UMB now officially dead, Long live LTE!

As one article put it, "Qualcomm cancels its own 4G system" going further to mention "Ultramobile broadband (UMB) is ultra dead". I blogged earlier about Nortel abandoning its CDMA business and about CDMA operators defecting to LTE and was sort of waiting for this imminent announcement to happen. There were already rumors about this happening since last year. (Not sure if some Hedge fund managers did be on this ;). UMB is also known as CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev C.

Qualcomm Inc officially announced that it has stopped development of Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB), its next-generation, high-speed wireless technology, and has been making small-scale layoffs as it looks to cut costs in the weakening economy, Chief Executive Paul Jacobs said. Jacobs said the company was putting resources into LTE technology instead.

The company that created CDMA techology, meant for UMB to be CDMA’s 4G play. The company had high hopes for squeezing out WiMAX, positioning UMB to compete directly against LTE. With a logical upgrade path for existing CDMA carriers, UMB was designed to continue the GSM vs CDMA platform war in the fourth generation of wireless technology.

However, Qualcomm in recent years has gained dominance in the LTE development field as well. With Qualcomm now heavily invested in UMTS/HSPA technology, UMB had Qualcomm playing both sides, ensuring that they would be dominant in all CDMA-derived products (both UMB and LTE use technology originally derived from Qualcomm’s oldest CDMA patents).

With WiMAX becoming embraced, and even deployed, globally, UMB failed to gain a single carrier. The main cause for CDMA carriers defecting to WiMAX, has been Qualcomm’s monopoly on the technology. WiMAX trumps UMB in being an industry standard, not controlled or mandated by a single company.

The CDMA Development Group (CDG) has yet to comment on this announcement. However, the CDG has told PhoneNews.com that their driving force going forward will be to foster CDMA as a low-cost network option, especially in developing nations. Qualcomm still hopes to use CDMA for new networks in Africa, using their own hybrid GSM/UMTS/CDMA chipsets for international roaming when those customers travel abroad.

This leaves LTE as the eventual winner and with Operators already planning to roll out LTE network mid next year, WiMAX is going to get tough competetion from LTE. CDMA2000 operators meanwhile will have to now start planning how to move towards LTE (or WiMAX for that matter). 3GPP has laid down clear evolution path to move to LTE from CDMA2000. Other option which I quoted earlier is the eHRPD approach.

Mobile Phone Data and Statistics from 2007

In 2007, 1.15 billion mobile units were sold. Now according to Tomi in a post in Forum Oxford, these 1.15 Billion was split so that 805 million went to existing customers and only 300 million phones sold to new customers.

According to Informa, total number of subscribers worldwide increased by 600 million (from 2.7Billion in 2006 to 3.3 Billion in 2007) in 2007. This would mean that 300 million people got only SIM's and no phones. I am sure this would make green lobby a bit happy because people are recycling phones ;)

According to Informa, 28% of phone subscriptions in 2007 were multiple subscriptions (one person having more that one phone/SIM). In Europe this figure was approx. 50%.

This raises an interesting point; there is a big market for phones with dual SIM capability. It is not so simple though. There are no standards defining phone behaviour with dual SIMs. All the phones that I am aware of have a single transmitter/receiver. This means that even if you have two SIMs, they are both not active at the same time. You would have to manually choose which one is active at any point of time.

Manufacturing of dual SIM phones with two transmitter/receivers is possible but the phones will become slightly bulky and expensive. It can definitely make my life easier so I am all for them, dont know what others feel.

On the flipside, if you lose the phone you lose both your SIMs and are totally cut off till you get atleast one replaced.

We all want LTE now

One headline said, "T-Mobile International wants LTE fast" while the other said "LTE roll-out will accelerate despite recession, claims Motorola" and the third one screamed "Huawei To Launch First LTE Commercial Network In 2009".

I mentioned in an earlier post about attending LTE world summit this month. I am expecting some announcements and surprises in the conference where everyone would like to show off about their progress and readiness to launch LTE.

T-Mobile has announced recently that it plans to skip HSPA+ altogether and focus on LTE. It wants to roll out LTE network by 2010. The main reason for its decision stems from the fact that since MIMO is introduced in HSPA+, it wants to avoid the upgrade cost if LTE is available in couple of years. We have to remember though that HSPA+ is more of an upgrade to the existing HSPA and we can be assured of the reliability and the quality that we have so got used to. On the other hand, LTE may have its own problems and since it will be new technology, it would take time to mature. Can T-Mobile afford to go through this period of uncertainty and maturisation on its own without something to fall back on.

According to Ihab Ghattas, assistant president of Huawei Middle East, the Chinese telecommunications equipment and solutions provider plans to launch its first LTE/SAE commercial network in June 2009, providing LTE/SAE infrastructure to mobile operators.

Ghattas announced the decision in his report "Preparing for the future technology trends - LTE focus" at the meeting held by the SAMENA Telecommunications Council. He said the rapid development and benefits of wireless technology has seen mobile broadband evolve from UMTS/HSPA/HSPA+ to LTE, which offers more efficiency than other networks. Expectations are that by 2015 LTE subscriber base will reach 400 to 450 million, generating revenues of almost EUR150 billion.

Till date, NTT DoCoMo, China Mobile and Verizon wireless had announced to launch LTE/SAE based networks. Now we can add Huawei and T-Mobile to this list as well. Companies like Motorola and Nortel have not much HSPA/HSPA+ presence and have invested heavily in LTE, hoping to grab market share by the fact that they are there before others.

According to this another report, Operators relying on mobile or fixed/mobile broadband services to increase their future revenues are not only facing an upgrade of their wireless networks to HSPA+, WiMAX or LTE, but also a massive increase in the backhaul capacity needed to support that data traffic and multimedia applications.

Paul Steinberg, chief architect for Motorola’s wireless infrastructure products, reinforced the message this week, predicting that even 3.5G technologies will start to struggle soon in areas of high usage, and that this will force new approaches to backhaul as well as an early move to LTE, despite economic uncertainty.

In an interview with US-based CommsDay, Steinberg said 3G operators in developed markets will experience increases in data usage in the course of this year, ranging from sixfold to 14fold, but revenue from data services is growing only by 10-30% a year. This will push carriers towards all-IP, flat networks like WiMAX and LTE, with their improved cost of delivering broadband data.

Citing research by ComScore, Steinberg said that reasonable traffic profiles for mobile users by 2011 will range from 2.7Gb of data for typical handset users, to 11.1Gb a month for heavy users with both a laptop and handset. He believes some operators will have to start to roll out 4G-class networks as early as the end of next year to cope with the demands. Motorola is still relying on LTE deployments by six operators next year and 10 in 2010. However small their initial build-outs, Motorola points out that the 16 carriers that have committed to LTE in the next two years account for about 1.8bn subscribers worldwide, about half the global total.

According to Motorola, each LTE base station will require 200Mbps-300Mbps of backhaul capacity, which will stretch most fixed or wireless technologies apart from fiber or Gigabit Ethernet. This will lead to new approaches, such as ‘wireless fiber’ technologies, or relay techniques.

Get a Femtocell and make money

This post again is a concept but I dont see why the operators may not go this way.

The main reason you would put a Femtocell in your house or your shop is because you want cheaper calls and reliable coverage. The Femtocells would probably be setup as Closed Femtocells or better known in 3GPP Release 8 as CSG (closed subscriber groups). It may be beneficial for the operator that the Femtocells are setup as 'open' rather than closed. This can be useful in shops or malls where the shoppers can experience bad coverage in particular part of the shop or mall.

To motivate people to keep open access, they could offer free cash to the Femtocell owners on which outsiders (IMSI's not on the access list) camp and originate voice and data calls. In the web world, similar approach is used by Google Adsense. UK operator '3' has also tried similar cashback scheme before with decent success.

This approach may encourage lots of shops and people (especially during Credit Crunch scenario) to install Femtocells thereby increasing coverage significantly.

On the flipside, I should mention that people might start abusing this and increase the interference in the Macro cell. Also, the operators have to plan the Femtocell rollout in such a way that such interferences would be kept to minimum.

Will there be a winner in LTE and WiMax debate?

In the past there have been so many developments within WiMax and LTE in terms of where the two technology stands. Which technology is on the rise or which will eventually be a 4G technology is a never ending discussion.

On a regular basis I do get to know that either the LTE or WiMax camp claiming victory over another.

In a recent WiMAX World conference in Chicago, some advocates were quick to claim a WiMAX victory in the 4G technology race. The mantra or refrain for most of the sessions was that WiMAX is here and it's paving the way for 4G.

In the past few months there has been significant development in WiMax camp coordinated with the launch of WiMax services. In September Sprint-Nextel's launched the commercial mobile WiMAX service (called Xohm) in Baltimore. This definitely helped the buzz for WiMax to reach a new high. But as always together with the excitement, lies some anxious moments as everybody is now watching Xohm's debut to see how it fares with consumers.

