KT: Cloud Communication Center for managing Data Explosion

Interesting presentation from Korea Telecom in the LTE World Summit that argues that to manage the data explosion

Day 2-keynote-0900 sung-man-kim-20120524 from ceobroadband

Voice-Over-LTE (VoLTE) Signalling

MetroPCS has recently launched rolled out VoLTE in USA using LG connect phones. More operators would be rolling it out soon so here is example of Signaling in VoLTE.

To read in detail, please see the article from NTT Docomo technical journal here.

Who do users blame for poor QoE when using mobile devices

An important reminder for mobile phone manufacturers as well as mobile operators.

The Social Web of Things - Part 2

Here is the Part 1 in case you are wondering.

3GPP SA1 Release 11 Standardisation Trends

An Interesting article from the NTT Docomo technical journal:

3GPP SA1 Release 11 Standardisation Trends from Zahid Ghadialy

Related posts:

• Non-Voice Emergency Services (NOVES)
• Network Improvements for Machine Type Communications (NIMTC)
• Evolution of Machine Type Communications (MTC)
• 3GPP Release-12 and beyond

QoS Strategies for IMS & VoLTE

Another brilliant presentation from the LTE World Summit early this year

Day 1-t4 roland-schott-20120523 from ceobroadband

Providing a Superior level of QoS through Femto/Small Cell deployment

Another interesting presentation from the LTE World Summit:

Related posts:

• Real Life Pictures of Small Cells Deployments in London
• Telefonica UK’s LTE & Small Cell Trials
• Backhauling the Telefonica O2 London LTE Trial
• Heterogeneous Networks 3G and 4G / LTE-A

A Twitter discussion on eMBMS

@zahidtg: Samsung has demoed eMBMS using Anritsu RTD system - http://bit.ly/PCGb99  - But is any operator interested?

Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung has successfully demonstrated the clear delivery of television broadcast signals over an LTE 4G wireless network. 

Samsung is using evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS) technology and has tapped test & measurement specialist Anritsu's Rapid Test Designer (RTD) and MD8430A to simulate the LTE network environment used for the demonstration. 

eMBMS technology allows carriers to adjust coverage and capacity as needed, allowing for more efficient use of network resources in order to better handle the heavy traffic load that broadcast video would present. 

Samsung is actively looking to add more content to the value proposition for its phones. It has deployed its own Hub strategy for its Galaxy line of smartphones, which includes a Music Hub, Movies Hub and Games Hub, all of which give the handset-maker a new incremental revenue stream. A TV Hub that could support live TV content in addition to on-demand episode downloads could add a compelling new wrinkle in that pseudo-walled garden approach. 

Samsung is also instrumental in bringing mobile TV to market via the Dyle initiative for mobile DTV—a service that offers live broadcast feeds from local TV affiliates over separate, dedicated broadcast spectrum. No. 5 U.S. wireless carrier MetroPCS just went live with Dyle service and a Samsung mobile DTV-compatible smartphone.

@KimKLarsen: Depends on whether an operator believes in the broadcast over mobile model. Mobile User trends seems not in favor at least in WEU.

@zahidtg: I agree and thats why I dont think broadcast will work in the short term. Would be different is Apple were to create biz model:)

@KimKLarsen: though the question is whether they (Apple/Google) really need eMBMS for executing such a business model ... I guess not really?!

@KimKLarsen: I have a couple of beautiful white papers on satellite (w & wo terrestrial component) eMBMS using S-band together w Apple or Google

@zahidtg: True. My point is that they are the ones who can create a new biz model on it, operators cant be bothered. Too much hassle.

@KimKLarsen: too much hassle, too little new revenue, risky ROI, insufficient scale, etc.. an Apple or alike might overcome due to shear scale!

@KimKLarsen: though w a satellite (w. city based terrestrial component) based eMBMS system you cover large landmass & pop & get the Scale!

@Qualcomm_Tech: I think the best initial use case for #eMBMS is to selectivley use it as venue casting at stadiums/exhibitons etc.

@kitkilgour: "ClipCasting" has been the main eMBMS use case - stadia, or catching up on your 1min news at stations

@Qualcomm_Tech: True, Any content destined to venue users, incl. live/real-time can leverage eMBMS- huge capacity increase

@KimKLarsen: I agree! Might be interesting! But can this really justify eMBMS as a service for mass adaption?

