Will LTE prove to be a life-saver?

LTE isn’t just a great technology for uploading pictures of the cake you just baked to Facebook – it could soon prove to be a life-saving technology. What the public is becoming increasingly aware that LTE is the technology behind ‘4G’ not many realise that plans are underway in the US for it to be to be used to build a public safety network.

This is a network that is set aside from the regular communications networks, exclusively for use by first responders in an emergency situation, such as terrorism or natural disasters. While these systems already exists it is hoped that the introduction of LTE will enable these first responders to act even more quickly and effectively thanks, in the main, to one of LTE’s key features – speed. An LTE public safety network should be several times faster than the networks currently in place, enabling information to be sent and received faster and more reliably.

As such, an LTE-based system called FirstNet is currently being discussed in the US and  the opening sentence of this report prepared for the US Congress on FirstNet, indicates how acutely the issue is felt in the country, stating that, “[on] September 11, 2001…. communications failures contributed to the tragedies of the day.”

The recent events on 20 April in Boston have once again brought attention on the progress being made in developing a newer public safety network and in a recent meeting of the FirstNet board the matter of how an LTE powered FirstNet could have helped in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing was discussed.

According to this report the most relevant assistance it might have brought was to board member Kevin McGinnis, who is also CEO of North East Mobile Health Services. He said that he can monitor the health of up to 20 patients on his smartphone in real time – but to do that a robust reliable network is required. Presumably this isn’t so that he can ‘work from home’ but rather he can help more people by being in more places at once, as it were, by having life-saving data at his fingertips.

Another example given at the meeting was by board member Charles “Chuck” Dowd, deputy chief of the New York City police department who said that bomb squads from different areas sometimes pooled resources and used real-time HD video to work together to diffuse devices. HD video is of course one of the things the LTE does best.

In an interview with the LTE World Series earlier this year, Tony Gray, board member of the TETRA & Critical Communications Association (TCCA) and chair of the Critical Communications Broadband Group (CCBG), pointed out that the public safety community can benefit from the economies of scale the LTE provides, lowering prices and time-to-market of equipment, which up to now has been proprietary and expensive. However, he also pointed out that LTE as a standard will have to adapted to meet the specific requirements of the critical communications community in the areas of group-based operation, fast call set-up and off-network, device-to-device working.

This and other issues will be addressed at the LTE Public Safety expo that is taking place on the show floor on day two of the LTE World Summit on Tuesday 25^th June. At the expo, which is free to attend, you’ll also get to hear from other key Public Safety experts such as Emil Olbrich, lead project engineer for NIST, and Herman van Sprakelaar, who is in charge of tactical management for the Netherlands Police.

While we all hope that critical communications will never have to be used, it is reassuring to know that LTE technology will soon be on hand to assist in these worst-case scenarios.

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 brochure for 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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

EE LTE: First impressions – fast but pricey

As you may have seen the UK finally joined the 4G club today as EE as put its devices on sale through its new rebranded stores. Gone are Orange and T-Mobile shops, and in their stead are EE stores – with the Orange and T-Mobile logos neatly placed in the corner so people have some idea what this newcomer to the high street is all about.

I walked in to the store on Tottenham Court Road in the heart of London and to take a look at the store and see what sort of speeds the network was offering on Day One. I initially picked up a Samsung Galaxy S3 (which is huge by the way) and looked to run a speed test. However, I noticed that the phone was connected via Wi-Fi, which on a display stand advertising EE 4G doesn’t seem like the smartest move. I tried to manually go into the settings and turn it off, but was thwarted by a password screen. Not a great start.

I then picked up another Android phone of unknown (or at least unremembered) parentage, but was immediately put off by the cheap, plasticky feel and the confusing mess of icons that is Android. Where does one start with that OS? It’s hard to know. I didn’t have time to mess around so with relief I found on display an iPhone 5 – connected to EE LTE, with Wi-Fi. The Speedtest.net app was preinstalled, so I just had to fire it up – simples.

On first attempt I got 13.90Mbps down and 9.80Mbps. The latter is impressive – faster than my home connection, but the former – a bit meh. The second go was better – 26.68Mbps down and 13.27Mbps up. Not bad, not bad at all. Of course, this is day one – the equivalent of driving sports car at speed on an empty motorway – but it’s promising.

If we’re being harsh, and we are, one thing to note to note is the ping of 50ms – good, but not outstanding. That said, we’ve been told that LTE would be responsive, and it was. Web pages loaded quickly, video streamed instantly and I could scrub through with no lag.

While I was using the phone an assistant came up to me and asked if he could help. I asked if he could make EE tariffs cheaper. He looked bemused.

