MNO, MVNO, MVNA, MVNE - The different types of operators

A new video and simplified presentation on this topic is available on 3G4G page here.

It took me quite a while trying to understand the different types of operators and the differences between them. Here is a short summary. Please feel free to add more information or correct me where needed


Mobile Network Operator (MNO): The MNO is the most commonly visible mobile network operator. Examples would be the likes of Vodafone, Verizon, T-Mobile, Orange, Telefonica, etc. These MNO's are responsible for creating the mobile network. They have to purchase/lease the spectrum from the regulatory body of the country and then purchase/lease the network equipment from the vendors. They have to then get into an agreement with various handset suppliers, do various testing, etc. They are responsible for the day to day running of the network and would be blamed if there are problems or if the quality of experience is not as expected.

The MNO has to maintain its own Operation Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS). They are responsible for billing the direct customers and may also be responsible for indirectly billing the customers of MVNO's.


Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO): An MVNO relies on the infrastructure and most other things provided by the MNO. The MNO may have plenty of spare capacity that it may be willing to sell at a cheaper price or a different rate. They wouldn't want to do this themselves as this may dilute the brand. To solve this they may sell the messages, voice minutes and data at a much cheaper price in wholesale to an MVNO. Examples of popular MVNO's include Virgin Mobile, Lyca Mobile, Walmart mobile, Lebara Mobile, etc.

A full fledged MVNO will have its own OSS/BSS software and would be responsible for billing its own customers but a smaller MVNO may rely on the MNO to provide usage information for its customers that it can bill.


Mobile Virtual Network Aggregator (MVNA): Sometimes, it makes little or no sense to have many small MVNO's connected to the MNO. As a result, MNO may decide to only sell the discounted bundles to really big players. An MVNA can aggregate lots of small MVNO's and using the collective might, be able to connect to the operator as a single MVNO. MVNA's will typically not have direct subscribers but only other smaller MVNO's that connect to it. It would typically have to have an own OSS/BSS to be able to provide accurate billing information to the MVNO's.


Mobile Virtual Network Enabler (MVNE): An MNO may decide to outsource all functionality related to virtual networks to an MVNE. The MVNE may do similar functionality like an MVNA or it may even allow MVNA to connect to the MNO via itself. It may allow MVNO's to connect to MNO's through it and in special cases, it may even provide sell services directly to customers. The main reason for it being called an Enabler is because its enables smaller MVNO's to be created. It can provide services to such as billing, network element provisioning, administration, operations, support of OSS/BSS, etc. to MVNOs. An MVNE typically would not have any relationship with end-user customers, instead focussing on providing infrastructure and services to enable MVNO's to offer services and have a relationship with end-user brand, customer loyalty and marketing and leave the back-end enablement to MVNE's.

The MVNO's could be Full or Light MVNO's. The above picture shows different variants but in simple terms a Full MVNO has its own HLR while the Light(er) MVNO's use the HLR of the MNO where it enters the details of its own subscribers. A Full MVNO has considerably more power as it may decide to move to another MNO for service if its not happy with the service provided by an MNO. It would definitely also mean a lot more investment as opposed to the lighter models.

Sometimes MVNOs refer to themselves as Skinny, Thin or Thick as can be seen in the picture above. My guess is that its just another term for Full, Light or Branded resellers.

Finally, we may be in what is being termed as MVNO 3.0. As per this PwC article:

The first generation of MVNOs was spawned during an era of regulatory concerns and rapid growth in the wireless industry. They struggled to compete with the very network owners who were selling them capacity. The second generation, known in some circles as MVNO 2.0, sought to change the playing field by basing customer relationships on innovative devices such as the iPhone and the Jitterbug. Could we be witnessing the end of the era of the branded network operator? Here are four key changes currently underway that could make MVNO 3.0 a reality.

Finally, if you have enough time and patience, there is an interesting list of articles to read on this topic.

