As wireless mobile networks continue to grow and become more robust, the path to LTE remains certain with operators deploying the technology the first half of this next decade, a new Visant Strategies report finds.
"LTE for many operators, if not almost all operators, is the 4G end goal for upgrading wireless networks," said report author Andy Fuertes of Visant Strategies. "In the most established markets carriers are systematically deploying upgrades to HSPA or CDMA2000 and awaiting the commercial arrival of LTE, which will begin to be strongly deployed within three to five years.
"Despite announced deployment roll backs of LTE due to recent economy woes there really is no fragmentation when it comes to 4G," Fuertes added. "All operators, except for the comparatively few that will migrate to mobile WiMAX, will use LTE to create an OFDM-based 4G wireless network, creating unprecedented economies of scale for LTE handsets and infrastructure."
According to the findings in "Long Term Evolution 2009: The World Role of LTE in Mobile Wireless Networks through 2015," LTE macro base stations will account for roughly 10% of total deployed macro base stations by year-end 2015, with the bulk of the LTE shipments occurring between 2012 and 2015. Also, over 60 million LTE femtocells will be shipped in 2015, with the Asia-Pacific market accounting for a good percentage of these shipments
"LTE really is the Hollywood ending to real 4G," said Larry Swasey of Visant Strategies. "While there will be a continued use of GSM and EDGE Evolution in lower-tier mobile markets and WCDMA and CDMA EV-DO throughout the world, when it comes to real 4G, LTE will eventually account for over 90% of global subscribers."
Source: www.cellular-news.com
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Femtocells support mobile phones in developing nations
Subscriptions to “old generation” 2G GSM-based mobile phone networks are growing significantly in emerging mobile markets such as India and Africa.
As a result, a couple of UK-based companies have seen an opportunity for a wireless basestation platform supporting the latest cost-effective femtocell architecture which retains compatibility with existing GSM basestations
The issue is that many new generation basestations do not offer 2G GSM capabilities, focusing as they do on the broadband-enabled mobile technologies like 3G and Wimax.
“This is widening the so called digital divide, and creates a barrier to adoption by the vast majority of the existing GSM user base,” said Cambridge Consultants Limited (CCL).
The company has produced a GSM/GPRS/EDGE/E-EDGE physical layer (PHY) reference design called Centaur implemented on a chipset designed by Bath-based picoChip.
“Femtocell development to date has focused on 3G and 4G technologies, but this product dramatically extends that, enabling low-cost basestations and femtocells for the high-volume GSM market,” said Nigel Toon, president and CEO at picoChip.
CCL demonstrated the Centaur reference design at the CTIA Wireless 2009 event in Las Vegas earlier this month.
The aim is to offer designers next-generation basestations and femtocells that incorporate 2G and 2.75G capability. This will allow them to develop low-cost basestations for developing markets such as Africa and India.
According to the Global Mobile Suppliers Association, much of the recent growth in GSM subscriptions is in the developing world.
By the end of 2008, there were 365 million GSM subscriptions in Africa, 100 million of whom had joined that year.
In 2008, India saw a 47.5% growth in GSM subscriptions, rising by an average of 6.83 million subscriptions each month, from 170 million to more than 250 million.
“GSM will still be in operation for many years, if not decades, to come, delivering the services required by billions of subscribers,” said Tim Fowler, commercial director at Cambridge Consultants’ wireless division.
“It is critical that the deployment of mobile infrastructure includes GSM capability. One of the challenges for the developing world in particular is the cost of infrastructure.”
The reference design addresses the cost issue by including a complete framework model and code implemented on the picoArray from picoChip.
"The technology can be used for GSM-only femtocells, for example for low-power GSM licensees,” said Toon. “It can also be used for dual-mode WCDMA/GSM femtocells, or even as a low-cost macrocell for economical wide area coverage in rural areas or developing countries.”
PicoChip has a range of femtocell chips developed with a series of partners. At one end is the PC8219 baseband chipset for eight-user HSPA femtocells designed to run on its PC202-10 processor chip. At the other end is the PC302 aimed at more cost-sensitive residential applications.
“Small cells are a crucial part of networks in the future, and we have shown that our approach can be extended to both 2G and 4G,” said Toon.
Source: electronicsweekly.com
As a result, a couple of UK-based companies have seen an opportunity for a wireless basestation platform supporting the latest cost-effective femtocell architecture which retains compatibility with existing GSM basestations
The issue is that many new generation basestations do not offer 2G GSM capabilities, focusing as they do on the broadband-enabled mobile technologies like 3G and Wimax.
“This is widening the so called digital divide, and creates a barrier to adoption by the vast majority of the existing GSM user base,” said Cambridge Consultants Limited (CCL).
The company has produced a GSM/GPRS/EDGE/E-EDGE physical layer (PHY) reference design called Centaur implemented on a chipset designed by Bath-based picoChip.
