Mobile Data 2008: $200 Billion and rising

Revenues from mobile data services are set to exceed US$200 billion this year for the first time, according to data sourced from Informa Telecoms & Media. Total mobile data revenues were approximately US$157 billion in 2007.

Research from the first quarter of 2008 reveals that mobile data service revenues exceeded US$49 billion, accounting for a 42.7% y-o-y increase. This figure means that mobile operators now generate approximately one fifth of their revenue from data services; this is significant given that a general slowdown in voice revenues is forcing the pace around the importance of data services for mobile operators.

Informa Telecoms & Media estimates that non-SMS data contributed US$17.48 billion of revenue in Q108, accounting for 35.6% of total data revenues.

The Asia Pacific region comprises 40% of the world's data revenues (over US$20 billion in Q108), representing an above average y-o-y growth rate of 48%. The biggest regional riser, however, is the Middle East, which despite contributing just 2% of the world's data revenues in the first quarter of 2008, has seen a 91.7% y-o-y increase in this figure to US$927 million. Aiding this acceleration is the 321% y-o-y rise in the number of HSPA subscribers in the region, which reached 2.9 million by the end of March 2008.

As per the above analysis, SMS still accounts for around 64% of the data revenues, not very different from the blog I posted last year.

Longer battery life for Notebooks

In the past decade the no of users switching notebooks has dramatically increased. Not only are the business personal, normal users accessing computer at home now preferring notebooks. The reason is quire simple as notebook/laptop provides mobility within the premises especially with wireless technology is now getting better.

The only limitation with the notebooks is its battery life. After using laptop for a while we do have to plug it back into the mains to charge it. Industry fully recognizes this limitation and hence the battle to create the notebook with the longer battery life is stepping up as every day passes by.

Dell recently announced new Latitude E6400 notebook with up to 19 hours of battery life. I am sure though the increase in battery life comes at the expense of extra weight. This increase in the battery life is due to the introduction of a new technology called a “slice,” which uses lithium-ion prismatic cell technology to extend the battery but it also added nearly 2 pounds of weight to the notebook.

On Sept. 8, HP announced that the company’s engineers had pushed the limits of battery life to the 24-hour mark with the EliteBook 6930p. So Hewlett-Packard has unveiled its own contender in response to Dell's announcement, where a new set of features for its HP EliteBook 6930p will push the battery life up to 24 hours. With a monster 12-cell lithium ion battery pack, HP claims that its new EliteBook 6930p is able to achieve 24 hours of runtime. As I mentioned above, off course this adds an additional 1.8 pounds to the laptop, which weighs 4.7 pounds with a "standard" lithium ion battery. However, the version of the notebook with 24 hours of battery life will not be available until October.

These developments from the likes of HP and Dell are definitely encouraged by the Intel’s new hardware which makes it possible to achieve higher goals. That is why it doesn’t surprise me that the HP announcement coincided with the release of new solid-state SATA (Serial ATA) drives from Intel, which are some of the key components to the notebook’s long battery life.

Since SSDs (solid state drives) use NAND flash memory and have no moving parts, these components reduce the laptops' overall power consumption.

As I mentioned above, the current business climate requires increased mobility and larger battery life for the notebooks. PC vendors such as Dell and HP are trying to target a new class of notebooks to enterprise road warriors who want to push the limits of mobility and who travel on airplanes for a good portion of the day or make several stops with customers across the span of several days. While 24- and 19-hour-battery life thresholds might seem a bit excessive, these claims by HP and Dell help showcase the ability of these vendors to push current battery technology to its limits. Notebook companies like HP and Dell also allowing users to download specific BIOS and driver updates that allow them to manipulate the power-saving features further.

It must be noted that since everyone is used to stretching the limits of battery performance, the actual "standard" usage life remains to be seen. Still, it is undeniable that as sales of laptops continue to dominate in the area of personal computing, it is inevitable that manufacturers reach out to globetrotting enterprise road warriors seeking to push the edge of mobility.

LTE on Youtube

I was amazed today while browsing for information as to how much marketing stuff on LTE has been added to YouTube. Nortel seems to be using YouTube actively to market its LTE products. Then there are loads of other people including Motorola and Freescale.

Here is an LTE Drive Demo from Nortel:




Another one titled, "LTE-Enabled Consumer Device" from freescale:

Next Generation All-IP Telecom Networks: Quality of Service Challenges and Is...

There is an Interesting tutorial on Next generation All IP Networks from Google on Youtube. Unfortunately they have not allowed sharing of that but you can see that on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC4E946i6aE

eHRPD: Stopgap between EV-DO and LTE

Interesting article from TMCnet.

As LTE is picking up steam, more and more operators opting for this technology. It is but natural that some CDMA2000 operators would like to joing the camp as well. Since there is no clear evolution path available from CDMA2000 to LTE, a soft option is required so that there is no immediate need to change the complete infrastructure and in case of any problems suffer.

The transition for CDMA operators from High Rate Packet Data (HRPD) to LTE will be over a period of several years, as is the case still with the transition from 1xRTT to HRPD. As a result, mobile operators must look for a migration path that will enhance their existing HRPD networks, while addressing LTE deployment requirements and will not require a ‘forklift’ upgrade.

The choice of migration path depends on many factors including radio access strategy, network resource strategy, services enabled, timing and cost. A key goal of LTE is to enhance service provisioning while simplifying interworking with non-3GPP mobile networks. This is essential for CDMA operators that have chosen to migrate to LTE.

Evolved HRPD is a method that allows the mobile operator to upgrade their existing HRPD packet core network using elements of the SAE/EPC architecture. Additionally, eHRPD is a more evolutionary path to LTE while also allowing for seamless service mobility — including seamless hand-offs — between the eHRPD and LTE networks.

One of the main advantages of eHRPD is the ability to provide seamless service mobility between HRPD and LTE access networks with a single mobility management protocol. Moreover, with eHRPD, the operator can leverage the benefit of optimized handover – no dropped sessions and reduced handover latency — between LTE and eHRPD. The benefit of seamless and optimized mobility for data is highly dependant on the mobile operator business model for adding new services. As new applications emerge, the requirement for seamless service mobility becomes greater. Since SAE is an all-IP network infrastructure, the network will quickly move to mobile VoIP for voice. Moreover, with the introduction of eHRPD, the operator can leverage the benefit of optimized intra eHRPD handover when the user crosses the HSGW boundaries. This capability does not exist in current HRPD systems.

You can read the complete article here.

Japan to trial its own 4G Technology

While we were focussing on the battle between LTE and WiMAX having already forgotten about UMB, Japan has been working on its Next G of PHS called the XGP.

The news came to light in ITU Telecom Asia, which concluded recently.

PHS was popular in Japan earlier on because it was very cheap and easy to deploy in the old days when other technologies were expensive. The main drawback it has is that it is not easy to perform handovers so the calls may drop while in the subway.

PHS operator WillCom has won, one of the spectrum block in 2.5GHz band and is going to start trials next April in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka and offer 20Mbps of symmetrical data speeds using a 10MHz spectrum block. A full commercial service is scheduled for August 2009.

The service will be known as WILLCOM CORE (Communication Of Revolution and Evolution)

The technology behind is based on the PHS architecture of numerous microcells offering limited coverage, but will incorporate a new air radio interface based on OFDMA/TDMA/TDD methodologies. Kyocera and UTStarcom will manufacture the radio access equipment for XGP while NEC Infrontia and NetIndex are developing the data card modules for the service. Canada’s Wavesat and Israel’s Altair is supplying the baseband chips for XGP. Like LTE and WiMAX, XGP will support viable spectrum blocks.

But while LTE and WiMAX are based on increments of 1.6MHz for its carrier size, XGP has aligned itself with CDMA and supports increments of 1.25MHz carriers.

With a basic 10MHz carrier system, XGP will offer data speeds of 20Mbps, but future systems incorporating MIMO and SDMA (space division multiple access) will be capable of supporting maximum symmetrical data speeds of 100Mbps. At the same time, the technical description for XGP will support handoffs between base stations for users travelling at up to 300 km/h.

A good presentation from Willcom on XGP is available here.

PHS = Personal Handyphone System

Which is the year of Femtocell: 2009, 2010 or 2011?

In the beginning of the year, I listed the technologies that would be successful in 2008. According to that 2008 was setting the stage for Femtocells and 2009 will be the year when it would be rolled out mass market. According to this report from Heavy Reading (via Unstrung), this is not going to happen.

Most operators do not plan to roll out commercial femtocell services until late 2009 and 2010

The "Femtocell Deployment and Market Perception Study" reveals that early 2010 will be the critical period for commercial trials of the tiny home base stations as operators prepare for full launches later that year or in 2011. This does not necessarily mean that mass market deployments will start in 2010, but rather early commercial activity will ramp up at this time.

Among the 111 responses from the 79 operators surveyed, 54 percent said that they planned to launch services between the second half of 2009 and the end of 2010, and 33 percent said their commercial femtocell launches were scheduled for 2011 or later.

This may dismay quite a few people in the Femtocell market as they have been expecting things to happen sooner rather than later. Lack of standards and interference have been cited as the main reason for delay but I think that both these issues are not critical for delaying the deployment. One of the other less well known reasons is the doubt of it succeeding and lack of demonstrable Femtozone applications that may be used to bill Femtocell as a must have gadget.

According to the same report: the operators surveyed also ranked their perceptions of femtocell equipment suppliers. Alcatel-Lucent got top marks among the large vendors, while ip.access Ltd. was the highest ranked among the smaller femto vendors.

I have seen and used atleast one of the Femtocell and what an amazing thing it is!

I am also in process of studying the areas where Femtocells are going to face practical problems when they are rolled out. Any input on this is welcome.

India to finally unrestrict VoIP

Even though India supplies the world with software and IT engineers, till now it was not possible for people living there to fully use VoIP facility. It was illegal to call any phone using the computer. This is about to change at the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has proposed that people be allowed to make calls using internet to fixed lines. What does it mean for the people? Well, the price of domestic long distance calls is supposed to halve to less than a penny (just over a cent) and international calls are supposed to get cheaper by 20%. It would also become cheaper for people to call India from abroad. Already in UK, Vodafone is allowing people to call India from a Pay as you talk phone for just 5 p per min. This may also help the Indian call centres as right now, the onshore companies have to pay termination charges when the calls get routed to India. This would mean that Indian call centres may become cheaper and more competetive.

Now for the small print; only the ISP's will be permitted to compete with the telephone companies using this VoIP. The fixed line and the mobile operators are up in arms about this because the ISPs are going to get free money whereas the mobile operators had to pay license fees for entry into the market.

This may not be a big problem for the time being as at the moment India only has around 5 million broadband subscribers whereas there are 287 million mobile subscribers and around 40 million fixed line subscribers. Also, the call rates are so cheap that additional investment in a PC and broadband connection (which is comparatively expensive) may not be lucrative.

If the recommendations by TRAI are accepted, there will surely be a VoIP revolution in India. The existing fixed line and mobile operators will have to come up with some challenging billing models to survive in future.

WiMax feeling the heat, Is It slowing Down?

Ever since we started talking about LTE, WiMax was always discussed alongside LTE. Every whitepaper or article I read on LTE it has always been mentioned that WiMax in the major competitor and the one of the main motivation behind LTE.

LTE camp together with 3GPP is trying really hard to catch up with WiMax and if possible supersede it.

There is no doubt that WiMax was and is still far ahead of LTE in terms of technology. For years, WiMax has been held up as something of a panacea, a technology that would finally deliver ubiquitous and cheap wireless broadband, especially in emerging markets. WiMax camp had a great opportunity to commercialize the technology and claim it to be the technology for 4G. But in my view it’s taken so long to get off the ground that it’s in danger of being superseded specially by LTE.

I personally think that WiMax is one of the most hyped technologies in history. Please let me know if you disagree with my opinion. Every emerging technology always has some motivation and objectives behind it. WiMax is no different and one of the main objectives of WiMax was to provide consumers an excellent wireless service at a lower cost. The computer and telecommunications industries have long seen WiMax, a so-called fourth-generation (4G) wireless technology as a way of driving down telecom costs and bridging the digital divide in the poorer parts of the world.

As I mentioned above, for some reason I don’t see that WiMax camp has taken the opportunity to take the technology to its high. As cellular operators continue to ramp up their investment in 3G, the outlook for WiMax seems to be getting murkier. And the next generation of cellular technology, known as Long Term Evolution (LTE), is set to arrive in couple of year’s time, with broadband speeds many times higher than is possible on copper-based digital subscriber lines.
People might be mistaken when they think that LTE is still some time away which gives an upper edge to WiMax. This might give an indication that by the time LTE will be launched WiMax will be well developed and commercialized technology. But in this mean time mobile operators are upgrading their networks with HSPA technology which is also a good bet in terms of high speed.

Mobile operators MTN and Vodacom are already deploying 3G-based High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) networks capable of theoretical download of up to 7,2Mbit/s (nearly twice as fast as Telkom’s fastest broadband product). That is set to double again, to 14,4Mbit/s, in the next 12 months. And the 3G roadmap is promising speeds a few years from now of up to 42Mbit/s.
HSPA subscribers have grown from 11 million in August 2007 to 50 million today. HSPA subscribers are growing at a very faster rate connections per month. There are already estimated 191 commercial HSPA networks in the world and more than 740 HSPA devices.

Qualcomm has already claimed that it has placed an HSPA+ Release 7 data call at a transfer rate of more than 20 Mbps in a 5-megahertz channel.

