VoLGA: Bringing Voice to LTE

Voice is becoming an Important issue for seamless introduction of LTE services. Even though most people think that LTE will start with the Broadband Dongles, it is important to resolve the issue sooner rather than later.



VoLGA Forum is one such body proposing a solution and its backed by quite a few well known industry players.



In the LTE World Summit, Franz Seiser of T-Mobile Germany spoke about VoLGA. Here is a summary from his presentation:

In order to ensure LTE will be used as much as possible, voice-and messaging services need to be supported on LTE networks in high quality asearly as possible.

The main Drivers being:

• Ensure acceptance of LTE as an possible next generation PLMN
• Shift traffic to new network as fast as possible
• Avoid price competition with DSL
  

The industry needs a stable, scalable voice and SMS solution forLTE:

• delivering a seamless user experience (voice hand-over to existing 2G/3G networks)
• with proven, commercial quality
• availability in 2010 (SMS) /2011 (voice) latest

In a post earlier, I discussed about the possible voice options for LTE and that generated quite a discussion relating to GAN. Recently Dean Bubley and Martin Sauter have covered this VoLGA issue and in general Voice over LTE in far more detail than I have earlier or even in this post. Please see the links at the bottom to read their post details.

Specified 3GPP solutions for Voice/SMS in LTE do not meet all requirements because:

CS Fallback ruled out due to customer experience and non-LTE usage

• issues with customer experience (call set-up time increase >1.5sec., no parallel voice/data if legacy network is 2G w/o DTM)
• not using LTE radio for voice
• requires changes to Rel-4 architecture MSC-Servers
• has much more impacts than originally envisaged

IMS based solution has very high complexity; availability and stability notfeasible in time, roaming eco-system is not yet existent

• solution would consist of IMS platform, various application servers and a major upgrade/change to Rel-4 architecture MSC-Servers
• no eco-system in place yet for IMS voice/SMS roaming and interconnect (only GPRS data or CS eco-systems are available today)
• solution requires updates/changes to quite many IT systems and processes as well

Key Objectives for Voice/SMS over LTE Solution is to Re-use as much as possible of existing systems, mechanism and eco-system while avoiding proprietary extensions to 3GPP nodes

• build upon existing Rel-4 CS network and investments
• “do not touch the MSC”
• build upon fully 3GPP compliant Rel-8 EPC/LTE network
• re-use existing CS roaming/inter-connect regime
• minimise impact on UE, especially on user-interface

As a result, the simplest solution is “Voice over LTE Generic Access” or VoLGA

What is VoLGA?

• A technological approach for delivering voice and SMS services over LTE access networks
• Leverages a mobile operator’s existing core voice network
• Derived from the existing 3GPP GAN standard

What is the VoLGA Forum?

A group of companies working to…

• Leverage collective technical skills to define VoLGA specifications
• Publish proposed specifications via the VoLGA Forum web site (coming soon)
• Facilitate the easy adoption of VoLGA technology by other vendors and operators

The group is open to interested parties in the mobile community

• See http://www.volga-forum.com/ for more information about joining

The main Highlights of VoLGA are:

• Full service transparency

Supports all circuit services over LTE

Supports IMS RCS and combinational services (CS+IMS) over LTE

Supports handover of active calls between LTE and GSM/UMTS

Supports expected LTE femtocell deployments

• Low risk, low investment

• Based on well proven 3GPP GAN standard

  Requires no change to existing MSCs and operational systems

  Conserves existing, extensive voice interconnection regime

To keep things simple, VoLGA is the best option available at the moment.

Further Reading:

• VoLGA Forum
• VoLGA Specifications
• Voice - Bearer Aware, Bearer Adaptive or Bearer Agnostic?
• The Volga-Forum: Taking the Quest For Voice over LTE out of 3GPP
• VoLGA - reinventing UMA for Voice-over-LTE
• LTE, mobile broadband & SMS - VoLGA vs. IMS

You can search multiple blogs (including mine) in a single search via the 3G4G search here. (Search at the bottom of the page).

