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Pico- and Femtocells have been a hotly debated topic at the Mobile World Congress this year and to my great pleasure I've been offered the opportunity to have a look at a real Picocell installation in a live network after returning home.

So one day, I was invited to visit an installation at a shopping mall, where a number of GSM picocells from IP.Access were deployed, as the surrounding macro network did not cover the interior of the mall very well. In essence, this means that the picocell was deployed as a coverage filler rather than to add capacity to the macro network.

It looks like the network operator using the picocells was not the only one having coverage problems, as I saw a number of repeater antennas throughout the building from other operators. Repeaters are another solution to get in-house coverage but I was told that while it sounds easy enough, they are rather tricky to deploy as permission is needed for the external antenna on the roof. Also, the coax cables running through the shopping center to the antennas inside are quite expensive and again a permission is required to lay the cables and install the antennas in the hallways.

Picocells on the other hand require no permission whatsoever and the installation is rather trivial: A phone line for DSL that serves as a backhaul link, a DSL modem and the picocell itself, that's all it takes. In the specific installation I was shown, an Ethernet switch was connected in addition as the DSL link was also used to connect the computers of the shop back to the mother ship. Quite a nice setup as the backhaul cost for the picocell is effectively zero that way.

I ran a couple of calls over the picocell and couldn't tell the difference in voice quality in the picocell compared from that in the macro network. Moving from the picocell to the macro network worked quite well as soon as I left the coverage area which was around 20 meters. I'd say there were only using a very low power output. In the opposite direction, however, the mobile lost coverage and had to perform a network search before the picocell was found. My test mobile revealed that the macro cell did not broadcast the parameters for reselecting into the picocell. Looks like it hasn't been configured correctly at the time I tried.

All in all, I was very impressed with the simplicity of the setup and not only the customers coming to the mall but also those that work there are probably quite happy to have the network there and are probably even unaware that their call is not handled by the macro network but is actually backhauled via a DSL IP connection.

Thanks for the visit, it was very insightful!

Over the weekend I read an article whereby a German cable network operator is now looking actively for cooperating with a wireless network operator to offer a fixed / wireless access package and combined services. That’s good news for connected home services I am advocating as the next great thing for network operators after fixed line voice telephony, as this is further proof that network operators on both ends of the table are looking into how the connected home can be enriched with remote access.

Interestingly enough, the cable operator in question, Kabel Deutschland, was rumored to be a takeover candidate itself for Vodafone Germany just recently to bolster its fixed line assets beyond the DSL business it already has with Arcor, soon to be renamed into Vodafone. Looks like there is a lot of movement in the market these days.

This week's Carnival of the Mobilists has stopped over at the Vision Mobile blog and Vanessa Measom has done a great job of guiding us through a wide range of topics discussed in the mobile blogosphere in the previous week. From Voice over LTE, carrier strategies to the untangling of the network neutrality debate there's something for everyone. So don't wait, head over and enjoy!

Sometimes a couple of words are enough but I have to admit, it only applies to the minority of the SMS, Twitter and e-mails I send from my mobile phone. While in the metro or another public place without a lot of space I use the keypad of my Nokia N95 and T9, but it's a concession to the situation. If there's any chance I can sit down and have some space, I prefer plan-B, which is typing that message or e-mail using my Nokia Bluetooth keyboard with 10 fingers.

I've had mine for several years now with various Nokia S60 phones and have done everything with it from writing SMS messages to reporting from the Mobile World Congress. Usually the keyboard is not cheap, costing well over $100. I am not sure why, but Amazon.com currently sells the SU8W for around $57! Amazing! If I hadn't already two I'd buy one right away before they increase the price again or run out of stock. So if you've hesitated before due to the price, now's your chance!

In case you wonder why I write such a straight forward product recommendation, the answer is simple: For me and for those who've bought one in the past due to my advice, the Bluetooth keyboard has been a game changer and one of the main reasons to stay with Nokia/S60 in the future.

The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is long over for this year and it hasn't really been my focus, but I also had a look at how well the exhibition ground for the Mobile World Congress was covered for non-3G users.

While many if not the majority of the MWC attendees had 3G phones I am sure there was still a sizable percentage of people with 2G Blackberries and other GSM only phones. Even with my 3G phone I was mostly using the GSM/EDGE network due to Vodafone Spain's battery killing network configuration when being always-on. While I haven't checked how many cells Vodafone had deployed and if they had dedicated coverage in the exhibition halls, I can nevertheless report that unlike during other exhibitions I have been in the past, incoming and outgoing calls worked fine throughout the week and I saw no degradation in download speeds for my e-mails and while browsing via Opera Mini.

Especially when web browsing, one can immediately feel the difference between a loaded network in which only few timeslots are available for data transfers which on top are heavily used for example by Blackberries. But no, everything was fast and swift, despite probably more than 20.000 people being at the exhibition simultaneously.

