No lag for SK Telecom as it turbo boosts LTE

Following on from our LTE at MWC round-up from last week, I thought we’d go into a little bit more depth on what SK Telecom is doing. Why? Because SK Telecom is one of the world leaders in LTE. According to Informa WCIS stats, as of December 2012 South Korea leads the way with LTE with 32.5% of all subscribers in the country using LTE. It has 7.5m of its subscribers on LTE subscriptions, some 25% of its total user base and it hopes that by the end of 2013 that will go up to 60%. It’s an ambitious figure but it does enjoy coverage of 98% of the country.

When you consider that in the UK, O2 has just been awarded the licence for 800MHz spectrum with an obligation to provide 98% coverage, the difference is stark. In a nutshell, South Korea is way ahead.

Clearly it is in its interests to get everybody across to LTE as soon as possible. It will want to recoup those investments it’s made in LTE and the more people move across the sooner it can leverage the benefits of the lower cost-per-bit of LTE.

If you want to know more about SK Telecom’s latest LTE advances first-hand, Dr Byun Jae-woan is speaking at the LTE World Summit in June. Click here to download a flyer for the event.

No surprise then that at Mobile World Congress SK Telecom said that it would be taking things to the next level and demoing LTE Advanced, with plans to commercialise it in the second half of 2013. After all with strong competitors in the form of KT Corp and LG U+ it can’t afford to rest on its laurels.

The LTE Advanced it showed at MWC consisted of ‘Super Cell’, a concept that uses cell virtualisation to improve network capacity by reducing inter-cell interference. It also helps to ensure better call handovers between cells. It’s still possible to get cut off when travelling between cells today so that’s a welcome improvement.

Top speed is the big news though and the LTE Advanced solution can comfortably deliver 150Mbps to a handset.  A 1.4GB HD movie would download in just 75 seconds SK Telecom is pleased to tell us. (Thunk. Don’t worry, that’s just the sound of someone who’s just signed up to EE on a 500MB cap hitting the floor after fainting).

LTE. It’s fast in a completely different way to a McLaren F1. (See below)

SK also demonstrated VoLTE, which the company has successfully deployed. This is in large part thanks to its widespread LTE coverage layer, which means it doesn’t have to worry about the tricky business of handing over calls to 2G or 3G.

Another good news story for LTE from the house of SK, was that it announced that it had an impressive one million users on its Joyn.T application, all garnered in just 50 days since its launch in December 2012.

Joyn.T, is the RCS-based offering created by operator in a bid to give them a tool to be the OTT guys such as Skype and WhatsApp. It’s good news for the Joyn backers the GSMA, which had to contend with Deutsche Telekom announcing that it was delaying its Joyn deployment for more extensive testing.

On the infrastructure side the news was the SK Telecom was working with Nokia Siemens Networks, the struggling telecoms infrastructure vendor that has seen resurgence in recent months.  NSN was boasting of its so called ‘Liquid Application’ technology, the main thrust of which is essentially to put more intelligence into the base stations in a bid to improve latency. This is a good move.

What many people don’t realise is the latency enhancements in LTE are where most of the real world perceived benefits come from. It’s all about responsiveness. Poor latency is like turbo lag in a car on a race track full of cars. If you have to wait for ages for the boost to come in, and you don’t have long stretches of road ahead of you to make use of that top speed you’re going to lose out to more nimbler connections with lower top speeds but faster responding turbos.

If that seems a little confused it’s because the parallel occurred to me as was failing to leave slower cars behind despite driving a McLaren F1. (In the Xbox 360 game Forza 4 that is – I don’t own a McLaren F1 in real life you probably won’t be surprised to know). It was the laggy turbo in the F1 you see, and the track didn’t let me go above fourth gear at any point, so despite its 240 mph top speeds its potential bandwidth couldn’t help me. Much like a high bandwidth connection with low latency. If NSN’s Liquid Application can improve latency and top speed, it’s the best of both worlds.

SK Telecom has been boosting its backend bandwidth too though, with the announcement in January that it would be moving from 40G to 100G upgrades, giving it 8Tbps to play with on its optical network.

SK Telcoms’s CTO and Head of Future Technology R&D Division Byun Jae-Woan

Other interesting developments that came out of MWC this year for SK Telecom were its indoor location positioning technology, its innovative healthcare solutions such as Smartcase that used mobile connectivity to send medical information to doctors remotely, and FREND, which provide on-site diagnosis of major diseases and send that information again for 3G or 4G.

However, for SK Telecom I’d say MWC 2013 was mainly about LTE. The GSMA certainly thought so and here is a picture of SK’s CTO and Head of Future Technology R&D Division Byun Jae-Woan, proudly displaying the award the operator won from the Global Mobile Awards 2013 for the 4G LTE with PETA Solution – a cocktail of technologies to improve LTE performance involving multi carriers, femtocells, VoLTE, SON and Advanced Smart Cloud Access networks.

 

LTE and wifi: two halves of the same coin

As I’ve mentioned in a recent post I’ve recently switched to EE, mainly to get LTE, and on the whole it’s excellent. However, the downside is that I had to move away from the unlimited data I was used to when I was on GiffGaff (an MVNO of O2 – Telefonica UK).

I now have a data cap of 3GB of data a month, which from what I can gather in on the large side compared to the average mobile user. I came close to using all of this one month but usually keep well under – and wifi is key to this.

Aside from wifi access at work, I’ve been taking more time to sign up to wifi networks when they present themselves and recently that seems to have been happening more often.

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m now being forced to pay more attention to wifi hotspots because of my data cap, or if BT has recently got its finger out, but I’ve found BT wifi hotspots seemingly pop up quite a lot. As EE’s data packages offer from access to BT wifi hotspots this is a Good Thing.

Barclays Bank recently announced a deal with BT to offer free wifi and other places dotted around such as restaurants offer it. That said, somewhat irritatingly there’s no hotspot or indeed EE coverage at the gym I recently joined, and their combined absence puts a rather large dent in my ability to stream music to my phone. Having to cache tracks ahead of time seems a rather dated approach to take.

BT has recently rebranded its BT Openzone hotspots as BT wifi, which makes things a little confusing but it does makes things easier to understand, so it’s a sensible move from a consumer perspective.

The point though is that having that any operator offering a data cap needs to have a solid wifi proposition to go along with it, in order to ensure its users can get a good data experience without worrying about their caps and to act as a backhaul channel to offload data from the core network. It makes sense for the user, and it makes sense for the operator.

The issue is that sometimes the EE app picks up the hotspot and enables access seamlessly – and sometimes it doesn’t, making the process far more clunky – firing up the browser, enter a phone number and passcode in to a launch page and then correcting mistakes and then waiting for it to connect blah, blah, blah. Too slow. Hotspot 2.0 can’t come soon enough.

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The LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, is taking place on the 24^th-26^th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Click here to download a flyer for the event.

Interview: Technical Sales Manager,Mobile Services, Telenor: “It is important to measure the QoS experience.”

Torbjorn Pettersson, Technical Sales Manager – Mobile Services, Telenor, Sweden

What major developments have there been with regards to the LTE industry in your region this past year?

The main developments this past year have been the operators launching their LTE projects as well as LTE roaming projects. A major development was the establishing of Diameter Routing Agents (DRA) to enhance interoperability, enable global roaming coverage and to greatly improve network security.

What are the chief technical challenges you are facing?

The main challenges are to ensure DRA is correctly implemented, dealing with Circuit Switched fall-back issues and to enable operators to connect to an LTE signalling partner (such as Telenor Global Services).

What are the key techniques for network optimisation in LTE and what effect can it have on the customer experience?

In our experience it is important to measure the QoS experience in order to improve the customer experience of downloading, uploading and using new LTE handsets.

Do you believe that RCS services can genuinely help the industry compete with OTT?

RCS will bring great opportunities since it will bridge the gaps between the islands of different OTT applications. It is also important that operators put great effort into launching RCS globally on new smartphones and handsets.

Pricing for LTE is a controversial subject. Are operators getting it right?

This is a challenging area with operators competing with each other locally and also for roaming pricing. In European countries pricing is driven by the EU regulation but outside EU it is up to the operators to agree on pricing that is affordable for customers.

What do you think will be the most exciting new development in LTE in 2013?

For me it will be operators launching global roaming LTE data services.

What impact does LTE have on your backhaul strategy and technology choices?

It requires greater planning in terms of security, diameter routing and GTP2 (Global Tunnelling Protocol data traffic version 2) traffic, capacity and QoS.

The LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, is taking place on the 24^th-26^th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Click here to download a flyer for the event.

Interview: Head Innovation and Trends, ENTEL, Chile: “Speed itself has no intrinsic value to the user – it is apps that create value”

Eduardo Duran, Head Innovation and Trends,ENTEL, Chile

Eduardo Duran, Head Innovation and Trends,ENTEL, Chile, is speaking on Day Two of the LTE LATAM conference, taking place on the 16th-17th April 2013 at the Windsor Barra Hotel, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Ahead of the show we speak to him about the latest LTE developments in the region and the difference LTE will make to its customers.

What major developments have there been with regards to the LTE industry in your region this past year?

The most important development has been the allocation of new frequency bands in the region, such as the 2.6GHz band and the future allocation of the 700 MHz band as part of the Tele Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT) band plan. In Chile, the official journal of the technical standard for the 700 MHz band was published in February 2013, and the basis for the LTE auction will complete mid-2013. This will be welcome, as the exponential growth of mobile users in Chile will require the advent of new technologies such as LTE.

What effect can LTE have on the customer experience?

The low latency of LTE along with QoS management and speed make LTE key to the business sectors and enterprise. It enables a new range of high-speed mobile services that require QoS management with low latency, such as real-time video, video surveillance and M2M.

