Verizon to buy spectrum leases from Clearwire as US telco's struggle to acquire airwaves rights

As per a latest news report in Wall street journal, Verizon Wireless has offered to pay as much a $1.5 billion to buy spectrum leases from Clearwire Corp. That’s about 8000 Crores in Indian Rupees. However, Verizon Wireless hasn't made an offer for spectrum that Clearwire owns. Clearwire owns some spectrum but it leases other spectrum from third parties so it can offer a nationwide network. Any bid for Clearwire spectrum could face hurdles if Sprint doesn't approve. Sprint has a number of contractual rights that pose steep obstacles for any outsider trying to do a deal.

The entire news is contrary to earlier reports according to which Clearwire had agreed to sell itself to part-ownerSprint Nextel Corp.  and Sprint agreed to sell a controlling stake in itself to Japan's Softbank Corp.

Strangely Sprint has always been looked upon as a company who would be interested in Clearwire’s spectrum. As of 2010, Clearwire was  licensed 133 MHz of spectrum, and Sprint had 51 MHz. Their combined 184 MHz represented more twice the holdings of Verizon (83 MHz) and AT&T (77 MHz), and nearly four times T-Mobile's haul (48 MHz). However, Verizon has been quietly amassing spectrum since then. Last year, the company paid $3.9 billion to acquire spectrum licenses from a group of cable companies including Comcast Corp and Time Warner Cable Inc. An access to Clearwire’s spectrum would have given Spirint an ability to compete with rivals like AT&T  and Verizon.

Clearwire's spectrum is in the 2.5 GHz (2,500 MHz) range, a band where signals don't easily penetrate walls and weaken significantly over long distances, requiring way more cell towers to transmit signal as lower-band airwaves. Verizon's spectrum in the 700 MHz band, acquired at more than $9 billion because it travels over long distances and easily passes through buildings for indoor coverage. On the positive side, the 2.5 GHz range is potentially perfect for small cells, since the higher bands can carry more data over a MHz of spectrum than lower bands, and they have less potential for interference. Some of the bigger markets like China, India and Japan are planning LTE roll outs in 2.5 GHz band. Thus the Verizon offer seems to throw open speculations that Verizon might complement it’s network in 700 MHz with small cells operating in 2.5 GHz. The U.S. telcos appear to be  evolving toward a model in which they will use the lower bands for voice and the higher bands for data transmission including video, streaming tv and cable programming.

Growing appetite for mobile data and suggested approach for India

Growing appetite for mobile data globally

Juniper has published it’s latest report on Mobile data traffic forecasts. As per them, the total mobile data traffic will exceed 90,000 Petabytes by 2017. What is more interesting is that 60% of this data will be offloaded to Wi-Fi networks and only 40% of the data generated by mobile devices will be carried through the cellular network by 2017. The report also emphasizes the roll that the small cells are going to play going forward.

Mobile data growth – Indian scenario

India today is on the verge of data revolution and in the current decade, data will transform the Indian telecom industry the way voice did in the previous decade. Indications are that data contribution from 2G will continue to rise, and 3G and LTE adaption will augment this growth. while the telecom industry in the rest of the world obtains 35-50% revenues from non-voice services, India derives only ~15% of sales from non-voice/ data services. Projections by UBS for major telecom players in India indicate that the non-voice revenues are going to be ~30% of total revenues for these players by 2020. These projections may well be surpassed if India is able to achieve a good broadband penetration backed by the recent policy pronouncement on National Broadband Plan.  As against the current broadband subscriber base of 14.68 million, the National Broadband Plan envisages provision of 160 million broadband connections (22 million DSL, 78 million cable and 60 million wireless broadband) by the year 2014. It is likely that the share of wireless broadband may be much more than the expectations as, like other countries, in India also; the data revolutions will piggy back on wireless broadband. 3G and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) are expected to aid the growth of economy by boosting broadband growth.