NGMN put into our context

Here is a slide from Klaus-Jurgen Krath of T-Mobile Germany, which simplifies NGMN for us. NGMN or the Next Generation Mobile Networks intends to complement and support the work within standardisation bodies by providing a coherent view of what the operator community is going to require in the decade beyond 2010.

You can read more about NGMN here.

An old whitepaper titled "Next Generation Mobile Networks Beyond HSPA & EVDO" gives much more insight into NGMN vision, mission and details some of their recommendations. Its available to download here.

Cell Radius on Different LTE Frequencies

I mentioned earlier about the cell radius being 300 metres at 2.6GHz. Here is a diagram showing that.

The Case for Early LTE in the USA

Doug Wolff,Vice President , End-to-end LTE product management, Alcatel-Lucent spoke about "The Case for Early LTE in the USA" in the LTE World Summit. Here are the main highlights from his presentation:

Overview of US Wireless Market:

• With the penetration rate approaching 90% and the economy decreasing, customer and revenue growth are both slowing
• Data is becoming increasingly important to operators’revenue growth –driven by flat rate data plans and the iPhone
• Operators are developing new revenue models, including M2M and mobile advertising
• Consolidation continues --the top four operators have recently purchased: Alltel, Rural Cellular, Dobson and SunComWireless
• LTE deployments are scheduled to begin in 2009, using the already auctioned 700 MHz and AWS spectrum bands
• Increase in availability and demand for smartphonesand multi-featured devices
• Verizon & AT&T, with 60% of the market, focus on network quality and coverage –smaller operators jockey for position with pricing
• Operators have increased their focus on OPEX cost savings related to network spending

The US Wireless Users of Future will demand and consume more data. According to a survey done by Alcatel-Lucent, Consumers are more likely to be interested in video, image, location and Business in collaboration, video conference, data transfer. There is a very high likelihood of people signing up for 4G [sic] when it is available.

The US lags in broadband adoption. It ranked 21st in world in 2008 vs. 6th in 2001. Rural broadband lags urban/suburban areas. 21% of US (nearly 60M people) live in rural areas.

To encourage Broadband rollout especially in rural areas, Broadband Stimulus Bill has been proposed. The Bill highlights can be seen from the picture:


LTE can be an ideal candidate as it leverages wireline/wireless assets for rural access in the USA

• Digital dividend band (700/800 MHz) offers ideal radio environment for rural access
• Best available backhaul using microwave, GPON and optical aggregation
• Common aggregation and service routing offers converged access solution
  

Along with the technology, focus is also on services, etc. Verizon has recently Wireless LTE Innovation Center to foster the development of new devices and applications for its upcoming fourth generation, long-term evolution (LTE) network (see presentation). The main aim being:

• Accelerate innovative services
• Enable new business models
• Attract open innovation
• Enable multi-screen experience
  

Along with this there is n.g connect program that will help various players in the ecosystem to come together.

There is also a Verizon Open device/development initiative and they recently released its initial set of technical specifications for devices that will run on its Long Term Evolution (LTE) fourth generation (4G) wireless network. The specifications are available for download at www.verizonwireless-opendevelopment.com.

So in conclusion, the case for early LTE in the USA driven by End-user demand for enriched QoE and New market opportunities (M2M, rural zone, M-advertising, 700MHz spectrum..). This is being helped by Network & Ecosystem initiatives led by Verizon & Alcatel-Lucent for successful early LTE launch in the USA. Drivers & Enablers of early LTE in the USA are highly relevant in European & Asian Mature markets. An early rollout in USA will encourage early rollout in other markets.

