Wednesday 2 December 2009
Femtocells to grow from 0.2 million units in 2009 to 12 million units in 2014
From Qualcomm's QMag:
Femtocell shipments will grow from 0.2 million units in 2009 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 127 percent to 12 million units worldwide in 2014, according to analyst firm Berg Insight.
In the U.S., 14.8 billion video clips are viewed online every month with an average user viewing time of 356 minutes and a consumption of 680Mbps (ComScore); in the UK, the average monthly consumption per user is 1.3Gbps(ComScore). This online trend is now migrating onto mobile. According to AT&T, data represented 27 percent of revenues in 1Q09 compared to 21 percent in the same period the previous year, with streaming audio and video accounting for 31 percent of network traffic.
In developed markets(Coda Research Consultancy), much of this mobile data explosion is generated by smartphone users, where the average year-on-year growth of mobile data per user is between three and five times.
“We need to drive down the cost per bit in operator networks while also meeting the rocketing demand for mobile broadband services, which is putting too much pressure on HSPA and HSPA+ networks,” said Simon Saunders, chairman of the Femto Forum. “We need a change and that is where femtocells have a major role to play.”
It is a change driven by the operators’ need to meet growing user consumption. Saunders told QMag that 90 percent of mobile data usage is indoors. “Because the data user experience is directly correlated to the quality of that signal, it makes sense to place femtos indoors where signals are weakest and therefore the user experience is poorest,” he said.
Questions are now being raised by mobile operators about whether macro networks will scale to meet the rapid upsurge in mobile data demand. In addition, coverage holes caused by building shadows and building penetration losses are limiting the performance of wireless networks indoors.
“Femtocells bring the network supply closer to the demand for services, and in the process, provide excellent signal conditions and high data throughput,” said Nick Karter, senior director of business development at Qualcomm.
Karter said operators confronted with capacity concerns will require substantial capital expenditures to improve macro network performance to support its heaviest users. However, operators can target their CAPEX in both the enterprise and residential environments by providing their heaviest users with femtocells. This will ease network congestion on the macro network and reduce backhaul capacity needs. In the process, femtocells can deliver indoor throughputs and peak rates well in excess of 1Mbps.
Similarly, Saunders is confident that the return on investment from femtocells will be considerably higher than a macro network upgrade path.
“Operators are starting to realize that the investment required to provide free femtocells to heavy data users is far lower than trying to achieve the same outcome with macro network upgrades,” he said. “Femtos deliver better voice quality and a vastly improved data experience at a cost no other technology can match.”
He claimed that 20 percent of homes in the UK have inadequate coverage for voice and data. In July, Vodafone UK became the latest operator to deal with the existing issue of mobile coverage at home using femtocells when it launched its Vodafone Access Gateway – targeting homes and small office locations. The UK operator positioned the service as delivering “more reliable 3G coverage indoors” and providing improved voice calls and faster data downloads.
Vodafone UK was the first European operator to launch a femto service, following similar announcements from Sprint and Verizon Wireless in the U.S., NTT DoCoMo and Softbank in Japan, and StarHub in Singapore. “These operators are the pioneers, and we will see more femto launches before the end of the year from other big operators,” said Saunders.
The Vodafone Gateway is available on a monthly tariff of £5 or a one-off cost of £160, while Verizon charges US$250 Femtocell shipments will grow from 0.2 million units in 2009 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 127 percent to 12 million units worldwide in 2014, according to analyst firm Berg Insight. (£157) for its Wireless Network Extender device. But as both Karter and Saunders explained, the costs are expected to be incorporated by operators as femto becomes a central component in the fight against churn. “Femtocells are creating a very sticky service for the consumer by providing operators with the ability to create differentiated offerings,” Saunders said.
Not only does femto have the additional attraction of being able to work with all 4 billion mobile devices operating around the world, it can deliver location-, context-, presence-, and user-based information.
Femto could deliver premium, bigger apps to the device when the user returns home and the device switches from the macro network to the femtocell. “When users are out and about they can use basic multimedia services,” Saunders explained. “However, when they arrive home they can use the femto to access far higher bandwidth services and synchronize their handset quickly and at zero cost with all of the media stored on their home network.”
As Saunders notes, femto is still in its evolutionary phase and requires key players such as Qualcomm to build on the standardized products in large volumes by delivering the silicon to femto-friendly vendors.