Much has been made of the fact that the EE prices seem very expensive to UK consumers. There’s the £36 starting point for a 500MB of data, and £56 a month top whack for £56 8GB on a lengthy two-year contract . If you’ve bought a phone outright and you want SIM only, you need to pay £31 a month for 3GB and £36 for 5GB. I’m paying £10 a month for unlimited data, so in no way do the EE tariffs seem attractive to me.

The service I’m with, an MVNO on O2 called Giffgaff offers low tariffs but has no shiny stores to pay for, and no phone-based customer care either – just a website and a forum full of knowledgeable, active users who can help you in seconds if you need assistance. The types you might say, that would be very likely to want to be early adopters of a fast network to really make the most of data, and would probably pay a bit more to get it. A bit more – maybe 100% more – but not 260% more.

One has to wonder who EE is aiming for, with its big stores, big phones, and its big prices. Not me. I sent the helper on his way, and I went on mine.

EE names its price

After months, nay years, of waiting, what is arguably the most important date for UK LTE is here. EE, the network that will launch the UK’s first national LTE service a week today, has announced its prices, giving UK consumer a first look at what they will have to pay to use the service. And as they say, the proof is in the pricing.

The prices cover subsidised smartphone plans, SIM-only plans, mobile broadband USB,  mobile wifi devices, and fixed-line broadband using both standard ADSL and fibre-to-the-cabinet, but what will interest the man/woman on the street though are the phone plans – and the starting tariff is £36 a month for a phone with unlimited calls, unlimited texts—and 500MB of data. A 1GB allowance is £41, 5GB takes it up to £36. The top-tier is an 8GB allowance at £56.

Move to SIM-only and 500MB will cost you ‘only’ £21. Its £25 for 1GB, £31 for 3GB and £36 for 5GB. There’s no 8GB SIM-only option for some reason.

This could be a problem.

Assuming a download speed of 15Mbps (we actually saw 27Mbps in the speed test at launch), and that entry-level 500MB of data could be downloaded in less than five minutes. Which, assuming 43,800 minutes in a month, would leave you with 43,795 minutes remaining with which you can’t not use the internet on your 4G phone.  You could pace yourself of course – but that would equate to around 10 seconds of full-tilt LTE a day. Whoopee.

Of course, that’s an exaggeration of real world use – you don’t tend to use that much data in one go on your phone, but even snacking on data, 500MB is a little on the lean side, to say the least.

What these expensively priced data buckets don’t seem to take into account is the way that LTE should change the way people uses their phones. Fast access will make using cloud and streaming services second nature – but if they do, they will run into their data allowances almost immediately.

Olaf Swantee, the chief executive of EE told Rory Cellan-Jones, Technology Correspondent for the BBC that, “”We really think we’ve priced it at the sweet spot,” and, “it’s all based on months of consumer research.”

From the look of my Twitter feed the UK public would beg to differ.

This from UK tech site TechRadar – “Lots of anger about EE’s 4G pricing – if it was £36/month for 1GB, would that sway you? What would you be willing to pay?”

This from a punter – “If I switch to a 4G contract (still paying £36/month) my data allowance goes from Unlimited to 500MB! Kept that one quiet! @EE.” and “Over promising and over pricing! When will@ThreeUK have 4G.”

The Editor of PC Pro said, “EE has just blown all first-mover advantage with those ridiculous 4G tariffs. Shareholders must hold CEO accountable.”

And this from yours truly – “Initial reaction to @EE prices – they’re horrible. 5GB SIM only for £36? That’s a 260% hike on what I currently pay for data. I’m out. #4G.”

On the plus side there are some real positives. EE has said that tethering is allowed, as is VoIP and for £5 a month extra, the tariffs can be used when roaming across Europe and is several other selected countries, among which are Australia, China, India, Israel, Russia and the USA. In addition, free access to BT wifi is included, and as a value-add, EE is offering EE Film, which enables customers to stream one film of choice to any device a month, without impacting their data allowance.

The fact that despite promises that EE would only place a modest premium on LTE, these are in fact premium prices for a premium service. The mass market will have to wait for the other networks to join the LTE party (and if you’re an die-hard iPhone fan that will mean an iPhone 6 will be required  – the iPhone 5 will not support 800/2.6GHz LTE).

From a pure industry perspective, EE’s rivals in the market should be pleased with EE’s pricing strategy. Theyr’e not too low that all the value has been taken out of the market at the start, and there’s scope for them  to be more competitive when their services come online.

When that happens EE will be likely to be forced to lower prices, but for now, the price levels indicate that it is trying to take as much advantage of its first mover position as possible to generate revenue. That‘s good news for the industry – but less so for the consumer.

UK carriers joining forces over 800MHz LTE

Good news in the UK LTE market, as Three, EE, Telfonica and Vodafone have actually joined forces to speed up the use of 800MHz for mobile broadband.

