Author: Martin

First 3GSM / Mobile World Congress 2009 Preparations

Good preparation is everything, especially for the 3GSM / Mobile World Congress in Barcelona 2009. I am sure there will be lots of events happening again in and around the congress/exhibition. As always it will be a bit difficult to keep track of all of them and select the interesting ones, so I re-opened the Wiki I created last year for everyone to share information about events, parties, job offers/seekers, apartment sharing, etc., etc.

It's open for everyone, no registration required for editing. If you like the idea, bookmark the site and check regularly. If you know of an event or if you are an event organizer, consider leaving a note and link on the Wiki. If you organize an event but don't want to create a web page for it feel free to create a new page on the Wiki for the details.

I already have one job seeker whom you might be able to help out:

Booth Hostess / Event Organizer

A friend of mine is looking for a job as booth hostess, event organizer, or similar during the congress. She's fluent in English, French, Italian and German. She's a proficient Internet and wireless technologies user so she'll be able to represent your company in a professional manner. In addition, she has previous experience with booth management at the Mobile World Congress from previous years. For details send me an email to gsmumts (at) gmx.de

Oh yes, and before I forget the Wiki has RSS feeds for new and updated pages which makes keeping track easier.

If you like the idea, please spread the word on your blog, by eMail, word of mouth, etc. 🙂

Introduction to Next Generation Wireless Backhaul

As data rates and mobile Internet use is increasing one of the big challenges of mobile operators is how to keep pace with adding capacity in the backhaul network, i.e. the network that connects the base station to the rest of the network. Currently, many operators still use slow and expensive 2 MBit/s E-1 and T-1 links that don't scale well at all with the rising wireless data rates that a single base station can provide.

This article in the 3/08 edition of the Ericsson review gives a great overview of next generation IP based backhaul and how to get there. Despite only being a few pages long, it touches a lot of different topics. Here are some examples:

  • In practice, the radio access network is split in two parts: The last mile to the base station and the aggregation network to the border node to the core network. For both parts, the article explains the different technology choices.
  • For the aggregation layer, different architectures are described from VDSL, microwave Ethernet and fiber.
  • An introduction to Quality of Service, latency, jitter and circuit emulation are also not missing.
  • And finally, a migration path from current E-1 centered access networks to hybrid networks in which a base station has both E-1 and IP connectivity to full IP connectivity with pseudo wire capabilities is also inside.

Definitely, a recommended read!

Paris and the Mobile Internet: That was Last Year

It looks like the fire in French operators about mobile Internet access has pretty much vanished for the moment. Last year at this time, there were posters such as this one everywhere, advertising how one could use a mobile phone to access the Internet. Nothing of the sort can be seen in the streets of Paris this year.

Also, no 3G USB dongle advertisements, most likely due to the lack of interesting pricing compared to those in countries such as Austria, the U.K., Sweden, Italy, Germany, etc.  Also, no iPhone advertising, no eeePCs with 3G dongles, just an E71 mobile e-mail advertisement by Bouygues.

Together with Orange's recent announcement that they will hold out on LTE for the moment, quite a bleak picture. But with their current data pricing, it's unlikely they will get any kind of real load on their 3G networks anytime soon anyway. Looks like French operators have gone into some sort of combined hibernation once more while the rest of Europe is moving forward at a rapid pace.

Am I too pesimistic?

3GPP Femto Specifications

The post on Femtospots a couple of days ago had some good feedback and one reader pointed me to TS 22.220 where 3GPP currently lays the ground for an end-to-end femtocell architecture, or Home NodeB architecture in 3GPP talk. Thanks for that, quite an insightful document! Here's a link to the document after the latest 3GPP meeting (December 2008) which hasn't yet made it to the official specification server. While still being a somewhat early draft today, it nevertheless gives some interesting insight into which directions operators want to go with femtos.

I've had a look at the contributors to the document and from the operator side, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Softbank, SK Telecom, and NTT-Docomo seem to be the most enthusiastic ones. On the vendor side, I've seen input from RIM, ETRI, Qualcomm, NEC, Alcatel, Huawei, Nortel and Marvel. The lists are not exhaustive but show that there is a lot of interest in the topic.