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) M-Bit report indicates that mobile data usage in India has grown at 54% growth in 7 months and is likely to double every 12-14 months. This report can be accessed at http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/sites/default/files/document/india_mobile_data_-_mbit_index.pdf . Evolution of data services in China provides some insight for the potential for the data segment growth for India. Data service revenue constitutes 30.6% of total service revenue in China as compared with 12.6% in India in FY11, giving an indication for strong data services growth trajectory in India in coming years. Credit Suisse estimates that over the next three years, data could more than double in size to a US$14 bn industry in India, contributing over half the incremental industry revenue and add 500 bp CAGR to an otherwise slowing voice industry. They estimate 3G’s contribution to mobile EBITDA to rise to 9-13% (from less than 5%) by FY3/14

Wi-Fi offload – a solution to handle growing data volumes and speeds

No doubt more and more carriers are adapting to Wi-Fi. Recently AT&T had inked a pact with Boingo - one of the leading Wi-Fi service provider having more than 600000 Wi-Fi Spots around the globe. Going forward the carrier-Wi-Fi adoption will be gather speed mainly because of two developments –

a)   NGH (Next Generation Hotspot) and Hotspot 2.0 specifications along with 5GHz enabled devices.

b)   Carrier-grade small cells along with Wi-Fi will enable high levels of capacity and along with the macro network will provide commercial and financial success to the operator.

Now what’s there for India in all this? Ironically, there are not many Wi-Fi hotspots in India currently. Given that almost one-sixth of the world's mobile subscribers are in India and that the country is already spectrum starved, in future offloading the mobile traffic on Wi-Fi is the only feasible and practical solution to cater to the growing hunger for data services.

ITU studies and other major research firms have already pointed out that the data requirements of future can never be met by increased availability of spectrum even if spectrum efficiency improve considerably. India cannot rely on vacation of frequencies by Defense ministry as the chances of this happening are remote. And even if this happens it will be a slow process. Thus demand and supply of spectrum in India will always have wider gaps than in other countries.

India specific approach – A Public Wi-Fi hotspot network

In such a scenario, it becomes important for the India to have a large number of Wi-Fi hotspots in almost all major cities and towns. There are two ways of doing this. The first way of approaching the problem is that the market is left to itself and the telecom operators or third parties like Boingo creates a Wi-Fi hotspot network. However the problem in this solutions can be  -

·         - The commercial criteria and not the country/public good at large will drive the hotspot creation

·         - All operators will target the same places for hotspot creation like Airports, bus and railway stations, big malls etc. They will end up creating duplicate infrastructure and in process may not get the return on investment. India missed the bus while the mobile towers were being erected and this resulted in sheer waste of resources by way of creating redundant infrastructure. All operators invested in mobile towers at same time and at same spots.

·         - Such approach slows down the rural penetration as all operators are busy spending their money in big cities. At least for Wi-Fi, we can eliminate this approach.

This leads us to the second and more practical approach of policy intervention to ensure that a common Wi-Fi network is created across major cities that can be shared on payment basis by all operators. This will help in savings on one hand and better ROIs on other. An added advantage can be faster rollout even in tier II and tier III cities. The Bharat Broadband Nigam Limited (BBNL) had been created by Government of India to roll out a common optical fiber network that can be shared across telecom service providers. On similar lines, BBNL can also be entrusted to create a common Wi-Fi network funded through USO. However, the entity will be able to make money once the Wi-Fi network is used by telecom operators. A Wi-Fi hotspot requires back-end connectivity, preferably on fiber so as to ensure that large numbers of users are supported by the hotspot at higher speeds. Suggested approach will ensure that BBNL will identify Point of Presence (POPs) for optical fiber as per the hotspot requirements. If implemented, such a solution can not only help in solving the spectrum crunch, but will also help Indian citizens to get higher broadband speeds at affordable prices – an objective that the NTP 2012 envisages to meet.

Global mobile penetration and subscriber numbers

Wondering how many mobile subscribers are there on planet earth??? Well by end of December, 2012 global mobile subscriptions were around 6.3 billion, growing at about 9 per cent year-on-year - as per a report by European telecom equipment maker Ericsson. According to the Ericsson Mobility Report, total mobile subscription in China stood at 1.26 billion, while in India it was 713 million in 2012. The net additions in the fourth quarter of 2012 were 140 million.