Additional reading:

• MVNA MVNE MVNO MNO - SIM Surprise
• WHAT IS AN MVNO, MVNE, MVNA? - http://www.mobile-virtual-network.com/
• InvesTelecom - MVNO, MVNE
• Prospering in a new MVNO hype cycle - Informa
• What do MVNA’s bring? - Cognatel
• Full MVNO and LIght MVNO - Georges-Harald Bernard's blog
• The Coming of MVNO 3.0 - PWC
• Insight: MVNO 3.0
• MVNOs explained

A quick case study on Smartwatches

My presentation from the Cambridge Wireless Connected devices SIG event "On Trend – High Fashion meets High Technology" held today, is embedded below. One of my favourite ads that highlights our fascination with the smart watches has been shown very well in a advert by Samsung mobile USA as follows:



I believe there is an opportunity and a market for the smart wear and smartwatches. There is a need for just the right kind of products to capitalise on the demand.

Securing the backhaul with the help of LTE Security Gateway

An excellent presentation from the LTE World Summit last year, that is embedded below. The slide(s) that caught my attention was the overhead involved when using the different protocols. As can be seen in the picture above, the Ethernet MTU is 1500 bytes but after removing all the overheads, 1320 bytes are left for data. In case you were wondering, MTU stands for 'maximum transmission unit' and is the largest size packet or frame, specified in octets (8-bit bytes), that can be sent in a packet or frame based network such as the Internet.

Anyway, the presentation is embedded below:

Securing the backhaul from 3G4G Blogs

HSPA+ Carrier Aggregation

Came across Qualcomm's HSPA+ Carrier aggregation video (above) and whitepaper. Interesting to see that HSPA/HSPA+ is still growing. As per my earlier post, half of the connections in 2018 would be HSPA/HSPA+.

As can be seen in the picture above, there are quite a few features that may be of interest to the operators. Scalable UMTS is one such feature as I have put in the blog before.

You will notice that upto 4 bands can be aggregated. It would be interesting to see which operators have these bands available and if they would be willing to use HSPA+ CA with upto 4 bands. The presentation by Qualcomm is embedded below and is available to download from here.

Related posts:

• Multipoint HSDPA / HSPA
• HSDPA multiflow data transmission

Mobile World Congress 2014 (#MWC14) Roundups

The worlds largest technology event came to a conclusion just over a week back so here is a summary of reports and roundups written by different people. Feel free to add yours in the comments:

The best way is to start with this Video of different gadgets by Orange (excuse their adverts)


Maravedis-Rethink has an excellent summary from Network point of view:

Now all the carriers have the same devices, and the all-you-can-eat offers are largely gone. This has shifted the competitive race to innovation in pricing and bundling; to services, even over-the-top ones; but most importantly to the one area which is still unique to MNOs, their licensed-spectrum networks. The race to implement more and more advanced features from the 3GPP menu is not just a carrier game of ‘mine’s bigger than yours’, but a truly necessary attempt, at least in the developed mobile markets, to differentiate themselves with the most advanced network capacity and capabilities.

In the network, new battle lines are being drawn, and the players are placing big bets on unproven technologies and new architectures. This is taking place on two levels – the well-understood but highly complex advances in RAN platforms, from the LTE-Advanced standards to small cells to Cloud-RAN; and the shift towards software-driven, if not yet fully software-defined networking, and towards virtualization.

Complete summary here.

Chetan Sharma has written a brilliant summary and covers all different topics:

All the progress that has been on the mobile economy has been on the back of trillions of dollars of investment over the last couple of decades. With declining margins, how long do operators continue to invest and at what pace? What’s the margin profile they are willing to live with? What’s the role of government in building out the infrastructure when high-speed mobile networks are concerned? Japan, Korea, Israel have all based their competitiveness on connected broadband world. Can others follow? The impact of Whatsapp launching voice services and Netflix/Comcast deal were hotly debated in the hallways. It is one thing to put out national broadband plans and it is entirely another reality to have an execution path to deliver on the plan. The broadband investment has much far reaching implications than most people and governments realize.

Complete article here.

Ian Poole from Radio Electronics has done a good job too with the summary and video:

There was a considerable amount of talk about connected cities, connected cars and the like. Many exhibitors at Mobile World Congress were showing their ideas and developments. There is a huge amount of work going on in these areas and this is reflected in the work and products being exhibited.

Said Mike Short, VP Telefonica: “Mobile World Congress is more of a data World Congress . . . . . . . there are many software companies, many special network companies, other companies providing billing and customer care and there are solutions for the whole digital economy”

Talking to a variety of people across Mobile World Congress, it was obvious there is a large amount of work going on.