Samsung unviels first 12 mega pixel camera phone

Samsung will release what it said is the world's first 12-megapixel camera phone this month, beating rival handset maker Sony Ericsson to market and jumping ahead in the megapixel race.
Samsung reinforced its leadership in the high megapixel cameraphone market by unveiling Samsung Pixon12 (M8910).Samsung will launch the Pixon12, which has a full-touch 3.1-inch AMOLED display, later this month in Europe and in other regions of the world in August.
Samsung is launching this camera phone with three keywords in mind i.e. Instant shoot, Instant see and Instant share which they think will provide incredible user experience.

Instant Shoot:
The Samsung Pixon12 enables users to take perfect pictures quickly and easily, thanks to a Dedicated Camera Power Key which gives users fast one-touch access to the camera function. Once the camera is turned on, users can aim and snap, capturing images as fast as today's advanced digital camera. Samsung Pixon12 also features fast image saving for next shot, so users can move to next shot within around 2 seconds. The phone provides the best photo quality by adopting innovative camera features. With Touch Auto-Focus (AF) tracking, users can simply select focus point with the touch of a finger, after which the AF function will automatically follow the object, keeping it in focus even as it moves across the screen. Moreover, Smart Auto feature allows users to capture the perfect images as the camera automatically changes the scene and mode based on its object, background and lighting. Images taken on the Pixon12 are worth showing off to friends and loved ones as they boast digital camera quality thanks to the phone camera's superb lens and Xenon flash. The 28mm wide angle lens also allows a better perspective and more full capture of a scene for consumers.

Instant See:
After they are done snapping, users can re-live and enjoy the pictures on the Pixon12's brilliant 3.1" AMOLED screen. The screen boasts a contrast ratio of 10,000:1 while providing power-saving features which increase battery life. Finally, the Pixon12 enables users to easily organize and manage photos with multiple ways of sorting - by tags, file names, ratings, and time. In addition, the multi-selection feature enables users to pull up images in groups rather than one by one, making viewing and editing photos much easier.


Instant Share:
With Samsung Share Pix, the Pixon12 lets users easily upload images and videos to popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, MySpace, Photobucket, Friendster - a breeze. Add to that, the phone's high-connectivity functions including Wi-Fi and HSUPA capabilities mean that user's photos can be shared to their friends in no time. The Samsung Pixon12 will be available from end of June in European countries and it will be expanded to other regions in August.The announcement of the Pixon12 is a blow to Sony Ericsson, which has touted its Satio phone, previously named the Idou, as having a 12-megapixel camera. The Satio will be available in the fourth quarter.

Signaling latency in UMTS/HSPA and LTE

I think this is a very good self explanatory picture from a presentation by Qasara.

Do check out the 3G4G page for up to date presentations, whitepapers, etc. on LTE/SAE.

Nokia’s Ovi store launch didn’t go well

Nokia has desperately waited for the day when it can launch its Ovi store thus envisaging that it would provide a direct competition to the apples App store.

Rather what I have found out is that Nokia's worldwide launch of its much touted Ovi Store proved to be an utter disaster and didn’t go as planned.

For those of you whoc don’t know, the Ovi Store is Nokia's direct response to Apple's App Store, serving as a central content store for applications that can run on Nokia phones.

This was supposed to be a glorious day for mobile phone giant Nokia . The Finnish company got out-innovated by Apple a couple of years ago with the introduction and subsequent success of the iPhone and the iTunes App Store, and has been desperately trying to catch up with Cupertino’s disruptive initiatives ever since by launching a couple of new devices on one hand, and consolidating its software & services business on the other hand.

While users who entered through the Ovi Store device client encountered no issues, it appears that web users were experiencing a intermittent or extremely slow response.

I too went to Nokia Ovi Store website and have been trying to browse the selection of apps to select 10 that users should download to start off. I found that the store was down most of the time I was trying to snoop around, pages often didn’t load, and if they did they nearly always did extremely slowly. Despite the fact that I constantly needed to refresh and hope for pages to load, I figured that the service must be getting pounded from all the press it’s getting and was willing to forgive the slowness and regular downtime for the time being. But this has been going on for hours on end now, and there’s no sign of improvement.