@KimKLarsen: when will eMBMS be supported in Gobi? & when can we expect this to be standard in all LTE terminal devices?

@kitkilgour: It's networks as well as devices. MBMS has always been hampered by needing to reach the cell edge ...

@kitkilgour: ... with limited / no power control whilst minimising interference to others

@KimKLarsen: great feedback! Thanks! Do you see a need for denser networks to deliver a uniform MBMS service than for standard data services?

@KimKLarsen: one of the challenges we have had in nominal terrestrial MBMS designs have been link budget requirements! Any good sources?

@Qualcomm_Tech: challenge’s been having enough penetration of multicast devices. Venue cast solves that problem #1000x

@KimKLarsen: Sounds like Venue Cast is The Main Driver for eMBMS adoptation? (hmmm?) What's the Revenue Source? #42x

@KimKLarsen: I don't understand how Venue Cast can Drive MC Device Uptake? The other way around more reasonable! #42x

@Qualcomm_Tech: Target specific groups, eg season ticket holders & offer attractive device/content/plan bundles #1000x

Participants:

@zahidtg = Zahid Ghadialy
@KimKLarsen = Dr. Kim Larsen
@Qualcomm_Tech = Qualcomm_Tech
@kitkilgour = Kit Kilgour



In other news, Huawei Launches eMBMS Innovation Center to Develop LTE Solutions:

Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, today announced the launch of an enhanced Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS) innovation center in Shenzhen in order to develop end-to-end eMBMS solutions and LTE applications. 

eMBMS is a 3GPP R9 standard for mobile video that enables a higher transfer capacity over typical MBMS technologies. Huawei's eMBMS innovation center will focus on on-demand video services and broadcast information based on eMBMS. This will enrich LTE applications and accelerate the development of the eMBMS industry chain, which includes chipsets, devices, and network equipment.

In addition to developing solutions, the innovation center will also serve as an experience center for operators. Video, mobile TV, and advertisements will be showcased via mobile smart devices employing Huawei's eMBMS solution. Global operators from Europe, Asia, the South Pacific and other regions have already visited the center to experience its LTE demonstrations.

Huawei has been committed to the growing mobile video market since 2006. According to the Global mobile Supplier Association's (GSA) “Mobile Broadband Status Report”, over four billion people watch videos on YouTube every day. This large-scale usage is leading to increased revenue. According to a report from Global Industry Analysts, revenue from the mobile video market will reach USD30 billion by 2017. Huawei's eMBMS research team works closely with operators, chipset and device manufactures and other partners to further the development of the industry for the benefit of all end users.

Huawei's LTE division has been committed to providing the best commercially performing network, the best end user experience through devices and innovative services, as well as end-to-end convergent solutions for helping operators with their business success. Huawei's eMBMS innovation center will push the development of mobile video well into the future.

LTE, LTE-A and Testing

Some months back R&S held a technical forum where there were many interesting talks and presentations. They have now uploaded video of all these presentations that can be viewed on their website (no embedding allowed).

Available to be viewed here.

VoLTE - making it work

Interesting presentation from Acme Packet in the LTE World Summit.

LTE KPI's (Key Performance Indicators)

Key Performance Indicators of KPI's are indicators for if a device or equipment meets a certain reliability criteria for being ready for deployment.

In [1] the following KPI's are defined

• Accessibility
• Retainability
• Integrity
• Availability
• Mobility

[2] gives the requirements related to the above KPI's. Take for instance Accessibility, [2] defines the requirements as follows:

Business level requirements: If an end user cannot access a service it is hard to charge for the service. Also, if it happens often that an end-user cannot access the provided service, the end-user might change wireless subscription provider, i.e. loss of income for the network operator. Hence, to have a good accessibility of the services is important from a business point of view. This measurement assists the network operator with information about the accessibility provided to their customers.

Specification level requirements: The accessibility of an end-user application covers a wider area than just the E-UTRAN part. Hence it is important to realize that a KPI for this in E-UTRAN shall be limited to the parts that E-UTRAN has control of, i.e. the E-UTRAN KPI shall be defined so that it indicates the E-UTRAN contribution to the end-user impact, NOT attempt to take responsibility of the whole end-to-end part of service accessibility.