Where do small cells fit into your plans, and what benefits will they bring to you and to customers?

From a technological perspective, small cells are necessary to cover densely populated areas where data capacity is critical and where we are spectrum restricted, such as  areas where we will only have access to the 2.6GHz band. Small cells can also open a lot of opportunities for high accuracy applications, such as location-based services.

The most important reasons to deploy small cells are to provide

• Increased coverage (indoor coverage)
• Fill-in coverage for areas of high-traffic
• Network off-load

LTE and smartphones make for a powerful combination. What new opportunities and innovations do you foresee in the next few years?

Further enhanced LTE mobile connectivity will not only provide more speed but also QoS and low latency. There will be an explosion of mobile connectivity not only in the number of people using devices, but also by “things” – [M2M]. The development of IPv6 will generate significant opportunities associated with mobility. An additional innovation that I think will gain traction in the next few years is that you will be able to use your smartphone as a secure and safe means of payment.

Is the raw speed of LTE enough to attract new customers or are value added services necessary to make packages attractive?

Definitely speed is not enough. In fact, speed itself has no intrinsic value to the user – it is the applications that create value around speed.

The LTE Latin America conference is taking place on the 16^th-17^th April 2013 Windsor Barra Hotel, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Click here to find out more about the event.

LTE at MWC 2013 round-up

Not so long ago LTE related news at MWC used to be something of a stand-out feature, but with the technology now mainstream in many leading markets round the world it’s now mainstream. Nevertheless there was still plenty of interesting LTE related things happening.

News wise there was an announcement from vendor Ericsson that it was still the number one in 4G and highlighted a major infrastructure deal with Telefonica UK, which operates under the brand O2. O2 has won 2x 10MHz of 800MHz spectrum, and has the taken on the UK regulator Ofcom’s requirement that it provide 98 per cent coverage of 4G in the country by 2017. Which gives Ericsson lots to do.

Small cells are going to soon play an increasingly important part of the LTE landscape. At MWC Aricent and Mindspeed announced that they have joined forces to create a small cell reference design. It features the Transcede T3300 Baseband Processor that supports 20MHz LTE FDD and throughput up to 150Mbps.

Sequans announced its LTE-Advanced chip: the SQN3220. This is part of Sequans’s Cassiopeia platform and adheres to Release 10 of 3GPP specifications, and as such meets the requirements to be considered ‘true’ 4G by the 3GPP.

The Novatel Mifi 2 to be launched first on Bell’s LTE network in Canada.

On the device side Novatel Wireless, the company that introduced the original wireless hotspot device announced the Mifi 2. it features a funky touch-screen display and it will launch first in Canada on Bell’s 4G LTE network in March where it will be known as the Mifi Liberate. Having recently had to use the original, very dated, unit, a screen that enables you to see what it’s doing easily would be much appreciated especially as claims an 11 hour battery life.

Huawei launched a global flagship phone the Ascend P2. As an A.N Other flagship Android phone it’s not that interesting really, but what is interesting is that according to Huawei it can support speeds of up to 150Mbit/s, which makes it faster than other major LTE phones such as the iPhone 5 and the Galaxy SIII. That said, you’d have to have that whole base station to yourself to get that kind of speed and if you do, you’d be spoiling it for everybody else. The other downside is that if that does that person would be pretty easy to spot – they’d be the ones holding the Huawei Ascend P2. How to win friends etc…

The Huawei Ascent P2 is fast. This is not your grandma’s LTE phone.

In terms of future technology SK Telecom, the South Korean operator and one of the world leaders for LTE demonstrated LTE Advanced at the show. It used carrier aggregation techniques to reach speeds double that of current LTE, which is impressive. Unless you’re already using an Huawei Ascend P2 of course.

TD-LTE also seemed to gain real traction at MWC this year, showing that it is a technology that will be a force to be reckoned with. The GTI summit, which took place at MWC was packed out and there were keynote speech from members Bharti Airtel, Clearwire, China Mobile and the GSMA. Notably on the handset side there was support announced by Samsung and Nokia as well as from chip vendors Qualcomm and Marvell. Ericsson and NSN made up the vendors present.

Packed out at the TDD-LTe GTI summit at MWC 2013

At the event, the GTI said that new testing had been done between operators globally. Of note was a completed trial between China Mobile in Hong Kong and KT in Korea and with Clearwire in Hong Kong and in China

At MWC China Mobile revealed a multi-mode, multi-band TD-LTE devices, while LG demoed an Optimus G, it’s first TD-LTE ready handset.

All good news for TD-LTE. But will there be one device to rule them all. There will be according to Qualcomm.

Qualcommm announced the RF360 chip, which it says will be the first in the world able to handle every LTE frequency out there, making a handset using it a one-world LTE roaming phone. In total it support LTE-FDD, LTE-TDD, WCDMA, EV-DO, CDMA 1x, TD-SCDMA and GSM/EDGE. The press release also says it contains, “the industry’s first envelope power tracker for 3G/4G LTE mobile devices, a dynamic antenna matching tuner, an integrated power amplifier-antenna switch, and an innovative 3D-RF packaging solution incorporating key front end components.” To be honest I’m not sure what any of those things are, but it certainly seems as if progress is being made. Even more than the Huawei Ascend P2.

We can expect the RF360 to appear in devices towards the end of 2013, hopefully bringing an end to the pain of LTE spectrum fragmentation.

Interview: CTO, MobinNet: “TD-LTE is a better choice for delivering mobile data than FDD LTE”

Nima Pournejatian is CTO of MobinNet, Iran

Nima PourNejatian, CTO, MobinNet, Iran is speaking on Day One of the inaugural TD-LTE Summit taking place on the 23^rd-24^th April 2013 at the Fairmont Singapore Hotel, Singapore. Ahead of the show we speak to him on the subject of what advantages TD-LTE brings to operators and what MobinNet’s plans are for the technology.

What have been the latest developments in terms of TD-LTE in your region?

There are two major operators in the region which employ WiMAX broadband technology. In order to plan a reasonable migration from WiMAX to a more advanced technology, both operators are going to secure an LTE license. As one of the two major WiMAX operators and the only nationwide wireless broadband provider, MobinNet is going to apply for TD-LTE. The other operator may select the same path. Moreover, recently the WiMAX Forum announced an updated industry roadmap supporting the continued evolution of the WiMAX ecosystem. The WiMAX Forum embraces a network evolution path to accommodate harmonisation and coexistence across multiple broadband wireless access technologies within a WiMAX Advanced network. Therefore, MobinNet’s plan is compliant with the WiMAX Forum’s roadmap.

Why do you believe the TD-LTE is a better choice for delivering mobile data than FDD LTE?

According to my personal experience working with both FDD and TDD technologies TDD deliver higher throughput per sector. This makes for a better user experience for data services and increases the capacity per base station, which lowers investment costs. Therefore TD-LTE is a better choice for delivering mobile data than FDD LTE.

Is the release of an iPhone that supports TD-LTE critical for the long term success of the technology?

It will definitely help but I would prefer the release of a device that is less voice centric. iPad users usually consume more data bandwidth than those of iPhone so perhaps a new iPad/iPod would be more helpful.

Some reports suggest that TD-LTE will account for 23 per cent of all LTE users by 2016. What has been difference this time between TD-LTE and previous time-division telecom technology flavours? (WiMAX and TD-SCDMA)

Firstly, data traffic demand now is not comparable with that of three or five years ago. This motivates more investment in TDD technologies. Secondly, nowadays spectrum is more congested, which means that the remaining spectrum must be used as efficiently as possible. Also the global minutes of voice services per user is decreasing. As a result, by selecting TDD technology, operators can utilise spectrum more efficiently, while addressing the demands of today’s customers. Thirdly, vendors production rates for TD-LTE equipment is much higher that older TDD technologies. This will help to keep prices low and consequently more TD-LTE networks will be built.

Are you concerned by increasing amounts of wifi offload reducing the need for TD-LTE?

One of the main motivations of wifi offload for users is to lower their costs. The severity of this threat for FDD LTE is higher than that of TD-LTE. Price per megabyte in TD-LTE is inherently cheaper than that in FDD LTE.

Does TD-LTE offer up any specific challenges around backhaul?

It depends on the type of the backhaul network. Any broadband service provider which holds a classic microwave backhaul network will suffer from the booming data traffic phenomena. It is expected a TD-LTE operator will need to carry heavy traffic over its microwave backhaul network. If that comes true, microwave backhaul will be a challenge.

What plans do you have for carrier aggregation?

Carrier aggregation depends on the frequency band and available bandwidth. Considering our spectrum limitations, we are not able to activate the intra-band contiguous or non-contiguous carrier aggregation.

What would you say to any operators considering the move to TD-LTE?

To select a technology, the availability of user terminals is the key decision factor. I suggest that operators first check the forecast of production rates of terminals per technology and for each frequency band.

Nima PourNejatian, CTO, MobinNet, Iran is speaking on the subject of “WiMAX to TD-LTE Migration: How and When?” on Day one of the inaugural TD-LTE Summit taking place 23^rd-24^th April 2013 at the Fairmont Singapore Hotel, Singapore. Click here to download a brochure

 

EE bah gum: it’s fast! – EE LTE on test

As my day job involves writing about LTE on a pretty regular basis (as in every day) I always found it quite ironic that up until recently I’d never experienced an LTE network ‘in anger’. Come October last year and UK operator EE changed all of that. It’s taken a while but I’ve finally succumbed to the temptation and signed up to the service. This means I’ve done the full tour of UK operators. I started with T-Mobile in 1998 when it was still One-to-One, later moved to Vodafone (just for 3G – yes really), before moving to O2 (cheap). It means Orange is the only brand I’ve not been billed by, but I am at least now using its network.