One of the issues around the use of 800MHz is that the signals are likely to knock out terrestrial digital TV signals, known in the UK as Freeview. The four operators have created the Digital Mobile Spectrum group, which is tasked with ensuring that Freeview consumers in the UK do not suffer from interference from 800MHz LTE, an issue that if not dealt with could put a stumbling block on launching the technology. Under the plans, the four will contribute to a 180m pot of cash that will be used for equipment to tackle interference that up to an estimated 2.3m homes could face once 800MHz LTE launches. However, any operator that fails to win any 800MHz spectrum will not have to contribute and will drop out of the company.

How it will work in practice is that eligible households will receive a voucher to cover the cost of a special filter, which will be attached to the Freeview box in the living room. In some situations the funding will pay for an engineer visit, and in extreme situations where there’s no chance of terrestrial TV working again – presumably is they live right next to a LTE800MHz macros station. Interestingly, for around 500 homes in the UK, there will be no acceptable alternative – it’s unclear if the fund will extend to letting these poor people move home. (NB. This is a joke).

Either way, it’s a market of how serious the government and the operators to get this 4G thing moving and the coming together is in everyone’s interest.

Ofcom, the UK regulator pulled out an unusual masterstroke in allowing Everything Everywhere to refarm its spare 1800MHz frequency for LTE despite it clearly placing it at an advantage over its rivals who do not have such spectrum to spare. After initially throwing their toys out the pram, the move has clearly made the rival realise that they need to fight back with network engineers rather than with lawyers and get their own LTE plans going to earn revenue.

Therefore Three, Vodafone, and Telefonica won’t want anything to further delay their LTE plans, while Everything Everywhere will not want to be seen to be unfairly extended their LTE lead, which from an initial 12 months is now more likely to be six months.

As far as UK consumers go that’s a win.

How MetroPCS has handled interference between macro and small cells is one of the discussion points in the tracks that Small Cells North America conference being co-located at LTE North America 2012 taking place on the 14-15^th November 2012. Click here to register your interest

4G in the UK: Timelines settled, now fight for the customers

This is a guest post by Francesco Radicati, an analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, provider of strategic insight, global market data and primary research.

The UK’s 4G saga may have reached its climax in August with Everything Everywhere receiving permission to launch its own LTE network early, but the story isn’t over yet. UK regulator Ofcom announced yesterday that it would move forward the auction for the Digital Dividend creating by switching off analogue TV, and that clearance of TV transmitters will be brought forward by around five months.

This is a clear concession to O2 and Vodafone, who were the most vocal in criticizing the decision to let EE launch 4G on its 1800MHz spectrum. Given the uncertainty over dates and the long lead times, both operators faced potential waits of around a year to launch their own 4G networks. Add to that the fact that Apple’s new iPhone 5, which hit the market just a few weeks after Ofcom’s announcement, only supports LTE over the 1800MHz frequency in the UK; this might not be an operator’s worst nightmare, but it must certainly be high on the list.

As I said back in August, the danger remained of O2 and Vodafone mounting a legal challenge to stop EE being able to launch its 4G network. But it looks like we’ve avoided that particular nuclear option, which would have caused even more delays; more to the point, it looks like everybody’s (just about) gotten what they wanted.

Click here to to read the rest of the post:

iPhone 5 expands LTE support but European/US roaming headaches remain

As the dust finally settles post iPhone, the tech blogs and comments sections the internet over are overflowing as Apple vs Android owners get embroiled in largely pointless arguments over the various merits of their preferred platform. As far as my own predictions based on rumours go, the only significant things I got wrong were the name (iPhone 5, not the new iPhone-phew) – and the lack of 800MHz LTE support, which I’ll get onto shortly. (It all mounted to a rather anti-climatic reveal, which made me long for the days when Apple announcement leaks were rare).

As far as we’re concerned though the major news of course was that, as was entirely expected, the iPhone 5 now offers LTE support. Crucially, for European and Asian operators and their customers, the iPhone 5 now supports their networks too, thus avoiding the disappointment that many faced when they realised that the iPad 3, which was touted as 4G capable, in fact only operated on US, Canadian and Japanese LTE networks.

This time, Apple has laid out the exact specs of what countries that will get LTE support, but there are still a couple of major LTE limitations that some may not realise.

The Verizon iPhone 5 can roam between the the US and Europe on LTE- but the other two iPhone variants can’t

There are three SKU’s of iPhone 5 with different LTE chips– (the A1428) a GSM model supporting AT&T in the US and Canadian networks, and the A1429 CDMA model for Verizon, Sprint and KDDI in Japan and the A1429 GSM model for the rest of the world.

This means that if you buy an iPhone 5 in Europe, you won’t be able to roam in the US on LTE, at all. However, the CDMA A1429 supports 1800MHz, so if you buy that one in the US, you should then be able to use in on 1800MHz LTE networks in the UK such as EE.

Secondly, there is no support for 800MHZ and 2.6GHz frequencies at all, which many operators, such as O2 and Vodafone in the UK, will be using for LTE once the auctions are complete and they get their networks up and running. Therefore their customers are going to have to wait for the iPhone 6 to get LTE support.

This is a double whammy blow for O2 and Vodafone in the UK, as on top of losing customers defecting to EE to get LTE now, they also have to contend with the fact that some customer’s may not be willing to commit to a two-year contract on the iPhone 5.

The LTE chip inside the iPhone 5 is Qualcomm’s MDM9615M. It’s a very impressive chip, built on a 28nm manufacturing process which makes for low power consumption yet still supports LTE in both FDD and TDD flavours and 3G in DC-HSPA+, EV-DO Rev-B and TD-SCDMA guise – the latter making it well suited for China.

However, the multiple frequencies required for LTE clearly make it impractical to offer a single chip version and maintain performance and power. It looks as though we’ll have to wait at least a year for Europe/Asia and US support in a single device, Apple or otherwise, while the ‘world-phone’ status that the iPhone 4S offered to become a reality in a highly fragmented LTE world.

LTE roaming is one of the many topics on the agenda at the LTE Asia conference, coming up NEXT WEEK at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. If you’re interesting in attending, there’s still time to register here.

UK finally joins the LTE fast track

Today Olaf Swantee, the CEO of UK carrier Everything Everywhere, newly dubbed EE, confirmed that announced that finally, LTE was coming to the UK. In fact, it’s here already. As you read this, shiny new LTE 1800 signals are shooting out from masts in four of the launch cities that have been turned on today for testing purposes, these being London, Birmingham, Cardiff and Bristol.

A word on the brand name change: Everything Everywhere to EE. It may not be the greatest name for a network, but it’s a darn sight better than the awkward, cumbersome Everything Everywhere, and as Olaf pointed out, it’s what the media refer to the network as anyway, and a link to what has gone before. A good move then.

The operator chose London’s Science Museum, home of so many technological innovations, as the location for its EE launch, a fitting venue for what EE CEO Olaf Swantee described as the, “communications equivalent of the change that jet made over steam”. The EE network he said would become, “as important to the country as the roads, the railways and the airports. This digital backbone will unlock new trade routes, unleash healthcare and create a host of opportunities that we haven’t been thought of yet. It will enable Britain to become a more modern, digital country, truly connected to itself, its neighbours and the world.”

By the end of the year the EE LTE network will be live commercially in 16 cities, the others being Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Belfast, Southampton, Hull, Nottingham and Derby. This will cover 20 million people, about a third of the UK population.

Fortunately those in other areas won’t have to wait too long, with the network rolling out during 2013 to the rest of the country and 98 per cent of the population by 2014. While a couple of years may seem a long way away, compared to the inertia regarding LTE only a few months ago, it’s relative light-speed.

No details were give on an exact full commercial launch date but we did get to hear about the five launch handsets, the Samsung Galaxy SIII, the HTC One XL, the Huawei Ascend P1 LTE and both new Windows 8 powered Nokias, the Lumia 820 and 920. There’s also the Huawei E589 Mobile WiFi mifi and the Huawei E392 mobile broadband USB. It seems like a very strong line up, but Olaf gave a very strong hint that there was more major news to come saying, “one more thing, more devices to come”. I think we know what that means.

Of course the other major networks may not be happy at the year lead that regulator Ofcom has given them by allowing EE, the merger of T-Mobile and Orange, to refarm its 1800 2G signals for 4G, but it seems unlikely that EE would have made a big a noise as it has today about the launch if it felt it was in danger of being held up by litigation. At this point Vodafone and O2 would probably have more to lose than to gain by holding up LTE in the UK any longer.

It seems than the from seemingly last place, the UK could pull it out the bag and come from behind to take the lead for 4G, ahead of major economies such as France and Germany that have already had a head start of the 4G race.

Olaf Swantee, CEO of EE announcing the new brand and UK LTE network

It’s been a long road for EE to get here but the master stroke was having 1800 spectrum spare, which came about when France Telecom and Deutsche Telecom agreed to merge their UK brands into a single network. It is this that has enabled it to make the leap forward it has today, and potentially get a valuable lead in the UK 4G market. Of course how effective that will be will much depend on how competitively it sets out its pricing. While the speeds of 5-6x that of 3G are not to be sniffed at, it won’t be as exciting for the country if average consumers are priced out of the market.

