Spectrum auction results from The Netherlands

The result of the auction: 

	800	900	1800	2100	1900	2600
KPN	2x10	2x10	2x20	2x5		30
Vodafone	2x10	2x10	2x20	2x5
T-Mobile		2x15	2x30		4,9+9,7	25
Tele2	2x10

The total price of the auction:

• Vodafone 1,380,800,000 euro (1.381 billion)
• KPN 1,351,852,000 euros (1.352 billion)
• T-Mobile 910,681,000 euro (910.8 million)
• Tele2 euro 160,813,000 (160.8 million)

After the auction is the distribution of the main bands is as follows:

	800	900 no	900 new	1800 no	1800 new	2100 no	2100 new	2600
KPN	2x10	2x12,4	2x10	2x18,4	2x20	2x15	2x20	2x10
Vodafone	2x10	2x12,4	2x10	2x4,8	2x20	2x15	2x20	2x10
T-Mobile		2x10	2x15	2x30,6	2x30	2x20	2x20	2x5
Tele2	2x10	-	-	-	-	-	-	2x20
TO		-	-	-	-	-	-	2x20

Sources:

• Dutch multiband spectrum auction ends with four winners
• Veiling eindigt met vier winnaars, Tele2 nieuwkomer

LTE Rollouts planned:
Vodafone - Summer 2013
KPN - February 2013

Added 15/12/12:11.48

You can also see it visually as in the slide below:

Half Duplex Operation (HD-FDD) in LTE

It was interesting to hear the other day that there is an option for HD-FDD but it is still undergoing investigation and not standardised yet. From what I hear, operators are showing an interest and we may see it coming to an operator near us in the next couple of years.

Complete presentation below:

Half Duplex Operation in Multimode/Multiband/MIMO-capable Handsets from Zahid Ghadialy

The advantages are obvious but probably the only reason this was not standardised actively is probably because then peak rates often quoted when promoting technology will be halved. The economy of scale is also important and we may not see this becoming popular unless many operators decide together to push for this.

Other posts of interest:

• Quick Introduction to LTE-Advanced
• Quick update on 3GPP Release-12 progress
• TD-LTE in China: Progress and Plan

"Small Cells" - An introduction for beginners

A good starting point for beginners on Small Cells:

 

Related links:

• Small Cells: Comparison and Deployment Scenarios
• Whats inside a Picocell?
• Building the World’s Largest Residential Small-Cell network
• ‘Small Cells’ and the City
• ‘Proximity Marketing’ and ‘Location Based Services’ (LBS) using ‘Small Cells’
• Radio Challenges and Opportunities for Large Scale Small Cell Deployments

Mobile Device Testing and its Path to Commercialization

Improvements to GSM, GPRS and EDGE to interact with the LTE experience

Improvements to GSM, GPRS and EDGE to interact with the LTE experience from Zahid Ghadialy

See Also:

• What is GELTE?

Quick update on 3GPP Release-12 progress

Some months back, I blogged about the 3GPP Rel-12 workshop, since then there has been progress on the Rel-12 features. Here is a quick update from 3GPP:

Future 3GPP RAN standardization activities for LTE from Zahid Ghadialy

You can download the PPT from Slideshare.

Other related posts:

• Quick Introduction to LTE-Advanced

5 videos on Augmented Reality

Looks like Augmented Reality (AR) is getting hot, just in time for Christmas. I wonder how many products will be sold based on AR. As I suggested in an earlier post, there may be 1 Billion users by 2020. Here are the videos:

Google's Ingress is an AR baased game:



Augmented Reality Book of Spells, Harry Potter experience:

Wonder when/ever it will come to a mobile near you.

LightBeam - Interacting with Augmented Real-World Objects in Pico Projections:



The next is a bit old but worth mentioning:

LuminAR from MIT


Finally, the science of Haptics will allows us to "touch" objects in a virtual world in future

Augmented Reality and Touch

Components of a BTS Site - nice pic

Data growth from 0.6EB/Mo to 10.6EB/Mo by 2016 (18x)

A slightly old slide that I found while looking for some information but worth putting up here.

1 EB (Exabyte) = 1000000000000000000B = 1018 bytes = 1000000000gigabytes = 1000000terabytes = 1000petabytes

As we can see, Cisco predicts (and I agree) that the mobile data consumption will increase from 0.6 exabytes per month to 10.6 exabytes per month by 2016. What is really debatable is what actually is a mobile device and how much of this data will go through the operators network.

If for example a tablet contains SIM card but you use your own home/work WiFi. Does this qualify as a mobile device and is this data included. What if its exactly the same scenario and the device does not have a SIM card then would you say this is a mobile device? What happens when the operator allows you to use an Operator WiFi which is secured via login/password and you use the tablet without SIM card on an operator WiFi. Would you count this data, is the device considered as a mobile device.

The bottom line is that data usage will continue to grow but probably not on the mobile networks. WiFi would be a prime candidate for offloading, due to it being mostly free (or costing much less - except in the hotels). Some of the recent pricing by the operators make me feel that they do not want the users to use their network for every day use, only for important work.

See Also:

• Operators strategy for supporting the ‘Mobile Data Explosion’
• Cellular or WiFi: Which is the preferred network access?
• Data Consumed by Different Streaming Applications
• A Twitter discussion on 'Data Tsunami' myth
• How Mobile Broadband users use their data allowance
• Understanding smartphone traffic

Hotspot 2.0, Next Generation Hotspot (NGH), etc.

From ZDNET:


Hotspot 2.0 is about certifying the hotspot itself, providing authentication using SIMs or certificates and the 802.11i standard, and using the recent 802.11u standard to provide performance and other information about the hotspots visible to a device. This will allow you to roam onto a hotspot with good connectivity that you have the right account to use, doing away with the need to select the network or enter your details into a web page, as you do today.

The Wi-Fi Alliance deals with the Wi-Fi hardware and the authentication specification under the name Passpoint, but this certification doesn't cover everything. The Wireless Broadband Alliance is a group of mobile and Wi-Fi operators that takes the Passpoint certification and ensures interoperability with other parts of the network — including authenticating to carriers' remote access RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service) servers, as well as roaming and billing.

"Next Generation Hotspot is the implementation of Hotspot 2.0 into a real, live network", explains Nigel Bird, the NGH Standardisation Manager at Orange Group.

From Next Generation Hotspot whitepaper:


A new program called Next Generation Hotspot (NGH) - using the latest HotSpot 2.0 specification1 - allows a mobile subscriber to connect automatically and securely to Hotspots using his service provider credentials while maintaining roaming visibility for the operator. NGH enables operators to continuously monitor and manage “cellular-like” service over Wi-Fi domestically and internationally so as to enhance performance and meet the demand for mobile data services over heterogeneous RANs - cellular and Wi-Fi. This enables mobile operators to simultaneously optimize backhaul throughput, offload specific traffic rapidly (e.g. video) and achieve better economics than traditional, cellular-only solutions.

The Wireless Broadband Appliance (WBA) and Small Cells Forum recently announced collaboration on this topic, see here.

More details are available in this presentation embedded below: