Femto Cells Coming in the UK and the U.S.

Vodafone will introduce a 3G femto service in the UK on July 1, 2009 using an Alcatel-Lucent gateway. The femto service will be available under several plans that include no charge to a cost of $250 for the gateway and $8 per month.

ATT is expanding its current 3G femto technical trial with 200 users to a marketing trial where it will be sold at ATT stores in several cities. It plans a full rollout by the end of 2009.

The telcos have significant challenges in pricing and marketing femto cells. They will have to convince a broad market what femtos do and what their benefits are.

Nokia Siemens Introduces Multi Radio BTS

Nokia Siemens has introduced a based station that will support GSM, WCDMA, HSPA, and LTE. It includes integrated Ethernet switching and transport. It expects to ship this system starting in 2011. This base station significantly reduces power requirements at 790 watts.

This is the kind of system that will facilitate the operation of multiple networks (2G, 3G, and 4G) as well as the evolution to 4G for all services. I expect to see other major vendors to introduce similar systems.

Femto Cell Survey Article

Light Reading has published a nice survey article about the state of femto cell technology. Femto cells are likely to very important but are just getting off the ground now.

Altair 4G OFDM Chips

I recently spoke with Altair, which is an Israeli company that is building OFDM chips to support both WiMAX and LTE. It is focusing on 4G technologies by building handset chips. The company currently has chips for WiMAX and for XGP, which is an OFDM technology deployed by Willcom in Japan.

Altair plans to introduce an LTE chip in the middle of 2009 and a multimode chip by the end of 2009 that will support WiMAX, XGP, and LTE. This will enable support of all three technologies in a single hand held device. The company is also working with a 2G/3G supplier to offer the ability to add WiMAX, XGP, or LTE to a 2G/3G device using the Altair chip as a coprocessor.

This is interesting because it shows that progress is being made on chips that will facilitate the integration of 2G, 3G, and 4G WiMAX and LTE networks. This will help with the evolution of existing networks to WiMAX or LTE. It may also facilitate roaming between WiMAX and GSM, WCDMA, and LTE networks, which may keep WiMAX from becoming the dead end that CDMA has become.

More than 1,000 HSPA Devices Available

The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) stated that there are now 1,095 HSPA devices available with 692 announced since October 2007. The following types of devices are available:

• 451 mobile phones
• 16 ultra mobile PCs
• 218 notebooks
• 154 USB modems
• 143 PC data cards
• 101 wireless routers/gateways
• 8 Personal Media Players
• 4 cameras

It is interesting that less than half of the HSPA devices are mobile phones. What is interesting is to see that a dozen consumer devices have become available. The number of HSPA (or 4G) enabled wireless devices will grow to become a significant segment if the operators create usage plans that are attractive for these devices.

China Mobile Poised to Jump to 4G LTE

A Light Reading article stated that China Mobile is poised to jump to 4G LTE before it has widely deployed its 3G TD-SCDMA network. It plans to launch LTE in 2010 and says that 60 percent of its TD-SCDMA investment will migrate to LTE. It plans to use TD-LTE, which uses spectrum in a similar manner as TD-SCDMA.

It will be interesting to watch how this situation progresses. I think the transition will be more problematical than this article indicates, but it show that China Mobile recognizes that 4G LTE is the right technology in the long run.

Spectrum Bridge's On Line Spectrum Auction

"eBay" is coming to the secondary market for spectrum in the U.S. A new company, Spectrum Bridge, has just started an on line spectrum auction system for the U.S. The company's auction web site http://specex.com provides spectrum owners the ability to list excess spectrum for sale and provides operators looking for spectrum to purchase or lease the spectrum. The web site supports the sale of any kind of spectrum resale permitted by the U.S. FCC.

Spectrum Bridge updates the web site daily with the most current information from the FCC. With this information the web site presents a potential seller with a list of their holdings and allows the user to select the specific pieces of spectrum that they would like to list.

The company's staff facilitates sales by helping buyers to identify available spectrum that meets their needs. The company also assists the buyers and sellers to make the deal happen with standard contracts and assistance during the negotiation process.

This is a significant development. With the move to 3G, operators are looking to refarm spectrum and add to existing holdings to increase the bandwidth of current 2G holdings so that they can use them for 3G services. This will be a continuing problem as these operators move to 4G and need even wider bands.
Spectrum Bridge can facilitate this process with its on line spectrum auction.

Spectrum Bridge plans to become a broker for white space spectrum as called for by the FCC's recent ruling. Coordinating the use of white space spectrum to minimize interference will be a natural evolution to its web site.

Its spectrum database intrigued me. This gives the company to do database sweeps and identify markets where one operator lacks spectrum and another has excess spectrum. With this kind of information, Spectrum Bridge could proactively bring potential buyers and sellers together, even before they have decided to buy or sell spectrum. I think this is only the beginning of the kind of services that the company could offer to its customers to facilitate the more efficient use of spectrum.

Qualcomm Backs LTE

Qualcomm will abandon its UMB 4G technology in favor of LTE. UMB was intended to be the 4G evolution for its CDMA and EV-DO customers.

LTE has been accepted by most of Qualcomm's CDMA and EV-DO customers as their 4G technology choice. UMB has received little or no support. By removing UMB from the table, it seems clear that LTE will dominate the 4G mobile networks. WiMAX has been adopted by some but is likely to be used more for wireline broadband replacement services in under served areas.