In terms of the auto mobile industry there is a lot of interest and development. While it is not expected all of the work will come to fruition in the short term, such as mesh networked cars where the networking elements can be used for crash avoidance, etc, there are other areas for in car connectivity that will be implemented in the shorter term.

Qualcomm were even demonstrating an electric racing car that not only used wireless communications technology, but also utilised wireless charging. In this way they were incorporating two developing technologies.

In addition to this, technologies like Weightless – the white space data cellular system have moved forwards. The original aim was for the technology to be used in the television white space to provide low powered data communications particularly for remote sensors and actuators. For these applications, cellular technology is too heavy. Dealing with complex waveforms like OFDM requires considerable processing and this is not conducive to long battery life – some devices ae expected to operate for months or even years from the same battery.

Neul has been working to develop the ideas further. They are now looking at using unlicensed spectrum instead of the TV white space. They have found that in urban areas, little white space often exists. Unfortunately it is often in urban environments where population levels are highest and there will be the greatest need for low power data communications.

In another move announced at Mobile World Congress Orange announced that it is helping start up companies who are developing products for the IoT. Orange states that it wants to help them accelerate development and assist with marketing. This move is possibly a long term move, because it can only be approached with 4G, but with 5G anticipated to be more capable of meeting IoT requirements it should be able to enter the market more strongly when it arrives. It is anticipated that the main areas where IoT will start to grow initially are personal services, healthcare, the connected home and smart cities.

Complete report and the video here.

Finally, an excellent summary on Small Cells and related by ThinkSmallCell:

The official Small Cell conference track was pretty tame - Vodafone have deployed 300K Small Cells in total, KT (Korea Telecom) and Radisys spoke of 18K LTE deployed in mostly indoor metropolitan areas. Vodafone said they continue to drive vendors to deliver multi-technology small cell and backhaul products with high operational efficiency and look for added value to help the business case. By contrast, the Small Cell Forum booth hosted extensive and popular presentations and is perhaps outgrowing its booth format.

A key network equipment vendor theme was SDN (Software Defined Network) and NFV (Network Function Virtualisation). We can expect next year to see this evolving to orchestration - better methods of managing and manipulating these virtualised software components, but in the short term it means slightly less or cheaper hardware. Frankly, I was more impressed to see Huawei now supporting any of 2G, 3G or LTE (FDD&TDD) on the same physical macrocell radio hardware modules - true software definable radio. We are beginning to see that capability for Small Cells too, but it's not quite as mature yet.

Most of the Small Cell activity is around 3G indoor (Enterprise) and LTE outdoor (Urban), with 3G still important indoors (for voice) and LTE HetNets seen as the longer term solution for capacity. At least four DAS vendors announced lower cost, simpler products intended to address larger buildings and stadia - highlighting the growing demand for in-building cellular solutions. Many new LTE Small Cell vendors are appearing on the scene. Residential femtocells still have a place in the market especially where integrated into a broadband modem or set-top box, driven by a different business case than before. There were some signs that the radical approach of Free France, who are shipping many 10Ks of femtocells a month, may be emulated by others.

Complete report here.

Ronald Gruia from Frost&Sullivan has created a summary presentation on Slideshare that is embedded below:

Other Summaries worth reading:

• GiffGaff Blog
• SONLTE
• Alan Quayle Blog
• Cisco SP 360 Blog
• Frank Rayal Blog
• Mobile OS Summary from MWC 2014
• Informa T&M Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3
• CCS Insight Day 0, Day 1 and Day 2

There was also a Carrier Wi-Fi Summit going on in parallel to the main MWC. A summary of that is available on the WBA website here: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4.



Claus Hetting has also added an excellent summary of the Carrier Wi-Fi Summit on his blog here.