Today the UK operator EE released its first figures since the operator launched its LTE network, and analysts have been fairly downcast on the figures, which show a decline in revenue of 2.6 per cent to £5.96bn. There have been an increase in post-paid subscribers to the service, the EE network includes the Orange and T-Mobile brands, which are 3G only. As EE has not released figures for the number of its new 4G EE customers there’s no way of knowing to what extent LTE has helped. The assumption from analysts though is that if EE has something to crow about, it would be doing so.

So what’s keeping the punters away? The only conclusion can be price. As you might have heard, there’s a double-dip recession on, which is not the ideal environment to get consumers to pay more for faster speeds, especially when they are as heavily capped as EE. Remember the entry-level cap only gives you 500MBs to play with and though the price has dropped to £31, it’s still pricey. To get a decent 3GB on a two-year contract with an iPhone 5 will cost you £46 a month with £99 for the phone.

But is it worth it?

The one thing I can confirm is that it’s fast. In areas of good coverage, which fortunately for me includes both work and home, LTE on an iPhone 5 delivers speeds that consistently put my Virgin broadband 60Mb connection to shame. Speeds of 30Mbps on the downlink and in excess of 20Mb on the uplink are a breathe of fresh air, especially coming from O2’s 3G network which at least for me, was pretty dire, rarely delivering more than 1.5Mbps.

What surprised me was how much difference it made even for the simple things, such as sending iMessages. The progress bar on messages just zips across, making for more natural conversations. Adding a picture to an iMessage used to mean a long wait while the message was painfully uploaded. Now, they go so quickly that the first time I had to check it had actually been sent and hadn’t just failed. All that upload speed is great for sending or posting pictures and videos, which is what more and more of us are doing from our smartphones.

A lovely was to demonstrate LTE is YouTube. It just loads up and starts to play immediately, with no buffering. Suddenly the speed of your device and not the network is the limit. This was brought home to me just today. I was on the train, and had need to watch a YouTube video. Immediately I did so and for once I was not thinking about latency or cell towers, – just the video. This all changed as the video suddenly stopped. I checked and noted that I was at a stop that I knew was an LTE blackspot (West Hampstead Station). 3G was displayed on the phone, but the speed wasn’t there. Result: experience spoilt.

This does seem to be a problem for EE. Even in the West-End of London I’ll see LTE come and go, and while DC-HSPA 3G is fast, I’ve also seen standard 3G, EDGE and GPRS, which means that your handset might well have to cope with switching between five different network standards during the day. No wonder these smartphones struggle for battery life.

If you have to fall back to DC-HSPA though performance is good. In a recent interview with EE’s Principal network architect, Andy Sutton, I was told that as part of its upgrade programme EE also currently has 40 per cent coverage of DC-HSPA on its network, and I can attest to this being pretty solid. However, ubiquitous coverage of either LTE of DC HPSA is still a long way away and clearly improvements can be made in the hand-off between network technologies.

LTE is not just great for video though. Being something of an audio aficionado I enjoy listening to high quality audio when I can. LTE enables me to stream by 24-bit FLAC files to my handset from NAS box at home, with no issues at all, something that was simply impossible on 3G.

As a downside, listening to high quality files on an LTE connection is also a great way for draining your battery, so necessitated purchasing a charging cable for work and plugging in on a regular basis.

I’ve also used LTE as a backup connection at home, when my Virgin connection has ground to a halt, as it sometimes does. This is thanks to the ability to very easily tether via the iPhone 5 hot-spot feature. This was banned by GiffGaff, the O2 MVNO I used to be on, a point of frustration when there was unlimited data to play with.

In my first month I’ve come just under the 3GB limit, which is clearly the sweet spot for me – enough to use the LTE as I want, without having to worry I’ll go over the cap.

What’s also gratifying is the speed at which EE is rolling out the network. At launch it was just 11 cities, and just four months later it stands at 27 cities – with 15 more by the end of next month.

And while I didn’t come to EE because of the value added services I have made use of the bundled wifi, which gives access to BT Wifi hotspots, the ‘EE Wednesday’s Cinema 2-4-1 offer, and the EE Film store, with a free film a week available to download that doesn’t eat into your data package to download.

To be critical, the EE app has just got very confused about my data usage, telling me I’ve used only 800Mb of my 3GB, when yesterday I had almost used it all up. The web site also had no record of my data usage. I also wouldn’t recommend roaming without a pre-pay bundle – the prices are simply eye-watering. Digital Commissioner Neelie Kroes has been working on forcing operators to lower these charges, and for me that can’t come soon enough.

The Clone Phone Lite app also seems pointless. It’s redundant for an iPhone thanks for iCloud, it only comes with a 500MB cap and when I tried to test the app it didn’t recognise my phone anyway.

Overall though, the combination of very fast network speeds and some actually useful value added services, I’d describe the whole EE experience as the most premium feeling package I’ve ever used. Which considering the premium prices is as it should be.

It remains to be seen then how it pans out. I’m relieved that being lucky enough to have an unlocked iPhone 5 without a contract I was able to go for a SIM-only package. This means that I’m only tied in for 12 months – not 24 and come next year they’ll be a pick of other operators offering LTE – (though of course as the iPhone 5 is LTE1800 only I’ll need a new handset to take advantage of them). If I stay, I expect that EE’s packages will be more enticing to the mass market.

So EE: it is expensive, and it can be patchy but as a teacher once described my contribution in class – “when it’s there – it’s really there.”

CSO, Interview: Indosat: “Look to develop the TD-LTE device ecosystem quickly”

Prashant Gokarn, Chief Strategy Officer of Indosat is speaking at the TD-LTE conference in April

Prashant Gokarn, is Chief Strategy Officer of Indosat the second largest operator in Indonesia with over 60 million subscribers. He is speaking on Day One of the The inaugural TD-LTE Summit, taking place on the 23rd-24th April 2013 at the Fairmont Singapore Hotel, Singapore. Ahead of the show we speak to him about where Indosat is with LTE, and more specifically TD-LTE….

You have recently received approval to deploy LTE services. Why is it so important for Indosat to deploy LTE?

Our intention is to differentiate ourselves as an operator on the strength of our high-end wireless broadband. A key way to achieve that is by using our spectrum assets more effectively – which means LTE.

What will the impact of LTE be in Indonesia? What will the key benefits be?

At present, the quality and availability of fixed-line broadband in the country is poor. LTE enables us to offer our customers a high-speed option, which will make video and rich media applications much more accessible to customers.

Why are you selecting TD-LTE? Do you believe the TD-LTE is a better choice for delivering mobile data than FDD LTE?

On the technology aspects, TDD has the advantage in that it can allocate bandwidth to downlink on-the-fly making it more spectrum efficient. However, the ecosystem of TD-LTE is still nascent and under-developed compared to FD-LTE, which today at least, places it at a big disadvantage.

Is there are role for both FDD and TD-LTE in your region? Will they have different use cases?

There is a role for both FDD and TDD LTE. The use cases may be different in the short term as the ecosystem for FDD is better tuned to smartphones while TDD-LTE is still dongle focused

Does TD-LTE offer up any specific challenges around backhaul?

The link budgets and spread mean you need a fairly dense network at 2.3GHz TD-LTE in order to be able to deliver the performance.

What would you say to any operators considering the move to TD-LTE?

Look to develop the TD-LTE device ecosystem, and do it quickly!

Prashant Gokarn, CSO of Indosat will be speaking on Day One of the TD-LTE Summit 2013, presenting ‘TD-LTE in Emerging Markets: An Opportunity for Achieving Sustainable and Economically-Viable Broadband?’ Prashant Gokarn is also participating in the panel discussion: ‘Monetising TD-LTE Deployment: Evaluating the Key Monetary Considerations’ on Day Two of the conference.

The inaugural TD-LTE Summit is taking place on the 23^rd-24^th April 2013 at the Fairmont Singapore Hotel, Singapore. Click here to download the brochure

A price war is coming

If there was any doubt that things are going to get tasty LTE-wise in the UK, it was earlier this week, when 3, the UK arm of telco brand Hutchison, announced that when it launches its own LTE network later in the year it will not be charging a premium. The implication was the users will pay exactly the same as they do now, and as 3 currently leads the market for low-cost unlimited 3G data, that’s a pretty enticing prospect.

It’s also one that shoots a considerable large volley across the bows of the good ship EE, which got itself in the LTE race early by launching a service in November. It was able to do so after pulling off the deft trick of getting the regulator, Ofcom, to let it re-farm its 2G 1800MHz spectrum for LTE.  Having bigged up the benefits of 4G at its launch it then proceeded to make the most of this by launching LTE as a premium service – with high prices for lengthy 24-month contracts with small data allowances, the latter of which the network took a lot of flak for in the press.

With the auction process for the digital dividend 800MHz frequency and 2.6GHz now underway, ironically pushed earlier by Ofcom to reduce EE’s 4G lead-time in the market, EE reacted by announcing lower prices for its entry-level tariff. Instead of £36 a month for 500MB of data it would now only charge £31 a month, which over a 24-month period that’s a significant saving of £90. The price of a handset such as the Nokia Lumia 820, would also come down to £29.99. However, the measly 500MB bundle would remain.

At the other end of the market it would cater for high-end users with a new 20GB a month tariff with a phone and unlimited calls for £61 or the same thing but SIM-only for £41.

It’s not quite the slashing of prices that some had reported though – just one real saving on the entry-level package.

3 is currently offering an iPhone 5 with unlimited 3G data and 2000 minutes for £36 a month, which is more or less the same, aside from 500MB of LTE data vs unlimited 3G. When both of these become LTE, EE will have a problem.