There is no doubt that plenty of stake is riding on Sprint's Xohm launch. Clearwire also has got its own anxious moments with this launch as it was in last May that Clearwire announced it would merge with Sprint Nextel's WiMAX business to create a new company, also called Clearwire. The deal, which is expected to close by year-end, includes a $3.2 billion investment from Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner and others.

Although the above scenario really present a competitive and rosy picture for WiMax but even one of mobile WiMAX's biggest fans, admits that it's unlikely that WiMAX (or any one technology for e.g. LTE) will win the 4G debate.

In my view and so as I believe most of the people expects that the wireless industry will always have at least two technologies, perhaps more. My view can be supported with the idea of most of the operators going for HSPA+ technology. With operators eager to generate more revenue with the ever increased data rate requirements together with the delay in LTE there is no choice but to go for HSPA+. Which in my view has always been the best way to move forward as I am always a big fan of HSPA+ till LTE arrives?

This means that there may be some operators that will evolve along the HSPA+ path and never opt to deploy 4G or a 4G-like technology.

If the situation were to develop like I mentioned above then I don't think it is going to be as black and white as one (technology) wins and one loses. A lot of people don't realize that the most of the successful wireless operator or one of the most successful wireless operators today uses a technology that is only used by 13 percent of subscribers around the world.

But that's not all, inspite of all these and hence the Future of 4G will includes several interactive panels with experts who will delve into all aspects of the 4G debate. I am sure that whenever there is debate between LTE and WiMax it starts with the WiMax camp pointing out that Mobile WiMAX is the first out of the gate. Ok I agree then people argue that LTE is often considered the more evolutionary technology. The question probably isn't whether they can co-exist, they have enough common elements that it's feasible, it's whether there are enough reasons for them too.

So many times in the past including me has got into the debate of whether WiMax and LTE should or will be merged together?

In my past blog I have championed the cause of LTE and WiMax working together.
But as always there are many experts whoc belive that they ae going to work together. One of them is Peter Jarich, the research director of Current Analysys who firmly believe that LTE and WiMax are not going to merge. I can see where Pter is coming from because most of these phrases of working together are mostly biased towards politics and just from a political standpoint of getting all the parties together it's just not going to happen.

As I said in my previous blog regarding LTE and WiMax harmonization the guys have to fight it out. Now that might be bad for the carriers but it's good for the vendors who supply weapons to both sides and it's always good for consumers who get more choice.

Once thing which is quite clear though is that the presence of a rapidly maturing WiMAX ecosystem certainly has had the effect of accelerating LTE well before all the revenue potential was drawn out of HSPA and EVDO. In the past year LTE has certainly gained momentum in standards development, carrier decisions and an LTE wireless ecosystem being created. After all these significant developments in LTE analysts have started to believe that there is no reason to slow it down by merging it with WiMAX. There is, however, a reason for speeding it up to compete with WiMAX.

I can make a pretty strong argument that LTE would be at least four years later if WiMAX were not pulling it forward. WiMAX also comes with its own strengths that could add some intrigue to the battle. It's an IP standard from its base up and performs better in TDD and less mobile environments. LTE performs better in FDD and a high-user count model. That means the two could be complementary-albeit competing.

Would it be better if we had one technology and not two?

Well the debate continues……

CDMA Femtocell race heats up in USA

Airvana has said that its 'Betting the Farm' on femtocells in 2009. Recently it has entered a definitive supply agreement with Hitachi Communication Technologies, Ltd. ("Hitachi Com"). The agreement covers Airvana's HubBubT CDMA femtocell, Femtocell Service Manager, and Universal Access Gateway, and follows a joint development relationship announced in July 2008.

As part of the companies' previously announced joint-development agreement, Airvana has customized its HubBub CDMA femtocell, which is unique in the industry for its support of both 1x-RTT and EV-DO services; its Femtocell Service Manager, a scalable auto-configuration and remote management system; and its Universal Access Gateway, a carrier-class femtocell network gateway; to support the advanced features of Hitachi Com's Convergence Server. Under the terms of the agreement announced today, Hitachi will provide marketing, sales and support activities, primarily in the Japanese market, for the Airvana femtocell products. Delivery of the Airvana-Hitachi Com joint solution will provide operators with rapid deployment capabilities of advanced femtocell solutions. Hitachi's infrastructure equipment is used in networks serving more than 30 million Japanese CDMA and EV-DO subscribers.