Such a capability of telecomm giants achieving high speed would allow operators to double the data and triple the voice capacity of their networks once HSPA+ is installed. These figures are very encouraging for the industry and hence taken as a stepping stone by the operators towards commercial deployment of HSPA+ which is late this year or early next year.

These developments are definitely not very good news for WiMax and hence pushed the technology further behind. People are questioning that if we can achieve such a high data rates with HSPA+ and with LTE is round the corner then why favour WiMax, especially when WiMax seems to have more restrictions in mobility as compared to HSPA+ or LTE.

LTE, which is still some years from commercial deployment (analysts say it should start taking off in 2011 or 2012), will ultimately offer speeds of 300Mbit/s or more. If we consider all the above developments for HSPA+ and LTE don’t you think that WiMax is a little too late or is lagging behind to be a serious challenger to LTE on the mobile side?

Mobile operators invest huge amount of money when it comes to deployment of new wireless technology. People might still remember how billions were spend to gain 3G licenses. This leaves no doubt in my mind that mobile operators will influence strongly when it comes to considering the 4G technology.

WiMax camp might be optimistic as the no of subscribers is growing although at a slower rate, but it’s in 3G and later in LTE where the real action is likely to be. 3G and its related technology i.e. HSPA etc is sweeping rest of the world after already establishing itself in Europe and America. There are already commercial 3G HSPA networks in many African countries which include SA, Namibia, Angola, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Morocco and Egypt. Libya and Mozambique will follow soon.

Even Telkom has said it has plans to build a 3G HSPA network, a startling development given that fixed-line operators have typically preferred to look at WiMax for their wireless strategies. Telkom has a limited WiMax network.

A recent BMI-T research report, written by telecom consultant Martyn Roetter, has cast serious doubts on WiMax’s potential. Roetter says cellular rivals enjoy a considerable head start, especially in mobile broadband, and it will be difficult for WiMax operators to catch up.

What I see from the WiMax growth trends is that WiMax is doing well where 3G is still a distant technology. The chances of WiMax obtaining significant market share are greatest in countries that have not yet seen the widespread roll-out of 3G cellular technologies. But even then, it has a hope only where telecom regulators have moved quickly to allocate radio frequency spectrum.

Spectrum and coverage are ultimately more significant than the “quasi-ideological and generally confusing, self-serving, and misleading statements uttered by advocates in the vendor community”, Roetter says.

Despite all these some in the industry are still optimistic about WiMax and believes that WiMax is not falling behind. WiMax is being developed within the normal industry time frame for new technologies. One of the reasons for WiMax camp to be encouraged is that the price of WiMax devices is falling sharply and from next year the technology will be built into some Intel-based laptops.

Will that be enough to save it from obscurity?

Only time will tell, but there’s little doubt that WiMax has lost some of its early edge and the hype that went along with it.

New Tutorials available

Two new tutorials are available on 3G4G website:

# A look at NAS Timers

# Sending SMS using AT Commands

Lights, 8 Megapixel Camera, Action!

Samsung recently announced exclusive deals for its 8 Megapixel Camera phone Innov8 (Innovate ;) a.k.a. Samsung i8510 or GT-i8510.

Its a 3.5G Symbian smartphone with an 8 megapixel camera, WiFi and GPS, plus an advanced multimedia player and a whole host of other features that compete head on with the Nokia N96 and N95 8GB. The "8" in "Innov8" refers to the i8510's advanced 8 megapixel camera. This has autofocus and a dual LED flash, plus an image stabiliser, panoramic stitching, face detection and a number of other clever features lifted straight out of Samsung's dedicated digital camera range. Sometimes we have seen disappointing video capture quality with some rival phones, but not so with the Innov8 which is capable of recording VGA resolution video at 30 frames per second, or QVGA resolution at 120 frames per second. The Innov8 also has built-in video editing and an FM radio with RDS, plus stereo Bluetooth and a 3.5mm audio output socket.

More features, pictures, etc in Mobile Gazette website.

Note that Samsung has previously already released 10 Megapixel camera with 3x Optical zoom. The SCH-B600 was shown off in CeBit in 2006. Dont know if it was launched in Europe anywhere.

Reiter's Camera Phone report has some interesting statistics on Camera phones. One of the interesting bit of information was summary of Ofcom communication Market report 2007. Based on that 84% of the phones sold in UK now have camera and 38% of people surveyed said that they use their mobile camera regularly. Another article mentions that 40% of Japanese print camera phone photos. More Interesting bits on Reiter's camera phone report.

There is another set of statistics from wirefly.com (via Click Chic) for US:

• 63.8 percent of users ages 18-30 say they use their cell phone’s camera at least once a week, while 26.3 percent reported using it daily
• “Family events” and “scenery/sightseeing” remain the top reasons cited for using a camera phone, but social uses separated the younger adults from the over-30 crowd - 58.3 percent of cell phone users ages 18-30 report using a cell phone regularly “to document nightlife,” while just 29.9 percent of those over 30 made a similar claim.
• individuals ages 18-30 use their camera phones to publish photos to online social media four times as much as respondents over 30 years of age.
• 96.3 percent of adult cell phone owners report that they have a cell phone with a camera. (No surprise here, since most cell phones now come with a camera.)
• 19 percent of adults prefer to use their cell phone as their primary camera for all photography.
• 77.2 percent of photos taken remain stored in the phone, 45.4 percent are used as wall-paper and 38.6 percent are sent to friends via MMS.
• 20.2 percent of respondents say they have snapped a photo of an attractive man/woman, and 7.5 percent have photographed an unsuspecting stranger.
• 46.4 percent of all adults and two-thirds of adults age 18-30 say they use their cell phone to snap self-portraits.
• 19.8 percent say they have snuck a picture while pretending to do something else.

Things have changed since Nokia became the biggest Camera manufacturer. Over the last couple of years the resolution of phone cameras have improved and at the same time the quality has improved as well. The are now coming with much better equipped cameras with professional quality lens.

Martin pointed out in his post earlier that Flickr maintains live statistics of the cameras being used to upload photos. In his post in January he mentioned that Nokia N95 has just overtaken N73 but I can see that Iphone is now the leader as can be seen above.

Phone Cameras is one area that is being seriously thought about in search for Killer applications.

Thumbs up to NFC in London trial

Guardian reported, Passengers on London Underground could be using their mobile phones to get through the ticket barriers and even pay for their lunch within the next two years, after a successful trial of technology in the capital by O2 and Transport for London.

The mobile phone company integrated Oyster card technology and a Barclaycard Visa card into a Nokia 6131 handset and gave it to 500 testers who spent six months using the phone as a mobile wallet.