The service provided by E-UTRAN for this KPI shall be E-RAB. It shall be possible to measure the accessibility of E-RABs in E-UTRAN. Accessibility measurement should be available as a success rate for the attempts. 

As for defining an attempt, it shall be considered an attempt first when the eNodeB can be certain that is a request for an E-RAB. As for defining a success, it shall be considered a success when the eNodeB have completed its task to setup resources and the result of the E-RAB establishment can be informed to the requester of the E-RAB. The KPI shall be available per QoS group.

Use case description: In providing end-user services to wireless end-users, the first step is to get access to the wireless service. First after access to the service has been performed, the service can be used. If an accessibility measurement is not considered OK, then the network operator can investigate which steps that are required to improve the accessibility towards their customers. This measurement should be used for observing the impact of E-UTRAN on end-users service accessibility.

From the above, we can create certain tests to test the Accessibility KPI. Example cases as follows:

1. RRC Connection Setup for Registration success rates

2. RRC Connection Setup for Services success rates

3. Initial E-RAB Setup Success rates

4. Successive E-RAB Setup Success rates

5. Call (VoIP) setup success rates

[1] 3GPP TS 32.450: Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN): Definitions

[2] 3GPP TS 32.451: Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN); Requirements

More example of KPI's is available from this document:

Summary of QoS Requirements from Zahid Ghadialy

Samsung's Transparent Smart Window

These are a bit old but I just saw them and love the idea.

Tech Laws we should all know about - #TechLaws

In many different events and conferences, these laws get quoted so I decided to collect them all in a place.

Moore's law: The law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, who described the trend in his 1965 paper.

Moore's law is the observation that over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. The period often quoted as "18 months" is due to Intel executive David House, who predicted that period for a doubling in chip performance (being a combination of the effect of more transistors and their being faster).

Gordon Moore himself predicts that Moore's Law, as applied to integrated circuits, will no longer be applicable after about 2020 - when IC geometry will be about one atom thick. However, recent technology announcements about 3-D silicon, single-atom and spin transistors gives another twenty years of conventional doublings before the electronics limit is reached. Inevitably, other technologies, such as biochips and nanotechnology will come to the forefront to move the equivalent of Moore's Law inexorably forward.

See Also: Transistor Wars: Rival architectures face off in a bid to keep Moore's Law alive


Koomey's Law:  The number of computations per joule of energy dissipated has been doubling approximately every 1.57 years. This trend has been remarkably stable since the 1950s (R2 of over 98%) and has actually been somewhat faster than Moore’s law. Jonathan Koomey articulated the trend as follows: “at a fixed computing load, the amount of battery you need will fall by a factor of two every year and a half.”

See Also: See Also: A New and Improved Moore's Law


Metcalfe's law: Attributed to Robert Metcalfe, originator of Ethernet and founder of 3COM: the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes; so, as a network grows, the value of being connected to it grows exponentially, while the cost per user remains the same or even reduces.

Within the context of social networks, many, including Metcalfe himself, have proposed modified models using (n × log n) proportionality rather than n2 proportionality.

See Also: Wikipedia


Gilder's Law: proposed by George Gilder, prolific author and prophet of the new technology age - the total bandwidth of communication systems triples every twelve months (some refer to the period as eighteen months). New developments seem to confirm that bandwidth availability will continue to expand at a rate that supports Gilder's Law.

See Also: Technology Needs for 40G–100G Network-Centric Operations & Warfare


Nielsen's Law: Network connection speeds for high-end home users would increase 50% per year, or double every 21 months. As a corollary, he noted that, since this growth rate is slower than that predicted by Moore's Law of processor power, user experience would remain bandwidth-bound.


Cooper's Law:

Cooper has found that the ability to transmit different radio communications at one time and in the same place has grown with the same pace since Guglielmo Marconi's first transmissions in 1895. The number of such communications being theoretically possible has doubled every 30 months, from then, for 104 years. This fact has been dubbed Cooper's Law.