It could go that way of course. Orange and T-Mobile will remain but will be hived off as 3G-only with EE becoming a premium 4G brand. This would hint that not everyone using the EE network will be switching to LTE immediately, possibly because it will require a new device, and tariff pricing will make it a premium option.

There could also be some confusion, as all EE customers will see EE displayed on their phones, regardless of whether they are on 3G or LTE.

The nonsense that was spouted by EE about its rather underwhelming new logo can be forgiven, or at least ignored, but Boris Johnson description of it as a “pollen count dot idea” is better than what EE itself presented to us.

Ah Boris, after an incredible summer of British sporting and organisational achievement that was the Olympics and Para Olympics, the London mayor has been handed another fantastic boon – a city soon to be swathed in 4G signals. A good move of EE to bring him on board for a typically highly amusing speech, where he managed to get away with thanking EE rival Vodafone for sponsoring the Olympics, and declare his love of “gizmos spouting data”. (scroll down and click link to listen to his amusing speech).

Boris Johnson’s speech at the EE launch, London 11 September 2012 (Audio only)

Also mentioned by Olaf, was the introduction of ‘superfast fibre’, under the EE brand, but while I was hoping this might be some revolutionary fibre to the home, it’s in fact offering speeds up to 76Mbps, so most likely just using incumbent BT’s wholesale network. Even so, as a combined offering under the EE brand, offering 4G LTE and fast fibre seems like a very strong play.

Many details still need to be fleshed out, in particular regarding pricing, but it’s hard to come away from the day’s news without an optimistic feeling that with EE’s move in LTE the UK will finally be able to compete and even lead the way for mobile broadband. Like Andy Murray, after years of waiting, we could finally be getting the grand slam network we’ve been waiting for.

LTE Asia Event Speaker Interview – Denny Kim, Director of KT

The industry-leading LTE Asia event is approaching fast and as preparations continue for Singapore on 18-19 September, we speak to Denny Kim, Director of KT, the second largest operator in Korea, who is presenting on Day Two.  We get his views on the importance of small cells and how he envisions monetising LTE…

What have been the main developments and major milestones for you over the last 12 months with regards to LTE?

KT has launched LTE commercial service in January 2012 and has provided nationwide LTE coverage. The brand name of the KT LTE service is LTE WARP, a name designed to demonstrate how KT offers the best and most efficient data throughput performance. KT was able to achieve this level of performance through the LTE virtualization network technology, which was developed jointly by KT and Samsung.

What impact will technology such as IMS and Joyn have for you?

OTT players are expanding their influence via smartphone services. RCS services such as Joyn could be the substantial and powerful alternative for telcos to increase the value of their services. To leverage the greatest value from RCS services, interoperability between telcos will be important.

How important are small cells to your network roll-out plans?

In high density areas LTE sites must be deployed extremely closely together so in that environment inter-cell interference will be a big issue to tackle. KT has deployed the LTE virtualization network technology to control the inter-cell interference in high density areas. Small cells for LTE could be the key to achieve the expected throughput performance.

What business models would you say are best for monetising LTE?

Mobile networks offering enhanced performance such as from LTE could accelerate the virtual goods market place. The digital content and application market and the related value chain could be the one of the best opportunities for monetising LTE.

The LTE Asia 2012 conference is taking place on the 18-19 September 2012 at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore.  To find out more about Denny’s presentation, please download the brochure by clicking here

To find out more about the LTE Asia event, click here

From Russia with LTE

Have you heard about the one where one of the supposedly leading economies of Europe had its LTE rollout repeatedly delayed much to the frustration of everyone except the lawyers. Yes, it’s called the UK. No you’re right, it’s not funny.

Over here, this week we’ve been looking enviously at Russia that has given out its 800MHz LTE licences with virtually no fuss to its top four network operators – the state-owned Rostelecom and the other big three: MTS, Vimpelcom and MegaFon. They paid exactly nothing for the licences but as part of the deal they are required to spend 15 billion Russian rubles ($457.42m or £296.2m) into network infrastructure each year until 2019. Which doesn’t seem that much compared to the billions that UK networks are required to pay.

Yota is of course already operating there, based on its WiMAX standard but in the process of switching over to LTE using 2.3GHZ, 2.5GHZ and 3.5GHz.

The point is that it’s all go as far as LTE is concerned over there, while over here we seem to be sitting behind what could be described as a virtual iron curtain.

The LTE Asia 2012 conference is taking place on the 8-19 September 2012 at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. Click here to register your interest.

LTE Asia Event Agenda Now Available to Download…

      

LTE Asia is back for 2012!  Taking place on 18-19 September 2012 at the stunning Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, this year’s conference will be bigger and better than ever before.  Join 800+ high-level attendees (60+% of whom will be representing operators) from 30+ countries at Asia’s leading 4G event!  