“We all need to draw on a common base of components,” Saunders said. “So we’ve been looking at femtocell devices and network gateways and started to harmonize design based on standards. This will allow consumers and operators to choose from a wider range of products as well as bring costs down through economies of scale. If it’s cheaper overall to deliver and it provides a better service, then everyone wins.”
Tuesday 1 December 2009
Experiences and Lessons from Early Femtocell Deployment
From IEEE Communications Magazine, September 2009:
Monday 30 November 2009
Presentation on LTE
Thursday 26 November 2009
SuperFemtos, 'greater femtocells' and 'wide area femtocells'
The Wide Area Femtocells have a capacity of up to 16 calls and can either be mounted outdoors, or placed indoors with an external antenna, typically attached to the roof of the building. They can be deployed very quickly, because they continuously adapt their radio configuration according to the operator’s policies, working in harmony with the regular mobile network and eliminating the need for a radio planning project.
The solution can be combined with Ubiquisys Grid System technology to cover still larger areas with multiple femtocells, which form a self-organising mesh of coverage and capacity.
Ubiquisys has performed a field demonstration of its wide area femtocells in a rural area near Swindon in the UK. The demonstration showed that for less energy than it takes to power a light bulb, a village area with a 1.5km radius was provided with comprehensive coverage.
The wide area femtocell solution is commercially available today and is being actively deployed.
The PC8219E is a programmable, flexible, easily integrated product that caters for multiple users, has self configuration features and backhauls via the internet. Featuring industry-standard FAPI and FRMI interfaces, as defined by the Femto Forum, the reference design also has fully-compliant security functions. The design includes a network monitoring function that allows the femtocell to reconfigure itself to behave like a handset receive chain, synchronizing with a macro-base station nearby, improving network planning and providing the basis for Self Organizing Network (SON) functions.
This new variety of mobile cells has been termed 'greater femtocells' or 'superfemtos'. Such products are similar to the 3GPP 'Local Area Basestation' or traditional picocells, but add the femtocell's capabilities to use standard backhaul and to self-configure for interference management. The Femto Forum has recently standardized femtocells into Class 1 (typically residential), Class 2 (primarily indoor for enterprise) and Class 3 (for rural, metro and wider area deployment).
Tuesday 24 November 2009
Wireless Phone chargers coming in time for Christmas
"Wireless electricity is something we used to talk about years ago almost as a bit of a joke when we made predictions about the future," says Michael Brook, editor of the gadget magazine, T3. "To a lot of people it sounds insane that you could even do it – like some kind of witchcraft – but we're seeing a lot of interest in the first wireless chargers. It's going to take off in a big way." If not witchcraft, how does it work? Here's the science: Current from the mains is wired into a transmitter coil in the charging mat. This generates an electromagnetic field. A receiver coil in the phone's case takes the power from the magnetic field and converts it back into electricity that charges the device. By separating those coils, induction charging takes the 150-year-old principle used in the transformers found in most electric devices and splits it in half. No more tripping over laptop leads and their power bricks or diving under your desk to plug in your charger – just put your gadget on the mat and induction takes care of the rest.
But wireless induction, which, in a less-sophisticated form has charged electric toothbrush chargers and some medical implants for years, isn't perfect. Advances mean it's now viable for more demanding devices, but in the case of the PowerPad, it requires a case that adds bulk to what is already a hefty handset. Another drawback is the lack of compatibility – a phone with a PowerPad case will not charge on a PowerMat.
A growing group of electronics firms want to sdeal with the problem. The Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) includes Gear4 and the mobile phone giants, Nokia, Samsung and RIM, makers of the Blackberry. "These companies think there won't be a mass market for wireless charging unless there is a standard," says Menno Treffers, chairman of the consortium's steering group and a director at Philips.
Learning their lesson from the hopeless incompatibility of wired chargers, supporters of WPC's Qi ("chi") standard will put universal coils in devices that will work without cumbersome cases. They'll also be compatible with any charging mat, whether it's on your desk or recessed in a table at Starbucks. Treffers expects the first Qi-compatible devices to hit shelves next year.
But there remains a major flaw in charging mats – their need for proximity. Separation of even a millimetre renders most mats useless. Take your laptop to your bedroom to watch a DVD and you'll need a second mat or a cable. For a truly wireless scenario, electricity must make a giant leap.