See Also: ArrayComm: Cooper’s Law


Edholm's Law of Bandwidth: Edholm sets out three categories of communications – wired, wireless and nomadic. Nomadic is a form of wireless where the communicator is stationary during the period of communications. According to Edholm’s Law, data rates for these three telecommunications categories increase on similar exponential curves, the slower rates trailing the faster ones by a predictable time lag.

The chart above shows data rates plotted logarithmically against time. When drawn like this, it is possible to fit straight lines to each of the categories. The lines are almost parallel, although nomadic and wireless technologies gradually converge at around 2030. For example, in 2000 2G delivered around 10kbits/s, W-LANs connected to dial up delivered 56kbits/s, and the typical office local area network (LAN) provided 10Mbits/s. Today, 3G delivers 100kbits/s, a home wireless LAN with DSL or cable broadband access is about 1Mb/s and typical office LAN data rates are 100 Mbits/s. Edholm’s Law predicts that in 2010 3G wireless will deliver 1 Mbits/s, Wi-Fi connected via a faster backhaul 10 Mbits/s, and office networks 1Gbit/s.

Edholm’s Law overlaps with Guilder’s on the fixed bandwidth side and to some degree with Cooper’s on the wireless side. But perhaps key is its prediction that wired and wireless will maintain a near-constant differential in data rate terms.


Shannon's law (Shannon–Hartley theorem): In information theory, the Shannon–Hartley theorem tells the maximum rate at which information can be transmitted over a communications channel of a specified bandwidth in the presence of noise. 

Considering all possible multi-level and multi-phase encoding techniques, the Shannon–Hartley theorem states the channel capacity C, meaning the theoretical tightest upper bound on the information rate (excluding error correcting codes) of clean (or arbitrarily low bit error rate) data that can be sent with a given average signal power S through an analog communication channel subject to additive white Gaussian noise of power N, is:



where
C is the channel capacity in bits per second;
B is the bandwidth of the channel in hertz (passband bandwidth in case of a modulated signal);
S is the average received signal power over the bandwidth (in case of a modulated signal, often denoted C, i.e. modulated carrier), measured in watts (or volts squared);
N is the average noise or interference power over the bandwidth, measured in watts (or volts squared); and
S/N is the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) or the carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) of the communication signal to the Gaussian noise interference expressed as a linear power ratio (not as logarithmic decibels).


Finally,

Murphy's Law: Anything that can possibly go wrong, does


Further reading:

• Twenty-two power laws of the emerging social economy
• Ten Laws Of The Modern World
• Wireless Communications to 2020 and Beyond - William Webb
• Wright's Law Edges Out Moore's Law in Predicting Technology Development - IEEE Spectrum
• Laying down the law - Professor William Webb, IEE Communications Engineer, February/March 2006

Please feel free to add any others you may know of in the comments and if they are popular I will add them in the blog post.

The Scent Phone

When I spoke about the 'next killer device', I showed this picture below and mentioned that smell is an area that has a lot of potential but difficult to exploit.  

In the Future of Wireless conference, one of the talks that many people were keen to listen about was about this 'scent phone'. Presentation embedded below:

Scent Phone from Zahid Ghadialy

I have also blogged about the same topic before that can be seen here.

If you are interested in these topics, see also:

• The Next ‘Killer Device’
• Future Mobile devices: Winners & Losers in technology

Heterogeneous Networks 3G and 4G / LTE-A

There is an excellent presentation and video on Hetnets by Qualcomm that is embedded below:

Heterogeneous Networks 3G and 4G from Zahid Ghadialy

Futuristic Video: 'Sight'

What happens when Google Glasses can get embedded in a lens placed in our eye. A bit like an advanced version of the Intelligent Contact Lens in Mission Imposssible Ghost Protocol movie. Maybe then the Augmented Future video is easily possible. Anyway, here is a new video which is someone's graduation project:




If interested, there are more videos that you can see using the tag 'Future Technologies'

PCC developments to take advantage of LTE capabilities

Another interesting presentation from the LTE World Summit 2012. The part that I find most interesting is slide 10 onwards that talks about Evolution of the PCC to include user Engagement. There is also a scope for 'Sponsored Data Connectivity'.