With the APAC mobile broadband market’s rapid progression and with LTE subscriptions in Asia set to surpass 120 million by 2015, this is the venue for you to discover the latest developments in the market.   The last year has been extremely exciting, with significant LTE deployments taking place in India, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and numerous other markets planned for the next 12 months.

LTE Asia 2012′s agenda, featuring 45+ operator case studies and an unrivalled 6 track programme, reflects the great strides being made in the industry, and the event’s 800+ attendees from across Asia and beyond will enjoy an un-rivalled forum to exchange ideas and be inspired.  This year’s event features presentations from industry heavyweights including:

• Madam Huang Yuhong, Secretary General, GTI, General Manager, China Mobile, China
• Puneet Garg, VP, Wireless Planning, Bharti Airtel, India
• Mock Pak Lum, CTO, StarHub, Singapore
• Tejaswini Tilak, Global Head of Carrier Services, Telstra Global, Singapore
• Gulzar Azad, Mobile Partnership Lead APAC, Google
• Michael Lai, CEO, Packet 1 Networks, Malaysia
• Rohit Kanwar, General Manager, Network Optimization, Bakrie Telecom, Indonesia
• Denny Kim, Director, Strategy Department, Korea Telecom, Korea
• Suresh Sidhu, CCOO, Celcom Axiata, Malaysia
• Christian Daignault, CTO, CSL, Hong Kong
• Bayu Hanantasena, Group Head, National Commercial Operations, Indosat, Indonesia
• Yijing Brentano, Vice President International Markets, Sprint

To see the full speaker line-up, click here

     

LTE Asia 2012 brings together these pioneering operators in the largest dedicated LTE event in the region, to discuss the opportunities the technology brings and the number of challenges that remain in its evolution.

The full programme agenda for this year’s 7th LTE Asia conference is now available to download – click here

Do you represent an operator?  If yes, you are eligible for a limited free conference pass – click here to claim your’s today!

Good vibrations in the UK: Vodafone and O2 come together

There have been major developments in the UK mobile operator market today with the news that Vodafone and O2, the UK arm of Telefonica, would be coming together and sharing resources in order to build their networks faster.

It’s a direct response, if somewhat delayed, to the threat from Everything Everywhere, a joint venture between Orange (France Telecom) and T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom ), and Three (Hutchison Whampoa). It’s not an entirely new venture, as the two have been sharing some sites since 2009 in a venture called Cornerstone, but this takes it from 4000 sites up to 18,500 masts and towers shared.

It’s not a full joint venture as with Everything Everywhere – customers won’t be able to choose between Vodafone and O2 signals, and the two companies will continue to compete in every other way.

It’s great news.

The two operators claim that this deal will bring 2G and 3G coverage to 98 per cent of the UK population by 2015, finally dealing with the many notspots that continue to plague this not particularly large country.

What’s particularly welcome is that the pair claim that it will enable them to bring 4G,by which we have to assume means LTE, quicker than they would separately. Ofcom, the UK regulator stipulates that there should be 98 per cent coverage of 4G by 2017 so this should help them meet that claim.

Network sharing does seem to be the way forward, especially in these cash strapped town. It simply makes sense from an efficiency point of view. Is there much sense in having the same areas covered by multiple networks by rival network offering essentially the same service.

The two companies said that the consolidation could also enable them to trim the fat and they could shrink the sites they run by 10 per cent.

Speaking at the LTE World Summit last month, Eduardo Duato, CTO at Orange Spain said as much, pointing out that while the US makes do with just four major networks, Europe, roughly the same size land mass, has over 100. He called on his local regulators and all those across Europe to support operator’s sharing prospects. “It doesn’t make sense to have this many networks [in Europe]” he said “we have to move to LTE network sharing.”

Vodafone and O2 seem to agree with him.

The move will mean that there will essentially two networks running in the UK – the MBNL network that powers Everything Everywhere and 3, and the extended Cornerstone network of Vodafone and O2.

So what do we have here then? Intelligent combining of resources, offering the potential for much improved coverage and accelerated roll out of next gen LTE services, and all with some extra cost cutting thrown in.

It all sounds alarmingly, well, sensible. At this rate, we could have operators making money and even satisfied customers.

Crazy times.

LTE everywhere, but not a drop to drink

The LTE World Summit 2012 finished earlier this week, and by and large it was a great success – with the great and the good of the mobile industry interested in LTE (which is pretty much everyone), attending in some form or another.

While it was a success an issue did crop up was that while wifi was available in the exhibition hall, it was not freely available in he Plenary. For anyone who enjoys tweeting this is something of an issue. Tweeting is a spontaneous art form, and once you’ve memorised what you want to say, left the room, gone down two floors, gone into the exhibition hall and waiting for your phone, your tweet may well have gone stale.