LTE Radar - LTE proximity services

Last year, DT gave an interesting presentation on what they termed as 'LTE Radar'. Here is the video to explain the motivation:


The picture below summarises how this will work:

It is interesting to note that these problems are already being solved using Apps and other technologies. Once the 3GPP standard is finalised, it would be a challenge to get this to mass adoption. An example would be Bluetooth based Beacons that I blogged about earlier here. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see how compelling the use cases would be once this is standardised. The complete DT presentation is embedded below:

LTE proximity services from Zahid Ghadialy

Mobile, Context and Discovery - Ben Evans

An Interesting presentation and Video from Benedict Evans, both embedded below:

There is an interesting Q&A at the end of the talk in the video. You can directly jump to 27:30 marker for the Q&A. One of the interesting points highlighted by him, that I always knew but was not able to convey it across is there is no real point comparing Google and Apple. I am too lazy to type down so please jump to 45:10. One of the comment on the Youtube summarises it well:

"Google is a vast machine learning engine... and it spent 10-15 years building that learning engine and feeding it data"

So true. It is not Apple vs Google; it is not about the present. It is about the future (see Google's recent acquisitions for context). As Benedict says, if Google creates beautiful, meaningful and unique experiences for users, why would they do it only for Android, they would also have it on Apple devices. 

In the end, comparing Apple and Google is like comparing Apple(s) and Oranges :)

Beacons, Bluetooth, NFC and WiFi

Not sure if you have heard about some kind of Beacons that will be used to guide us everywhere. There are Bluetooth Beeacons, iBeacon, Paypal Beacon, probably more. So here is an attempt to understand some of these things.

The first is this introductory presentation which seems to be extremely popular on Slideshare:

Once we understand the concept of Beacons, there is another presentation that helps us understand iBeacons and Paypal Beacons as follows:

Bluetooth Beacons vs Wifi vs NFC is an interesting article comparing the Beacons with WiFi & NFC. Read it here

Why Beacons may be NFC killer, GigaOm has a good answer here:

iBeacon could be a NFC killer because of its range. NFC tags are pretty cheap compared to NFC chips, but NFC tags are required on each product because NFC works only in very close proximity. In theory, NFC range is up to 20cm (7.87 inches), but the actual optimal range is less than 4cm (1.57 inches). Also, mobile devices need to contain a NFC chip that can handle any NFC communications. On the other hand, iBeacons are a little expensive compared to NFC chips, but iBeacons range is up to 50 meters. Not all phones have NFC chips, but almost all have Bluetooth capability.

Many years back there was a proximity marketing craze using Bluetooth. Then the craze died down and everyone started focussing on other approaches for LBS. I also suggested a Small Cells based approach here. Its good to see that we are going to use a new Bluetooth based approach for similar functions.

By the end of the year we will hopefully know if this is a new hype or a successful technology. Issues with battery drains, security, interoperability, etc. will need to be sorted asap for its success.

The Rise and Rise or '4G' - Update on Release-11 & Release-12 features

A recent GSMA report suggests that China will be a significant player in the field of 4G with upto 900 million 4G users by 2020. This is not surprising as the largest operator, China Mobile wants to desperately move its user base to 4G. For 3G it was stuck with TD-SCDMA or the TDD LCR option. This 3G technology is not as good as its FDD variant, commonly known as UMTS.

This trend of migrating to 4G is not unique to China. A recent report (embedded below) by 4G Americas predicts that by the end of 2018, HSPA/HSPA+ would be the most popular technology whereas LTE would be making an impact with 1.3 Billion connected devices. The main reason for HSPA being so dominant is due to the fact that HSPA devices are mature and are available now. LTE devices, even though available are still slightly expensive. At the same time, operators are taking time having a seamless 4G coverage throughout the region. My guess would be that the number of devices that are 4G ready would be much higher than 1.3 Billion.

It is interesting to see that the number of 'Non-Smartphones' remain constant but at the same time, their share is going down. It would be useful to breakdown the number of Smartphones into 'Phablets' and 'non-Phablets' category.

Anyway, the 4G Americas report from which the information above is extracted contains lots of interesting details about Release-11 and Release-12 HSPA+ and LTE. The only problem I found is that its too long for most people to go through completely.

The whitepaper contains the following information:

3GPP Rel-11 standards for HSPA+ and LTE-Advanced were frozen in December 2012 with the core network protocols stable in December 2012 and Radio Access Network (RAN) protocols stable in March 2013. Key features detailed in the paper for Rel-11 include:

HSPA+:

• 8-carrier downlink operation (HSDPA)
• Downlink (DL) 4-branch Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antennas
• DL Multi-Flow Transmission
• Uplink (UL) dual antenna beamforming (both closed and open loop transmit diversity)
• UL MIMO with 64 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (64-QAM)
• Several CELL_FACH (Forward Access Channel) state enhancements (for smartphone type traffic) and non-contiguous HSDPA Carrier Aggregation (CA)