So kudos to Vodafone Spain, your 2G network was working fine as well.

This week, the Carnival of the Mobilists has stopped over at Judy Breck's Golden Swamp blog. As always a great resource for what's happened in the mobile blogosphere over the past week and Judy has done a great job of packing everything into a super dense and great looking post. So for the latest and greatest on mobile, head over and enjoy!

Another Mobile World Congress has come to an end. Thursday is usually a bit strange as everyone is alreday quite tired and just waits for the closing bell to ring. To my surprise, my Thursday was quite different.

In the morning, I met with Ajit Jaokar of Open Gardens / Futuretext to prepare for our upcoming course on LTE Services at Oxford University. Lots of great energy flowing in that session and I went out in a very positive mood. More about that soon in a separate post.

Next I went to the Next Generation Mobile Network Presentation stream to listen to some network centric presentations. Julius Robson reported on the progress of the LTE/SAE Trial Initiative, which I already reported on in one of the first MWC posts. Great presentation, Julius, it’s good to see LTE making progress.

China Mobile had a presentation on common FDD and TDD chipsets for LTE, so like me, they also think that a common chipset, i.e. mobile devices being able to do both FDD and TDD are vital for TDD to become a success.

As usual there is also the odd presentation from a North American carrier bashing on the vendors and the users alike, calling European network operators stupid for their extensive 3G network rollouts and sale of prepaid SIM cards for voice and data. I wonder if they will ever wake up!?

Good that most other operators have quite a different view on that and out of the many other presentations I especially liked Seizo Onoe’s presentation for NTT DoCoMo on Deployment and Realities of LTE. The most interesting chart for me was how DoCoMo plans to deploy LTE. It seems that they already have a deployment in which the UMTS radio module sits on the mast and is connected via a fiber cable to the digital module of the UMTS base station. For LTE, they will reuse the existing antennas and hook their digital LTE module into the fiber link that is already in place. Quite cost effective. In the Q&A the presenter was asked by a representative of T-Mobile (who also push very hard for LTE and don’t want to invest much more into the HSPA network) what he thought of HSPA+. Seizo Onoe seems to be one of the “fathers” of LTE, if one can say so, so he was of course not quite in favour of HSPA+ and said with a smile on his face that he doesn’t like it, it makes things too complicated in the mobile devices and one should go to LTE straight away. I had to smile as well, that was brought over very well. But no matter, HSPA+ will go into handsets anyway, that’s my opinion.

On into the afternoon, I had some more meetings with companies doing testing equipment and I learnt a great deal about how the optic interface between the LTE radio module and the digital part, called CPRI, will be used by maeasurement and testing companies to simulate mobile devices to stress test the base stations and the network in general.

And finally, I went to Wiley’s again to pick up a book about wireless to read on the way home and to say good bye. More about that in a separate blog post as well.

There we go, another Mobile World Congress has closed its gates. Not the most splendid one I have seen but I hugely enjoyed it again, have learnt many new things and spoke to lots of people enthusiastic about what they are doing. What else can one ask for?

It’s Thursday morning and before I head of for the final day of the Mobile World Congress, here’s what happened yesterday.

In the morning I went to see a number of companies doing measurement and testing equipment for LTE networks. While in UMTS, a lot of info can be extracted from the Iub interface between the base station and the radio network controler, this is no longer possible with LTE as all functionality has been put into the base station. So other innovative ideas are required to analyze and debug the radio access network in the future. I’ve seen lots of interesting approaches and I am sure the hearts of many engineers while beat faster when they get one of these new testers into their hands.

The highlight for me on Wednesday was of course my author session at the Wiley booth in hall 2 to promote the launch of my new book. Lots of people came by to say hello, to have a chat, to see what is going on and to pick up a copy. At the end of the session we were sold out. Thanks to all who stopped by it was very nice meeting you and to see the different angles you have on the industry.

Later in the afternoon I went to see TV moderator Guy Daniels at the TelecomTV studio to see what he thinks of this years MWC and the state of the industry. It was good to see them being in Barcelona again in full force pumping out lots of great interviews that one could watch live, over one of the huge video walls at the Fira, and as a live stream on the Internet on the TelecomTV.com homepage. This year, the program was also broadcast via DVB-H, so people lucky enough to have a Nokia N96 or other DVB-H capable handset could watch this and a number of other channels for free. I also had a chance to get a backstage look at the TV equipment used for producing the shows, including the 10 Terrabyte disk array that stores the week’s production.

One thing I didn’t get to see was a demo of Nokia’s Home Control hard and software which seems to have been cancled at the last moment. A bit dissapointing, I was very much looking forward to that.