So what is Global wireless tele-density. Well, Global mobile penetration reached 89 per cent in Q4 2012. However if you looking for unique users figures, the actual number of unique users were around 4.4 billion, thanks to people having several subscriptions. 

If you are wondering which countries are adding most subscriptions, then the report answers your query. China accounted for about 22 per cent of net additions, adding around 30 million subscriptions, followed by India (11 million), Bangladesh (9 million), Indonesia (8 million), and Nigeria (5 million).

As far as mobile broadband subscribers are concern, In Q4 of 2012, mobile broadbandsubscriptions grew 125 million to 1.5 billion, reflecting a 50 per cent year-on-year increase. GSM, GPRS and EDGE subscriptions grew 44 million and WCDMA and HSPA grew 70 million. Together these technologies represent 80 per cent of total net additions. That apart, LTE subscriptions grew from 14 million to 57 million in 2012

Telecom New Zealand unveils its LTE roll out plans

Telecom New Zealand plans to have LTE live on a large part of its smartphone network in Auckland by October 2013. The company will then extend LTE coverage to Wellington and Christchurch by December and expects to have LTE live on close to half of its nationwide smartphone network during 2014. As per news reported in some papers, the company has selected Huawei to build its network of 4G-capable mobile sites – known as the eUTRAN. 

Telecom plans to install dual carrier HSPA+ on more than half of mobile sites, fast backhaul to 90 percent of mobile sites, and – from mid 2013 – rolling out Optical Transport Network (OTN) technology to the network core. 

Verizon all set to drop unlimited data plan offer on iPhone

More and more operators are becoming allergic to Unlimited data plans on wireless. Verizon Wireless, USA based operator,  who has only just started selling the Apple iPhone,  is already planning changes to the tariff plans it offers to its customers. Specifically, it intends to cancel the headline grabbing "unlimited" mobile data tariff as soon as this summer and switch to a tiered pricing model. The mobile network operator currently offers an unlimited data option for US$30 per month, although it reserves the right to throttle the download speeds for heavy users in areas where network congestion is high. That compares to the offer from rival iPhone seller, AT&T - who charge US$25 for 2Gb of data traffic per month.

US regulator rejects proposal for free wireless broadband service - Interesting!!

Federal regulators (FCC- Federal Communications Commission)have shot down a proposal by a startup called M2Z Networks Inc. to build a free, nationwide wireless broadband network using a spare slice of airwaves.  M2Z had requested that the winner of an auction for the radio spectrum would provide free Internet service to anyone who connects to it.  M2Z's business model was - offering free basic wireless broadband access — with speeds of up to 768 kilobits per second — that would be supported by advertising in addition to a faster, premium service.

The FCC is still studying possible uses of the spectrum.

Download speed of 28 Mbps offered by Singapore's Mobileone - Wired-line broadband's fag end begins?

Singapore's MobileOne (M1) has announced a further upgrade of its HSPA+ network to support mobile broadband download speed of up to 28 Mbps in selected areas. The increased speed has been achieved with the installation of MIMO (Multiple-input-multiple-output), making M1 HSPA+ network the first in the Asia Pacific to adopt this technology. MIMO is expected to be rolled out to the entire network progressively. Huawei has provided the upgrade.

Meanwhile, M1 will be offering mobile broadband service with download speed of up to 21Mbps island-wide from this Saturday. The M1 HSPA+ network has been capable of delivering download speed of 21 Mbps since July this year, although the company says it held back its commercial launch pending the arrival of customer terminals.

In a year or so the same can be expected in other major telecom markets of world - India & China. Does that indicate that the fag end of wired-line broadband has just begun.

Is WiMAX out of 4G race ?

I found the recent reports on HSPA and WiMAX users data very interesting. Does the reports indicate that the WiMAX is out of 4G race ? Pl go thru -

As per the GSM Association reports - The number of live HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) connections will pass 150 million globally this summer, while according to a report published by Marvedis this week WiMAX has just 3.5 million users. This puts HSPA firmly ahead of other mobile broadband technologies.