Of course EE does have a couple of decent added value services to offer, such as tethering, inclusive BT wifi, Underground wifi, 2-4-1 cinema tickets (better known as Orange Wednesdays) and  the EE Film Store – but it’s unlikely this will be enough to sway many people away from an unlimited package.

Of course EE does have one key advantage – it has an LTE network that is up and running with coverage is increasing all the time with new markets being announced on a regular basis. What EE needs to continue to do is keep up the marketing pressure on signing people up before the other come online with live networks – which will be around six months from now.

It might get a bit longer to play with as the iPhone crowd won’t switch to LTE unless they can use their favourite fruity phones. The current European model of the iPhone 5 only supports 1800MHz, so all the other operators will be looking at Apple to make them happy and release an 800/2600MHz LTE supporting iPhone next time round – which is unlikely to be until September/October 2013 – a year or so following the iPhone 5 launch.

When this happens one has to imaging that EE’s pricing will look somewhat different to what it looks like at the start of 2013.

Pricing strategies are certainly going to be one of the hot topics addressed at the LTE World Summit 2013, taking place in Amsterdam in June, so be sure to get your plans together now to attend.

Asian operators pushing the envelope with LTE Advanced

While many parts of the world are awaiting LTE, Asian carriers are already moving ahead leaps and bounds by testing LTE Advanced.

Current LTE rollouts are based on Release 8 of the 3GPP standards, while LTE Advanced is based on Release 10, which was standardised in April 2011. Since then, some companies have been working on pre-release equipment, looking to get a jump on the rest of the industry.

Chief of these are equipment vendor Ericsson and SK Telecom, the biggest operator in South Korea with just under 50% market share. The two have got together to test a specific feature of core LTE Advanced technology called Transmission Mode 9. TM-9 is designed to help reduce interference between base stations to maximise signal stability and boost performance.

TM-9 is particularly smart though. It can detect when a mobile device is being used and send a different type of signal that is optimal for a mobile device (variable DM-RS – demodulation reference signals). This maximises the efficient use of the base station and guarantee’s a decent data rate for users. Early results are positive with a claimed 10-15% increase in data rates in locations where there was known inter-cell interference.

One of the best known improvements that LTE Advanced will bring is Carrier Aggregation and here ZTE have been taking strides with the world’s first use of it in a commercial network. This was the Guangdong arm of China Mobile using 20MHz of spectrum and interestingly was performed on a TD-LTE network. Peak download rate? A massive 223Mbps, more than double the peak rates quoted for Release 8 LTE.

TD-LTE also once again comes to the fore in China, having been used for a live TV broadcast – the Xiamen International Marathon beamed to the TV centres of China Central TV and Xiamen TV. The vendor here was NSN, using its SingleRAN platform with Liquid Core EPC.

It all points to a bright future for LTE.

This next evolution of LTE technology is significant as it will meet the speed requirements of what the 3GPP originally dubbed 4G. LTE Release 8 was of course not originally considered to be 4G, but the 3GPP were forced to acknowledge ‘the realities on the ground’ where even DC HSPA 3G was being dubbed 4G by some US carriers. This time round, there’s no doubt, though I suspect it will simply give some the licence to go to market with ‘True 4G’ or some such exaggeration.

If you want to hear more about the latest advances in TD-LTE then be sure to get to the inaugural TD-LTE Summit taking place on the 23^rd-24^th April 2013 at the Fairmont Singapore Hotel, Singapore. Click here to download the brochure

 

Too little, too late for Blackberry?

Something incredible happened last week. Over at Telecoms.com, The Informer, revealed that Nokia has made a profit. Yes Nokia. An actual profit. At least in Q412. It was €439m, and, just for handy comparison, Apple made $8.2 billion in the same time period. Still, while I’m not great at maths, I know a profit is better than a loss. Of course, it still made a massive loss overall in 2012, but for a company that everyone had pretty much given up the ghost on it’s a welcome, if surprising, bud of recovery.

Today another company is looking to return from the near dead. RIM, the Canadian owner of the Blackberry brand was once synonymous with phones that were smart, (email – in your pocket! Wow!) but times have changed. In 2010 RIM had 14 per cent of the smartphone market. In 2012 it was four per cent. Again, I’m not great at maths but… it clearly can’t continue to drop at the same rate as by the end of 2013 it wouldn’t exist.

So what’s the plan?

The plan is Blackberry 10 – an OS the company has bet the farm on. Things haven’t gone to plan so far though, and the OS, which was due to arrive in mid-2012 has been delayed not once, but twice.

However, as I type, are announcing Blackberry 10 OS and two new handsets to go with it – the touchscreen only Z10, which will feature LTE support, and a keyboard equipped X10 (because as we know, hardcore Blackberry fans will only give up their physical keyboard equipped handsets if you prise them from their cold, dead hands).

The Z10 is the flagship device and early reviews have been mixed. Joseph Volpe, Engadget tech site journalist described the hardware to the BBC as a, “full-on Monet, to borrow a line from the movie Clueless – attractive from afar, but disappointing up-close.” It seems that only Apple is able to churn out devices that have a truly premium look and feel.

As for the software, some analysts and tech journalists have had a preview and reports seem to be positive – a cool UI, and fast switching between apps and the BlackBerry Hub, which combines all your messaging services (email, Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook etc.) into one location, are highlights.

Gartner’s Phillip Redmam has said that Blackberry 10 offers the best UI on the market, and that it has comeback potential. Stuart Jeffrey, Nomura Securities analyst observes that there is pent-up demand for new Blackberry’s from its existing fans, so there’s still a core market to tap into. I’ve always found it rather bizarre that this audience seems to be either be-suited, lawyer types, or streetwise, hooded, sexting obsessed teens.

At the launch the company made some smart moves, changing the company name from RIM, to Blackberry, which is what most people called it anyway. However, the show was clearly not up to the standard of Apple’s keynotes – PC Pro’s News Editor Nicole Kobie described RIM, sorry, Blackberry’s CEO Thorsten Heins as having, “all the charisma of a cheese sandwich.”

All the more impressive then that despite its precarious position in the market Blackberry has managed to line up a strong suite of names to offer apps compatible with BB10 OS – Skype, Amazon Kindle, SAP, Whatsapp, Angry Birds (this one is the most crucial, obviously), which at least prevents it from being a lame duck on day one. (Blackberry Playbook, I’m looking at you).

And with the flagship Z10 offering LTE it will be able to keep up with the rest of the competition. At least in the US – it supports LTE 700/850/1700/1900MHz, – but not 1800MHz, meaning that if it’s to support the UK and Australia it’s going to have to release a separate flavour capable on 800MHz and 1800MHz and 2.6GHz. So can RIM ­‑ sorry, sorry – Blackberry, make a comeback? Well the jury is not so much out, as having announced that it is leaving the igloo and may be some time.

So can RIM ­‑ sorry, sorry – Blackberry, make a comeback? Well the jury is not so much out, as having announced that it is leaving the igloo and may be some time.

Yesterday I talked to Bengt Nordstrom, co-founder and CEO of strategic wireless business consultancy, Northstream. Will we be reading next year of a Nokia-like bud, showing signs of recovery?

No, he said. (Nordstrom is never one to mince his words). Blackberry’s time has passed was his view. “It was a phenomenal thing. It was unique when it came 10 years ago but that era is over- we’ve moved on. I don’t think there is any way back”

Based in Sweden, Nordstrom expressed his surprise in the continued interest in Blackberrys that he sees in London and other parts of the world. “Every time I come here and Indonesia or the Middle East, Blackberry is big. The lawyers love it!”

So there we are, back to the  lawyers. And when you’re relying on those who practice the dark arts for your continued success you know you’re in trouble.

Blackberry will be taking part in a panel discussion on content and OTT applications at the LTE MENA 2013 conference, so if you can make it to Dubai on the 12^th-14^th May, download a brochure so you can find out more.

LTE in Africa: The Race is On!

A recent prediction from Deloitte has forecasted that 2013 will see an upsurge in the momentum behind LTE mobile networks globally, with LTE thriving across multiple markets. But what role will Africa play in this global upsurge?

While LTE has hit the mainstream in more developed markets such as Asia, North America and Japan, Africa still remains at the early stages of its LTE development with very low LTE subscription numbers and limited coverage. Although far behind its global peers, LTE has certainly started to make an impact in Africa, with operators launching LTE services in five African countries just last year (see table below).

Operator	Country	Launch date
Movicel	Angola	April 2012
Orange Mauritius	Mauritius	June 2012
Smile	Tanzania	June 2012
MTC Namibia	Namibia	May 2012
Vodacom	South Africa	October 2012
MTN	South Africa	October 2012
Unitel	Angola	December 2012

 

 

 

 

 
Major players in South Africa have expressed their ambition to move to LTE with Vodacom and MTN both commercially launching LTE services, while Cell C and 8ta are currently in the trial stages.
Airtel Nigeria has also demonstrated its commitment to LTE, successfully completing its LTE trials in Lagos. As Africa’s biggest mobile market with over 100 million mobile subscriptions, there is significant potential for LTE in Nigeria.

In the competitive mobile market, African operators appear keen to be the first ones to bring these high-end services to customers and gain an early mover advantage. More recently, MTN Uganda announced its plans to deploy a 4G network in Uganda, which would make it the first operator to offer LTE technology in East Africa.

However, LTE will not be without its challenges in Africa. Issues surrounding spectrum availability, coverage and a lack of fibre and devices all pose obstacles to its development in the continent. LTE requires an entirely new technology infrastructure and therefore initial rollout costs for operators will be high. In addition, LTE may be out of financial reach for many customers in Africa with the high cost of mobile data that comes with 4G, deepening the ‘digital divide’.