LTE-Advanced:

• Carrier Aggregation (CA)
• Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (MBMS) and Self Organizing Networks (SON)
• Introduction to the Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) feature for enabling coordinated scheduling and/or beamforming
• Enhanced Physical Control Channel (EPDCCH)
• Further enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (FeICIC) for devices with interference cancellation

Finally, Rel-11 introduces several network and service related enhancements (most of which apply to both HSPA and LTE):

• Machine Type Communications (MTC)
• IP Multimedia Systems (IMS)
• Wi-Fi integration
• Home NodeB (HNB) and Home e-NodeB (HeNB)

3GPP started work on Rel-12 in December 2012 and an 18-month timeframe for completion was planned. The work continues into 2014 and areas that are still incomplete are carefully noted in the report.  Work will be ratified by June 2014 with the exception of RAN protocols which will be finalized by September 2014. Key features detailed in the paper for Rel-12 include:

HSPA+:

• Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) Heterogeneous Networks (HetNet)
• Scalable UMTS Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) bandwidth
• Enhanced Uplink (EUL) enhancements
• Emergency warning for Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN)
• HNB mobility
• HNB positioning for Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA)
• Machine Type Communications (MTC)
• Dedicated Channel (DCH) enhancements

LTE-Advanced:

• Active Antenna Systems (AAS)
• Downlink enhancements for MIMO antenna systems
• Small cell and femtocell enhancements
• Machine Type Communication (MTC)
• Proximity Service (ProSe)
• User Equipment (UE)
• Self-Optimizing Networks (SON)
• Heterogeneous Network (HetNet) mobility
• Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Services (MBMS)
• Local Internet Protocol Access/Selected Internet Protocol Traffic Offload (LIPA/SIPTO)
• Enhanced International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced (eIMTA) and Frequency Division Duplex-Time Division Duplex Carrier Aggregation (FDD-TDD CA)

Work in Rel-12 also included features for network and services enhancements for MTC, public safety and Wi-Fi integration, system capacity and stability, Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC), further network energy savings, multimedia and Policy and Charging Control (PCC) framework.

Whitepaper: 4G Mobile Broadband Evolution: 3GPP Release 11 & Release 12 and Beyond from Zahid Ghadialy

VoLTE Roaming with RAVEL (Roaming Architecture for Voice over IMS with Local Breakout)

Voice over LTE or VoLTE has many problems to solve. One of the issues that did not have a clear solution initially was Roaming. iBasis has a whitepaper on this topic here, from which the above picture is taken. The following is what is said above:

The routing of international calls has always been a problem for mobile operators. All too often the answer—particularly in the case of ‘tromboning’ calls all the way back to the home network—has been inelegant and costly. LTE data sessions can be broken out locally, negating the need for convoluted routing solutions. But in a VoIMS environment all of the intelligence that decides how to route the call resides in the home network, meaning that the call still has to be routed back.

The industry’s solution to this issue is Roaming Architecture for Voice over LTE with Local Breakout (RAVEL). Currently in the midst of standardisation at 3GPP, RAVEL is intended to enable the home network to decide, where appropriate, for the VoIMS call to be broken out locally. 

Three quarters of respondents to the survey said they support an industry-wide move to RAVEL for VoLTE roaming. This is emphatic in its enthusiasm but 25 per cent remains a significant share of respondents still to be convinced. Just over half of respondents said they plan to support VoIMS for LTE roaming using the RAVEL architecture, while 12.3 per cent said they would support it, but not using RAVEL.

Until RAVEL is available, 27.4 per cent of respondents said they plan to use home-routing for all VoLTE traffic, while just under one fifth said they would use a non-standard VoLTE roaming solution.

Well, the solution was standardised in 3GPP Release-11. NTT Docomo has an excellent whitepaper (embedded below) explaining the issue and the proposed solution.

In 3GPP Release 11, the VoLTE roaming and interconnection architecture was standardized in cooperation with the GSMA Association. The new architecture is able to implement voice call charging in the same way as circuit-switched voice roaming and interconnection models by routing both C-Plane messages and voice data on the same path. This was not possible with the earlier VoLTE roaming and interconnection architecture.

Anyway, here is the complete whitepaper

NTT Docomo: VoLTE Roaming and Interconnection Standard Technology from Zahid Ghadialy