Marin Soljacic is a Croatia-born physics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2002, he got annoyed when his wife's mobile phone woke him up with beeping when its battery ran low. "Not only did I have to wake up to plug it in but had to find the charger in the dark," he says. "I thought, power is everywhere – sockets all over the house – yet it isn't close enough." Soljacic was sure there must be a way to bridge the gap. He wanted his wife's phone to charge while it was still in her handbag. Two years ago, after months of equation crunching and computer modelling, Soljacic literally had a light bulb moment when he flicked the switch of a 60-watt lamp. No big deal except that the electricity powering the light was travelling two metres through thin air.
Soljacic and his team at MIT have since formed a company called WiTricity. Last July, its chief executive, Eric Giler, came to Oxford to demonstrate a wireless television. In front of an amazed audience at a technology conference, he powered up a giant plasma screen TV that had no cables. Electricity sprung from a sleek unit on the floor to a receiver mounted on the back of the screen. Last month, Giler travelled to Japan to show off a wirelessly-charged electric car. "Every time I show people they're blown away," Giler says. "When you see it up close it does appear almost magical."
Soljacic's magic takes the split-transformer model that powers charging mats and adds a key ingredient to make electricity fly. It's called resonance, the phenomenon that means a singer who matches the acoustic frequency of a wine glass can shatter it. Soljacic knew that two resonant objects of the same resonant frequency tend to exchange energy efficiently – imagine a tuning fork causing a nearby fork with the same frequency to chime sympathetically. His breakthrough was to work out a way to use resonance in magnetic form to transfer not sound but electricity. He explains: "By coupling the magnetic field that surrounds a resonant coil to another coil resonating at the same frequency, we can make the electricity hop from one to the other."
WiTricity's strongly coupled magnetic resonance means cars, TVs, free-standing lamps, and computers – anything that requires electricity – can be powered or charged from a central source in the ceiling or under the floor. And it's all totally safe. "The fields that we are generating in are about the same as the earth's magnetic field," Giler says. "We live in a magnetic field."
Giler and his team are in talks with big-name electronics manufacturers, including many of those who are putting their names to the Qi standard for charging mats. Giler says proximity charging is "first-generation stuff; by the end of next year you'll start seeing devices with WiTricity components built in". If he is right, homes and offices could soon be fully wireless. "It's a fundamental breakthrough in science and a game changer for the industry," he says. "Cut the cords and the world's going to change."
Interesting Video:
Monday 23 November 2009
WiMAX Femtocell System Architecture
Sunday 22 November 2009
Focus on TD-LTE by 3G Americas
Saturday 21 November 2009
Updates from GSMA Asia Mobile Congress 09 - Day 2
- 55% of Japan has migrated past 3G to 3.5G
- Japanese mobile content industry is worth 14 Billion dollars annually
- 50% of mobile data in Japan is consumed in the home, the peak time for mobile data consumption is between 9 PM and 10 PM; and smartphone users consume 10 times more data than non-smartphone users.
- Japan's Softbank will turn off their 2G network already in March of next year, 2010.
- Allen Lew, Singtel's CEO, said that in Singapore almost 50% of smartphone owners are shifting web surfing activity away from PCs.
- Jon Fredrik Baksaas, Telenor's President and CEO, spoke about the eco-friendly initiatives they have, such as solar powered cellular network base stations etc, but an interesting tidbit that came out, is that in Europe, Telenor has installed 870,000 household electricity meters that are remote digital meters and operate on the GSM cellular network, in Sweden. As Sweden's population is only about 7 million people that is probably a third of all households.
- Rajat Mukarji of Idea (one of India's largest mobile operators), told us of the Indian market, where the average price of a voice minute is 1 cent (US). He Mr Mukarji also said that in India mobile is the first screen, not the fourth screen; and mobile is the first internet connectivity opportunity for most people of India.
- Tony Warren, GM of Regulatory Affairs at Telstra, told that 60% of phones in Australia are 3G already, and over half of mobile data is now non-SMS type of more advanced mobile data. And he said that MMS is experiencing enormous growth, grew 300% in the past year.
Thursday 19 November 2009
LTE = Windows Vista and HSPA = Windows XP
- Support for voice
- Supoort for SMS
- Readiness of IMS
- Support for emergency calling
It takes a very narrow view that "maturity" equals "fully specified". It still maintains that "The voice solution for LTE is IMS VoIP and it is fully specified" and that any other solution is merely a "transition".