However, as operators battle to strengthen their position in the mobile market the long-term benefits of LTE appear to outweigh the initial costs. Mobile operators in Africa are therefore eager to implement 4G and meet the needs of growing subscriber demand for data-driven services

Mazen Mroué, MTN Uganda Chief Executive Officer has said that LTE has become “the new standard”, while Kenya’s Essar Telecom has announced its strategy to skip 3G altogether and invest directly in LTE.

As strategies are put into place and operators race to rollout the technology, 2013 will be an important year for LTE in Africa. It’s fitting then that this year will also see the launch of Africa’s first dedicated LTE event, LTE Africa on 16-17 July 2013 in Cape Town, South Africa.  Bringing together the key players in the African LTE industry, the event will address the strategic and technical issues facing the market and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Click here to view the preliminary agenda. To find out more information download the flyer here.

EE puts LTE in January sales

This is a guest post by Mike Hibberd, editorial director at Telecoms.com, Mobile Communications International magazine and Banking Technology. Follow him @telecomshibberd

Last year, with a deft move that left its competitors fuming, Everything Everywhere became the first UK operator to offer LTE services. This week, as Ofcom’s LTE spectrum auction got underway, Everything Everywhere has become—rather less auspiciously—the first UK operator to slash its LTE retail charges.

Most notable was the special promotion that will give customers 500MB of LTE data, and the standard unlimited domestic calls and texts for £31/month over 24 months with a handset for less than £30. That’s cheap.

At the high end, consumers that EE profiles as “super users” can spend £46/month for 20GB of data with a SIM-only plan if they sign up before the end of next month.

EE says that these are time-limited special offers but price-cutting tends to be a one-way journey. Even if these tariffs do revert to more significant premiums, other offers will take their place. Especially when Vodafone, O2 and 3UK deploy their own offerings.

These players, along with EE, are currently stacking their chips on the green baize of Ofcom’s gambling table. You wonder what they make of EE’s announcement as they weigh their wallets. It’s not the most positive of messages about the prospects for LTE operators in the UK—EE only launched in November and the prices are already coming down.

Unfortunately, and unlike the 3G auction, this game is being played behind closed doors so we won’t know if EE’s retail re-jigs will affect any other player’s valuation on the spectrum until the process has concluded.

We can draw a few conclusions from EE’s pricing tactics, though. First, the firm knows that its LTE lead is running out fast and it wants to wring every advantage from it that it can. Second, money is tight and the market is price sensitive at the moment. Third, and most worrying for EE and its competitors, faster network speeds just aren’t enough of a draw for consumers in the immediate term.

Consider that EE is cutting its prices in the face of no comparable network offering from any of its competitors. We’re used to hearing about price cuts because of intense competition; price cuts in a monopoly are somewhat less common.

The reality, of course, is that EE’s LTE network has plenty of competition, from the UK market’s 3G HSPA networks (EE’s own included).

Why should the end user pay even EE’s reduced rate of £31/month for 500MB of LTE data and a limited range of handsets when they can pay £26/month for 1GB of data at HSPA+ rates and get the Nexus 4 for free? This makes more sense financially to the consumer because consumers value the device more than they value the network.

Now this is bitterly unfair, because the network is the most complicated part of the mobile service and by far the most expensive to deploy and maintain. But it is a fact—and one that is unlikely to change any time soon.

Which is why operators need to be given as much flexibility as possible in their deployment of LTE networks. Ofcom is publicly committed to maintaining the number of separately owned and operated LTE networks in the UK market; it is one of the goals of this auction. And yet as our Telecoms.com Intelligence Industry Survey 2013 reveals, 65 per cent of respondents believe that network sharing is essential to the profitability of LTE. Not a useful tool to improve cost management, but essential to profitability.

EE will be speaking at the LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, taking place on the 24^th-26^th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Click here to download a flyer for the event.

Interview: CEO, P1 networks, Malaysia: “Once speed is there more innovation will come”

Michael Lai, CEO OF Malaysian operator Packet One is delivering one of the keynotes on Day One of the inaugural TD-LTE summit, taking place on the 23rd-24th April 2013 at the Fairmont Singapore Hotel, Singapore. Ahead of the show we speak to him about the challenges the company faces during its on-going transition from WiMAX to LTE.

Michael Lai, CEO of Packet One Networks, Malaysia

Packet One Networks (P1), led by the irrepressible Michael Lai (one of the members of the influential GTI Steering Committee), has been one of the star players in the Malaysia region for data, coming from a standing start in 2009 to delivering a service that covers 55 per cent of the Malaysian population, with a subscriber base of over 500,000 customers.

However, as with all data focused operators that looked to capture market share in the previous decade, the technology it is based on is WiMAX. Clearly, the global trend is for operators to move away from WiMAX towards LTE, and P1 is no different. Indeed, it has been eagerly waiting for its opportunity to offer LTE to its customers and to take advantage of the growing LTE eco-system.

That moment came in early December 2012, when it was finally awarded the spectrum it needed. “[Back in December 2012] we were awarded 20MHz of 2.6GHz spectrum, for which we are truly excited and we are very glad that our regulator has finally given us the go ahead to roll out TD-LTE.” Michael Lai also stated said that P1 plans to launch a TD-LTE service in the second half of 2013.

Of course, P1 wasn’t the only network to be allocated spectrum and the next 12 months promises to be challenging as it starts to face real competition in the supply of 4G data. “Next year there will be more of a level playing field from a technology perspective, so we will have to be a lot more innovative in terms of what we bring to market compared to what we have today,” Lai admits.

The transition from WiMAX to LTE won’t be immediate Lai says. The plan is to first overlay TD-LTE technology in its busiest areas before moving out to other areas of the region.” It will be two to three years before everything completely moves over to TD-LTE,” Lai predicts.

Considering the similarities in the technologies, the use of TD-LTE over FD LTE, makes a lot of sense for P1, Lai explains. Both technologies employ unpaired spectrum and the greater amounts of downloading compared to uploading that fits most people’s internet usage, fits well with the Time Division flavour of LTE, thus maximising the efficiency of the airwaves.

P1’s commitment to furthering the TD-LTE cause has recently been recognised by the fact that it has been added to the steering committee of the Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI). Along with new members E-Plus and KT it now joins an exclusive club that consist of big players such as Bharti Airtel, Softbank, Clearwire, Vodafone and China Mobile.

This is indeed the reason why P1 is moving from WiMAX – to take advantage of a growing eco-system that brings with it economies of scale and the lower prices for devices. “The economies of scale will definitely depend on the movement of the biggest guys such as China Mobile,” Lai observes.

“While we can do a software upgrade on half of our current base stations right now, if we upgrade right away without the eco-system in place, the prices for [devices] will be US$500-1000, which is simply too high. So we will launch in the second-half of next year, depending on how fast the eco-system comes into place. It is going very well so far – we’ll be monitoring it very closely. By the second half of 2013 the dongles and the fixed wireless modem for TD-LTE will be there – it’s just a matter of the price at that point in time. And if China Mobile starting to officially launch next year, they will truly lower the prices of all TD-LTE devices.”

As a data-only player dongles and fixed-line modems are a priority but Lai also has his eye on handsets.  “In the second half of next year, I believe that you will start seeing a small screen smartphone hopefully coming on board as well. But again, it’s what kind of volume it will have, and what kind of model.”

Is he hoping for the big one – a TD-LTE enabled iPhone?

“You can’t run away from the two major US platforms, which are iOS and Android. So to have TD-LTE on a multi-mode, multi-band iPhone or Samsung Android that are compatible with 3G and GSM would be ideal for us – at the right price point.”

As well as the price of devices, the pricing of data in an LTE world is one of the major controversy’s currently raging in the carrier world. Lai is clear though that unlimited data will not be on the cards for P1. “There will not be unlimited, all-you-can-eat [data], which I think most operators are moving away from. You need to manage expectations very well. In terms of value we are positioning LTE to continue to provide value for money in terms of cost-per-bit.”

Lai says that P1 that right now offers better value for money than its 3G rivals. “At the same price point [in Malaysia] 3G operators are offering 5GB, [while] we are actually offering our consumers 15GB right now. [And] we are currently doing it on a big screen, which is even more demanding. Over average volume of data per subscription is currently 17GB per month – mostly for fixed wireless modem [connections].

As a company that is consistently looking to innovate it’s no surprise to find that P1 is already looking at LTE Advanced. “It’s definitely on a roadmap to move from Rev 8/9 to 10,” Lai says. “I think the standard still needs to be finalised even though some vendors have claimed to have done trials on TD-LTE Advanced. But definitely there’s a roadmap. It’s exciting, as that’s when you’ll get theoretically 1Gbps. It’s fibre in the air, without fibre!”

Lai though is not just excited about speed for speeds sake. He also believes that superfast mobile speeds will bring innovative services along with them in their wake.

“When the network is there, at a super high rate, then a lot more innovation will come. And that’s proven over and over again. Take the Korean example; with the high speed broadband they have in the country a lot of innovation has happened in the last ten years. The same with LTE – once the speed is there a lot more innovation will come. Things you could not even image today will start happening.”

He’s confident though that the LTE adventure will be a positive one. “It will be a win-win for all I think.  A win for consumer, for the content provider, and a win for network provider as well. If we can continue to bring benefits for the subscribers and as the same time continue to do better then why not – the business model will start to happen.”

Michael Lai, CEO OF Malaysian operator Packet One is delivering one of the keynotes on Day One of the inaugural TD-LTE Summit, taking place on the 23rd-24th April 2013 at the Fairmont Singapore Hotel, Singapore. Click here to download the brochure

 

LTE launch strategies webinar – What’s working and what isn’t

Informa Telecoms & Media, of which we are a part, regularly conducts Webinar’s conducted by its analysts.