LTE World Summit 2012 Day 1 T3 Oisin O'Connor OPENET from ceobroadband

LTE-Direct (rebranded Flashlinq) by Qualcomm

I blogged about Flashlinq before and also about the Proximity based Services (ProSe) and AllJoyn which probably is part of Release-12. Qualcomm is now proposing LTE-Direct that looks like a rebranded Flashlinq here. A video of that is embedded here.

View More Qualcomm Videos

From PCWorld:

Qualcomm is promoting a peer-to-peer cellular technology as a potential new standard called LTE Direct, which it says would make location-based services faster and more efficient.

The proposal grew out of FlashLinq, a system Qualcomm developed in its own labs. FlashLinq lets two cellular devices communicate over the air without relying on a fixed network infrastructure. Qualcomm sees two main applications for the technology: public safety communications in areas where mobile networks are down or unavailable, and a "discovery mode" that provides information about what interesting things and people are nearby. Qualcomm is primarily interested in the discovery mode, which it says has more commercial potential.

LTE Direct eliminates steps in the location process, allowing users to find things more quickly, Qualcomm says. Though the technology can be used for ongoing communication at high speeds, including streaming video, in discovery mode it would only broadcast tiny 128-bit packages of data. Those packages, called "expressions," would contain basic information about the device or user. Each LTE Direct device would look for expressions nearby, choosing among them using filters customized for the user or for specific applications.

"What you do is, every so often, you broadcast this 128 bits of information, which are expressing your desire ... so devices and services around you can listen to (your expressions) and figure out what you're interested in," said Mahesh Makhijani, senior director of technical marketing at Qualcomm.

Mobile consumers as well as businesses could send and receive expressions. If an application detects an expression that's relevant to what it does, that application can then go into action, providing something to the user. For example, if two friends have devices that are sending out expressions, then a social-networking app that both of them use might pop up notifications for each saying the other friend is nearby. A classic example of an application that might take advantage of discovery mode is the location check-in app Foursquare, Makhijani said.

Decentralized process

Current location-based services rely on a central database of location data. Every party's location, determined by GPS or other methods, has to be collected in that database and then sent out to other interested parties who request it, Makhijani said. LTE Direct finds nearby devices directly over the air.

Finding a match between one user and other people or services nearby is also quicker, because "service layer" information is contained in the 128-bit expression, Makhijani said. That service layer information determines whether something is of interest to you, such as whether someone uses Facebook and is a friend, or whether your favorite store nearby is offering a deal. To determine these things with LTE Direct, it's not necessary to query a central server over the Internet or even to establish a dedicated connection with the nearby device, he said.

LTE Direct isn't intended to provide exact location or replace GPS for finding out exactly where you are, but it could complement existing location systems and speed up the process of finding out where you are, Makhijani said. Its benefits include the speed of proximity-based location as well as its ability to work indoors, where GPS often has trouble getting a fix because it relies on satellites, he said.

Twitter et al. for Small Cell Planning

A recent report in Light Reading mentioned about using Twitter for planning of Small Cells network. In fact for quite a while, a UK based company, Keima has been using this technique to help plan small cells deployments in the US. I used some of their research in my presentation in the Optimisation conference; see here.

A map using the Keima tool showing the activity on the Social Networks for London is as follows.

It would be very interesting to see the above during olympics.

If you are interested in learning more about the tool see Keima's presentation from MWC here and their video here.

Keima’s Simon Chapman will be presenting to the Cambridge Wireless Small Cells SIG event on 3rd October on the topic "Deploying bigger numbers of smaller cells". Here is a summary of things going to be discussed by them:

Small Cell Planning from 3G4G

We discuss how "small cells" are a natural evolution of network design principles started with A.H. Ring in 1947. We discuss the practical consequences of managing interference while rolling out more cells in the next few years than all the previous deployments put together.

We consider processes for achieving cost-effective, spectrally efficient network capacity and establish the most influential: the location of small cells. Given the importance of location we demonstrate mechanisms for identifying demand hotspots using publicly available datasets and show that this knowledge alone has a significant impact on the eventual network capacity.

Finally, as we look at the immediate areas in and around demand hotspots, we discuss the associated issues of selecting thousands of utility poles or building-side mountings; of managing wired or wireless backhauling; of lowering latency; of repurposing the macro

To register for the event please click here.