To add insult to injury, i hear people with an Ovi account are unable to use their credentials for logging on to the new service, but that they are being told that there’s already a profile with their username when they attempt to register for a new account. That means Nokia is basically blocking registered users from using its new service at this point.

It seems that a large spike in traffic resulted in performance issues. An apology posted to the company's Ovi Blog confirmed the situation: "We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused Ovi Store users." According to Nokia, it was able to make "intermittent performance improvements" by adding extra servers. Hopefully, everything will run smoothly in the next few days.

"Has Japan lost its fizz?"

Interesting article from the Independent, not related to mobiles though...

Walkman, compact disc, VCR, DVD, PlayStation; It reads like a roll call of the coolest gadgets of the last three decades, and Japan is responsible for making the bulk of them. From the Sony transistor radio in the 1950s to today's global megahit, the Nintendo Wii, the technological prowess of Japan's corporations has been a key engine of its economic success since its rise from the ashes of the Second World War.


But is the world's second largest economy a spent technological force? This concern has been sharpened by the brutal balance-sheet realities of Japan's once all-conquering consumer electronics sector. Hitachi leads the pack, filing a record annual loss of £5.3bn this month after announcing worldwide job cuts of 7,000 employees. Panasonic, the brand name of appliance giant Matsushita, has posted its first net loss in six years and will slash 15,000 jobs and shutter 40 factories. In the late 1980s, Matsushita was turning out two-thirds of the world's video recorders, but now finds itself in a battle for market share with cheaper rivals.

For Sony, a company synonymous with Japan's postwar resurrection, the plunge from greatness may be steepest of all, with the posting of a £141m operating loss for the final quarter of last year and the planned slashing of 16,000 people from its global payroll. The company that brought the world the Trinitron TV, quietly slipped to third place in the global television market this year, behind South Korea's Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics. Even the PlayStation 3, touted as Sony's comeback product, has been outperformed by the Wii. More than three years after being appointed president, British-born Sir Howard Stringer is said to be deeply frustrated at his apparent inability to pull the company out of its death dive.

Almost wherever one looks, the picture isn't pretty. Toshiba and NEC's consumer electronics divisions are also in trouble; embattled Sanyo has just become a subsidiary of Matsushita. One of the few bright spots is the Wii, which has sold over 50 million units worldwide. But is that simply the fading light from a burnt-out star, wonders Jonathan Allum, Chief Japan strategist at KBC Asset Management in London.

"I think its fair to say that Japan's big brand names have lost some of their preeminence." The key question is whether this loss is cyclical or terminal. While much of the recent red ink can be blamed on plummeting global demand that will presumably recover, the Japanese electronics industry faces "historic challenges" that threaten the survival of its most famous brands, warns Tim Hornyak, author of Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots. "The 20th-century appeal and market share of Japanese brands has eroded amid the IT revolution and new rivals in electronics." True, Japan still sells over 60 trillion yen in consumer electronics every year. The profitability of finished products is slumping, however, with competitors in China, Korea and Taiwan increasingly churning out cheaper flat-screen TVs, DVD players, mobile phones and digital cameras. Analysts say Japan has clung to its hardware strengths even as the world around it has been transformed by the digital and Internet revolution.

Meanwhile, at the top end of the technological spectrum, fleet-footed rivals like Apple have swept Japan's dominance of the market for portable gadgets aside, replacing music and video players with a single device like the iPod. "The consumer electronics business has disappeared as we know it," points out Allum. "There has been a convergence of the computer and consumer electronics worlds; people download music and movies from their PCs now." But Mark Lytle, a tech nology consultant who runs the Japan-based Digital World Tokyo website, calls the convergence notion "patent nonsense."

"Converged things are really all about one core function (e.g. a mobile phone) with extras bolted on (e.g. a camera) as marketing points. It's rare to find one thing that performs more than one or two functions as well as a dedicated device would for each. The combination of iPod and phone in the iPhone is one shining example, which is why it gets so much press."