This link is to a recent webinar entitled “LTE launch strategies – What’s working and what isn’t” led by Paul Lambert, Senior Analyst Operator Strategy, and Thomas Wehmeier, Principal Analyst, Operator Strategy.

If you want to listen to it in full, get yourself a cup of tea and a biscuit and strap in as it’s an hour long, or if you’re time starved you can just take a look at the slides.

Highlights include a look at which operators have had the most success, what are some of the lessons learned by those that have launched, what new services have been used to indicate the benefits of LTE, and what the prospects are for revenue generation.

LTE at CES 2013

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the glitzy tech-fest that takes place in Las Vegas ever January, is over for another year. Last year LTE featured heavily with many manufacturers choosing to announce their new-fangled LTE handsets there, ahead of the traditional mobile launchpad that is the Mobile World Congress in February.

However, as LTE is starting to become mainstream there was less activity on the LTE front, but there was still enough  related announcements to give us something to talk about.

T-Mobile announces LTE

T-Mobile USA is the one major network not to have launched an LTE network yet and its CTO Neville Ray made the revelation that the network would finally be launching its LTE network in a matter of weeks. It’s had 4G for some time of course, via the oh-so-clever ruse of telling everyone that its 42Mbps HSPA+ network was 4G. (It is in fact faster than LTE in spectrum constrained locations, but while HSPA+ is the end of the road for UMTS, LTE is just the start for the technology).

Excitingly for T-Mobile customers the iPhone 5 could finally arriving on the network bringing the network up to date with pretty much everyone else.

Ray hinted that it wanted LTE to have been launched in Las Vegas in time of the show, but it didn’t quite make the schedule. Still, if it does launch, any day now, it’s still in advance of the initial plans that had T-Mobile launch in mid-2013 and the company how hopes to have a total of 100m covered by that time.

Verizon bigs up its LTE network

The world’s biggest LTE player Verizon also used CES to show off some impressive stats. It’s CEO Lowell McAdam revealed that its LTE network covers 89 per cent of its footprint just two years after it started and it will be finished its roll out mid-2013, well ahead of its rivals.

In car LTE

In car LTE is becoming a thing. At CES Audi unveiled its latest A3 with LTE build in, courtesy of a Gobi multi-mode 3G/LTE Qualcomm chip. “”We will soon be offering a fully integrated LTE link for our Audi connect services in the new Audi A3 in 2013,” said Ricky Hudi, chief Audi executive engineer.”

The integrated LTE will provide connectivity for up to eight devices in the car. That’s impressive considering that only five passengers can fit in the A3 at once. I guess that’s two each for the four passengers and none for the driver, which is probably best.

RIM, owners of the drowning Blackberry brand, also unveiled an LTE related car to showcase its QNX platform, using a black 2012 Bentley Continental GT. Subtle.

Nvidia Tegra 4 chipset
Nvidia gained a lot of attention at CES for its ‘Shield’ concept, a portable games console powered by its Tegra 4 chipset, running Android yet with dedicated gaming controls – essentially a marriage of the PSP concept with an Android smartphone. Of interest to us though was the LTE support in the newly announced Tegra 4.

The Tegra 4 features an Icera soft-modem. The soft-modem has the advantage of being able to be software updated, which can’t be done with a fixed hardware solution, and this will utilised soon as while it support Category 3 LTE at launch, this is said to be updated to Category 4 in due course. However the downside is that it draws more power than fixed hardware, which for today’s currently battery constrained smartphones isn’t good news. As LTE hits the mainstream it will be interesting to see how many smartphone design wins Tegra 4 gets in 2013.

The road to LTE

While we all are interested in the latest LTE developments, it’s always good to see how it fits in to the wider story of mobile communications.

The website Electronic Design has a good brief article on how we have got to LTE and there’s a link to another article on LTE Advanced at the bottom. Interesting reading.

Interview: “VoLTE is set to play [an] important role within our LTE strategy”: Master Expert System Architect Network, Eplus-gruppe.

The E-Plus Group is the third largest mobile network operator in Germany, with just over 20 per cent market share. Ahead of the LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry taking place on the 24th-26th June 2013 at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands, we speak to Dietmar Kohnenmergen, Master Expert System Architect Network for E-Plus Gruppe about its preparation for launching LTE and the issues around diameter signaling.

What have been the major developments around LTE in your region this year?

For E-Plus Gruppe, the major developments have been an IP RAN rollout and the introduction of EPC and associated testing.

Do you feel the people still need to be educated as to what Diameter signaling is?

The experts are quite familiar with Diameter signalling issues, but the operational teams still need some education.

What are the key issues around Diameter that the industry needs to be aware of?

The primary issues are E-signalling load protection and adaptation to the various needs of the different Diameter flavours.

How can these key issues be solved?

From our perspective the introduction of a Diameter Router Agent is one of the most promising solutions for solving diameter issues.

What are the other technical challenges around LTE that you expect to face in the next 12 months?

The introduction of Circuit-Switched Fall Back (CSFB) with acceptable performance will be a major challenge for us. The other challenge will be the preparation of the BSS systems in time for our LTE launch.

Where are you on VoLTE and RCS? Are these important to your LTE strategy?

VoLTE is in preparation phase, whereas our plans around RCS have not been decided yet. VoLTE is set to play a more important role within our LTE strategy.

Dietmar Kohnenmergen will be giving a presentation on diameter signaling at the LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, taking place on the 24^th-26^th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Click here to download a flyer for the event.

Also put a date in your diary now for the inaugural LTE Voice Summit, taking place in London on the 23^rd-24^th October 2013. Click here NOW to download a flyer.

LTE in 2013: The Top 5 predictions

While it first appeared as a live commercial network technology at the tail end of 2009, it really wasn’t until 2011 that LTE could really be called a mainstream technology. It really hit the ground in 2012 but as it stands it is only really widely deployed in North America, South Korea and Japan. In 2013 however, we expect it to truly become mainstream proposition in many countries around the world, particularly in Europe.

Here then are our Top 5 predictions for LTE in 2013.

1. LTE handsets:

With more LTE networks will inevitably come more LTE handsets. It’s fairly sound logic, but the analyst figures are there to back that up. According to Boston’s Strategy Analytics global sales of LTE smartphones will triple to 275 million handsets in 2013, up from 90 million sold in 2012. It might just be numbers but in many ways it’s quite exciting. With LTE networks and LTE handsets in people’s hands the rise of cloud services can really start to accelerate and encourage innovation as companies begin to compete for dominance in this rising space.

2.  Emergence of LTE in Africa:

One of most interesting areas for LTE in 2013 will be the emergence of the standard in Africa. That’s not to say it will hit the mainstream – anything but, but the technology will start to impact the continent. Vodacom is currently the only live service has launched in South Africa, with 70 active base stations at launch, while MTN is readying a limited launch service in Durban, Pretoria and Johannesburg, while Cell C has been making plans to. There are concerns such as high CAPEX costs, a lack of devices and a lack of spectrum to contend with. Nevertheless Informa Telecoms & Media is predicting 350,000 LTE subscriptions in Africa by the end of 2012. These issues and more, will be address at the LTE Africa conference, taking place on the 16^th-17^th July 2013 in Cape Town, South Africa. Click here to download the flyer for the event.

3.  TD-LTE: Big in China

China was well known for furrowing its own path for 3G, using the TD-SCDMA standard so it would not have to be beholden to western technology standards. It’s sticking with TD for 4G, but crucially it looks as though this Time Division thing is going to be pretty popular worldwide. Sprint in the US is using it, as it P1 is Malaysia and of course as the world’s largest operator in terms of subscribers, anything the China Mobile uses it going to have a huge impact of economies of scale. With well over a 100 TD-LTE at the moment 2013 could be a breakthrough year for TD-LTE.

The LTE Asia conference is taking place on the 18^th-19^th September 2013 at the Suntec, Singapore. Click here to download a brochure for the event.

 4.   VoLTE: Only fools rush in

Using Circuit switched Fallback for voice calls when you have an LTE network is horrible from a technical purist viewpoint, but with no negative customer feedback operators are not going to hurry to introduce new technology. Just ask Verizon Wireless and EE, who have already announced that they are pushing out their timelines for the commercial deployment of VoLTE. SK Telecom and Metro PCS may have deployed but we don’t see many joining them in 2013. To quote Mark Newman, Chief Research Officer at Informa Telecoms & Media, “A business case that looks to be based solely on spectrum efficiency will struggle to gain enough executive support to justify a rushed investment plan”.

Put the date in your diary now for the inaugural LTE Voice Summit, taking place in London on the 23^rd-24^th October 2013. Click here NOW to download a flyer.

5.   LTE Small-Cell Backhaul:

Some comment from wireless infrastructure vendor Ruckus Wireless summed this up well with the following comment:

The launch of commercial 4G services from EE in October saw the UK join the LTE race. In order to achieve the network capacity required by increasing mobile data traffic, it will be necessary to augment these LTE macrocell build-outs with an underlay of small cells. This represents a new, and very significant, backhaul challenge because the mounting locations for these small cells (typically street lamps and traffic signals) are not a natural fit for fibre or microwave backhaul solutions. The optimum solution to this challenge is to use Wi-Fi in the 5GHz band to backhaul this traffic to a place where Ethernet is available. We will see lots of activity here as small cells are integrated in Wi-Fi APs, so that one unit can provide both small cells access and Wi-Fi backhaul.

 The LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, is taking place on the 24^th-26^th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Click here to download a flyer for the event.

A year in LTE – the top 10 news stories of the year

Merry Christmas to all our readers!

As the year draws to a close its natural that we take stock and look back at what has happened in the LTE industry over the past year.

The US market took off in a big way as AT&T and Verizon competed to beef up their LTE networks, while South Korea and Japan saw a large influx of LTE subscribers boosting numbers worldwide.