Here are the some of the highlights of the document:

Open and Closed Operation

3GPP TS 22.220 is a requirements specification so it will serve as a guideline for future stage 2 and stage 3 documents which will contain the implementation details for those requirements. So while trying to stay realistic, the document tries to explore the topic in as wide a range as possible and to keep as many options open as possible. Three operating modes are specified for femtos / Home NodeBs (UMTS) or Home eNodeBs (LTE) and I use the terms interchangeably below: The first one is called open, which means all UEs (user equipment in 3GPP talk or mobile devices) of an operator are allowed to use the cell. The second mode is called Closed Subscriber Group (CSG), which means only selected UEs, for example those belonging to a household, are allowed to use the cell. The third mode is called hybrid and combines the first two. I imagine that in hybrid mode, CSG users might potentially get higher priority and access to the local network.

Local IP Access

Speaking of local network access, the requirements specification also contains a chapter on allowing the UE access the the users home network. No specifics are mentioned yet as to how this should be implemented in practice or what kind of services could be used over such a connection. I expect that the 'how' will be clarified in stage 2 and stage 3 documents while the 'what' will be left for other standards bodies to clarify. The document says that both operator and users will have a say which users are part of the CSG and which users will be allowed to have access to local resources.

Local IP Access to the Internet

A so far empty chapter is present for how to connect to the Internet via the local network therefore bypassing the operators core network. I can hardly wait to see if this chapter will be filled with text or removed in later versions of the document.

MBMS and Mobile TV

Some parties also seem keen to use the Home NodeB for mobile TV and would like to see MBMS specified for femtos.

IMS

Further, there seem to be operators or vendors who would like to have some parts or all of an IMS implemented in the femto in a transparent way for the UE to potentially bypass the circuit switched network. I don't quite yet fully get the concept and purpose of this feature but I am sure some more text will be added to this chapter as the document evolves.

The Achilles Heel : Pre-Release 8 UEs

In my opinion the biggest overall issue for femtos used in closed subscriber group (CSG) mode is how to prevent mobiles not belonging to the CSG trying to reselect to the femto. For future 3GPP Release 8/9 compliant UEs, things can be standardized to avoid unnecessary cell reselections and signalling. TS 22.220 gives some general guidance on how that could be done by adding femto related information on the broadcast channel of the cell. For today's UEs, however, any solution has to work with what is already in place. 3GPP TR 25.280 gives a number of potential solutions in Chapter 6.2. Personally I think the Equivalent PLMN solution has a lot of merrit, but no definite recommendation of how to solve this is given yet.

The SIM Card Family Pack

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I guess it is no secret that in the supermarket, the space in front and alongside the cash register is great for selling those small things you can grab and consume on the way, which you would probably not pick up if you saw them somewhere else. These days, German supermarkets sell SIM cards this way. Only have 3 already? Why not pick up another one? The offer shown in the picture on the left must be the latest step in this direction: How about getting 4 SIM cards in a single family pack from Edeka Mobil, an MVNO using the Vodafone network, and distribute them to your family members!?

All yours for 30 euros, with 10 euros of credit already on each SIM card. For 3 euros a month, talk 10 hours between the SIMs of the MVNO. 9 cents a minute to fixed and mobile phones in Germany and 9 cents per SMS. Who could say no? Probably only your kids who already have SIM cards with community options to text their friends 🙂

It's an interesting trend to observe. The first no-frills but cheap MVNOs were launched by mobile operator e-Plus (KPN) about two years ago. O2 has been a bit quicker with MVNOs but their prices were not very competitive until e-Plus stirred up the market. Since then, all mobile operators have followed and even incumbents like T-Mobile and Vodafone are now offering no-frills prepaid SIMs via MVNOs with competitive prices for voice and SMS.

The same is now happening with mobile Internet access. Again e-Plus was first to offer competitive prices for small screen web browsing and now O2 is offering all post-paid Internet access plans also on their own prepaid SIMs. Let's see how the story continues in 2009.

Forecasts for Mobile Broadband Use From PCs and MIDs

Each year, mobile Internet access from PCs and other non mobile phone devices gets better and better and as I write these lines, I am sitting in a railway station in Paris, connected to the Internet via a 3G USB dongle at multi-megabit speeds. I travel a lot and depending on the country I am seeing lots of people doing the same these days. While at the beginning of this trend, the distinctively red Vodafone PC card adapters were dominant, today it's mostly 3G USB dongles and I wonder how many people still bother looking for suitable Wi-Fi to connect.