T-Mobile to Adopt LTE

Light Reading has and article that describes T-Mobile's wireless network evolution plans. T-Mobile plans to continue to make software upgrades to its HSPA network to improve its performance; however, the company will not make hardware upgrades. Instead it will move to LTE at that point.

With software upgrades, T-Mobile can boost its current 7.2 Mbps HSDPA network up to 14.4 Mbps on the downlink. Beyond that, HSPA Evolution (or HSPA+) can boost 3G network speeds to 28.8 Mbps or more but requires MIMO antennas. That is where T-Mobile draws the line.

T-Mobile also stated that it is considering deploying TD LTE in currently unused TD spectrum that it owns in Europe.

T-Mobile's approach makes sense. It will put them onto the OFDM track earlier than later.

The 4G Conundrum

The announcement by Cox Cable this week that it is going to build two wireless networks as well as utilize Sprint's wireless network got me thinking again about what I call the 4G Conundrum. I just don't understand how 3G and 4G networks will coexist.

Both 3G and 4G networks will be targeted to the same set of users: laptops, smart phones, and the iPhone class of handsets. Sure, operators can deploy 4G in areas were there is a high level of 3G use as a more economical way to add capacity. But it they provide higher speeds on these 4G hot zones, people will see a significant decrease in speed when they move to a 3G zone. The recent problems with iPhones on the ATT network show that these uses see this kind of performance decrease as a network failure. I think that this kind of zone based 4G deployment will just not provide the level of service that the Internet heads that use iPhone like devices will want.

The other thing is that 3G HSP continues to be enhanced. Performance is getting better. These advanced 3G networks are adopting the same flat IP architectures that is part of 4G networks. The question here is if 4G is really enough better than these advanced 3G technologies to justify deploying it.

There is one situation where the the case for 4G seems clear. The CDMA operators are moving to 4G LTE technologies to enable international roaming. Today the lack of international roaming is a big disadvantage for CDMA operators compared to GSM/WCDMA 3G operators. Verizon is adopting 4G LTE as are many other CDMA operators.

I do think that nearly all carriers will migrate to 4G LTE by 2020. There will be a few such as Sprint and Korea Telecom that will operate WiMAX 4G networks. It is very likely that handsets will be able to support roaming between WiMAX and LTE by that time. Operators will bite the bullet as HSPA's WCDMA reaches its limits and is surpassted by 4G OFDM technologies.

Cox Clarifies Wireless Plans

Light Reading published an article that clarified Cox Cable's wireless plans a bit.

• Cox will have autonomy on the Sprint network, controlling the backoffice, customer service, product integration, branding, supported devices, packaging, and product plans.
• Cox will use its AWS spectrum that it acquired in 2006 to support a 3G network based on EV-DO Revision A.
• It plans 700 MHz spectrum LTE field trials sometime in 2009.

This approach means that Cox's own AWS 3G service and its Sprint-based service will both be based on CDMA. It is likely that it will be able to offer handsets that can run on both networks. It is less clear how LTE will fit in, but Verizon's commitment to LTE is likely to produce handsets that support both CDMA and LTE. It will be interesting to see how this works out.

Cox historically has taken the leadership on new technologies such as cable telephony. It has taken a strong technical approach in the past that has led to the deployment of robust services. It looks like it is taking the same approach with wireless.

Cox Cable to Offer Wireless Bundle in 2009

Cox announced that add a wireless component to its bundled offering that includes TV, high speed Internet, and telephone services today. Cox will utilize Sprint's wireless network to enter the market in 2009. At the same time, Cox is building its own 3G wireless network for additional market launches in 2009. Cox will also test 4G technology utilizing LTE. Cox acquired 700 MHz spectrum in about 10 areas in the U.S., including Los Angeles, Phoenix/Tucson, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and Atlanta.

Cox partnering with Sprint is no surprise since it is one of the partners in the Clearwire deal. However, its strategy is not clear. It seems to have the following options:

• Sprint's CDMA service on a national basis
• 3G in the 10 areas where it has 700 MHz spectrum
• LTE later in the 10 areas where it has 700 MHz spectrum

It will be interesting to see how Cox weaves all of this together in a way that makes sense to its cable customers. There is no compatibility between CDMA, WiMAX, and 3G. It does not seem likely to me that they will find any handsets that can support all of these serves.

Even with all of these problems, this is a key trend. The cable companies will have to develop strong wireless service offerings in order to be competitive in 2020.

Femto Cell Interest in Spain and China

Telefonica's O2 mobile arm is planning a femto cell trial. It expects its femto cell commercial roll out to start ramping up in 2010.

picoChip Designs demonstrated its Chinese femtocell reference design in China today announced that femto startup Digimoc Telecom Technology (Shanghai) will use its chips and software designs to make femtocells based on the country's homegrown 3G standard, TD-SCDMA. The news is an indication that China Mobile is interested in the low-power home base stations, because it is the only Chinese operator that will deploy TD-SCDMA in the country.

This is the start of an important trend. Femto cells will off load mobile networks and blur the lines between wireless and wireline services. This will have a major effect on how services are offered in 2020.