VoLTE services also became a reality as MetroPCS and SKT launched the technology. As LTE networks began to spring up across Europe even the UK got its LTE act together and launched a live service towards the end of the year.

TD-LTE is also expanding its reach, with networks staring to deploy in China and areas such as Malaysia. This will be looked at in more depth at the brand new TD-LTE Summit, taking place on the 23rd-24th April 2013 at the Fairmont Singapore Hotel, Singapore.

A great way of gauging the events of the last year is to take a look at the top ten news articles that have appeared on our sister publication Telecoms.com.

It’s exclusive revelation that Apple vets LTE networks was not only the top LTE story of the year, it was the most read Telecoms.com news story ever, despite only going up two weeks ago!

While 2012 was big for LTE, 2013 is set to be even bigger as the technology consolidates itself in Europe and begins to spread to new markets such as Africa, and we’ll be celebrating this at the LTE Africa conference, taking place on the 16th-17th July 2013 in Cape Town, South Africa.

We look forward to continuing to bring you all the latest exciting LTE developments in 2013 and all of these hot topics will be covered in depth across our LTE events series in 2013.

Happy holidays and see you all next year!

1. Apple vetting operators on LTE network performance –  November 30, 2012:

A little snippet in a Swisscom press release and an unwitting confirmation from said company was all it took to reveal that Apple calls the shots when it comes to which LTE networks the iPhone 5 can run on. One leading industry consultant was “shocked” by the revelations but really we all already knew where the power now lies in the industry. World’s Most Valuable Company 1 – Telecoms Industry 0.

2. Samsung deploys Three UK’s LTE network – August 24, 2012:

Samsung has already become a major force in handsets, so it makes sense that the Korean firm wants to do the same as a network equipment vendor. It has already done deals in the US, Japan and Middle-East and a deal with 3UK to supply it with LTE RAN equipment gives it an important foothold in Europe too.

3. Middle East operators facing problems over LTE spectrum, devices and pricing – May 1 2012:

Devices and prices. These are two core elements that hold back the take up of any new network and this post LTE MENA conference analysis from Informa principal analyst Matthew Reed showed that it was proving no different for LTE in the Middle-East.

4. New LTE devices to shake up smartphone market – January 10, 2012:

Speaking of devices, the LTE market got a shot in the arm right at the beginning of the year when Sony, Nokia and Huawei all announced LTE handsets: the Xperia S, the Lumia 900 and Ascend P1 S respectively. A handset released at the other end of the year had greater impact, but these got there first

5. Vodafone seethes as Ofcom clears UK LTE1800 launch – August 21, 2012:

The backwards and forwards appeal process between the four big UK networks related to the 4G spectrum auction was getting so farcical it could well have been set to a Benny Hill soundtrack. UK regulator Ofcom clearly felt it had had enough of all this silliness and decided to let EE refarm its 1800 spectrum and launch LTE. Vodafone was not pleased. Cue Benny Hill music.

6. First LTE phone coming to Vodafone Germany – February 9, 2012:

It’s all very well having an LTE network, but to go mainstream you need phones. Lots of phones. Cue much excitement then in February when the first LTE handset for the European market turned up on Vodafone D2 in Germany. It might actually have been a Samsung Galaxy S2 on Tele2 that beat it to the punch, but either way the LTE ball had started rolling.

7. Brazilian operators select LTE provider – October 11, 2012:

As a worldwide technology, LTE benefits from an expansive eco-system and the resultant economies of scale. Telefonica Brazil and local incumbent Oi both announced their LTE plays in Brazil in October, with Ericsson the main beneficiary on the vendor side

8. UK welcomes new LTE brand; now rivals must step up – September 11, 2012:

Once Ofcom got the aforementioned Benny Hill music to finally stop, EE, the new 4G brand from France Telecom and Deutsche Telecom’s joint UK play Everything Everywhere, was finally able to launch its LTE network in the UK. As the dust settled Telecoms.com’s managing editor James Middleton analysed the fallout from EE’s disruptive move.

9. LTE and the backhaul challenge – January 12, 2012:

With so much attention placed in the RAN, it’s important to remember the importance of backhaul in ensuring the performance of the network remains strong. Back in January Dawinderpal Sahota took a closer look at the various technologies involved.

10. Rogers lights up Canadian LTE network - July 8, 2012:

Not wanting to let the US have all the fun, Canadian operator Rogers lit up its LTE network in July. We were amused that as it had already dubbed its HSPA+ services as 4G, it was forced to market its LTE network as “Beyond 4G”. Blame Canada.

Who’s in? Deadline for applications for UK 4G spectrum auction closes

This post is by Thomas Wehmeier, Principal Analyst, Operator Strategies, Informa Telecoms & Media

Following swiftly on from EE’s launch of the UK’s first live 4G network just a few weeks ago, today marks the next important milestone in the establishment of a genuinely competitive market for 4G services in the UK.

The passing of today’s deadline for prospective bidders to submit applications takes us one step closer to the completion of the highly controversial, long-awaited and largest ever auction of spectrum in the UK. Bidding itself won’t actually start for real until January and we’re likely to see weeks of intensive bid rounds until the results proper are finalised by February or March next year.

As far as the UK’s mobile operators are concerned, this can’t happen soon enough. Despite the encouraging signs we’ve seen since EE went live, the UK is still lagging far and away behind the world’s most advanced 4G market(s). To put it context, by the time the remaining 4G networks are switched on at some point in the middle of next year, more than one-third of Korean and about 20% of Japanese consumers will already be actively using 4G services in their respective countries.

But that’s not to say that we don’t expect to see a marked acceleration in the pace of 4G adoption in the UK next year. By that point, most of the high-end flagship phones on sale in the UK will support 4G technology, we can expect to see some pretty competitive pricing as the markets kicks into life and the inevitable blanket market campaigns are sure to lift interest in and adoption of 4G amongst UK consumers.

How much is the auction expected to raise and who will bid?

It’s fair to say we’re expecting the amount raised to represent just a fraction of the record £22.5 billion spent during the 3G licensing round in April 2000. We have to remember that those were exceptional times, before the dotcom bubble burst and at the height of hype around mobile, and the industry will be much more cautious this time around, not least because of the weak economy and the declining revenues that many operators are suffering in the UK and across Europe.

In his recent Autumn Statement, the UK Chancellor George Osborne pegged the amount the UK Treasury is hoping to raise at £3.5 billion, which puts the official view slightly above industry expectations, but broadly on par with the amounts raised in similar auctions in other European markets such as Germany.

We’re expecting the auction to attract all the usual suspects , meaning the UK’s existing mobile operators Vodafone, Telefonica O2, 3 UK and, of course, EE, who’ll be looking to bolster their existing 4G spectrum position.

What we don’t know and can’t predict is whether we’ll see any wildcard bids. There’s been plenty of industry speculation about the possibility of some of the UK’s other telecoms and media powerhouses, the likes of Virgin Media, Sky or BT, entering the fray, but the experience of looking to other markets that have held similar auctions means we should be surprised if there is a genuinely disruptive and large-scale bid from one of the players. It can’t be ruled out, but it would certainly be unexpected.

The LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, is taking place on the 24^th-26^th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Click here to download a flyer for the event.

Inverting the Pyramid

So now it’s official. It seems that we now have conclusive proof that when it comes to LTE and the iPhone 5, Apple is the one calling the shots – not the carriers.

A report on our sister publication Telecoms.com has confirmed as much after a Swisscom spokesperson inadvertently confirmed it in a report on its LTE network going live.

While full credit goes to Telecoms.com for breaking the story, it was some digging by yours truly that led to confirmation of the news.

While researching the Swisscom story, in its press release Swisscom said that its LTE network would be going live on a triumvirate of frequencies, 800, 1800 and 2600MHz. However, in the release Swisscom said that, “Apple will provide a software update in due course for customers with an iPhone 5 or one of the new iPads.” This piqued my interest, as the iPhone 5 supports 1800MHz LTE, so surely is would simply be a case if putting in a compatible SIM and letting it do its thing.

It seems not. After I enquired further about this Swisscom got back to me to say that, “The iPhone 5 requires a software update since Apple only enables 4G access after having successfully tested their device on an operators live network.”

Wow.

What’s interesting about this is now it demonstrates that the pyramid has been inverted. Bengt Nordstrom, founder and CEO at industry consultancy NorthStream said he was ‘shocked’ by the news and that it proved that Apple is, “running the industry”, adding: “Apple have put themselves in the driving seat; it’s really changing the game.”

Operators used to be the ones who gave the go ahead on whether a device was good enough for its network – not the other way round. Carriers used to have the power to make or break a network. There are some who think that this has contributed to HTC’s decline over the last couple of years – with Samsung’s Android device getting most of the subsidy love in the US over HTC.

But as the most valuable company in the world Apple has a power that no one else has. It evidently conducts its own tests to determine whether the network is good enough, and only then will enable its phone to operate on that network via a software update.

It does have strong reasons for doing this. After the release of the original iPhone in 2007 exclusively on AT&T, Apple took a lot of flak after poor reports of performance on that network, and there was nothing it could do to correct that impression.

Now it can ensure that the network experience is as positive as possible, and after the Maps debacle and various other issues it needs to ensure it can do what it can to bolster its reputation.

From an industry perspective, the carriers are unlikely to be happy with this change in the power swing but the success of the iPhone means that the power is now in Apple’s hands and that is showing no sign of waning – just recently Sprint spent heavily (US$15billion over four years) to get the iPhone on its roster.

If you are to judge from the comments left on this story on the various sites around the web, (that is after all how we get a sense of these things these days) there are many punters that seem pleased that Apple is now running that show and dictating things to the carriers. Despite Apple being the one making the huge profits, many view the carriers as the ones restricting customers choice and squeezing the dollars from them anyway they can. While the network is central to what consumers want to do, what the carriers offer is invisible to most of them.