Fundamentally, the root cause of the issue is one that strikes at the heart of the issues that the conference was addressing – that I could not tweet as I refused to turn on my data connection for fear of the outrageous roaming charges. There has been movement in this area – the EU has recommended caps on reducing charges and O2 has responded by announcing rates much lower than there – but they won’t kick on until July this year. (I’m on Giffgaff, an o2 (Telefonica) MNVO, so we’ll see if this gets passed on).

Wifi offload was also one of the big topics of conversation at the conference and while interference from multiple hotspots was not an issue, congestion from too many requests was – highlighting one of that technology’s drawbacks.

What we’re all dreaming of is to be able to use our phones abroad as we would at home – on fast, effective LTE networks. That’s the vision we’re all driving towards. Of course if we were already there – living the dream, or at least, tweeting the dream, they’d probably be no need for an LTE conference in the first place, which would just not do at all. As such, I’m looking forward to great LTE coverage at affordable prices – at the 5G conference coming your way soon.

Meet customer expectations with your LTE offering

Thomas Nilsson, CTO, Polystar

This is a guest post from Thomas Nilsson, CTO, Polystar, on the challenges of an LTE rollout.

When a new technology is introduced on the market, it is essential that the service quality that is experienced by the subscribers is not negatively affected in any way. “First impressions last”—there is truth in that old saying. So far, we have seen some early adopters of LTE, but now we are starting to see the transmitted LTE data volumes doubling every month.  LTE introduces a set of new network elements, and with the increased data load and more active subscribers those elements will now come under stress. We know from history that many problems are first discovered when network elements are subjected to real traffic load. Consequently, it will be very important to follow the performance of the network elements that provide the LTE infrastructure.

Lower latency and higher uplink and downlink throughput are key technical arguments for moving to LTE. However, this opens up the possibility of more bandwidth-hungry real-time services. The subscribers that will migrate to LTE are most likely the ones that today use good performing and well-functioning data services in 3G. Moving to LTE, those subscribers’ expectations will increase even more. Apart from super-fast browsing, they will expect services that take advantage of the lower latency, such as voice and video.

Today, voice is provided through CS fallback or VoLTE, with CSFB the choice when a legacy 3GPP network is available. I see 2013 as the year where VoLTE, delivered under an IMS umbrella, will move beyond the early adopters and grow a larger commercial footprint. Even though voice will represent only a small portion of all data transmitted in an LTE network, it will remain a key service with high-performance expectations.  To meet these expectations, it will be essential to keep track of the delivered voice quality.

One more challenge with moving to LTE is understanding the impact new applications and devices will have on the network infrastructure and user experience.  For example, we saw the introduction of smartphones and tablets in 3G completely changing the traffic profile, with a significant signalling overhead that caused overload of some network elements. The LTE networks will be much better prepared to handle such an eventuality, but it will still be crucial to understand how new devices and new software versions of existing devices will impact the end user experience.

The key to a successful LTE rollout is to keep the subscriber experience in focus, coupled with closely following the performance of new network elements and interfaces being introduced as part of the LTE deployment.

Polystar helps you keep the customer experience quality in focus. Meet us at the LTE World Summit on 22-24 May 2012 in Barcelona (stand 96) to continue this discussion.

Thomas Nilsson, CTO, Polystar

LTE Spectrum bands foxing networks and devices alike

Paul Beaver, products director at Anite

This is a guest blog post from Paul Beaver, products director at Anite. Anite has been shortlisted at the LTE Awards 2012 in the Best Test/Measurement LTE Product category. 

There will be one billion HSPA and LTE connections by the end of March and that number will double in two years, according to Informa Telecoms & Media. But the roll-out of LTE is not without its challenges. As carriers and handset providers navigate the path to 4G mobile services, not only do they have to cope with multi-technology networks, but also multiple frequency bands. Global LTE frequency allocation will differ because of diverse national regulatory positions on the issue. Current 3GPP specifications for LTE define over 30 potential bands for the technology. This is an inheritance of the different allocations issued by regulators and the ability of LTE to be deployed in a much wider range of frequencies than prior mobile standards.

Incorporating technology to cope with multiple LTE frequencies and supported bandwidths presents a major challenge to operators and manufacturers. One example of the complex problems that LTE brings is the ability to roam onto different international LTE networks, each with their own varied make-up and performance nuances. For instance, French incumbent operators are in the process of bidding for 4G spectrum in the 2.6GHz band, whereas networks in the USA have deployed LTE in the 700MHz–800MHz frequencies. Networks utilising 2.6GHz or 700MHz-800MHz frequencies for LTE could mean that subscribers may have problems connecting to the network when roaming.