From Nokia's press release:

• 78% want to use contactless services on their mobile phone
• Nine out of ten trialists were happy using NFC technology on a mobile phone
• Interest in having Oyster on their mobile phones was particularly strong with 89% of trialists saying they were interested in taking this up
• Over two-thirds of trialists also said that they would be interested in having the Barclaycard Visa payWave feature on their mobile in the future.
• Having Oyster on their mobile phone actually increased trialists use of public transport. One in five (22%) trialists using Pay as You Go Oyster reported that they increased the number of journeys they made on public transport during the trial.
• Overall, almost 50,000 tube journeys took place using the O2 Wallet during the six month trial.
• 67% said that they found it more convenient to use than a standard Oyster card.
• 87% said that availability of the service would be likely to influence their purchase of a new mobile phone.

From Guardian again, In Japan, such phones have been in use for more than four years. The Japanese railway network has been using the technology since 2001 and millions of cards have been issued. But the technology used in Japan is based on Sony's FeliCa chip technology, which is different from that used in the O2 trial and by Transport for London for the Oyster card.

Philip Makinson, at industry experts Greenwich Consulting, said mobile wallets had fallen down in the past because of the number of people needed to make any system viable.

"It requires cooperation, not just between handset manufacturers and network operators but third parties such as Visa or Mastercard and banks and retailers. To reach critical mass you really need to have at least three of the big operators to be involved or there is not enough in it for the likes of Transport for London or Nokia," said Makinson.

Several of the UK's five mobile phone networks are understood to be interested in mobile wallets.

"There does seem to be consumer demand for it, people are saying they want to carry less stuff around with them," said Makinson.
The results of the O2 trial show that people like using a mobile phone to do more than send texts and talk.

NRS, ENUM and NGN

The way most of mobile savvy people work is that they have bundles of free minutes on their mobile which they use for calling people locally/nationally and then they have VoIP based clients like Skype they use for calling people on similar services locally/nationally/internationally. There is a constant juggle between Mobile numbers and VoIP numbers. What if we were able to use our number with VoIP client so regardless of whom you are calling, if they have a similar VoIP service on their side, you get free call and if they dont have this VoIP client then you use your inclusive minutes or get charged. ENUM will be able to solve this.

According to a Yankee Group report titled "ENUM Will Be Reinvented as a Strategic NGN Element", In spite of its early struggles, ENUM, short for Electronic Numbering or Telephone Number Mapping, is well positioned to provide a fundamental underpinning of the Anywhere Network™ as it relates to the efficient routing of any IP-based service across operator domains. It is in this new role that ENUM evolves from its rather meager beginnings to a strategic role in the transition to IP.

I wrote about ENUM sometime back as that was mentioned as magical entity in one of the conferences. Since then I have managed to find the Nominet presentation which was discussed in the conference. Infact there was a conference in London on ENUM organised by Nominet. If you are not clear about ENUM from my earlier Blog then please check Technology Inside Blog here.

We can discuss again here, why ENUM is important:

Imagine the NHS has 500 telephone numbers that it operates as 0800 freephone numbers to allow customer (patients) to contact various local departments. The cost of each minute of every call is borne by the NHS so ultimately by the British taxpayer. Now the NHS also has VoIP connectivity and decides to advertise their 0800 numbers through DNS using ENUM. Subsequently, every time someone using VoIP decides to call any of those 0800 numbers their VoIP provider will find the 0800 number in the ENUM DNS listings for the NHS and will connect the caller to the medical department using VoIP alone - at no cost to either party (usually).

Siemens have a very good presentation that shows different uses of ENUM.

Clearly with this approach there is scope for financial savings. That said, there remains considerable work needed to achieve even this small goal, let alone the potential options further down the road.

In case you were wondering, ENUM is an international standard being implemented by individual countries separately through their respective Governments. The UK Government, through regulator OFCOM, has assigned the design, implementation and ongoing administration of the project to UKEC who, in turn, have contracted much of the work to Nominet. Nominet administer and maintain the .uk gTLD - when you buy any domain ending .uk it is ultimately sold by Nominet although almost always through a reseller (”registrar”) like GoDaddy.

GSMA and NeuStar have been working with leading operators to provide a standards-based solution to this problem. This solution is the Number Resolution Service, or NRS.

NRS is a GSMA Managed Service operated by NeuStar. The service facilitates IP interoperability by translating telephone numbers to IP-based addresses. Interoperability is particularly important in facilitating the uptake of emerging services such as MMS, IMS and Packet Voice.

Based on Carrier ENUM, NRS is available to mobile operators, fixed network operators, and related service providers. The service is currently being piloted with a number of operators, with commercial availability scheduled for the autumn of 2008.

As next generation IP-based services proliferate, operators can utilise NRS to position new services behind the telephone number already used by subscribers. Whenever a telephone number is used to identify an end user, the NRS service will facilitate the discovery of URI containing information specific to the service being provided.

NRS is provided as an off the shelf managed service, interoperable on a global basis, providing all the facilities and features necessary to implement an operator’s interconnect policies. Pricing is based on a cost effective “pay as you go” model with no up front capital investment required. NRS thus helps lower the entry barrier for new services and promotes innovation by simplifying the product development and implementation process.

ENUM is going to be hated by the CPs because it will lower their per minute revenue which they are getting at the moment but they it is definitely going to provide new opportunities (and competetion). At the same time the customers will love it because they will get loads of free calls and dont have to worry too much about installing different VoIP clients on their phones. At present it is still in the initial stages with everyone waiting for others to adopt it first but ENUM is here to stay.

Abbreviations:

• ENUM - tElephone NUmber Mapping (I have also seen Electronic NUMbering)
• CP - Communications Provider
• SBC - Session Border Controller
• NHS - National Health Service (in UK)
• NRS - Number Resolution Service
• GSMA - GSM Association

Femtocells With LTE and their commercialization

Over the past few months LTE is gaining real momentum and the LTE camp is expanding. Companies who have decided to consider LTE as their 4G technology are doing everything possible to make LTE a big success.

Femtocells is another one of the most talked technology these days. In the past one year itself Femtocells has gained lots of strength and they are already in the process of commercialization. Giants like Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint have already announced their offering of femtocell products and service plans sometime this year. A few big announcements like this in the femtocell arena should give Femtocell market some good momentum. Some of you might already be aware that Qualcomm made a significant yet unknown investment in ip.access' Oyster 3G systems, which uses the residential broadband connection to deliver a 3G signal in the home. The move is seen as validating the femtocell concept, especially since Qualcomm is so adept at making the right technology investments.

With the work on LTE in full progress and femtocells strengthening its ground, industry is very comfortable with the idea of having Femtocells in LTE.

Analysts consider LTE as a major boost to the future success of femtocells. In order to take femtocells further with LTE and to make them big success the joint testing of a reference design against the LTE standard was proposed.

Considering the proposal seriously the joint testing was conducted by picoChip, a U.K based femtocell silicon developer; mimoOn a German-based SDR specialist; and the test equipment vendor Agilent Technologies. The objective behind the test was to verify that the femtocell reference design met the requirements of the LTE standard as measured by the recently developed 3GPP LTE modulation analysis option from Agilent.