Seamless offloading between Cellular Network and WLAN (CNW)

Last month I wrote a post about the 'Virtual Femtocell' concept. Apparently there is a company already doing this. The following is from GigaOm:

SR-Mobile, a Korean company that also has offices in Plano, Texas, is looking to help cellular carriers make seamless handoffs with Wi-Fi networks, enabling them to easily offload traffic from their cellular networks. The company, which is demonstrating its technology later this month at the Mobile Asia Expo, allows a carrier to switch a call or data traffic seamlessly between Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G. It does this with the help of a virtual radio agent mobile application on a mobile device that automatically switches between cellular and Wi-Fi modems. The VRA app works with a smart radio mobile controller that can access the network server and transfers the network traffic to the network core.


The benefit of this approach is that it allows a Wi-Fi hotspot to act as a virtual base station, which can be easily added and managed by an operator. If there’s capacity on the Wi-Fi network, it can seamlessly handle calls and data but if it gets overcrowded, it can switch back to the cellular network. SR’s approach also means that a carrier can expand their network capacity without a lot of investment, by relying on their existing Wi-Fi network or their user’s private Wi-Fi network. SR, which was founded by James Lee, a former senior staffer at Samsung Telecom America, is working on a trial with Korean operator KT, which will test SR’s technology on select LG phones.

More details about their solution in their presentation below:

Seamless offloading between Cellular Network and WLAN (CNW) from Zahid Ghadialy

Real Life Pictures of Small Cells Deployments in London

Visitors of this blog seemed to like the last set of deployment pictures I put up. As a result here is another set of pictures from the same Telefonica presentation by Robert Joyce. See also my earlier post on the same topic here.

mHealth Revolution

We are living in amazing times where we can do things we could have just dreamt of 5-10 years back. I came across the following video:



This gives hope to the third world where a lot of our old non-smartphones are ending up. In fact this reminds me of Mexapixel Microscopy that can possibly have numerous applications.

There was an interesting presentation recently in the Future of Wireless Conference that was very well received and had people discussing it on twitter and in the event. Its embedded below (download from slideshare)

mHEALTHCARE Opportunities, Challenges and Prospects

View more presentations from Zahid Ghadialy

Do you have any more ideas or information on this topic? Please feel free to share in the comments.

Real Life Pictures of LTE Equipment and Antenna

From a presentation by Robert Joyce of Telefonica.

Fundamentals of Mobile Network Sharing

Some days back I blogged about the twitter discussion on 'Mobile Network Sharing'. Dr. Kim Larsen from Deutsche Telekom (DT) has now made a presentation and in his own words:


Given the renewed discussion of Network Sharing pros and cons I thought it made sense to wrap up several of my older presentations and update some of the information with latest knowledge. 


The myth of network sharing is clear -> huge savings and benefits often blinding the decision makers for the other side of the coin. 


I hope this presentation provided a fair picture of both sides of the Network Sharing Coin!

Fundamentals of Mobile Network Sharing

View more presentations from Kim Kyllesbech Larsen

Telefonica UK’s LTE & Small Cell Trials

A presentation by Robert Joyce, Chief Radio Engineer, Telefonica UK

Rec 12 073 Lte Small Cells Presentation Arrows from shaylinau

OTT Messaging and the need for Telco-OTT Strategies

Sometime back I created a OTT Stats, Facts and Figures presentation for the FWIC conference and in that revealed the shocking figures of how popular the OTT messaging have become and how its impacting the operators worldwide by cannibalising their revenue. Below is a presentation by Dean Bubley from Disruptive Analysis who believes that in light of the OTT messaging apps eating into operators profits, Telco-OTT strategies are inevitable. Its not the question of 'if' but 'when'.

Disruptive Analysis - OMA Messaging Workshop July 2012 from Dean Bubley

A twitter discussion on 'Integration problems with Mobile Network Sharing'

@dmavrakis: Are cost savings >> cultural and integration problems for mobile network sharing? - http://www.telecoms.com/46594/cultural-and-integration-problems-hamper-network-sharing-deals/

Dimitris Mavrakis, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, believes that a major challenge many operators should anticipate when embarking upon network sharing deals is the extent to which cultural and integration problems can slow down their progress and success. 

