Strong signals from the LTE World Summit 2012

Following on from a successful LTE World Summit conference we present a guest post from Susan Becker, director product marketing for F5 Traffix.

I’d like to share a few observations while on my way home from Informa’s LTE World Summit that just concluded in Barcelona. There was a wider range of operators attending the two day event than I expected. From our customers, I know that top tier carriers in North America are rolling out LTE, some in the Far East and others in Europe. But during the show it became clear to me that in every part of the world operators are in some planning stage towards their LTE deployment.

From every continent and then some, operators are thinking about an LTE strategy. And the ones already in the more advanced stages are approaching experienced core network infrastructure vendors such as F5 Traffix to enable them to provide advanced services in this increasingly competitive market. With smart phones already a mass market commodity, the range and quality of services are utmost in their minds. Unfortunately, there was much premature hype about LTE leading people to believe that it is a simple, fast roll out.

And that has proven to be exactly the opposite. As LTE is more of an evolution and not a revolution, most operators will experience pains in LTE deployment. The questions remain as to what extent and when these pains will happen, and most importantly how much will it cost them. Will it result in significant churn or can the churn be abated with the lure of attractive services like family data plans, and selected real-time prepaid options like optimised video upon demand for postpaid subscribers?

There are many questions that revolve around the dozens of unprecedented cases that will be analysed and planned by the industry’s best network architects and engineers. One thing is for sure, that a special focus day on signalling like the one that preceded the LTE Summit this year attracting close to 200 people to sit and listen to Diameter experts, would not have happened last year. We were overwhelmed by the positive responses we received following presentations by F5 Traffix Diameter experts Ben Volkow and Peter Nas on “Approaching Diameter as the Nervous System of the Network” and “Diameter Use Cases for the Signaling Explosion”.

The word on Diameter solutions’ ability to solve, or rather to enable, all the promises of better and faster service in LTE is out there. Mentioning signalling to industry analysts covering mobile broadband today more often than not triggers a serious conversation. Even journalists without a technical background approach F5 Traffix to write on the topic of the signaling surge in LTE. We can’t take these facts for granted as they were NOT happening last year. So yes, things are changing, and definitely for the better.

LTE World Summit: Thoughts from Day 0

It’s been a long time coming but the LTE World Summit has finally kicked off! Having survived an unexpectedly eventful flight involving major turbulence the Informa team was relieved for the plane to touch down on the second attempt at landing. Well done pilot.

The hope was that the rest of the conference caused fewer scares, and so far, that’s proved to be the case. Ahead of the start of the LTE World Summit proper, the event started with a Signaling day, which by all accounts was very well attended. It also showcased a new format – the LTE Operator Mind Share.

This involves a series of concurrent round-table discussions led by an operator executive on key topics that are affecting the future of LTE, such as debating pricing strategies around LTE and the roll of Small Cells and Het-Nets. It proved to be a major success, with each topic generating a large number of points. The idea was for a relaxed environment to kick around ideas and generate discussion, so anything recorded here is certainly not the official view of the company’s in question.

My table was led by Simon Best, head of consumer mobile strategy at Orange and the discussion was based on LTE pricing strategies. Will LTE create new services to drive new revenues? The consensus was that due to its faster bandwidth and reliability it might in certain areas such as online games and video surveillance, but otherwise, no – there would be no killer app for LTE. Best referenced the mistaken pushing of video calling as a marketing driver for 3G that most certainly did not work, and it sounded as if he was haunted by this. However, a lower cost per bit and quality of service would be the weapons to attract customers to LTE.

As for Voice over LTE, it also seemed likely that this could not be used to attract new revenue as customers are looking to pay less for voice and not more. However, delivering carrier grade quality could potentially help retain customers over the ‘best effort’ services from the OTTs. Eventually there will be no need to attract customers with minutes – as it will all be data it will be a matter of offering a simple data bundle.

It was agreed by most that charging the same for LTE as 3G was the only realistic way to go, but it would lead to more ARPU simply by the fact that customers will use more data and then move up to a higher tier.

The final thought was the subsidising handsets too heavily would not be a good strategy, another lesson learnt from 3G.

All in all, this was just one of many great discussions and conversations happening in the day: not bad considering we’ve still got the main event to look forward to.

Meet the industry leaders at LTE World Summit 2012!

As excitement for LTE World Summit 2012 builds with only two weeks to go, here is a sneak preview of what some of our sponsors and exhibitors are doing at the show…..

Acme Packet, Stand 50 

Acme Packet invites you to discover how we are helping service providers build session delivery networks for the LTE era. Join Acme Packet at booth 50 at LTE World Summit to explore:

• How to simplify IMS for rapid VoLTE ROI
• MS service delivery solutions for VoLTE, RCS and VoWiFi
• Requirements for a scalable next generation signaling core for SIP and Diameter
• Seamless SIP interconnect and LTE roaming

Be sure to catch Acme Packet’s presentation Simplifying IMS and Improving VoLTE ROI from Kevin Klett, Vice President of Product Management in the VoLTE track on May 23rd at 15:10. We welcome the opportunity to hear from you and exchange ideas at LTE World Summit.