In other words, it makes LTE sound unsuitable for those operators which are IP-centric but which do not believe in IMS as a suitable control/service solution.
3GPP is trying to use LTE as a lever to force unwilling operators to adopt IMS. This will fail.
SMS-over-SGs has some serious shortcoming as well as costs, but is probably OK as a short term solution.
I am moving to the view that current LTE is the equivalent of Windows Vista, while HSPA = XP
I think a lot of operators will wait until "Windows 7" becomes available, either LTE Advanced or perhaps Rel 10 LTE.
Very interesting. He has put forward a great analogy of Windows OS that reflects concerns of many of us.
You can follow the complete discussions here.
Wednesday 18 November 2009
Updates from GSMA Asia Mobile Congress 09 - Day 1
- According to Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association, the number of subscribers will grow to 8 Billion (not sure when though).
- China Unicom, China's second largest mobile operator with 142 million subscribers - bigger than AT&T and Sprint put together.
- Bharti Telecom of India has over 110 million subscribers
- According to Manoj Kohli, the CEO of Bharti Telecom, India already 20% of all mobile phone owners have 2 or more subscriptions. He also told us that as India will add 500 million new subscribers by the time frame of 2014-2015. India is currently adding 10 million new mobile subscribers every month. And most revealingly, he said that in India the customers will go from 'no internet' directly to 'mobile internet'.
- According to Wang Jianzhou the Chairman and CEO of China Mobile, the world's biggest mobile operator with over 500 million subscribers, on the Chinese 3G standard of TD-SCDMA, they already have 3G phones being sold that cost about 1,000 Yuan, or about 130 US dollars. The average China Mobile customer spends 1 minute per day on voice calls, but sends on average 3.6 SMS text messages per day.
- According to Yamada-san, the President and CEO of Japan's NTT DoCoMo, on NTT DoCoMo's network, today already 42% of their total revenues come from non-voice data services. NTT DoCoMo is so far in its migration of its customer base from 2G to 3G, they will terminate 2G in March of 2011.
- Yamada-san also told of their new 3G video TV service, they call BeeTV. BeeTV is special in that it is optimized for the small screen, not re-purposed video content from TV and the internet. BeeTV in only six months has achieved 800,000 paying subscribers - who pay 315 Yen per month (about 3 USD).
- Yamada-San's 20 minute presentation also mentioned that NTT DoCoMo's i-Consierge service (yes, think of it as your personal butler, the phone learns your habits and starts to help you with your life, this is like magic) has 2.3 million paying subscribers one year from launch. Their i-Channel idle screen invention is spreading and they have launched it also with their partner in India, Tata, who offer Cricket game updates via the idle screen using i-Channel.
- Japan's mobile advertising market in 2008 was worth 900 million dollars.
- Grameenphone and Huawei won the 'Green Mobile' award for their 'green' network initiatives.
Read the complete blog here.
Tuesday 17 November 2009
Motorola believes in TD-LTE
According to Fierce Broadband Wireless:
Motorola is being very strategic about the contracts it goes after, said Bruce Brda, senior vice president and general manager of the vendor's wireless networks business, in an interview with FierceBroadbandWireless.
"We are not trying to go head to head in every part of the globe. We've been selective in our engagements, focusing on the customers that we think we have a higher advantage with," Brda said. "Our initial thrust is in places in Asia where we have a significant competitive advantage." That's why it won an LTE contract with Japan's KDDI, he said, despite the fact 10 vendors in all competed for that business.
Motorola's other sweet spot is the TDD (unpaired spectrum) version of LTE, otherwise known as TD-LTE, a technology China Mobile is keen on deploying. Brda believes that Motorola's OFDM experience with WiMAX coupled with its TDD experience, again with WiMAX, will give Motorola an advantage in China.
TD-LTE, in fact, won't be a niche market, Brda said. "With the demand for data that exists around the world, it will be a solution set that solves the equation, not just FDD, but a series of solutions, and TD-LTE will play in increasingly large role, maybe coexisting in the same network as FDD LTE."
Brda noted that Motorola is talking to a number of European operators that envision TD-LTE and FDD LTE coexisting. "You could have one set of services carried over the TDD network and another set going over FDD," he said. "It's would create a more efficient use of the network, but I also think more and more TDD spectrum is going to be available. It's been kind of ignored around most of the world, but it's much easier to find un unpaired block of spectrum than a paired block."
Another aspect that has been largely ignored is the fact that experience in mobile WiMAX is highly transferable to the LTE world. Motorola, which has constructed about 20 WiMAX networks, and Samsung are now the two major vendors that have stuck with the mobile WiMAX game to a high degree. Many vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks either shunned mobile WiMAX or significantly scaled back on their efforts in favor of LTE.
Monday 16 November 2009
The Secret world of WiMAX Femtocell
Sunday 15 November 2009
Global LTE Commitments, November 09
Saturday 14 November 2009
Bangladesh: Learn English on your Mobile
The project, which costs users less than the price of a cup of tea for each three-minute lesson, is being run by the BBC World Service Trust, the international charity arm of the broadcaster. Part of a UK government initiative to help develop English skills in Bangladesh, it marks the first time that mobile phones have been used as an educational tool on this scale.
Since mobile-phone services began in Bangladesh just over a decade ago, more than 50.4m Bangladeshis have acquired phone connections, including many in remote rural areas. This far outnumbers the 4m who have internet access.
English is increasingly seen as a key to economic mobility. An estimated 6.2m Bangladeshis work overseas and hundreds of thousands of others want to follow in their steps. However, English is also important for securing jobs at home, where about 71 per cent of employers look for workers with “communicative English”.
Through its Janala service, the BBC offers 250 audio and SMS lessons at different levels. Each lesson is a three-minute phone call, costing about 3 taka (2.6p).
One basic lesson involves listening to and repeating simple dialogue like: “What do you do?” “I work in IT, what about you?” “I’m a student.” “That’s nice.” Another is devoted to differentiating vowel sounds like those in ship and sheep or leaf and live.
All six mobile phone operators in Bangladesh have agreed to cut the cost of calls to the service by 50 per cent to make it more affordable. Ms Chamberlain said the project team was in talks with the mobile phone companies to increase capacity to cope with the unexpectedly high demand.
The launch of the service comes just weeks after Grameenphone, the country’s largest mobile phone operator, held Bangladesh’s largest IPO, raising $71m from retail investors in the largest offering ever held in the country.
The language lessons are mainly targeting 18 to 24-year-olds, who typically had five or more years of formal education, but whose training in English had been weak. The target market is people living on less than 10,000 taka ($145, €97, £87) a month, who would struggle to pay for formal English lessons.
The relatively low cost of mobile handsets and connection charges has led to an explosion in their use and an estimated 50 million people now have access to phones.
Now users will be able to listen via their phones to weekly bilingual English language lessons and receive lessons by text as part of a low-cost service. Lessons are available at four levels, ranging from basic conversation skills, to support with sounds that Bangladeshis find difficult to pronounce, and the higher-level vocabulary of English language news media.
New lessons will be available each week with older lessons accessible from an archive. Learners can also assess their skills by doing audio quizzes and tests delivered by text message.
The trust says that it has negotiated reductions on standard mobile tariffs of up to 75% to make the service affordable to users with limited incomes.
Allan Freedman, country director for BBC World Service Trust Bangladesh, said: “Young people across Bangladesh have told us they consider learning English as a path to better jobs and opportunities. Our project is about meeting that demand and helping millions of people access English learning tools for the first time.
“It’s arguably the most exciting use of English to improve the lives of people in the developing world today.”
The Janala lessons will also be available via the internet on a website designed to develop both English-language and web-user skills, in a country where computer use has been severely restricted by high costs and lack of electricity in rural areas.
Janala will also be promoted via a weekly television programme, BBC Buzz, produced by the World Service Trust, which started broadcasting last month. The show features stories aimed at younger viewers and covers topics such as careers, politics, fashion and music.
It includes the English language learning exploits of a cartoon character called Rinku. Viewers can receive follow-up lessons via mobile phone that build on language points raised by Rinku and have a say on future episodes.
Tuesday 10 November 2009
eMBMS: Naughty after 11pm ;)
Friday 6 November 2009
Inter-Layer Communication Primitives
'One Voice Initiative': IMS Based approach adopted
AT&T*, Orange, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Verizon, Vodafone, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nokia, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., and Sony Ericsson have defined the preferred way to ensure the smooth introduction and delivery of voice and SMS services on Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks worldwide.
The above telecommunications industry leaders have jointly developed a technical profile for LTE voice and SMS services, also known as the One Voice initiative. The profile defines an optimal set of existing 3GPP-specified functionalities that all industry stakeholders, including network vendors, service providers and handset manufacturers, can use to offer compatible LTE voice solutions.
Open collaborative discussions have concluded that the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) based solution, as defined by 3GPP, is the most applicable approach to meeting the consumers’ expectations for service quality, reliability and availability when moving from existing circuit switched telephony services to IP-based LTE services. This approach will also open the path to service convergence, as IMS is able to simultaneously serve broadband wireline and LTE wireless networks.
By following the jointly defined technical profile, the industry can help guarantee international roaming and interoperability for LTE voice and SMS services, ensuring subscribers continuity of these vital services – all while offering service providers a smooth and well-defined path to LTE.
The objective of the initiative is to ensure the widest possible ecosystem for LTE and to avoid fragmentation of technical solutions. LTE will, with this initiative, not only serve as a broadband access for increasing data traffic, but also for continuing voice and SMS services. Network operators will be able to more quickly develop their customized LTE ecosystem in collaboration with both network equipment vendors and device manufacturers. In addition, the reassurance of global interoperability in an LTE voice landscape and the ability to offer both broadband access and telephony services over LTE will create strong foundations for future business.
The profile for the initial solution has been finalized and is available through the companies associated with this press release. The objective is to hand over the profile and continuing work to existing industry forums.
To view the technical profile, please visit http://news.vzw.com/OneVoiceProfile.pdf.
From Rethink Wireless:
One of the trickiest issues for early LTE deployers is uncertainty over how voice and SMS services - still the key cash cows for most operators - can be supported. Eventually, all these services will be carried over IP, using the IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) standard, but only a few carriers, like Verizon Wireless, are looking to deploy all-IP from day one. However, there is pressure to accelerate the process and reduce the cost and risk of LTE/IMS for carriers, and this is the objective of the new One Voice initiative.
Some operators believe they will initially deploy LTE as a data-only network, but most want to support voice and, even more importantly, SMS (which underpins many cellco processes and customer communications). Faced with the risk that large players might delay their plans until they have a strong route to voice, One Voice has defined a profile based on existing 3GPP standards for IMS-enabled voice.
The work has initially emerged from Nokia Siemens, which was previously trying to get wide industry support for its own interim voice over LTE solution, VoLTE (which only worked with its own softswitches). The company's convergent core marketing manager, Sandro Tavares, said One Voice should ease fears over how voice will be deployed by resolving roaming and interworking issues at an early stage. It is not creating a new standard, but aims to ensure compatibility between networks and devices by creating a common profile, which defines an optimal set of existing 3GPP functionalities for use by vendors and operators. "There is no new standard," added Tavares. "It's just using what is there already."
NSN is already producing LTE equipment that complies with the new profile, and so has a headstart in offering an important feature to early triallists - which could boost its so-far low profile in LTE tests, dominated by Ericsson and Huawei. However, the vendor will now hand its work to the 3GPP and GSM Association so that other companies can work on and adopt the profile. So far, it has signed support from most of the key operators that tend to wield influence over cellular standards, apart from DoCoMo and China Mobile - AT&T, Orange, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone are there, plus a strong line-up of vendors. These are Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson on the infrastructure side and Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson for devices. The group needs to get the Chinese vendors on board to complete the set, as well as Motorola.
The supporters of the initiative say this is their "preferred path" for voice over LTE, though for carriers that do not want to move to IMS at an early stage, there are other options available - namely open web-based voice; the stopgap solution of Circuit Switch Fallback (also enshrined in 3GPP standards), where the handset is forced off the LTE network onto 2G or 3G for voice calls; and variations on the theme of using circuit switch over packet techniques. There are two main approaches to this - MSC Voice, which is tied to a switch, with NSN's VoLTE the most prominent example; and VoLGA, which is architecture independent, and uses the UMA/GAN (Unlicensed Mobile Access/Generic Access Network) protocol. This Kineto originated technology was originally adopted for Wi-Fi/3G fixed-mobile convergence and as such did find its way into the 3GPP. VoLGA does not require modifications in the LTE RAN or core, or the MSC, but uses a separate gateway controller.
Some of the One Voice supporters are already involved in VoLGA (though its major carrier T-Mobile has not yet joined the new group). Steve Shaw, who heads up corporate marketing for Kineto and VoLGA, believes that IMS is the way that, ultimately, voice will be handled, but it has a long way to go before it is usable, and so there will still be a role for several years for approaches like VoLGA.