Mavrakis said that one such deal that he is aware of saw two operators spending several months holding meetings on a frequent basis in order to tackle cultural issues. And with some key figures in the industry, such as Orange Spain’s CTO Eduard Duato, calling for multiple vendors to share networks for cost-effective LTE rollout, cultural and integration problems will be vast. 

“If two operators cannot agree, what happens when there are three or four? The cultural problems and integration problems increase dramatically with the number of operators involved,” he said. 

He explained that there are multiple types of integration issues affecting operators in this scenario. 

“One vendor’s equipment may be compatible with the core network but with another one, it may require considerable effort to integrate. But there is a danger that after the equipment has been integrated the core network, it may still need considerable reconfiguration to work efficiently. This is just the tip of the iceberg; it could be that the billing system is not interoperable, or that the personnel are not trained to handle certain problems – there could be a million different problems.” 

Mavrakis noted the words of Graham Payne, managing director for the MBNL project, as evidence of the tribulations involved in setting up a shared network. Payne said that, unless the companies embarking on a sharing project were fully committed from board level on down, the results could be disastrous. 

“[Payne] said that the integration of the three networks was the biggest achievement of his career, and he’s a seasoned veteran – he’s not a newbie. So that speaks volumes about how difficult it can be,” said Mavrakis. 

He added that even by taking the path that Vodafone and O2 have in the UK, and splitting the market by geographic area, is not a sure-fire way to prevent such integration and cultural problems. 

“There’s no silver bullet; it really depends on each operator. In the case of Vodafone and O2 it may be a better solution, but if we’re talking about a shared network for LTE, from a cost perspective, the more operators involved, the better. The problem is working with the culture and the competitive nature of each operator.” 

However, Mavrakis did admit that because cost savings are the biggest driver for network sharing, the benefits that operators will see from such deals should be sufficient incentive to overcome any integration and cultural problems.

@KimKLarsen: (1) I have come to believe that for #NetworkSharing to be successful/sustainable it needs to provide more than "just" cost saving

@KimKLarsen: (2) Often Operators gets blinded of saving Potential and forget UPFRONT Cash requirements and Restructuring Cost needed!

@dmavrakis: Very interesting! Seems all discussion on network sharing is on benefits, but not on challenges or threats.

@KimKLarsen: (3) TMUK-H3G 3G sharing was about doing a lot more than they could standalone (for same or better TCO), EE Ltd formula similar,

@KimKLarsen: (4) PTC-Or PL Deploy incredible strong SHARED 2&3&4G network across! Poland (would not have been financially feasible standalone)

@dmavrakis: Agreed. Strong drive for single deployed nationwide network+sharing for LTE or any new RAN tech.

@KimKLarsen: (5) Negatives of ?#Networksharing? (a) upfront cash required, (b) helping competition (e.g., H3G-UK), (c) strategic lock-in,

@KimKLarsen: (6) (d) Complex governance (e) Complex & COSTLY disentanglement (f) loss of operational independence (g) asymmetric benefits etc

@dmavrakis: I would hate to think what disentanglement means in an active RAN sharing deal...

@KimKLarsen: (7) Doing more network for same/less TCO compared to standalone is a MUCH Easier case for ?#Networksharing? than just cost saving!

@KimKLarsen: ;-) There are no easy/clean Divorces! but Disentanglement of Active RAN Share w. Spectrum Sharing would be Mother of Messiness!

@dmavrakis: Is it even possible? I feel sorry for the person in charge of such a divorce :-)

@KimKLarsen: Though the lawyers would have a field day with Disentangling an Active RAN Share JV ;-) ....

@dmavrakis: Indeed! Patent litigation and network sharing divorces. Lawyers' dream cases!

@KimKLarsen: (8) Overlooked in ?#Networksharing?: (i) instant cell split=more capacity, (ii) improved coverage, (iii) Spectral efficiency boost

@dmavrakis: Very interesting! Seems all discussion on network sharing is on benefits, but not on challenges or threats.

@Gabeuk: Biggest issue I've heard for #Networksharing is the competitive dynamic -- you need to be more or less equal size

@KimKLarsen: Well then TMUK & Three UK must have been a mistake! ;-) ... Smaller party has much more to gain from sharing that's true!