Operators and manufacturers will be able to overcome the challenges of supporting multiple LTE frequency bands by developing a comprehensive quality assurance system, based on laboratory based device testing. However, I believe that field testing LTE devices alone is not a practical solution, as it requires a significant amount of time, prohibitively high cost levels and is not repeatable. Imagine replicating a real-life scenario in which a business user is downloading a file on their device, while making an essential voice call, but moving from a 3G coverage area to a 2G cell. Test engineers are not able to fully control such field tests, repeat them exactly or account for changes in RF conditions and network configurations.

Fortunately lab-based LTE device testing does not rely on any live network dependency, and can be optimised to match the profile of an LTE environment and the range of different LTE frequencies. Live LTE device tests can be reproduced in the laboratory from roaming through to data throughput and specific user scenarios, plus many more. Precise examinations can be undertaken at any time, with no actual impact on network subscribers or service, not to mention the lower costs and significant testing ease that the lab environment unlocks.

The LTE World Summit is taking place on the 23-24 May 2012 CCIB, Barcelona, Spain. Click here to register your http://ws.lteconference.com/interest.

LTE’s virtuous circle: LTE to go mass market in 2012?

Arne Schälicke, LTE Product Marketing, Nokia Siemens Networks

This is a guest post from Arne Schälicke, LTE Product Marketing, Nokia Siemens Networks on the growth of the LTE eco-system and the work that NSN is putting it to make it happen.

That fact that the annual LTE World Summit has recently established itself among the top events in the sector has really underlined the importance of LTE in our industry. It’s also a good opportunity to reflect about the LTE market development that we have seen over the recent years.

By April 2012 there were 64 commercially launched LTE networks, 70 per cent more than a year earlier. The last year has also seen the commercial launches of the first TD-LTE networks. The global adoption of both FDD LTE and TD-LTE is not a vision anymore, it’s a fact. Global scale fosters the development of the device ecosystem, which in turn drives subscriber figures. The LTE virtuous circle has accelerated.

The arrival of multiband/multimode USB dongles has enabled operators to migrate their mobile broadband large screen customers to LTE. Subscribers benefit from faster average throughputs and shorter latency times, while the operators can offload their 3G networks, apply new tariffs and hence optimise their ARPU.

For all the aforementioned reasons, LTE data services have started to expand from the premium high-price segment to mid- and entry-level segments, with some operators having already introduced prepaid packages. Also, some international data roaming packages have been introduced, e.g. by TeliaSonera, who launched commercial LTE services more than three years and now provides LTE in many Northern European and Baltic countries.

The launch of LTE smartphones and tablets has since then accelerated subscriber growth tremendously. The publicly available data from NTT DoCoMo, Japan, shows an acceleration of roughly 300 per cent in monthly subscriber uptake following the introduction of LTE smartphones and tablets in autumn 2011. By April 2012, three operators in the US, Japan and Korea had reported more than two million LTE subscribers. LG U+ in Korea has reached an LTE penetration of more than 20 per cent of its total subscriber base.

In short, in 2012 LTE is becoming mass market.

What does the market success of LTE mean for Nokia Siemens Networks? As specialist in mobile broadband, we have been at the forefront of the LTE and TD-LTE commercialisation since the very beginning. Through our partnerships with the leading LTE operators in advanced markets like Northern Europe, Japan and Korea, we have continuously evolved our commercial LTE network systems to deliver superior throughput and lowest latency times in networks.

With a TD-LTE end-to-end solution, including the complete network infrastructure, services and TD-LTE data devices, we have enabled SKY, the largest satellite pay-TV operator in Brazil, to not only enter the local wireless broadband market, but to also be the first to launch commercial 4G services in Latin America. For operators with existing 1800MHz GSM networks we have commercially introduced concurrent operation of GSM and LTE on the same base station hardware module. Telia Denmark uses our concurrent-mode GSM/LTE technology nationwide and has repeatedly been praised for having the best 4G network in the country.

As the LTE market evolves further so are the LTE offerings of Nokia Siemens Networks. Pushing speeds ever higher we have demonstrated LTE-Advanced with data rates exceeding 1.4Gbps using aggregated spectrum of 100MHz on the commercial Flexi Multiradio 10 base station platform.

With increasing LTE smartphone penetration rates and growing LTE network coverage 2012 is also a significant year of VoLTE, with operators like LG U+, Korea, having already announced their VoLTE plans for this year.

And then, as the LTE World Summit 2012 agenda underlines nicely, small cells will play a key role in complementing macro networks to bring better coverage and capacity boost to areas of high demands. Clusters of small cells can provide the capacity needed in mobile broadband network hot zones. With our highly acclaimed Flexi Zone small cell solution, we are proposing a revolutionary new small cell cluster architecture that ensures  small cell capacity really adds to the macro network and does not “tax” the operator’s TCO.