The above joint testing triggered enough confidence in the industry and hence the idea of having Femtocells on LTE. Based on the joint testing picoChip and mimoOn, which have been co-operating on the reference design for the past 12 months, recently announced the availability of what they suggest are the first LTE femtocell and picocell reference designs, the PC8608 Home eNodeB and PC8618 eNodeB respectively. The design is based upon the same hardware platforms as picoChip's WiMAX products.

Going further PicoChip unveiled its first reference designs for LTE femtocells and picocells, which will enable the company's existing femtocell customers, which include ip.access and Ubiquisys, to upgrade to LTE.

3GPP is well aware of all the developments in the femtocells and is busy in developing the specifications with regards to femtocells in LTE.
To end the squabbling The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has adopted an official architecture for 3G femtocell home base stations and started work on a new standard for home base stations.

The 3GPP wants to have the new standard done by the end of this year, which appears to be an aggressive time schedule given the fact that vendors had various approaches to building a femtocell base station.

The agreed upon architecture follows an access network-based approach, leveraging existing standards, called IU-cs and Iu-ps interfaces, into the core service network. The result is a new interface called Iu-h.

The architecture defines two new network elements, the femtocell and the femtocell gateway. Between these elements is the new Iu-h interface. This solution was backed by Alcatel-Lucent, Kineto Wireless, Motorola and NEC.

However with every new standard the old or existing architecture comes under review. With this new standard all of the femtocell vendors who had their own design in place, must go back and change their access point and network gateway equipment to comply with the new standard interface. I think in doing so vendors can bring themselves in line with the global standard.
All femtocell vendors will have to make changes to their access points. Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, NEC, and those that already use Kineto's GAN approach, such as Ubiquisys, will have the least work to do. Ubiquisys has already announced that it will have products ready that support the new standard by December of this year.

Now as the standard is been decided companies can work on their designs based on the standard and can think of introducing the products in the market.

T-Mobile is moving fast in that direction and it has chosen two German cities, Cologne and Bonn to test the commercial feasibility of 3G femtocells. The operator will be the first to conduct trials of the technology in Germany, albeit that numerous trials have already taken place elsewhere in Europe.

While T-Mobile demonstrated femtocells at the giant CeBIT exhibition earlier this year, this trial is aimed at testing how consumers react to the plug-and-play characteristics of femtocells. Having achieved positive feedback from earlier tests, T-Mobile is now continuing to explore the area of deep indoor coverage and enhance in buildings femtocells coverage for UMTS and HSPA (High Speed Packet Access). This will definitely boost both data transmissions and telephony.

T-Mobile’s earlier results from the above tests suggest there might be a limited commercial deployment of femtocells later in the year. T-Mobile is reported as seeing femtocells having 'a lot of potential'.

Femtocells are widely perceived as a solution for mobile operators to boost in-building 3G coverage without the high costs associated with increasing the size of their macro networks. Femtocells are very much the hot topic of the mobile industry at present and are expected to have a high profile at the forthcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Femtocell does present another front for revenues and companies are investing in femtocells.
In March of this year the T-Mobile Venture Fund made a strategic investment in Ubiquisys, a developer of 3G femtocells, joining Google and original investors Accel Partners, Atlas Venture and Advent Venture Partners.

Cisco and Intel recently invested in femtocell company ip.access and Qualcomm has put money into Airvana.

T-Mobile said it plans to test Ubiquisys' femtocell technology in trials in Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. in the coming months. Meanwhile, its U.S. subsidiary is using WiFi hotspots in the home as an alternative to a femtocell solution to improve coverage in the home. Once T-Mobile launches its 3G network in the U.S. we could see both femtocells and WiFi.
However I am not sure whether T-Mobile in its latest trial in Germany used devices provided by Ubiquisys.

The commercial deployment of femtocells has taken another step forward following the adoption by the Femto Forum of a worldwide standard that defines the real-time management of femtocells within households. Members of the Forum have agreed to implement the Broadband Forum's TR-069 CPE WAN management protocol standard which is already in use with around 30 million devices having been defined in 2004 for the broadband community. The basis of the TR-069 standard is to enable CPE devices to be easily deployed and configured reliably but, more importantly, in high volumes, something that has worried operators planning to position the femtocell as user installable.The Femto Forum claims that TR-069 has proven itself to provide consumers with a method of easy installation and self provisioning, while enabling the operator to run diagnostics and conduct remote firmware and service upgrades with millions of end-user devices, in a cost-effective manner. The two groups now plan to define extensions to TR-069 to add additional femtocell capability to the standard.
It is an exciting time for the femtocell industry with commercialization in sight. The industry hopes are even higher with femtocells in LTE will provide even better services to the customers.

HSPA: Milestone and bold predictions

GSMA announced last week that the number of HSPA mobile subscribers has reached 50 million. The number of HSPA subscribers last year at around this time was 11 million.

An old slide predicting the rise of HSPA subscribers can be seen above. I dont think that the number of subscribers reached 20 million in 2007 as predicted but they will definitely be more than 60 million by the end of 2008. Around 4 million people are converting to being HSPA subscribers every month.

GSMA also have a site dedicated to HSPA where they also maintain a live counter of the number of HSPA subscribers worldwide.

Finally, here are some HSPA related statistical facts from GSMA website:

• 267 operator commitments in 111 countries
• 191 commercial deployments in 89 countries
• All EU countries have commercial HSPA deployments
• 747 HSPA devices from 114 suppliers including:
  > 281 mobile handsets
  > 68 data cards
  > 120 notebooks
  > 40 wireless routers
  > 72 USB modems
  > 39 embedded modules

GSMA has also claimed that mobile will reach speeds of 100Mbps before landline will. This was in response to BT announcing FTTx technology to be available in 10 million homes by 2012. With the Fibre technology though the initial speeds will be 40Mbps, rising to 60Mbps later on. Sometime (quite far) in future it will eventually achieve 1000Mbps though.

Finally, Global mobile broadband connections in the first quarter of this year rose by 850% from the same period last year, according to Herns Pierre-Jerome, director for wireless broadband technologies of Qualcomm. The rapid growth, he said, illustrated how mobile broadband had become a mainstream data application of third-generation (3G) mobile phone technology, driven primarily by evolution-data optimised (EV-DO) and high-speed packet access (HSPA) systems.

The number of 3G subscribers globally totals 670 million in a market of 3.5 billion mobile users. The figure is forecast to reach 1.6 billion over the next four years, fuelled by declining costs of network equipment and devices. Telecom vendors and operators are expected to realise revenue of US$114 billion from 3G equipment and $394 billion from 3G services. Qualcomm earned $10 billion in revenue in 2007, out of overall industry revenue of $352 billion.