As per Wireless Intelligence reports , EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) have 49.5 million HSPA users currently and almost 60 million predicted by the end of the summer. Asia-Pacific is a close second at 47.7 million subscribers and by the end of September will have over 56 million. The U.S. trails significantly, with about 32 million HSPA connections growing to perhaps 37 million by September, while the rest of the Americas will hit just over four million subscribers in the same time frame.

Why HSPA may be a prefered choice to operators -
HSPA is an attractive option for mobile operators as the technology allows operators to upgrade their existing 3G networks, often by simply upgrading the software. This gives HSPA a leg up over WiMAX, which requires new network infrastructure. Further, its performance rates are attractive, as well. HSPA download rates range from 3.6 Mbps to 14.4 Mbps, and a handful of operators are beginning to roll out 21 Mbps using HSPA+.

The GSMA reports that there are more than 300 upgraded networks across 127 countries. More than 1500 HSPA-enabled devices are on the market. Its rapid adoption — faster even than SMS — has led the organization to embrace HSPA as the dominant mobile broadband technology.

The report expects growth to continue at a rapid pace, predicting 200 million connections by the first quarter of 2010.

Clearwire pushing WiMAX in USA

Clearwire Communications is moving forward WiMAX deployment in the United States at a quick pace, announcing the latest launch of its mobile WiMAX service, CLEAR, in Las Vegas, Nev., just one month after its Atlanta, Ga. service rollout. The new service covers approximately 638 square miles, making WiMAX available to an estimated 1.7 million people.

Providing backhaul for the 4G service is Ciena Corporation. Motorola is the end-to-end system provider for this launch. In addition to providing 4G connectivity with wired and wireless modems operating in the 2.5 GHz frequency band, more than 300 cell sites in the Las Vegas area utilize the company's WAP 400 Diversity Access Point product.

Pricing options start at $20 per month for home Internet service or $30 per month for mobile Internet. Customers can purchase day passes for $10

Mobile broadband expected to reach 418m Worldwide by 2017

­Newly released forecasts from Coda Research Consultancy's report show that portable laptop and netbook users accessing the internet via mobile broadband will produce US$48bn in operator revenues in 2017, will number 418m worldwide, and will generate and consume an immense 1.8 exabytes of traffic per month - a forty fold increase over 2009.

The most significant growth will occur in the Asia-Pacific region, where users will amount to 162m by 2017. Europe will account for 94m users, and North America for 58m users. Impacts of Long Term Evolution (LTE) will be dramatic, with half of all mobile broadband via netbook and laptop users employing LTE worldwide in 2017. LTE users will hit 38m in 2013 after a ramp up in LTE production in 2012, and will rise to 209m by 2017, a 1100% increase over 2012. Three quarters of users in Europe and nearly two thirds of users in North America will employ LTE in 2017. This contrasts with just over half of users in Asia Pacific, and 12% in Central and South America. LTE take up will be greatly skewed toward European and North American markets in the short to medium term, where ARPU will be highest. However, report envisage significant take up in China, and see countries like India bypass 3G altogether, and move straight to LTE.

More generally, mobile broadband user growth will not correspond with operator revenue growth, particularly in less wealthy regions of Asia-Pacific, thus significantly impacting mobile broadband ARPU. For example, operator revenues from Asia Pacific will grow at only 50% of the rate of users, which contrasts with 63% for Europe. The silver lining however, is that LTE ARPU will be 17% higher than for mobile broadband in general.

LTE operator revenues will be greatest in Europe, where they will rise by a CAGR of 47% from 2012 to 2017, and will form 83% of all mobile broadband revenues in that region. LTE revenues from North America will grow significantly more, at a CAGR of 59% between 2012 and 2017, and LTE will form 72% of its mobile broadband revenues. In contrast, LTE revenues will form only 13% of all mobile broadband revenues in Middle East and Africa.

LTE usage via portables will lead to more traffic per user than for mobile broadband in general. This will further increase pressure upon network capacity, and will hit 1.1 exabytes per month in 2017. Asia Pacific alone will take up 45% of this, whilst Europe will take up a third, and North America 17%.