Actix, Stand 51 

Discover how to reduce LTE rollout risk. Visit Actix, stand 51 for a demonstration of our LTE Acceptance solution. Safe and assured, it has already been deployed by over 50 operators and network equipment providers and has been shortlisted for ‘Best Test/Measurement LTE Product’ in the Telecoms.com LTE Awards. Actix’s network acceptance solution enables you to:

• Take the risk out of LTE rollout
• Prioritize LTE deployment
• Assure day one network quality
• Reduce disputes with vendors

Drawing upon our real world experiences, Actix will also deliver an illuminating free masterclass “Best practices for ensuring LTE rollout success”. Don’t miss it!

Ercom, Stand 9 

Do you want to “Get the best performance from your LTE network”?

If you are an Operator concerned about:

• eNodeB performance benchmarking
• eNodeB capacity testing
• Scheduler testing
• VoLTE end-to-end testing
• QoE testing
• Please come to see Ercom’s Mobipass demo.

Mobipass, the unparallel solution in LTE Multi-UEs emulation filling the gap between lab testing and field testing with its Advanced Multi-UE RF channel emulator.

We will be pleased to welcome you at our Booth #9 on May 23rd & 24th at LTE World Summit in Barcelona.

Intel, Meeting Room 7 

Intel is becoming a key player in the mobile marketand will be onsite as a thought leader in the session Track called “Devices / Smartphone Development”.

We will talk about the challenges LTE band fragmentation presents for platform manufacturers and showing Intel’s approach to address these challenges.

Interesting insights will be provided on:

• LTE devices within a high fragmented frequency band landscape
• Roaming capabilities and carrier aggregation to address issues resulting from these band fragmentation
• Flexible system architectures and dedicated configurations of mobile platforms

Mesaplexx, Stand 10 

Mesaplexx will be at stand 10, showcasing their compact, high performance filter technology for active antennas and next generation networks. Advanced filters enable better base station radios and active antenna systems, leading to better mobile networks.
Mesaplexx CEO, Mark Bole, will be speaking at the ‘What does the future hold for the Femtocell/Small Cell Market’ panel session at 16.50 on Wednesday 23 May.

Come and see us at stand 10, to understand how our xCube filter technology is enabling telecoms vendors to rapidly deliver next generation technology evolutions and deliver increased network capacity.

Mosaik Solutions, Pod Zone 

Mosaik Solutions, formerly American Roamer, is the global source for geospatial network intelligence. The company maintains the largest mobile network coverage catalog in the world, includes all common mobile technologies, and is updated quarterly. Mosaik Solutions’ data also includes telecommunications coverage patterns, wireless spectrum depth, network configurations, and licensing data through geospatial, analytical, creative and web solutions tailored to meet client needs. Whether you require better intelligence for consumer marketing, network branding, mobile roaming or strategic planning, Mosaik Solutions will deliver. We would enjoy the opportunity to meet. Visit us at Pod Zone #9.

Simulcraft-Omnest, Stand 70 

Simulcraft is launching a full-fledged LTE Simulator this year.

SimuLTE™ handles the full User Plane of LTE technologies, enabling a wide variety of useful studies, performance evaluations, tests and tuning experiments.

SimuLTE™ is extensively configurable, extensible and can be customized to requirements. The simulator comes with full source code to provide you with full information and complete control.

• Evaluate the technical impact of business and market strategies: differentiated pricing, impact of new services.
• Evaluate what-if scenarios: network dimensioning studies, network tuning on users’ applications traffic patterns, performance evaluation of specific networks configurations and testing of new user plane related algorithms.
• More info on http://www.ltesimulator.com

Symena, Pod Zone

SYMENA is the leading supplier of Automatic Cell Planning (ACP) for LTE. The LTE World Summit is a great chance to find out why.

All major LTE OEM vendors are using Symena’s tools for planning LTE networks. Capesso™ is the proven, fully-featured, tightly integrated ACP tool for your planning tool. Capesso™ delivers measurably better and proven results faster. Capesso™ is unique in providing simultaneous, multiple network, multiple band optimisation. So it’s the best tool for planning LTE overlays.

Speaker: Dr Thomas Neubauer, Managing Director, on the panel for, “Delivering an improved network performance with SON” on Day 2, 4:50pm, Track 9, “Handling the Mobile Data Explosion.”

Location: Pod Zone, P1.

SYMENA. Smart Up Your Network!

 

 
Join us at LTE World Summit 2012 exhibition on 23-24 May in Barcelona to meet the world’s leading LTE companies, attend free learning sessions and network with 3,000+ LTE decision makers; an ideal opportunity to discuss strategies, build partnerships and widen your LTE knowledge! To register for your free exhibition pass click here

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.