According to Unstrung:

The company is slightly different from many others trying to crack the home base station market, in that it is developing both UMTS and CDMA boxes and pushing ahead with voice and data support straight out of the gate.

Airvana's main rival in the mini-CDMA field is Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., which already has its Airave box in use at Sprint Nextel Corp. and possibly in tests at Verizon Wireless . Some analysts, however, expect that Verizon could also have its eye on Airvana's gear.

Competition is bit tougher on the GSM/UMTS side of the fence, involving everyone from established players such as Ericsson AB to well funded youngsters like RadioFrame Networks Inc. and ip.access Ltd.

Readers familiar with Airvana, however, will spot that although the technology is new [ed. note: sorta] the company's strategy for entering the market is the same as it took with 3G CDMA infrastructure: Partner with the big boys and gals and supply them with the technology that carriers end up using in their networks.

In other news, Tatara Systems Inc. is going full steam ahead for femtocells now that it has sold its mobile broadband business to Smith Micro Software Inc.

Now, femto-focused Tatara will use the money from this sale to develop its convergence gateway product used in the femto gateways that will sit in the network between the femtocell access points and the mobile core. In IMS networks, Tatara's convergence gateway acts as an SIP-application server.

According to a press release last month:

Ericsson and Tatara, the leaders in SIP-based network integration and femtocell convergence, have successfully demonstrated this solution, which enables CDMA network operators to cost effectively integrate femtocells into their IMS networks. This provides both enterprises and home subscribers in-building service levels that meet or exceed the service levels and voice quality of macro networks, while enabling improved economics and delivery of advanced services.

The solution combines Ericsson’s IMS Core Network infrastructure with a SIP-based femtocell and the Tatara Convergence Server (TCS) for CDMA-1xRTT.

AUO to show off upcoming innovations

AU Optronics Corp.'s recently announced vision for the next decade, AUO announced a series of forthcoming innovations, including the world's first 24-inch 2D/3D mix mode panel, a range of 4.3-inch to 15-inch multi-touch panels, and the world's first 2.8-inch image/fingerprint scanning technology on QVGA mobile device panel. AUO plans to showcase these new technological achievements in the upcoming FPD International 2008, to be held in Yokohama, Japan.

With the 3D display's inevitable growing popularity, there will be a variety of future applications in various fields, including market advertising, video games, medical imaging, industrial design, education training and more. AUO presents the world's first 24-inc h 2D/3D mix mode display panel supporting Full HD, by controlling designated areas on the panel to accomplish parallax. Without wearing glasses, the same monitor can simultaneously display high-resolution 2D images as well as high-depth 3D images.

Another 24-inch 3D display that requires specialized glasses, on the other hand, can also diminish the side effects such as dizziness after a long observation. In addition, the lenticular lens technology's 2D/3D switchable 7-inch 3D display panel, again without the need of specialized glasses, simplifies the switch between 3D images and reading conventional 2D text, solving previous 2D text reading difficulties and inconvenience.

Dedicated to the development of in-cell multi-touch panel technology for years, AUO released a series of in-cell multi-touch display in new sizes ranging from 4.3-inch to 15-inch, some of which can even be integrated into computer applications. A 15-inch in-cell multi-touch display panel utilizes p hoto-sensing technology and is sensitive to both a light pen and a finger touch.

For instance, users can dance their fingers across as on the black and white keys of a virtual piano on an LCD display, playing a melodious tune; or use the light pen as a remote control in a thrilling video game; or simply be delight along with others in this amazing multi-touch functionality. In the future, it can eventually be applied to TV remote controls, making further inroads in improving the usability of these age-old human-computer interfaces. Other multi-touch panel innovations include a 12.1-inch WXGA panel with finger-supported input and a 4.3-inch hybrid in-cell multi-touch panel that support both stylus input and finger input. These will indisputably make future handheld devices and notebook computers more intuitive and easier to use and can even possibly replace the function of the keyboard altogether.

Along with the modern pursuit of a novel, convenient and trendy lifestyle, smartphone devices will also continue to be innovated. Aside from its basic information platform, it can also be a new medium and interface that will provide a new life experience. Great news for both health-conscious and beauty lovers alike: AUO is releasing for the first time a 2.8-inch VGA UV-sensing mobile phone panel that can not only sense UV rays but also alert users in real-time their exposure to harmful UV.