Video will dominate mobile broadband traffic to and from portables, and will account for over half (53%) of traffic by 2017. The bad news for rights' holders is that one fifth of all traffic will be P2P. Nearly half of video traffic (47%) and nearly two thirds of P2P traffic will be consumed in Asia Pacific. This reflects the dominant position this region will play in mobile broadband usage and how mobile broadband will continue to be the sole vehicle for many people to gain broadband connectivity in developing countries such as India and China.

In summing up the report's forecasts, Steve Smith said, "Clearly, tremendous opportunities for both operators and device and component vendors exist, but the risks are significant. With enormous growth in traffic and considerable decline in ARPU, operators will need to be ruthlessly efficient. Asia Pacific is going to be the hotbed for growth, but it is a complex picture of emerging markets, developed markets and even markets that will leapfrog 3G altogether. LTE is going to be an important cushion for operators, but our research shows they will need to take into account the very different factors impacting 3G and 3G+ growth across regions and decide carefully how, when and where to market LTE."

Silver lining for fixed access opearators - Mobile broadband in UK fail to live upto expectation

­According to the latest data from the UK broadband comparison website Broadband Genie, only around one in ten (11 per cent) mobile broadband users are satisfied with the speed of their mobile broadband. While around a quarter were undecided, two thirds claimed their 3G broadband wasn't fast enough. According to Genie - Mobile Broadband Fails Miserably to Live Up to Consumer Expectations. The public perception of mobile broadband is often of a service that is comparable in speed and stability to fixed-line broadband, which simply isn't the case - and won't be for the foreseeable future. Exaggerated advertising and unrealistic 'up to' speed claims have given the public a rose-tinted idea of mobile broadband that the service cannot, in most cases, hope to live up to.

Battle won for Wimax - ITU Accepts IEEE 802.16 as a 3G Standard

The IEEE 802.16 has been accepted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as the sixth technology that it has accepted as a 3G wireless standard. The move has caused celebration in both the WiMAX and WiBro communities - both of which are based on 802.16 variations.
WiMAX/WiBro/802.16 join rival technologies W-CDMA, CDMA-2000 and TD -SCDMA in the ITU's IMT-2000 3G spectrum standard.
Technically the ITU has accepted what it has termed "IMT-2000 OFDMA TDD WMAN," a specification "based on a normative reference to IEEE Std 802.16. In other words, IEEE Std 802.16 is now part of the IMT-2000 family. WMAN, is short for "wireless metropolitan area network," which is the real name for 802.16, as set by the IEEE. Put another way, the ITU didn't accept WiMAX. It accepted WMAN. WiMAX, as defined by the WiMAX Forum, is "based upon the harmonized IEEE 802.16/ETSI HiperMAN standard.
South Korea's WiBRO is a mobile form wireless broadband also based on 802.16 and that may even some day be compatible with what's emerging as mobile WiMAX.
Indeed, even Ambassador Richard M. Russell, the U.S. Representative to the World
Qualcomm has fought hard to keep 802.16 away from ITU acceptance whereas Intel has spent a large fortune promoting the technology so that it could break what it sees as Qualcomm's stranglehold on 3G.
One little caveat in the ITU action that at least some observers noted is that what the ITU approved was 802.16 as a Time Division Duplex (TDD) technology. That's fine for the attempt to craft a mobile WiMAX, which is based on TDD. However, the ITU didn't accept 802.16 for use in Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) bands, which account for an estimated 80 percent or more of all the licensed frequencies in the world.
On the other hand, the ITU approval specified OFDMA - Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access - the first time the ITU's done that. Many in the industry believe OFDMA will be a key technology included in the standardization of 4G wireless technology.

New standard for WiMAX unveiled

The CDMA Development Group (CDG) and the Third Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) has recently released their proposed Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB) standard, the technology they hope will trump the mobile iterations of IEEE 802.16e-2005 (so-called mobile WiMAX) and Long-Term Evolution (LTE) as the world's eventual 4G standard.
The proposal now needs to undergo final standardization, which backers predict will be a rapid process. In the United States, UMB is scheduled to emerge as Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) standard TIA-1121.
The UMB proposal is an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) solution that uses
- "sophisticated" control and signaling mechanisms;
- radio resource management (RRM);
- adaptive reverse link (RL) interference management; and
- such advanced antenna techniques as Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO), Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA) and beamforming.