Data revenues can go even higher

Over the past few years the telecoms world has experienced number of emerging technologies with a great degree of innovation coupled with intensive research. In the year 1999 when I completed my engineering in electronics and communication, most of the telecomm companies in India were only interested in GSM/GPRS. At that time I had no idea how the technology will evolve, as it has over the period of time.

Initially it was GPRS and then it lead to the major shift towards 3G. Once the 3G found its place further developments were carried out in terms of improving the user experience while on the move. This sole idea of giving the user the best, lead to the emergence of new technologies like HSDPA, HSUP. HSPA+ and LTE. Clearly improved data rates were the key factor for introduction of each technology from GPRS to LTE.

Everybody in the industry realised that if they have to win the customers and to compete with the fixed technology then they have to provide better data rates while the user is on the move. Till today the vendors and operators together with 3GPP has worked very hard to come forward with technologies like HSPA+ etc which can serve plenty of mega bytes per second to the users.
Although the wireless operators insist that we are still in the early stages of wireless data adoption but the data revenues are already playing the major part in the overall revenues of the companies. Recently when the operators announced Q2 data revenues they reported that data revenues account for nearly 25 percent of their average revenue per user (ARPU). Verizon Wireless is the prime example of the above fact which is the data leader in US, with 24.4 percent of its $51.53 ARPU coming from data. AT&T is a close second with 22.9 percent of its ARPU coming from data.

During the earnings calls with analysts, both the above operators together with the likes of Vodafone talked about the continued growth potential for data. There is a clear trend that operators are leaving no stone unturned in order to provide as high data rates as possible to their users. Operators are working feverishly to upgrade their network and the competition is intensifying for the better user experience. Youth and businesses are the main targets for the companies which are always in demand of high data rates for their own reasons.

These days one can easily get access to mobile broadband with reasonable amount of monthly payment. There are so many competitive deals available in the market in order to lure the customers towards browsing and emailing while on the move. There is no doubt that operators are successfully adding the customers and hence increasing their revenues mostly generated by data use. Verizon's data revenue grew 45 percent year over year. AT&T's data revenue grew 52 percent year over year. Vodafone and T-Mobile’s data revenue too grew by more than 50% over the last couple of years. But I'm wondering how high the data revenues can really climb. Is this strong growth rate sustainable?

Executives from the telecomm giants like Vodafone, AT&T etc predict there are still much more growth to come as consumers upgrade to integrated devices and smart phones that can take advantage of the 3G network. The companies say that nearly 20% of their customers has either upgrade or are in the process of upgrading to an integrated device. Meanwhile, Verizon recently said that 60 percent or 40.5 million, of its retail customers have upgraded to 3G data-capable devices.

Analysts believe that the likes of Vodafone, T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon are the clear leader in monetizing data and that it will continue to lead the industry in data ARPU as it increases the number of data applications and data-centric devices.

I think the key to sustaining this growth rate lies not in the number of data-capable devices in consumer hands but in the availability of compelling data applications at reasonable price points. Without the continued push for better, more user friendly applications, data revenues are not going to be able to sustain this current growth trajectory.

Vodafone for example is already taking the necessary steps in that directions and it is looking to boost the usage of 3G data. Vodafone has announced an agreement with the laptop vendor Lenovo that will see its new X200 computer pre-installed with a Vodafone SIM and supporting software. The broadband connectivity comes at no extra cost and, when activated by the purchaser of the laptop, will offer the user a 30-day free trial. "The connection manager will ask for your name and email, but no bank details," said Alec Howard, head of PC connectivity at Vodafone. "Users will be prompted to take out a contract at the end of the free trial and the prices are around £12 a month for broadband, with automatic roaming in Europe at £8.50 a day. But like any other products this also has a disadvantage. Users dissatisfied with the Vodafone service will struggle if they want to connect to another mobile operator thus installing a new SIM and downloading and configuring a new connection manager instead of using the built-in software which only works with Vodafone.

I certainly believe that this embedded 3G initiative would significantly lower the cost of built-in mobile broadband technology across the entire range of laptops. I myself have used a dell laptop with an embedded data card.

Where you just have to put the right SIM and then connect to wireless broadband with the help of a connection manager. I think embedded modems are cool and are fun to use. There is no doubt in my mind that the use of embedded modems for mobile broadband connectivity is set to increase rapidly in the next few years, with sales estimated to grow at a rate of well above 80% per cent from 2008 to 2012. Laptops with an embedded modem are one of the data applications which will enhance the user experience and hence lead to the increase in ARPU.

Most of the vendors are also working in the direction where they can enhance the handset architecture with enhanced multimedia functionalities. Nokia surprised analysts with its Q2 revenues with better-than-expected second-quarter earnings. Nokia thinks inline with some of the operators and firmly believe that the global handset market could grow more than its previous estimate of 10 percent in 2008.

For the new devices, Nokia concentrated a lot on the services front, and hence enriched customers with the handsets supporting next generation multimedia services e.g. supporting Sony BMG Entertainment with Music service. The Nokia Music Store is now available in 10 markets and the company expects to have 14 stores open by year-end. In addition, N-Gage mobile games service, which became available during the quarter, has had more than 406,000 downloads.

So in my view if the companies are innovative just like Nokia has, then there is every possible chance to push the data rates to new high. Vendors with their excellent architecture and high degree of data applications can definitely push the data throughput and hence contribute in high data revenues.

As everyday passes by we are seeing new handset with amazing designs and new architecture. These handsets are designed to perform faster and can support very high data rates. Today’s youth can play online games on these devices, can watch live TV, send and receive multimedia messages and so many other things. The business users can exchange email while on the move. The installation of HSPA+ by vendors will further enhance the experience of the data users. The number of HSPA sunscribers is growing many folds i.e. at the rate of 4 million subscribers a year. Companies like At&T are aggressive towards their HSPA roll out plans and it looks to rollout the HSPA together with the 3G iphone.

Very high speed of up to 20 Mbps in a 5 Mhz channel is already achieved by HSPA and Qualcomm is one of the many to prove this.

At the moment things looks very promising and I strongly believe that industry will keep coming out with bright ideas to generate the increased data revenues. LTE is another step towards more revenue generation with enhanced user experience in view. Let’s see how high the data throughput together with the data revenues will go.

Need for femtocells -> from Youtube

Someone sent me this link from youtube. Even though this is more like a marketing presentation from Soundpartners for a market report, it gives a good idea from operators point of view, why they will be looking at Femtocells to strengthen their market position and as a way of optimising their networks.

802.11n and 4G...

IEEE 802.11n is a proposed amendment to the IEEE 802.11-2007 wireless networking standard to significantly improve network throughput over previous standards, such as 802.11b and 802.11g, with a significant increase in raw (PHY) data rate from 54 Mbit/s to a maximum of 600 Mbit/s. Most devices today support a PHY rate of 300 Mbit/s, with the use of 2 Spatial Streams at 40 MHz. Depending on the environment, this may translate into a user throughput (TCP/IP) of 100 Mbit/s.

