revenues. LTE is another step towards more revenue generation with enhanced user experience in view. Let’s see how high the data throughput together with the data revenues will go.

Need for femtocells -> from Youtube

Someone sent me this link from youtube. Even though this is more like a marketing presentation from Soundpartners for a market report, it gives a good idea from operators point of view, why they will be looking at Femtocells to strengthen their market position and as a way of optimising their networks.

802.11n and 4G...

IEEE 802.11n is a proposed amendment to the IEEE 802.11-2007 wireless networking standard to significantly improve network throughput over previous standards, such as 802.11b and 802.11g, with a significant increase in raw (PHY) data rate from 54 Mbit/s to a maximum of 600 Mbit/s. Most devices today support a PHY rate of 300 Mbit/s, with the use of 2 Spatial Streams at 40 MHz. Depending on the environment, this may translate into a user throughput (TCP/IP) of 100 Mbit/s.

According to the book "WI-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee and Wimax":

802.11n is the 4th generation of wireless lan technology.

• First generation (IEEE 802.11) since 1997 (WLAN/1G)
• Second generation (IEEE 802.11b) since 1998 (WLAN/2G)
• Third generation (802.11a/g) since 2000 (WLAN/3G)
• Fourth generation (IEEE 802.11n) (WLAN/4G)

The distinguishing features of 802.11n are:

• Very high throughput (some hundreds of Mbps)
• Long distances at high data rates (equivalent to IEEE 802.11b at 500 Mbps)
• Use of robust technologies (e.g. multiple-input multiple-output [MIMO]and space time coding).

In the N option, the real data throughput is estimated to reach a theoretical 540 Mbps (which may require an even higher raw data rate at the physical layer), and should be up to 100 times faster than IEEE 802.11b, and well over ten times faster than IEEE 802.11a or IEEE 802.11g. IEEE 802.11n will probably offer a better operating distance than current networks. IEEE 802.11n builds upon previous IEEE 802.11 standards by adding MIMO. MIMO uses multiple transmitter and receiver antennae to allowfor increased data throughput through spatial multiplexing and increased range by exploiting the spatial diversity and powerful coding schemes. The N system is strongly based on the IEEE 802.11e QoS specification to improve bandwidth performance. The system supports basebands width of 20 or 40MHz.

Note that there is 802.11n PHY and 802.11n MAC that will be required to acheive 540Mbps.

To achieve maximum throughput a pure 802.11n 5 GHz network is recommended. The 5 GHz band has substantial capacity due to many non-overlapping radio channels and less radio interference as compared to the 2.4 GHz band. An all-802.11n network may be impractical, however, as existing laptops generally have 802.11b/g radios which must be replaced if they are to operate on the network. Consequently, it may be more practical to operate a mixed 802.11b/g/n network until 802.11n hardware becomes more prevalent. In a mixed-mode system, it’s generally best to utilize a dual-radio access point and place the 802.11b/g traffic on the 2.4 GHz radio and the 802.11n traffic on the 5 GHz radio.

A lot of phones are coming with inbuilt WiFi (or 802.11 a/b/g) and this WiFi is a must on Laptops or they wont sell. The main difference in 802.11n, compared to previous generation of 802.11 is that there is a presence of MIMO. 802.11 family uses OFDM which is the same technology being adopted by LTE. The new LTE handsets will have advantage of easily integrating this 802.11n technology and the same antennas can be reused. In fact the same is applicable for WiMAX as it supports MIMO and OFDM. Ofcourse we will have problems if they are using quite different frequencies as the antennas ore optimised to range of frequencies, this is something that has to be seen.

In the news:

MIT and a medical center based in Alabama are beginning to deploy faster wireless 802.11n access points from Cisco Systems Inc. In more than 100 buildings on MIT's Cambridge, Mass., campus, as many as 3,200 access points running older 802.11a/b/g protocols will be replaced with 802.11n devices in the next 12 to 16 months, said Chris Murphy, a networking engineer at the university. Murphy said MIT, with more than 10,000 students and 11,000 staff members, has a "very, very wide variety" of client devices, from handhelds to laptops. Many of the laptops probably support the 802.11n protocol, he said. Some MIT staffers have been using voice-over-IP wireless handsets and have experienced poor coverage with the older Wi-Fi technology, but they said they have had full signal strength within the range of the new 802.11n access points, he added. With 802.11n, the university could eventually provide IP television, which requires a lot of bandwidth, Murphy said.

Using 802.11n technology, Lapham said he was able to transmit a gigabyte of data in less than two minutes. Currently, the 370-bed medical center has about 450 access points on older protocols. Devices used on the wireless network include 180 laptops, which are used primarily for transmitting bedside patient data. The hospital also supports 100 VoIP wireless phones and a various medical devices.

Wi-Fi is expected to be available in 99 per cent of North American universities by 2013, according to research released by industry analyst ABI Research this week. Much of that penetration will be in the form of 802.11n equipment: higher education is clearly the number one market for early adopters of 802.11n, the company said.

ABI Research expects 802.11n uptake – which is today fairly small in the education market – to ramp up steeply to quite a high rate of penetration," said ABI Research vice president Stan Schatt. There are several reasons for this. ABI said many students now assume a campus Wi-Fi network as a given, and many of their shiny new laptops will be 'n'-compatible. Universities also have great bandwidth demands, as lecture halls may need to serve a large number of users with multimedia contention at any given time and 802.11n's greater speed and capacity can address that need. Moreover, said Schatt, "Universities are breaking new ground by using video over Wi-Fi in a number innovative ways. This is driving the adoption of high speed 802.11n. Students in the near future (at least the diligent ones) will be just as likely to watch their favourite professor's lectures on their laptops as they will be to view 'America's Next Top Model'."

You may also be interested in reading:

• Wireless Handheld Devices--The 802.11n Advantage - Embedded.com
• 802.11n delivers developing ecosystem - EE Times
• Emerging Technologies in Wireless LANs - Benny Bing