All that implies that when it comes to persuading consumers that the networks have the services that they want and should be paying for, such as Joyn, the operators are going to have their work cut out for them.

LTE North America – What will LTE Advanced bring? (Panel session video)

One of the best things about LTE events is not just the presentations, but the panel sessions. These give the audience an opportunity to hear the views of key figures in the industry on a particular topic and it’s always interesting to get to hear the different views and opinions.

Here are three short clips from the panel discussion on Day One regarding LTE Advanced. With LTE rollouts progressing well from Verizon, AT&T, MetroPCS, U.S. Cellular and Clearwire, thoughts are already turning to what’s next.

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In part one we have we have Krish Prabhu, CTO of AT&T labs, Jesse Hurwitz, global strategy mobile platforms at Google, Daniel Lönnblad, director of technology, Sony Mobile and Ahmad Armand, Staff VP LTE, MetroPCS, with the session moderated by Alan Quayle of Alan Quayle Business & Service Development.

Ahmad Armand of Metro PCS notes that to one of the features of LTE Advanced is its support for 8×8 MIMO, but this will require devices with more antennas. He notes that admittedly only larger devices such as tablets are likely to actually be able to feature this.

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In part two the simple question is once we get LTE Advanced – “Is DSL dead”.

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In part three we had something a bit different – one word answers to specific questions. As you can see, our panellists are somewhat reluctant to stick to the one word answer scheme but listen as Krish Prabhu gets a good laugh for his response to the question, “Will customers still be paying for voice and SMS!”

For more videos from key speakers at LTE North America 2012 be sure to check out our LTE World Series YouTube channel.

The Mysterious Case of the Google Nexus and the Phantom LTE Chip

If there was any proof that what smartphone users really, really want is LTE then the exciting story of the Google Nexus Phone and the Phantom LTE chip should put paid to that.

When Google released its latest smartphone, the Nexus 4, all and sundry were duly shocked and surprised to find that it lacked LTE support. This truly was unexpected, as all recent flagship smartphone releases, such as the Samsung Galaxy SIII and the iPhone 5 have featured LTE support.

Google’s explanation for this, delivered by Android head honcho Andy Rubin, was that it was a ‘tactical issue’, which of course means nothing. He also cited cost and battery life concerns but the most likely suggestion for the omission that I have seen is that if Google included LTE that it would not have had to do deals with the carriers in the US to get onto their network, and that would have prevented it from selling the phone unlocked in its own online store – which would essentially defeat the purpose of having a Google branded phone, and eat into its revenue.

However, it turned out that while LTE was not on the list, it had still gatecrashed the party.

iFixit, a web site that loves its teardowns, where a gadget is taken apart to find out what lurks within, discovered that there was indeed, an LTE chip nestling inside the LG manufactured phone. So why was it not turned on?

This time the explanation had to come from LG, and the quote was:

“In order to provide the best possible specification for Nexus 4, LG utilised the same powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset as can be found in its 4G LTE product, namely LG Optimus G. This powerful chipset is only available with a combined processor and modem and cannot be implemented separately.”

In other words it was cheaper for LG to leave the LTE chip in there than use a different chipset sans LTE.

The reason it could not be activated LG said was the LTE requires a dedicated antenna and filter to operate correctly for each frequency. This is what adds, bulk, cost and complexity to smartphones and one of the reasons why not all bands can be supported.

That seemed to be the end of that, until it turns out that some crafty people had managed to get that LTE chip to do its thing using some software tweaks. Users on the XDA developers forum (or in other words – hackers!) discovered a settings menu that enables them to turn on the LTE- and lo and behold it worked. So is this affordable LTE for everyone? (The Nexus 4 only costs around £250, compared to £600 for an iPhone 5).

Well, not for everyone. The hardware only supports Band 4, which is 2110MHz for the downlink and 1710MHz for the uplink. The only operator that use that is Telus in Canada, which is great for them, but not much use anywhere else. (See missing antenna’s and filters mentioned earlier).

It’s interesting though, as it reveals how politics, control and money can affect how devices and gadgets are implemented. It also demonstrates that ‘old skool’ hackery is alive and well. We are in the ‘post-PC era’ and mobile phones, particularly if they are running Android, are like PCs ‘back in the day’ – intriguing, powerful, and eminently hackable.

UK LTE – The Best is Yet to Come

This post is by Bengt Nordstrom, co-founder and CEO of strategic wireless business consultancy, Northstream,

The intense UK media coverage around Everything Everywhere’s (EE) LTE service launch could have fooled people into thinking it was the first launch of its kind. There are, in fact, a total of 113 operators with live networks across 51 countries, according to the Global Mobile Suppliers Association. EE is trailblazing a new path for the UK mobile industry, but this route is not without its controversies and challenges. Bengt Nordstrom, co-founder and CEO of strategic wireless business consultancy Northstream, discusses the UK’s first LTE network launch and whether EE’s gamble to go early will pay off.

4G or not 4G….

The UK regulator Ofcom, much to the consternation of rival operators, allowed EE to re-farm its 1800MHz spectrum to launch LTE services in October. However, prior to this, the regulator had earned widespread condemnation for displaying a lack of leadership in allowing the UK operator community to constantly appeal its decisions. This led to massive delays in the UK spectrum auctions taking place; which in turn has prevented commercial LTE service availability and left the UK trailing its European neighbours.

However, the UK is now catching up, with its first live LTE network. More are now set to follow, with the news that Ofcom will auction LTE spectrum licences, at a reserve of £1.3 billion. It is likely that the auctions will raise three of four times this amount of money. A staggering amount given the state of the global economy; and considering how energised the UK Government appear to be regarding LTE deployment. It seems an enigma why regulators make sense of taxing operators who are prepared to build out critical mobile infrastructure.

Despite the cost, these auctions will have the positive outcome that Vodafone, O2 and 3UK will now get their chance to launch LTE. At the moment though a marketing war has erupted – in which EE’s rivals scramble to differentiate themselves and retain their subscribers. For example, Vodafone has launched a £4.5m national newspaper campaign with the tagline “not all 4G networks are the same”; claiming that Vodafone’s signal will travel “further into your home” and is the only mobile network to “own a nationwide fibre backbone”.

A war of words is one thing, but it will be difficult for competitors to respond to EE’s latest move. Although UK 4G coverage is currently limited there is a genuine buzz among consumers about LTE, following the huge amount of publicity it has received. LTE is the service subscribers are keen on; and EE is offering that now. The reality is that operators will not have a fitting response to EE’s LTE offering, until they deploy LTE themselves next year.

The Price is Right?

EE’s 24 month LTE tariffs, ranging from £36 for 500MB up to £56 for 8GB, have drawn criticism on price and how much data they provide. Downloading a one hour programme on BBC’s iPlayer consumes roughly half the 500MB data allowance the lowest priced EE plan offers. It is commonplace for the first mover in the market to have the advantage. EE has done this by setting the bar high on its LTE tariff plans. However, this premium period should only last a short time. There will be a decline in LTE price plans as other operators enter the market. EE may potentially make an early move to lower prices as they seek to control the market as Vodafone, O2 and 3UK plan their entry.

Higher prices for LTE won’t trouble the initial audience; predominantly early adopters and corporate subscribers. There is also a huge market for LTE USB dongles. EE’s dongle tariffs start at £15.99 for 2GB, up to £25.99 for 5GB, and the device is available from free up to £49.99. This is an attractive alternative to ADSL from fixed line providers. Especially for residents of semi-rural areas who suffer slow speeds as they are far away from the switch. Young professionals living in shared accommodation will also find LTE dongles an easy, convenient and cost effective way to get online. This is a market in which EE can really outperform and provide challenging competition to fixed line players. Traditional telcos would have to deploy an increased amount of fibre to compete with LTE coverage; making it very costly for them to stay in touching distance of EE.

The Challenge Ahead

But deploying LTE does pose some technical challenges; and one of the biggest is backhaul. Fibre to the base stations is required to ensure they leverage LTE’s throughput capabilities. EE will need a lot of lead time to deploy fibre; and it is not an easily available off-the-shelf product. WiFi, a rapidly maturing and familiar technology, is not perfect, but could plug coverage gaps and be a solid foil for EE and its macro LTE network.

The other challenge is one that is unique to LTE over 1800MHz – limited indoor coverage. An 1800MHz base station grid just doesn’t penetrate buildings as well. It will be important for EE to deal with this issue as the majority of smartphone usage occurs indoors. Deploying base stations in buildings is not practical or affordable. Small cells remain a remote concept and a great deal more unrealistic than many perceive. Their unit cost, and the amount required, makes them increasingly unviable solution for operators. In order to provide a good user experience EE needs the combination of 1800MHz and 800MHz; with LTE deployed over 800MHz for better indoor coverage.

It will take time for EE’s LTE network to mature, but there was no reason it took such a long time to launch LTE in the UK. However, the country has not suffered due to the delay. Now 4G is live, the UK has a good chance of reaching the level the rest of Europe is at by 2014. But for a market with such a long tradition of being influential in mobile, the UK’s LTE delay has certainly dented its prestige.

Bengt Nordström biography

Bengt co-founded Northstream in 1998 and has been its CEO ever since. Prior to founding Northsream, Bengt held the position of CTO and Executive Director of Smartone in Hong Kong. Other management positions include Ericsson, Comviq and Netcom consultants. Bengt has also held been on the Executive Committee of the GSM Association as well as chairing its Asia Pacific Interest Group.

Pricing strategies will be a major focus of the LTE World Summit, taking place on the 24^th – 26^th June 2013 at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Click here to pre-register for the event.