It's definitely a trend and operators in many countries are experimenting with it. So how will this trend continue? Dean Bubley over at Disruptive Wireless has worked on a detailed report on this and has published it this week. Here are some of the findings which I think are right on the mark:

  • 3G USB dongles will continue to be more successful for some time to come than built in 3G connectivity. From my experience in countries such as Germany and Austria, getting online is as simple as walking into the supermarket, picking up a 3G dongle and SIM card for a couple of euros. Unfortunately, it's not everywhere like this. In other European countries, like France for example, the situation is quite different, with operators still resisting the general trend. Built in 3G cards on the other hand are unlikely to get as cheap as Wi-Fi chips for quite some time to come so the PC/notebook industry is probably reluctant to add 3G capabilities to notebooks by default in the same way as Wi-Fi.
  • 340 million devices non mobile phone devices connected via 3G by 2014. An interesting number considering about 4 billion devices online by that time and unequal distribution of such devices mainly in developed markets. But given the falling prices and prepaid billing models by day, week and month, buying an inexpensive dongle for occasional use will definitely drive the numbers.
  • Dean estimates about 45 million WiMAX users by 2012. I think that's probably in the right ballpark as well. After lots of activity around alternative WiMAX operators in Europe 18 months ago, this has pretty much died down in the meantime and I think the window of opportunity has been pretty much lost. After all, 3.5G HSPA is now available in Austria, for example, for 9 euros a month with a traffic limit of 15 GB.
  • Impact of the Credit Crunch and the Capacity Crunch. Indeed, having more users on the network will of course drive bandwidth requirements and operators will have to monitor their networks closely and invest in upgrading the backhaul capacity of existing base stations and add additional ones in high traffic locations. The extend of this, however, has yet to be seen. I've done my own calculations on when we might see a general capacity crunch and I think it is still some years off. In the meantime, technology is developing and backhaul is getting cheaper. So it remains to be seen if the demand curve going upwards and infrastructure and backhaul prices going downwards can be brought into a healthy balance for everyone.

Lot's more to be found in Dean's report and if you are lucky enough to work for a company that appreciates the value of such research I encourage you to give your business intelligence department a call and ask if they have this report available.

DVB-H Roller Coaster in Germany, Austria and Italy

DVB-H seems to be a roller coaster technology, quite different adoption rates from country to country.

In Germany, DVB-H recently flopped as the business model of setting up a single DVB-H company that resells the services to mobile operators did not spark a lot of interest if not to say outright opposition from network operators and had to close down recently.

In Austria, DVB-H was introduced a year ago and according to this report (in German), A1 and 3-Austria have only been able to get a couple of thousand subscribers so far. DVB-H service costs 6 euros per month.

In Italy on the other hand, the same report says that DVB-H has attracted one million subscribers to date, some of the channels are available for free, and on average, subscribers watch for one hour a day. To me, one hour a day seems to be quite a bit much. But I can confirm, every now and then I see someone in the streets of Rome watching a football game on his DVB-H mobile, quite easy to spot the antenna sticking out and to hear the typical sound of a football game.

For those interested in further background info on mobile TV, here's another blog entry on mobile TV I've written earlier this year on DVB-T on mobiles (the big twin brother of DVB-H) and 1seg in Japan.

A Mobile Christmas Spike This Year?

A couple of years ago, when mobile phones were still a novelty, one could read reports around Christmas that operators expect/experience a traffic spike on Christmas eve when people start unpacking their presents and start playing with their new mobile devices. I wonder if that still is the case these days and if the spike is moving more towards the packet switched part of the network. Forecasts, anyone?

LTE, China and Center Gaps

Like in UMTS, China is determined to go its own ways with LTE as well. Instead of adopting FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) LTE like the rest of the world, China Mobile wants to deploy TDD (Time Division Duplex) LTE. One of the reasons stated for this is to have an upgrade path from TDD UMTS (which, to the best of my knowledge, is not yet deployed on a broad scale in China). I am sure Chinese companies and joint ventures have put a lot of work into TDD UMTS over many years and yet, it hasn't made it anywhere. So why should TDD LTE be different?

In fact, I see the same problems with TDD LTE:

  • Economy of scale: China is a big country but in order for the technology to be a success, other countries have to adopt TDD LTE as well. As with TDD UMTS, I think that this is unlikely to happen, I don't see an incentive.
  • Devices: Same issue as above. For a limited market, only few vendors will be tempted to develop mobile devices. One way out of the dilemma could be dual mode TDD/FDD devices. But what is the chance of this happening?

So without a real need for an upgrade path, why TDD-LTE? Unlike with UMTS, Chinese companies like Huawei do not have to catch up to the rest of the pack, this time they start at the same time and with an advantage.

The center gap, a glimmer of hope? In many countries the center gap between the uplink and downlink channel of UMTS and LTE is unused. Some operators in Europe for example have even bought TDD spectrum in the 2.1 GHz band during the UMTS auctions back in 2000. So maybe those bands might trigger some operator interest for TDD LTE!? 

As always, comments are welcome.