According to the book "WI-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee and Wimax":

802.11n is the 4th generation of wireless lan technology.

• First generation (IEEE 802.11) since 1997 (WLAN/1G)
• Second generation (IEEE 802.11b) since 1998 (WLAN/2G)
• Third generation (802.11a/g) since 2000 (WLAN/3G)
• Fourth generation (IEEE 802.11n) (WLAN/4G)

The distinguishing features of 802.11n are:

• Very high throughput (some hundreds of Mbps)
• Long distances at high data rates (equivalent to IEEE 802.11b at 500 Mbps)
• Use of robust technologies (e.g. multiple-input multiple-output [MIMO]and space time coding).

In the N option, the real data throughput is estimated to reach a theoretical 540 Mbps (which may require an even higher raw data rate at the physical layer), and should be up to 100 times faster than IEEE 802.11b, and well over ten times faster than IEEE 802.11a or IEEE 802.11g. IEEE 802.11n will probably offer a better operating distance than current networks. IEEE 802.11n builds upon previous IEEE 802.11 standards by adding MIMO. MIMO uses multiple transmitter and receiver antennae to allowfor increased data throughput through spatial multiplexing and increased range by exploiting the spatial diversity and powerful coding schemes. The N system is strongly based on the IEEE 802.11e QoS specification to improve bandwidth performance. The system supports basebands width of 20 or 40MHz.

Note that there is 802.11n PHY and 802.11n MAC that will be required to acheive 540Mbps.

To achieve maximum throughput a pure 802.11n 5 GHz network is recommended. The 5 GHz band has substantial capacity due to many non-overlapping radio channels and less radio interference as compared to the 2.4 GHz band. An all-802.11n network may be impractical, however, as existing laptops generally have 802.11b/g radios which must be replaced if they are to operate on the network. Consequently, it may be more practical to operate a mixed 802.11b/g/n network until 802.11n hardware becomes more prevalent. In a mixed-mode system, it’s generally best to utilize a dual-radio access point and place the 802.11b/g traffic on the 2.4 GHz radio and the 802.11n traffic on the 5 GHz radio.

A lot of phones are coming with inbuilt WiFi (or 802.11 a/b/g) and this WiFi is a must on Laptops or they wont sell. The main difference in 802.11n, compared to previous generation of 802.11 is that there is a presence of MIMO. 802.11 family uses OFDM which is the same technology being adopted by LTE. The new LTE handsets will have advantage of easily integrating this 802.11n technology and the same antennas can be reused. In fact the same is applicable for WiMAX as it supports MIMO and OFDM. Ofcourse we will have problems if they are using quite different frequencies as the antennas ore optimised to range of frequencies, this is something that has to be seen.

In the news:

MIT and a medical center based in Alabama are beginning to deploy faster wireless 802.11n access points from Cisco Systems Inc. In more than 100 buildings on MIT's Cambridge, Mass., campus, as many as 3,200 access points running older 802.11a/b/g protocols will be replaced with 802.11n devices in the next 12 to 16 months, said Chris Murphy, a networking engineer at the university. Murphy said MIT, with more than 10,000 students and 11,000 staff members, has a "very, very wide variety" of client devices, from handhelds to laptops. Many of the laptops probably support the 802.11n protocol, he said. Some MIT staffers have been using voice-over-IP wireless handsets and have experienced poor coverage with the older Wi-Fi technology, but they said they have had full signal strength within the range of the new 802.11n access points, he added. With 802.11n, the university could eventually provide IP television, which requires a lot of bandwidth, Murphy said.

Using 802.11n technology, Lapham said he was able to transmit a gigabyte of data in less than two minutes. Currently, the 370-bed medical center has about 450 access points on older protocols. Devices used on the wireless network include 180 laptops, which are used primarily for transmitting bedside patient data. The hospital also supports 100 VoIP wireless phones and a various medical devices.

Wi-Fi is expected to be available in 99 per cent of North American universities by 2013, according to research released by industry analyst ABI Research this week. Much of that penetration will be in the form of 802.11n equipment: higher education is clearly the number one market for early adopters of 802.11n, the company said.

ABI Research expects 802.11n uptake – which is today fairly small in the education market – to ramp up steeply to quite a high rate of penetration," said ABI Research vice president Stan Schatt. There are several reasons for this. ABI said many students now assume a campus Wi-Fi network as a given, and many of their shiny new laptops will be 'n'-compatible. Universities also have great bandwidth demands, as lecture halls may need to serve a large number of users with multimedia contention at any given time and 802.11n's greater speed and capacity can address that need. Moreover, said Schatt, "Universities are breaking new ground by using video over Wi-Fi in a number innovative ways. This is driving the adoption of high speed 802.11n. Students in the near future (at least the diligent ones) will be just as likely to watch their favourite professor's lectures on their laptops as they will be to view 'America's Next Top Model'."

You may also be interested in reading:

• Wireless Handheld Devices--The 802.11n Advantage - Embedded.com
• 802.11n delivers developing ecosystem - EE Times
• Emerging Technologies in Wireless LANs - Benny Bing

Revised paper on “4G” by 3G Americas

3G Americas have published a revised paper on Defining “4G”: Understanding the ITU Process for IMT-Advanced.

3G Americas initially created this white paper one year ago to provide clear understanding regarding the work-in-progress by the ITU, the sole organization responsible for determining the specifications for IMT-Advanced. The current paper updates the considerable progress made by the ITU, establishing a basis for what should be included in an IMT-Advanced system.

While speculation has been going on about 4G technologies, ITU is close to releasing a full set of documentation for this definition. It has held ongoing consultations with the global community over many years on this topic in Working Party 8F under the scope of a work item known as Question ITU-R 229-1/8 “Future development of IMT-2000 and systems beyond IMT-2000.” Following a year-end 2007 restructure in ITU-R, this work is being addressed under the new Study Group 5 umbrella (replacing the former Study Group 8) by Working Party 5D which is the new name for the former WP 8F.

This work in WP 8F, and now WP 5D, has woven together a definition, recipe, and roadmap for the future beyond 3G that is comprised of a balance among a Market and Services View, a Technology View, and a Spectrum View. These, along with Regulatory aspects, are the key elements for business success in wireless.

By mid-2008, ITU-R advanced beyond the vision and framework and developed a set of requirements by which technologies and systems can, in the near future, be determined as a part of IMT- Advanced and in doing so, earn the right to be considered 4G.

During 2008 and though 2009, ITU-R will hold an open call for the “first invitation” of 4G (IMTAdvanced) candidates. Subsequent to the close of the submission period for the “first invitation” an assessment of those candidates' technologies and systems will be conducted under the established ITU-R process, guidelines, and timeframes for this IMT-Advanced ‘first invitation.” The culmination of this open process will be a 4G, or IMT-Advanced family. Such a 4G family, in adherence to the principles defined for acceptance into this process, is globally recognized to be one which can grow to include all aspects of a marketplace that will arrive beyond 2010, thus complementing and building upon an expanding and maturing 3G business.