Many Japanese analysts remain unconcerned at the rise of the Asian tigers, which have been playing technological catch-up for "many years now," says Takuji Okubo, senior economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "The countries in the middle – Korea and Taiwan – have a much bigger problem than China or Japan. China doesn't threaten Japan directly; it threatens Korea and Taiwan." Many of the lower-end goods coming from China are in any case produced in Japanese-owned factories. Hornyak too believes that talk of Japan's technological demise has been "exaggerated," and that the country will stay ahead of its Asian rivals. As evidence, he cites a list of recent product breakthroughs, including Sony's compact HDR-TG1 high-definition camera and pocket-sized PCs, Nikon's D90 digital camera with video capture, and JVC's ultra-thin LCD TVs. "I believe current aggressive restructuring moves may better position Japanese makers to regain market share and their former leadership position."

Perhaps so. Sony is getting ready to dump about half its suppliers and shrink its electronics factories from 57 to 49. Matsushita and Hitachi are also preparing to swing the axe. But critics say Japan's problems have exposed an old Achilles heel: a lack of truly groundbreaking creativity. The transistor, IC circuit, LCD screen, PC, VCR and compact disc, after all, were invented elsewhere before being miniaturised and mass-produced by Japanese corporations. Once out in front, these corporations floundered in the face of more innovative foreign rivals.

Veteran Japan-based commentator Eamonn Fingleton calls that analysis part of the "creativity conceit" that consistently blindsides America and Europe to Japan's strengths. "In economic terms, probably the most significant form of creativity is the development of new, more efficient manufacturing technologies," says the author of In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony.

Look beyond the eye-catching market for gadgetry, says Fingleton, and Japan is still the world's leading technological player behind the scenes. Toshiba, for example, manufacturers the mini hard drive that powers the iPod, Japanese companies monopolize the production of semiconductor-grade silicon, and make much of the optical fiber and laser diodes that form the backbone of the internet; Nikon and Canon supply many of the optical machines that print lines on computer chips, and so on.

"Anyone who thinks Japan is out of the game should look at trade statistics," advises Fingleton. "Japan's current account surplus last year totaled $211bn. That was nearly four times the total in 1989, the last year of the great Japanese boom. Japan has achieved this despite rapid growth by other East Asian nations." So down, but not out seems to be the message. Still, the country's corporations have no room for complacency. Falling profits will affect their ability to invest in R&D, and competition, especially from South Korea, is likely to intensify; Samsung has already stolen much of Sony's thunder. China, with about 10 times Japan's population, is an economic behemoth that will easily outpace its rival in the long term, outspending it in research and in trained scientists and engineers. "There is still an awful lot of stuff that Japan is doing technologically very well," says Allum. "But people are catching up."

All about latest Mobile Phones

Picked this one up from a Forum Oxford thread. Where to get the latest information and statistics about Mobile phones? Here are some of the links. If you know more please feel free to add them via comments.

• cnet uk reviews
• GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association) Surveys
• Cellular news: Handset category
• Phone Scoop
• Engadget Mobile
• GSM Arena
• Mobile Burn
• Phone Arena

Skyfire Browser for your Windows and Nokia mobiles

A complete browser is now available for your mobile phones. Unfortunately its only available for Windows Mobiles and Nokia N and E series phones. Fortunately I was able to download and try it on my ancient Nokia E61. Very impressed but I have to say it seems that when a big website is being downloaded then the phone/browser sort of grinds to a halt. I remember trying to use it when Beta came out but would crash while loading.

The release brings with it a host of improvements, such as improved navigation, zooming and interaction and a faster launch, lower power consumption, and new search functionality.

Also, while the new version of the browser starts up, you can begin typing URLs or search queries into the box at the top, saving time. That's added to existing flash support, so you can peruse your favourite video site.

Check the Skyfire website here.

To download the browser using your mobile, click here.