@KimKLarsen: An important consideration as is the possible asymmetry! but I would not say it's the Biggest Issue nor a Blocking Stone!

@KimKLarsen: As the saying goes: "Money Makes Strange Bed Fellows" ;-) & cost savings do (often) take precedent over market dynamics.

@twehmeier: Interesting to see if agreement unwinds with transition to LTE, a la Sweden. Or are there commitments?

@Gabeuk: TMoUK and 3UK were the two smallest outfits at the time... so it worked for both of them

@Gabeuk: TeliaSonera wanted out of the deal, hence push to LTE. Telenor wont share in Norway, but will in Sweden

@Gabeuk: O2 and Vodafone are RAN sharing in the UK because they are roughly equal size; other combinations couldn't be agreed

@KimKLarsen: It is a highly asymmetric venture in terms of respective market shares and network size -> Size does Not matter too much!

@KimKLarsen: There are no other options in UK for meaningful network sharing! O2/VF needs higher net density to remain competitive!

@KimKLarsen: I just don't believe that Size Matters ;-) is a very important consideration for #Networksharing ...

@dmavrakis: Indeed, VF/O2 can't compete against MBNL's site density on a standalone basis!

@KimKLarsen: The only way O2 & VF could create a network in equal size to EEs in a meaningful economical way is to share their grids!

@Gabeuk: TMo, 3UK, and Orange all needed scale -- hence those combinations, and why VF and O2 sat aside

@Gabeuk: yes, the emergence of EE has changed the telco landscape in the UK

@KimKLarsen: (1) Changes in spectrum strength/position (low vs high freq) between partners might trigger an unwind.

@KimKLarsen: (2) though more likely than unwind would be downgrade from active to passive/site sharing!

@disruptivedean: Issue I see is around flexibility, eg if one MNO's customer profile has v different usage patterns

@dmavrakis: That may be in favor or active sharing. E.g. if busy hours or traffic patterns are different

@disruptivedean: Yes, but might be mix of signalling vs. "tonnage" intense, indoor/outdoor mix, specific geo's etc

@disruptivedean: ie network-sharing puts constraints on business models, customer targets, mktg propositions etc

@dmavrakis: Not sure if network sharing has effect beyond the network dept of MNO.

xoxoxoxoxoxo Added 13/07/2012 xoxoxoxoxoxo


@sadinmobile: Interesting - from experience "network" sharing should be strictly limited to a very short term or site/antenna sharing only..

@KimKLarsen: how do you get to that conclusion/experience? Particular the very short term statement? At odds with the economics!

@sadinmobile: After traffic levels pick up, networks will split anyway, until then it's nothing but tech issues and politics, s/t <5y

@KimKLarsen: 2+ yrs to get a shared network, spending abundant on integration & restructuring, w. <3 yrs to recover! Hmmm ;-)

@KimKLarsen: Though this said (1) I do agree that most of the Opex savings are in site related Opex incl. Ops/field services!

@KimKLarsen: (2) substantial Capex savings/avoidance can be achieved as well … doing so much more for the same amount of cash!

@KimKLarsen: and (3) network sharing is so much more than technology … it’s about marketing too … though politics! YEAHHH that too!

@sadinmobile: site/antenna sharing should def be done for many reasons. Also fibre backhaul sharing is a must for larger landscapes.

@KimKLarsen: particular last point is a really important one for LTE and HSPA+ where legacy backhaul falls short of air-interface!

@KimKLarsen: Few operators have the financial strength & infrastructure to standalone finance FTTS: backhaul sharing is important!

@KimKLarsen: And as backhaul FTTS is shared, so does site sharing jump out as a natural corollary.

Participants:

@dmavrakis = Dimitris Mavrakis

@KimKLarsen = Dr. Kim Larsen

@Gabeuk = Gabriel Brown

@twehmeier = Thomas Wehmeier

@disruptivedean = Dean Bubley

@sadinmobile = Sadin N

Femtocells vs. Wi-Fi - Conflict or Complement?

How Wi-Fi and Femtocells complement one another to optimise coverage and capacity

View more presentations from Zahid Ghadialy

A presentation from the LTE World Summit 2012.