T-Mobile will I assume soon have to follow suit and fall in line otherwise they may have limited devices that are available and there will also be inter-operability issues.
Last week I attended a presentation by IET Berkshire on Voice Services over LTE, presented by Iain Sharp from Nortel. Even though this announcement came yesterday, Iain did say that IMS is the way forward for Voice over LTE. If interested you can see the presentation here.
Thursday 5 November 2009
Network Operator commitments to LTE as of Oct. 2009
Read more: http://www.fiercebroadbandwireless.com/pages/mapping-it-out-operator-commitments-lte#ixzz0W0sBukPZ
WiMAX Network reference model
Continuing from yesterdays post.
The baseline WiMAX network architecture can be logically represented by a network reference model (NRM), which identifies key functional entities and reference points over which the network interoperability specifications are defined. The WiMAX NRM differentiates between network access providers (NAPs) and network service providers (NSPs). The NAP is a business entity that provides WiMAX radio access infrastructure, while the NSP is the business entity that provides IP connectivity and WiMAX services to WiMAX subscribers according to some negotiated service level agreements (SLAs) with one or more NAPs. The network architecture allows one NSP to have a relationship with multiple NAPs in one or different geographical locations. It also enables NAP sharing by multiple NSPs. In some cases the NSP may be the same business entity as the NAP.
The WiMAX NRM, as illustrated in Fig. 3, consists of several logical network entities: MSs, an access service network (ASN), and a connectivity service network (CSN), and their interactions through reference points R1–R8. Each MS, ASN, and CSN represents a logical grouping of functions as described in the following:
• Mobile station (MS): generalized user equipment set providing wireless connectivity between a single or multiple hosts and the WiMAX network. In this context the term MS is used more generically to refer to both mobile and fixed device terminals.
• Access service network (ASN): represents a complete set of network functions required to provide radio access to the MS. These functions include layer 2 connectivity with the MS according to IEEE 802.16 standards and WiMAX system profile, transfer of auathentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) messages to the home NSP (HNSP), preferred NSP discovery and selection, relay functionality for establishing layer 3 (L3) connectivity with MS (i.e., IP address allocation), as well as radio resource management. To enable mobility, the ASN may also support ASN and CSN anchored mobility, paging and location management, and ASN-CSN tunneling.
• Connectivity service network (CSN): a set of network functions that provide IP connectivity services to WiMAX subscriber(s). The CSN may further comprises network elements such as routers, AAA proxy/ servers, home agent, and user databases as well as interworking gateways or enhanced broadcast services and location-based services.
A CSN may be deployed as part of a green field WiMAX NSP or part of an incumbent WiMAX NSP. The following are some of the key functions of the CSN:–IP address management–AAA proxy or server–QoS policy and admission control based on user subscription profiles–ASN-CSN tunneling support –Subscriber billing and interoperator settlement–Inter-CSN tunneling for roaming–CSN-anchored inter-ASN mobility–Connectivity to Internet and managed WiMAX services such as IP multimedia services (IMS), location-based services, peer-to-peer services, and broadcast and multicast services –Over-the-air activation and provisioning of WiMAX devices
• Base station (BS): a logical network entity that primarily consists of the radio related functions of an ASN interfacing with an MS over-the-air link according to MAC and PHY specifications in IEEE 802.16 specifications subject to applicable interpretations and parameters defined in the WiMAX Forum system profile. In this definition each BS is associated with one sector with one frequency assignment but may incorporate additional implementation-specific functions such as a DL and UL scheduler.
• ASN gateway (ASN-GW): a logical entity that represents an aggregation of centralized functions related to QoS, security, and mobility management for all the data connections served by its association with BSs through R6t. The ASN-GW also hosts functions related to IP layer interactions with the CSN through R3 as well as interactions with other ASNs through R4 in support of mobility.
Typically multiple BSs may be logically associated with an ASN. Also, a BS may be logically connected to more than one ASN-GW to allow load balancing and redundancy options. The WiMAX network specification defines a single decomposed ASN profile (ASN C) with an open R6 interface as well as an alternative ASN profile B that may be implemented as an integrated or a decomposed ASN in which R6 is proprietary or not exposed. The normative definitions of intra-ASN reference points (R6 and R8) are only applicable to profile C. Note that in release 1.5 profile A has been removed to reduce the number of implementation options and create a better framework for network interoperability.