NTT DoCoMo for LTE Femtocells next year

Its been nearly couple of years since I blogged about starting LTE with femtocells initially and then moving onto Macro network. It had initial momentum but didnt take off for one reason or another. In the ongoing Femtocells World Summit, Yoshiyuki Yasuda, NTT DoCoMo's managing director said that they plan to roll out LTE Femtocells next year mainly to fill the coverage gaps in the LTE Network they will be rolling out later this year.

Those who read this blog regularly would have noticed my recent post about NTT DoCOMo's LTE initiatives here. I have also been promoting LTE femtocells idea as can be seen in my blogs here, here and here. My belief is that femtocells could be very valuable to iron out the problems present in devices, networks or the technology. Also they provide seamless coverage and offer better data security.

Light Reading has interesting analysis on this topic:

Which vendors can serve up the LTE femtos in time? NEC Corp., which is already one of DoCoMo's LTE vendors, has revealed plans for an LTE home base station that will be available for friendly user trials at the end of 2011, and a commercial product is expected in 2012.

Other vendors that are involved in DoCoMo's LTE rollout that could have a shot at meeting the carrier's next-gen femto demands are Fujitsu Ltd., Ericsson AB, and Nokia Siemens Networks, and Stoke Inc. , which supplies an LTE base station aggregation gateway to the Japanese operator.

DoCoMo's current femto vendor is Mitsubishi, which supplies little 3G home base stations to DoCoMo for its MyArea service that launched in November 2009.

DoCoMo's Yasuda said that when the carrier wants to deploy LTE femtos in the 2011-2012 timeframe, it will have deployed 1,500 LTE macrocell base stations during 2010 and 2011. By 2013, it plans to cover 30 percent of the population with LTE. By 2014, DoCoMo plans to cover 70 percent of the population with 15,000 LTE base stations.

'Internet Kill' switch and IPv9

Slightly off topic today as I was going through the pile of information and I caught attention of this news article that for some reason has not been reported by major newspapers. The article says that the president of USA will have the 'Kill' switch to kill off internet (temporarily i guess) in case of a major emergency like war, etc. Joseph Liberman who proposed this idea has since then backed away saying that he meant that parts of Internet can be disconnected like they do in China.

This brought into attention the other article I was going through about IPv9. Yes thats correct, I did write IPv9. I first heard about IPv9 back in 2004-5 but then it was dismissed as nothing serious. Apparently Chinese government backed Ministry of Information Industry (MII) has been promoting this IPv9. According to an old TelecomAsia.net article:

Back in July 2004, reports of a Chinese IPv9 prompted a bewildered reaction from internet godfather Vint Cerf. 'What could this possibly be about‾ As far as I know, IANA [Internet Assigned Numbers Authority] has not allocated the IPv9 designation to anyone. IPv9 is not an Internet standard. Could you please explain what is intended here‾" he wrote in an email to China's internet leaders.

The idea was dismissed as a "rogue" project with no official backing. But it is back on the table led, now as then by Xie Jianping, the head of the Shanghai Universal Institute of Chemical Technology and more recently in charge of the decimal network standards team in the MII's science and technology department.

The project returned to prominence at a press conference at the unusual location of the Party Central School in Beijing two weeks ago, where Xie announced that the networking technology had been successfully tested by China Netcom and the Ministry of Commerce.

He asserted that the project is all about China wresting control of its own IP networks away from US dominance for which, he claimed, China was paying 500 billion yuan a year.

The system reportedly uses numerical addressing to make China "the only country able to unify domain names, IP addresses and MAC addresses" into a single, metric system, according to Xinhua. Without any explanation, Xinhua said it also made China the only country outside the US "to have root servers and IP address hardware connectivity servers and its own domain name, IP address and MAC address resources".

In an interview with a skeptical Sina reporter, Xie and denied the project was another Hanxin - a reference to a fraudulent state-backed chip project.

"Our IPv9 has gone through testing and assessment," he said adding that he could not give any more detail but would "make public some material at the necessary time."

But the system, or what little is known of it, has plenty of doubters at home. Sina said critics of the system complain that turning domain names and brand names into numerals is a "backwards step" for the net.

The fact that the decimal network appears to asset control over root servers is bound to alarm internet governance bodies around the world.

And whatever else might be said about it, the project is clearly backed by the MII. "IPv9" raises more questions than answers.

So it looks like the Chinese government may have been expecting some 'Kill Switch' in the future by the US government and is probably creating a backup based on a new approach so that the users within China remain connected to their Internet.