In addition, AUO boasts another groundbreaking innovation, the world's first 2.8-inch QVGA mobile phone panel with image / fingerprint scanning technology, with the high s ensing resolution of up to 288 dpi, bringing mobile phone technology to a new level. After the image is scanned, the technology can enhance the image and then show the scanned image in real time. This new technology realizes consumers' dreams to utilize fingerprint identity while shopping in the future. Yet another 2.2-inch mobile phone panel applies modern optics technology to be borderless, increasing the viewable size of the screen active area. The borderless panel model will revolutionize mobile phone aesthetic design for the future.

Other small and mid-sized innovations also include: a 6.5-inch WVGA ultra-high contrast display panel that utilizes new pixel design with a high contrast ratio of 2000:1 and the 4.3-inch in-cell multi-touch panel that will be implemented in the up and coming Mobile Internet Device (MID), one of the top platforms and user interfaces.

Dr. CT Liu, vice president and general manager of AUO Consumer Product Display Business Group is full of confidence and passion regarding the future. He reiterated AUO's commitment to its new vision.

He said: "In addition to the ceaseless pursuit of technological innovations, AUO will also continue to shape cutting-edge thinking in this field. LCD's have progressively become a cross-technology phenomenon, making advancements in the domains of mobile internet devices, smartphone devices, and essentially the entire range of portable audio-visual systems. AUO vigorously strives to further develop display technology and is committed to excellence. With the various needs of entertainment, life and the workplace in mind, we expect our new panel innovations to provide more value and enrich the overall quality of life."

Mobile Fingerprint Scanners

Police in UK will reportedly be issued with mobile fingerprint scanners so they can check peoples' identities in the street.

The hand-held devices are no bigger than a BlackBerry smartphone and will apparently be issued to every police force in the UK under a scheme called Mobile Identification At Scene (Midas).

They will enable officers to scan suspects' fingerprints on the spot and compare them against records on the police national biometric database, Ident1.

It is claimed the scanners will save police time and cut the number of wrongful arrests.

Currently, officers have to take suspects to custody suites to check their fingerprints - a procedure that takes an average of 67 minutes.

Details of the hand-held technology, which may ultimately be able to receive pictures of suspects, were revealed at a conference presentation by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NIPA).

The devices are expected to be in widespread use within 18 months.

I was trying to find out a bit more about these devices; which technology they use and how is the data transferred over the air but no luck. Any information would be useful.

Customisable services on their way

According to a survey in Mformation:

80 percent of respondents to the survey indicated that they would use mobile services more if greater personalization were possible. 67 percent of mobile subscribers stated they would be willing to pay a premium to personalize their mobile devices and the applications and services on them. In fact, 86 percent of people said this would enrich their mobile experience. The research also revealed that over two thirds (68%) of mobile users find buying a phone frustrating when they know that there are applications and services on it that they will never use. This clearly demonstrates that greater personalization offers an opportunity to unlock pent-up demand.

The research also found the following results:

• Revenue-generating mobile data services such as mobile email (43%), Internet (51%) and picture messaging (46%) are gaining ground as the most frequently used applications.
• There are still a large number of people who never or rarely use these applications (email – 57 %, Internet – 49%, picture messaging – 54%).
• More than half of people who don’t currently have access to these applications would use them if they were made available in a simple and compelling manner (email – 62%, Internet – 58%, picture messaging – 68%).

94 percent of consumers are already attempting to personalize their phones with items like specific ringtones or accessories. However, 89 percent said that they would like a higher level of personalization through the ability to pick and mix applications, services, and other characteristics of the handset such as form factors and designs. Moreover, 81 percent would switch to a provider that offered greater choice for customization.

Now, a forthcoming update to the Open Mobile Alliance Device Management (OMA DM) standard for mobile phones will make it easier for users to personalise their handset, for which there is enormous potential demand

Matt Bancroft, Mformation vice president, said that operators have a strong role to play in making this happen, and stand to gain as many respondents indicated that they would switch carrier and be prepared to pay extra for the ability to customise their handset.

Bancroft suggested that the OMA DM extensions, due to be ratified in 2009, will enable users of feature phones to customise their handset as much as high-end smartphone users already can.

"In essence, the update adds a new managed object defined for delivery, installation, activation and management of applications," he said.

The new extension, called Software Component Management Object, is already available as a pre-ratified version in Mformation's management tools for mobile operators, according to Bancroft.

"It also means profound things for software developers. A billion and a half mobile phones are sold each year, so there will be a much broader market for applications in the next 12-18 months once this standard becomes available," he said.

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.