The paper is available to download from here.

The ITU-R Radiocommunication Bureau has established an “IMT-Advanced” web page (http://www.itu.int/ITU-R/go/rsg5-imt-advanced/) to facilitate the development of proposals and the work of the evaluation groups. The IMT-Advanced web page provides details of the process for the submission of proposals, and will include the RIT and SRIT submissions, evaluation group registration and contact information, evaluation reports and other relevant information on the development of IMTAdvanced.

Ofcom's 2008 Comms Market report

Dean Bubley posted this on Forum Oxford and i thought that this is worth spreading around.


Ofcom's just released a huge new report on the current state of the industry, incorporating telecoms, broadcasting and related services. Some interesting statistics:

• Quite a lot of discussion of the resilience of fixed-line comms in the face of the mobile onslaught. Rather than direct fixed-mobile substitution, it appears that the UK sees more mobile-initiated incremental use of voice. Fixed minutes have dropped about 17bn minutes in total over 6 years, but mobile call volumes have risen by 38bn minutes. The UK outbound call total is still around 60/40 fixed:mobile, and 88% of homes still have a fixed line.
• The proportion of mobile-only households has been pretty static for the past few years, currently at 11%. This is considerably lower than elsewhere in Europe (eg 37% in Italy), and is possibly reflecting the prevalence of ADSL. Most mobile-only users are from lower socioeconomic groups.
• 44% of UK adults use SMS daily, against 36% using the Internet
• More than 100k+ new mobile broadband connections per month in the UK in H1 2008, with the rate of sign-up accelerating. 75% of dongle users are now using their mobile connection at home.
• Nearly half of adults with home broadband use WiFi
• 11% of UK mobile phone owners use the device to connect to the Internet, and 7% use it to send email.
• VoIP usage appears to have fallen from 20% of consumers in late 2006, to 14% in early 2008. However, I suspect that this masks the fact that many instances of VoIP (eg BT's broadband circuit-replacement service, or corporate IP-PBXs), don't make it obvious to the user.
• Over two-thirds of mobile broadband users also have fixed-line broadband
• UK mobile subscribers send an average 67 SMS per month (or 82 / month per head, taking account of multiple subs-per-person). MMS use is only 0.37 messages per user per month.
  Slight increase in overall fixed-line subscriptions in 2007 - attributed to business lines.
  Overall UK non-SMS mobile data revenues were flat in 2007 vs 2006 at £1bn. I reckon that's because the data pre-dates the big rise in mobile dongle sales, and also reflects price pressures on things like ringtones. Ofcom also attributes this to adoption of flatrate data plans vs. pay-per-MB.
• UK prepay mobile ARPU has been flat at £9 / month for the last 4 years. That's a big issue for operators wanting to sell data services to prepay subs in my view.
• 17% of mobile subscriptions in the UK were on 3G at end-2007, although there's not much detail on the actual usage of 3G for non-voice applications.
• Overall, UK households allocate 3.3% of total spending to telecom services. That's been flat since 2003 - ie the slice of the pie isn't getting any bigger relative to food/rent/entertainment/travel etc.
• 94% of new mobile subscriptions are bundled with handsets.
• 11% of UK adults have >1 SIM card. Among 16-24yo users, this rises to 16%. There's an estimate that of the second devices in use in the UK, 1m are 3G dongles, 0.7m are BlackBerries or similar, and 8m are genuine "second handsets". There's also another 8m "barely active" devices that are used as backups, or legacy numbers that get occasional inbound calls or SMS

Some other interesting key points that are available here:

• Communications industry revenue (based on the elements monitored by Ofcom) increased by 4.0% to £51.2bn in 2007, with telecoms industry revenue the fastest growing component, up 4.1% on the year.
• Mobile telephony (including an estimate for messaging) accounted for 40% of the total time spent using telecoms services, compared to 25% in 2002. However, much of this growth has come about as a result of an increase in the overall number of voice call minutes (from 217 in 2002 to 247 in 2007) rather than because of substitution with fixed voice, which still accounted for 148 billion minutes last year, down only 10% from 165 minutes in 2002.
• The most popular internet activity among older people is ‘communication’ (using email, instant messaging and chat rooms for example); 63% of over-65s say they communicate online, compared to 76% of all adults.
• The majority of children aged 5-7 have access to the internet and most children aged 8-11 have access to a mobile phone. Children are more likely to use the internet for instant messaging than for email.
• Television is particularly important to older people. Sixty-nine per cent of those aged 65-74 say it is the media activity that they would miss most (compared to 52% of all adults) and this rises to 77% among the over 75s. Older people are also more likely to say they miss newspapers and magazines – 10% of 65-74s and 7% of over 75s, compared to 5% of all adults.
• The converged nature of mobile handsets became apparent during 2007, with 41% of mobile phone users claiming to use their handset for taking pictures and 15% uploading photos to their PC. Nearly one in five (17%) also claimed that they used their phone for gaming.

Nokia Eco Sensor Concept Mobile

Though this is not new, i havent seen it anywhere and found it recently while working on a report.

A visionary design concept is a mobile phone and compatible sensing device that will help you stay connected to your friends and loved ones, as well as to your health and local environment. You can also share the environmental data your sensing device collects and view other users’ shared data, thereby increasing your global environmental awareness.

The concept consists of two parts – a wearable sensor unit which can sense and analyze your environment, health, and local weather conditions, and a dedicated mobile phone.

The sensor unit will be worn on a wrist or neck strap made from solar cells that provide power to the sensors. NFC (near field communication) technology will relay information by touch from the sensors to the phone or to or to other devices that support NFC technology.

Both the phone and the sensor unit will be as compact as possible to minimize material use, and those materials used in the design will be renewable and/or reclaimed. Technologies used inside the phone and sensor unit will also help save energy.

To help make you more aware of your health and local environmental conditions, the Nokia Eco Sensor Concept will include a separate, wearable sensing device with detectors that collect environment, health, and/or weather data.

You will be able to choose which sensors you would like to have inside the sensing device, thereby customizing the device to your needs and desires. For example, you could use the device as a “personal trainee” if you were to choose a heart-rate monitor and motion detector (for measuring your walking pace).

The Nokia Eco Sensor Concept is built upon all three of these underlying principles of waste reduction. Emphasis will be placed on materials use and reuse in the phone’s construction.

To complete the Nokia Eco Sensor Concept, the phone and detector units will be optimized for lower energy consumption than phones in 2007 in both the manufacturing process and use. Alternative energy sources, such as solar power, will fuel the sensor unit’s power usage.

Please note that this is a concept phone so you wont be seeing this in a shop near you anytime soon.