It supports inter-technology handoffs and seamless operation with existing CDMA2000 1X and 1xEV-DO systems. It claims to be able to deliver both high-capacity voice and broadband data in all environments, including fixed, pedestrian and fully mobile in excess of 300 km/hr. It supports, proponents say, as many as 1,000 simultaneous VoIP users within a single sector, using 20 megahertz of bandwidth. Average latency is 14.3 mSec over-the-air to support VoIP, push-to-talk and other delay-sensitive applications with minimal jitter.
The unveiling of the UMB proposal, an IP-based mobile broadband standard alleged to enable peak download data rates of 288 Mb/s in a 20-megahertz bandwidth, is clearly evidence that a 4G technology potentially four times as fast as mobile WiMAX is almost market-ready. The CDG and 3GPP2 estimate initial commercial availability at the first half of 2009, and they clearly hope to convince carriers looking at 802.16 to instead wait just a little longer what the CDG fancies is a technology that will "leapfrog other wireless broadband technologies to become the leading standard adopted for next generation mobile telecommunications."
And, of course, all the players - including UMB, LTE and the mobile WiMAX camp - are in a death match for designation as the official definition of wireless 4G technology. That definition won't be released until the 2008/09 timeframe, in the form of the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) IMT-Advanced requirements. However, some folks, like those at research house In-Stat, also think initial implementations of LTE, UMB and 802.16 WiMAX may fall short of throughput and other expectations, with later enhancements or even some type of technology combination actually bringing real 4G to the table But that's not what the corporate backers of each of the technologies really wants (Qualcomm is behind UMB, which it considers a member of the CDMA 2000 family; Ericsson is touting LTE; and Intel has spent uncounted millions singing the glories of WiMAX). Each wants its technology to be "the one" - thus the faster the push to get UMB at least certified as a TIA standard before the ITU acts, the better to compete with the fact there is an IEEE designation for the foundation technology behind what is being called WiMAX (without, interestingly, the official permission of the IEEE).
"It is expected that the UMB specification will be quickly converted into an official global standard by the 3GPP2 organizational partners," the 3GPP2 said in its statement unveiling the final UMB proposal. It also noted that those "organization partners" include the Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB) in Japan, China Communications Standards Association (CCSA), TIA in North America, the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) in South Korea and the Telecommunications Technology Committee (TTC) in Japan.

WCDMA HSPA connections to reach 40m by 2008 !

As per Wireless Intelligence, WCDMA HSPA cellular connections are expected to reach 40 million worldwide by end of 2008. By 2010, WCDMA HSPA is expected to represent around 45% of total WCDMA cellular connections, which are also on track to exceed GSM connections by 2010 in those countries where the network has been launched.
Asia-Pacific is driving growth during the initial phase of adoption, while European operators will boost total WCDMA HSPA cellular connections from the end of 2008. WCDMA HSPA is expected to increase data traffic and non-voice revenues.

WCDMA HSPA will be commercially present in more than 60 countries by the end of next year, based on announced plans. With the aim of bringing broadband speeds to mobile networks, WCDMA HSPA is a software upgrade to existing WCDMA networks typically launched from 2003. WCDMA HSPA will go through a slow adoption phase until the end of 2008. WCDMA HSPA is expected to represent around 6% of total WCDMA connections by the end of 2007 (11 million connections).
"The fastest early growth is coming from Asia-Pacific, with operators such as KTF, Telstra and NTT DoCoMo already very aggressive in migrating their installed base to the new technology," says Gillet. At an operator group level, Vodafone Group could reach 4.5 million WCDMA HSPA cellular connections by the end of next year. T-Mobile has been focusing more on its EDGE network and is expected to be more aggressive in launching WCDMA HSPA, especially in Germany, its home market. Orange and Telefonica O2 are following the same pattern as they expand coverage in their key markets, including Eastern European countries such as Poland and Czech Republic. Finally, from 2009, WCDMA HSPA uptake in Western and Eastern European countries will trigger a fast adoption of the technology worldwide. "In 2010, worldwide WCDMA HSPA cellular connections are expected to represent around 45% of total WCDMA connections, numbering around 278 million cellular connections.