Any thoughts and opinions are more than welcome...

Say no to texting and yes to Swype

Tapping out a text message could become a thing of the past due to new 'Swype' technology.

Instead of pressing individual letters, mobile users drag their finger from one letter to the other in a fluid, faster motion.

The computer then calculates which word was intended by the combination of the letters touched upon.

The movements do not even have to be precise because the software can work it out.

According to U.S. inventor Cliff Kushler, 'Swype' can increase the speed of even the most nimble texter by up to 30 per cent

He said the technology could have an enormous impact and be used anywhere people have to use a keyboard, such as video games, sat-nav devices and ticket machines.

Mr Kushler has already invented T9 software, or predictive text, which guesses the word people are thinking of as they text, and thinks 'Swype' is the next step.

'We've squeezed the desktop computer, complete with keyboard and mouse, into something that fits in a pocket,' he said.

'The information bandwidth has become very constricted. I thought, if we can find a better way to input that information, it could be something that would really take off.

'The most important thing was that it could accurately figure out which word you wanted to spell.

'It needed to work no matter what.'

Palm pilots sought to liberate mobile users from texting, but they still demanded that you write each letter on to the device with a special plastic pen.

T9 technology went one step further, and now 'Swype' can improve even that. In demonstrations, hurdles like capitals and double letters are overcome by pausing or doing a squiggle, while spacing and punctuation are automatic.

Won Park, director of United States technology sourcing at Samsung said: 'It could become the de facto standard for tablets, next-generation TVs or next-generation remote controls. It has tremendous potential.'

Swype is now being used on seven smartphones in the U.S. across all major mobile phone companies and by the end of the year, Mr Kushler says its software will be on more than 50 models worldwide.

Deals with Apple for the iPhone are some way off, as is the technology's arrival in the UK.

Via: Daily Mail, UK

LTE HeNB Options

In my earlier post I had a picture of LTE Home eNodeB architecture. There is a possibility of multiple ways in which Home eNodeB can be connected. A slide from Andy Goddards presentation in LTE world summit summarises the different approaches.

Dilbert Humour: Apps and Dates dont go together

NTT DoCoMo's latest LTE Initiatives

Samsung v/s Apple Display War

In launching the new iPhone at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco last week, the Apple front man claimed the screen's IPS LCD technology, developed by LG and Hitachi, also offered superior colour resolution and was “quite a bit better” than Super AMOLED overall.

“You can‘t make an OLED display with this type of resolution right now,” Jobs said on stage. “Retina Display is going to set the standard for displays for the next several years. We don’t think anybody’s going to come close.”

But Samsung disagrees, claiming that the difference in the total number of pixels over Super AMOLED's 800 x 480-pixel resolution is all but negligible to the naked eye, and pointed instead to Super AMOLED's emissive lighting and its ability to deliver far better colour and contrast than more traditional backlit screens like the Retina Display.

"The visibility difference is only 3 to 5 per cent. But raising resolution to that level increases battery consumption by 30 percent,” a Samsung spokesperson told the Korean Herald. “Structurally, IPS LCD technology cannot catch up with AMOLED display technology,” .

One of Super AMOLED's chief attractions is the reduced strain on the battery thanks to that lack of backlighting, with Samsung's new Wave smartphone offering double the battery life of the iPhone. In addition, the Samsung screen offers a contrast ratio thought to be around 1,000,000:1, dwarfing the iPhone's figure of just 800:1.

According to Jobs, the iPhone's screen's 326 pixels per inch meant it had a higher resolution than the human eye “The display is your window into the internet, into your apps, into your media, into your software,” he said. “Retina Display is the best window on the planet.”

Its good to see the Mobile Display evolving but not sure if everyone cares about it. There is a good comparison of AMOLED v/s LCD with lots of pictures here, which will give you a good idea. More details here as well.

Femtocell configuration via TR-069

TR-069 has been standardised for remote Configuration Management. The slide above is from a presentation by Andy Gothard in Femto Forum. The presentation below sheds more light on TR-069 for Femtocells.

Extending TR-069 Management to Femtocell

View more presentations from Zahid Ghadialy.

'Greater' Femtocells

An interesting slide from the presentation by Prof. Simon Saunders, Chairman of Femto Forum in LTE World Summit. The slide throws more light on the Greater-femtocells I blogged about last year.

Related Post: When Femtocells become Picocell.

Conformance, Interoperability and Field testing via GCF

Delivering a “Test Once, Use Anywhere” Certification Scheme for LTE Devices

View more presentations from Zahid Ghadialy.