10 Billion out of 50 Billion - The Connected World

Remember the mantra of 50 Billion connected devices (blogged here and here) but 202x, apparently 10Billion are already here. The above slide is from a latest presentation by Chetan Sharma Consulting (embedded below). There are already 7 Billion mobile devices (phones + dongles) and 3 Billion others. The number of others will increase with M2M being the main focus and is touted as the next big thing, especially with LTE. 3GPP is focussing very heavily on standardising the MTC and is working on new features in upcoming releases.

Coming back to the topic of connected world, the presentation is embedded below and is a good read.

M-health and LTE

The last presentation from FWIC on m-Health was quite popular so I decided to add this new presentation from the LTE World Summit:

Robert istepanian kingston-university-masterclass_wed_zone-2 from ceobroadband

UK: Spectrum, Operators, Vendors and LTE

So LTE (or '4G') is about to be launched in the UK as announced yesterday. Its going to be branded as 4GEE.

Here is a summary of the Spectrum in the UK that will be used for LTE and would be auctioned by Ofcom.

Here is the current allocation of Spectrum in the UK

The above pics are from a presentation by Ofcom in LTE World Summit 2012 in Barcelona, available here.

The last table is from an Ofcom document here. Its very interesting read. For example I didnt know that The L-band was the first major part of Ofcom spectrum awards programme relevant to mobile services. It consists of 40MHz between 1452MHz and 1492MHz. The auction took place in May 2008, in which Qualcomm won the entirety of the available spectrum.

Here is the summary of the operators working on LTE:


Everything Everywhere (EE = Orange + T-Mobile) - They are calling their '4G' service as EE, covering up to 70% of the UK by the end of 2013. Network kit provided by Huawei.

Three - Samsung will provide the Radio Access Network, and the core infrastructure, for Three's LTE (4G) network. That includes the base stations, and radio core. 3 UK has agreed to purchase 2 x 15 MHz of 1800 MHz spectrum from Everything everywhere, and plans commercial launch of LTE service in 2013.

Telefonica (O2) trial network - Equipment supplied by Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) for both the Radio and Core network elements. Backhaul for the 4G trial network has been provided using Microwave Radio Equipment from Cambridge Broadband Networks Limited, NEC and Nokia Siemens Networks.

Updated 13/09/12 - 11:25

UK Broadband rolled out the first commercial TD-LTE network in London back in February (available to customers since May 2012). The equipment is provided by Huawei. They have 40MHz in Band 42 (3.5GHz) and 84MHz in band 43 (3.6GHz).

Vodafone - No news.


Anything else I missed?

New Carrier-Aggregation Proposed Bands

Carrier Aggregation (CA) the promised feature of LTE-A that will make it compatible to IMT-A is not fully exploited in Rel-10. There are only 2 bands supported for CA in Rel-10 and the same for Rel-11. The following are the bands for Rel-10

And the following for Rel-11

Unfortunately these are not enough for all the operators launching LTE/LTE-A. As a result there is currently a study on lots of other bands ongoing within 3GPP. Here is my understanding of the bands that would be needed and the region where they would be needed. Interested in knowing if there are other operators/regions where other bands need to be included.
 

Supporting M2M Services over LTE: Challenges & Solutions

A presentation from the LTE World Summit in 2012.

Spectral Efficiency Comparison

From the 4G Americas presentation

Qualcomm's 1000x Challenge

Qualcomm has been promoting the '1000x' challenge and has recently held a webinar to make everyone aware of how 1000 times efficiency may be achieved. I think there is always a scope of achieving a better efficiency but putting a figure may not necessarily give the desired results. Anyway, here are the slides.

The 1000x Mobile Data Challenge from Qualcomm Wireless Evolution

You can listen to the webinar here. The promotional video is available here.

A writeup on this topic by Steven Crowley is available here.

Data Consumed by Different Streaming Applications

Interesting table from the 4G Americas presentation about data consumption by different streaming apps. With LTE getting deployed and tablets becoming popular, I wont be surprised to see 1GB allowance consumed in couple of days. In a blog post on Verizon Wireless website earlier they had mentioned that 4GB data bucket will be minimum that is needed. In the end I think we may all stick with the trusted and reliable WiFi for thats fast and free!

Cellular or WiFi: Which is the preferred network access?

I was going through this report by Cisco on "What do Consumers want from WiFi" and came across this interesting picture. 

With the ease and availability of easy WiFi, it would be the preferred access technology whenever possible. Cellular access would be generally reserved for mobility scenarios or where there is no wifi network to allow access.

Another interesting observation from above is that the survey puts WiFi and Cellular security to the same level. Though the cellular is more secure in case of an open public WiFi scenario where an eavesdropper may be able to get hold of login/password information it is generally at the same level of security to a secured WiFi. On the other hand with cellular, lawful interception may be much more easy as compared to using secure WiFi.

I am sure that the content of last paragraph are debatable and am happy to hear your viewpoints.

A slidecast of the Cisco whitepaper mentioned above is embedded as follows:

Smartphones Integrated into our daily lives

Very interesting to see how we use Smartphones in our everyday lives