Handset launches - In 2006, operators were offering high-speed services mainly through HSDPA datacards. HSUPA datacards are expected to be introduced in the second half of 2007. HSDPA handsets will be more affordable from 2008, driving volume.
Handset pricing - As WCDMA moves towards the sub-€100 ASP segment, HSDPA benefits from time and volume advantages and is expected to hit the mid tier by the end of 2008. WCDMA HSPA handsets will hit the mass market faster than the existing WCDMA handsets.
Tariffs - Operators will differentiate by offering new services based on flat-rate tariff plans withWCDMA HSPA as one of the enablers.
Network cost of development - WCDMA HSPA is a software upgrade to the existing WCDMA network infrastructure and is therefore not particularly costly except for backhaul.
Network coverage - WCDMA HSPA will generally be implemented over the whole WCDMA network of an operator, starting with the most densely populated zones.
Technology migration - We have assumed that WCDMA to WCDMA HSPA migration will follow a similar pattern to migration from CDMA2000 1X to CDMA2000 1XEV-DO.
Exceptions - Networks in China and India have not been included in the WCDMA HSPA forecasts as operators have not yet announced any official deployment. Similarly, Russian WCDMA HSPA connections have not yet been forecasted.

Source - http://www.cellular-news.com/

Mobile WiMax will connect 8 percent of world's 1.1 billion mobile broadband subscribers by 2012 !!!

According to new research from Parks Associates - Mobile WiMax will connect 8 percent of the world's 1.1 billion mobile broadband subscribers by 2012, accounting for nearly 88 million users worldwide, The firm also forecasts 52 percent of these subscribers will be from Asian countries, while North and South America will account for another 28 percent.
Today, most existing WiMAX deployments are the province of aspiring start-up service providers or incumbent telecom carriers looking to fill coverage gaps. The imminent availability of commercial products and increasing availability of spectrum around the world will change the market for Mobile WiMAX and make it viable among major service providers. Taiwan alone will have 8 million Mobile WiMAX subscribers by 2012.
Approximately 160 million cellular subscribers (6 percent of all cellular subscribers) were using a mobile broadband service at the end of 2006, Parks adds. Two-thirds of these mobile broadband subscribers used UMTS technology, and the remainder used CDMA EV-DO.
"Both Mobile WiMAX and UMTS/HSDPA technologies will gain market share in the next several years, at the expense of CDMA EVDO," Cai says. "TD-SCDMA will also have a meaningful market share due to its strong foothold in China, the largest mobile market in the world."

VSNL rolls out WiMax services in Bangalore

The Tata-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam (VSNL) has rolled out WiMax services in India. To begin with, the global communications company will offer the services to enterprise customers in Bangalore. VSNL will extend its WiMax network to about 120 cities across India for enterprise customers and in five cities for retail customers by the end of this financial year. A number of companies from sectors like retail, financial services and automobiles are using VSNL’s Wimax services. VSNL has launched WiMax after conducting pilots in Bangalore and other locations VSNL is also the leader in the Wi-Fi space, with nearly 300 public hotspots in India. Among operators, Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) is also planning to launch WiMax services very soon, having undertaken pilots at 14 locations. While Motorola as well as Nortel are offering equipment for WiMax, Alcatel-Lucent has completed the country’s first live WiMax field trial using Aircel’s licensed spectrum. WiMax also allows applications in moving conditions such as video streaming, high-speed file downloads, voice over IP and web browsing.

WiMAX market in India is warming up!

Reliance Communications (RCOM) is all set to launch its wireless broadband technology commonly known as WiMax in Pune and Bangalore in June. After assessing the market response, the company will extend the WiMax service to other cities such as Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Chandigarh and Delhi. The move that targets the three million wireless internet users in the country, is expected to give first-mover advantage to the company. It is said that Bharti Airtel, VSNL and BSNL have also tested the new technology and planning to roll out in the near future. In India, WiMax has been launched by Aircel Cellular in Chennai for business customers.