After the Symbian Foundation Party on Monday and the great dinner reception of Ip.Access on Tuesday I didn’t really get enough sleep so I opted for something more quiet and with less people last night. The food was good and the amount of sleep a bit more so there is enough energy left for the final day at the Fira.

You might have noticed I have not written anything about new mobile phones having been announced this weeks. Well, they have just not really been my prime focus. Too many other things to see here that can’t easily be seen on the web. Any suggestions from your side which mobiles I should look at before the Congress closes this year?

Day 3 at the Mobile World Congress and my impression is that it is a little bit less busy than in the days before. People also start to be a bit tired, long hours at the congress and activites in the evening leave their marks. Anyway, so here are some of the things I have seen today:

Last year it was only Nortel and LG who where showing a live and over the air LTE demo. This year, I was expecting more companies to do the same. To my surprise this was not the case. Hall 8 is full of LTE demos but no real over the air and no real mobile devices or prototpyes are shown except for LG and Nortel. What’s going on!? I am puzzled. Good to see that the size of the mobile device prototypes have shrunk from desktop PC size down to about twice the size of a typical 3G dongle today. At least at the LG booth. These were no mockups but were used for the demos.

The GSMA and Ericsson showed the evolution of HSPA in hall 2 and I was shown an HSPA live air demo with a throughput of 14 MBit/s with a 3G USB stick with a Telstra branding. It said 21 on the top which probably stands for 21 MBit/s, which I think is the highest speed with 64 QAM without MIMO. I couldn’t see where the antenna was hidden but it was probably quite nearby. In all fairness one has to say that at the Congress pretty much all antennas are nearby to give excellent coverage as reported earlier.

Another thing that I checked out in more details is who is doing the different layers of the protocol stack. I know that the area is very fractured and lots of smaller companies are working in this space. I talked a bit with a representative of MimoOn who are doing layer 1 to 3 LTE protocol stacks for chipsets from PicoChip and TI. They had good demos what each layer of the protocol stack does and how they can be separated. While some companies lincense their complete stack, others implement some of the layers on their own and just want one or the other from them. Pretty much a mix and match game. So for a product like a femtocell, silicon of vendor x is used, the protocol stack from y and z and the femotcell vendor then might put the rest of the protocol stack on top itself plus all the femto applications and there are probably partnerships for that as well. And finally the femto cells get sold to an even bigger company which then sells it under their own brand. Incredible how many companies are involved.

And finally for this post, I’ve spoken to a couple of people about dual mode TDD / FDD handsets and if they think this will happen. All of them said they weren’t sure and that it is a quite complicated thing to do. They pretty much all said “Let’s see how things develop”.

Network capacity and access to devices in the home from mobile devices are going to be important features in the near future. Femtocells are an interesting solution to these challenges and ip.access has shown some interesting solutions in the past on other tradeshows which I could only watch so far on Youtube. So at this year’s MWC it was great to finally meet some people I’ve been in contact with at ip.access over time for the first time and to take a look at their femto solution first hand.

It’s so simple these days to get a demo up and running at the Mobile World Congress compared to the days when you needed E-1’s and other non standard links to equipment located somewhere else. Today, a simple Internet link does the job, inexpensive even at trade shows compared to dedicated E-1 lines. Ip.access made good use of it and had a number of live femtocells at their booth, connected to their femto controller back in Cambridge in the UK via an Internet connection in exactly the same way one would do at home. Interesting to see that they have partnered with Cisco for their first femto deployments, that’s certainly going to raise awareness.

In retrospect it seems a bit odd that I didn’t ask them if I could do a voice call on their femto, but I just believe that voice calls work, it’s the core feature. Instead, I was much more interested how mobile devices can be included in the home network via the femto cell to interact with the video and music library, the television, act as a remote control, etc. I’ve seen it in a Youtube video before but seeing it live is always different. They wouldn’t exactly tell me how the mobile is included in the local network, thus bypassing the operators network, but after seeing the demo I think I have a fair idea. Thanks for that, very interesting!

In addition, they also showed an interesting Facebook plugin where users can leave messages for a femto user which are delivered by SMS when the user’s mobile finds the femto cell at home or at the office and performs a location update procedure. Great integration of social networking. The scenario can be expanded to things like getting a message when the children arrive at home after school or automated reminders to water the plants, something that would help me a great deal, as my plants never survive very long.

We continued the conversation in the evening at Casa Batlo at their dinner party and it was great to meet more people working on the technology and share their enthusiasm for their product and wireless in general. Thanks very much for that! During the evening, I was asked when in my opinion femtos will be launched for the mass market. Obviously, the first standalone femtos are very close to market readiness, the Cisco femtos at the booth are a clear indication for that. For a real mass audience, I think it will take a bit more as I see an integrated Femto/Wifi/DSL/Home Gateway box with applications such as IPTV and streaming server as an ideal platform to attract interest from consumers beyond voice coverage enhancements.

So, what do you think?