The news comes when the global WiMax Forum has sought the Indian government’s support in its endeavour towards getting the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to include WiMax as part of International Mobile Communications – 2000 (IMT-2000) standards. The Indian cellular operators have, however, opposed the move and said that the DoT must not support the forum’s proposal until further details such as compatibility and interference issues with regard to WiMax are available. IMT-2000 is the global standard for third generation (3G) wireless communications as defined by the International Telecommunication Union. It has defined five standards which are followed globally for 3G services. In January 2007, a proposed sixth standard (WiMax) was submitted into ITU by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and supported by the WiMax Forum.

Ericsson all set to dominate the wireless broadband market

Ericsson has launched close to a hundred HSPA networks across the world. HSPA has been established as the preferred technology for mobility and wireless broadband.
With some 125 HSPA enabled devices, including some 50 HSPA mobile phone models, Ericsson is today managing networks with more than 100 million subscribers.

5 Gbps transmission rate tested in 4G by DoCoMo

NTT DoCoMo announced Friday (9th Feb 07) that it achieved a maximum packet transmission rate of approximately 5Gbps in the downlink using 100MHz frequency bandwidth to a mobile station. .The field experiment of fourth-generation (4G) radio access took place in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture on December 25, 2006.
DoCoMo has already tested a maximum speed of 2.5Gbps on December 14, 2005.
The 5 Gbps speed was achieved by increasing the number of MIMO transmitting and receiving antennas from six to 12 each, and by using proprietary received signal processing technology.As compared with the December 14, 2005 test, the frequency spectrum efficiency, or the ratio of data transmission rate to channel bandwidth, was also doubled from 25bps/Hz to 50bps/Hz (5Gbps/100MHz).
The caveate as of now is that the test was done for mobile station moving only at speed fo 10km/h

Does WiMAX has a big future?

I have been writing on this blog about the growth of WiMax and have given lot of latest figures on no. of WiMAX users. But a recent major analytical study has concluded that, despite all the hype, the technology being marketed as WiMAX is going to be just a niche player in the mobile wireless market over the next half decade. I would like to hear your comments on this -
The latest study, by Arthur D. Little, compares High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) and WiMAX, and concludes WiMax will capture "at most 15 percent of this network equipment market and perhaps 10 percent of mobile broadband wireless subscribers by 2011-2012."
Other research houses including Strategy Analytics, which recently estimated that WiMAX would win at best 6 percent of the world market by 2010, also have similiar opinions. The findings of study are based on interviews with 31 HSPA and WiMax equipment vendors, operators running the networks, government regulators and financial investors around the globe.
"The momentum in HSDPA deployments has been stimulated by competition from other broadband wireless technologies and by the prospect of competition from mobile WiMax," says Michael Natusch, head of Arthur D. Little's UK TIME (Telecoms, IT, Media and Electronics) practice. "However, there is as yet no convincing real-world evidence of the actual relative performances of these technologies in large scale deployments. Nevertheless, it is likely that these two technologies will achieve comparable levels of performance in typical real-world situations, contrary to the notion that mobile WiMax should be regarded as a 'killer' technology."
In mobile WiMAX's favor, Little in its study does note that "WiMax systems are expected to achieve significantly greater theoretical peak data transfer rates when deployed than today's commercial HSPA networks deliver now." It cites thoretical speeds of 16.8 Mb/s in urban areas compared to 2-3 Mb/s for HSPA. A bigger issue, though, it says is that "the coverage a WiMax base station can achieve, is substantially lower than HSPA, hence HSPA operators will be able to deploy a smaller number of base stations and sites to cover the same geography." The result is that "radio access network Capex for current WiMax technology can significantly exceed HSDPA capex."
That issue may be a WiMAX-killer, because "an HSPA operator will be able to match its growing investment more clearly to the development of demand than mobile WiMax operators who will have to install more cell sites at the beginning to ensure coverage."
Looking further out into the future, and the battle between Mobile WiMAX advocates the HSPA community and its 3G LTE, Little isn't making any solid predictions. "The long term future relative roles of 3G LTE and mobile WiMax, both of which face major development hurdles before they achieve the full promise of new, so-called 4G systems, is uncertain and will be influenced by continuing expected shifts in the priorities and competitive alignments of major players in the wireless industry which has undergone a number of consolidations in recent months," Little concludes.

Source - Telecomweb