“Femtocell development to date has focused on 3G and 4G technologies, but this product dramatically extends that, enabling low-cost basestations and femtocells for the high-volume GSM market,” said Nigel Toon, president and CEO at picoChip.
CCL demonstrated the Centaur reference design at the CTIA Wireless 2009 event in Las Vegas earlier this month.
The aim is to offer designers next-generation basestations and femtocells that incorporate 2G and 2.75G capability. This will allow them to develop low-cost basestations for developing markets such as Africa and India.
According to the Global Mobile Suppliers Association, much of the recent growth in GSM subscriptions is in the developing world.
By the end of 2008, there were 365 million GSM subscriptions in Africa, 100 million of whom had joined that year.
In 2008, India saw a 47.5% growth in GSM subscriptions, rising by an average of 6.83 million subscriptions each month, from 170 million to more than 250 million.
“GSM will still be in operation for many years, if not decades, to come, delivering the services required by billions of subscribers,” said Tim Fowler, commercial director at Cambridge Consultants’ wireless division.
“It is critical that the deployment of mobile infrastructure includes GSM capability. One of the challenges for the developing world in particular is the cost of infrastructure.”
The reference design addresses the cost issue by including a complete framework model and code implemented on the picoArray from picoChip.
"The technology can be used for GSM-only femtocells, for example for low-power GSM licensees,” said Toon. “It can also be used for dual-mode WCDMA/GSM femtocells, or even as a low-cost macrocell for economical wide area coverage in rural areas or developing countries.”
PicoChip has a range of femtocell chips developed with a series of partners. At one end is the PC8219 baseband chipset for eight-user HSPA femtocells designed to run on its PC202-10 processor chip. At the other end is the PC302 aimed at more cost-sensitive residential applications.
“Small cells are a crucial part of networks in the future, and we have shown that our approach can be extended to both 2G and 4G,” said Toon.
Source: electronicsweekly.com
Thursday, April 23, 2009
magicJack getting femtocell version, other upgrades
The magicJack, a VoIP telephony device first introduced in 2007, is about to get a number of upgrades, according to a Tuesday Laptopmag report. The timeliest of these, number porting, is expected to arrive within the next 60 days, according to magicJack inventor Dan Borislow. The most requested feature from customers, it will allow users to transfer existing numbers to current and future devices.
Next up, the new and existing devices will get Linux compatibility sometime in the third quarter of 2009, and sometime between then and the first quarter of 2010, a new magicJack model will use femtocell technology that will allow users to port GSM cellphone calls through the device. This will not only improve call quality or give them a signal indoors, but also save minutes on their plans. The technology will use a portion of the cellular phone spectrum. Borislow says the device will be slightly bigger than the current magicJack and only slightly more expensive. To alleviate worries during emergency calls, it will have a revamped 911 system that uses triangulation to plot a current location.
Finally, a downloadable application for mobile phones and usable with the magicJack service is rumored, though no specifics about it is known.
The low-cost device is compatible with Windows PCs and Macs, and is bundled with one year of service and is priced at $40.
Source: www.electronista.com
Next up, the new and existing devices will get Linux compatibility sometime in the third quarter of 2009, and sometime between then and the first quarter of 2010, a new magicJack model will use femtocell technology that will allow users to port GSM cellphone calls through the device. This will not only improve call quality or give them a signal indoors, but also save minutes on their plans. The technology will use a portion of the cellular phone spectrum. Borislow says the device will be slightly bigger than the current magicJack and only slightly more expensive. To alleviate worries during emergency calls, it will have a revamped 911 system that uses triangulation to plot a current location.
Finally, a downloadable application for mobile phones and usable with the magicJack service is rumored, though no specifics about it is known.
The low-cost device is compatible with Windows PCs and Macs, and is bundled with one year of service and is priced at $40.
Source: www.electronista.com
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Migrating Heavy Data Users to Femtocells
Signals Research Group has completed a whitepaper on the business case for femtocells as part of its ongoing femtocell business modeling initiative with the trade group, the Femto Forum. The study found, across a wide variety of scenarios considering different regions of the world, the business case for femtocells is strong---often doubling the customer lifetime value---and does not depend on any one critical factor or assumption in order to generate a favorable outcome. Further to this, the research demonstrated that femtocells can dramatically reduce the growing financial costs made by heavy mobile broadband data users on the mobile network.
Signals Research Group found that changing the perceived key assumptions associated with femtocells does not threaten the viability of the business case. For example, increasing the wholesale cost of the femtocell by 50% (from $200 to $300) only reduces the basic value proposition for femtocells by a modest 16.3%. The study also found that the business case is not contingent upon a reduction in churn even though it is a likely outcome of a femtocell deployment and has already been proven in other similar FMC product deployments.
At a time when there is a great deal of interest surrounding managing the costs associated with the growing uptake of unlimited mobile broadband data packages, the research found there to be considerable savings associated with offloading traffic via the femtocell - in particular for heavy data users. The study found that the cost savings associated with offloading as low as 1.4 GB of HSPA data or 1.3 GB of EV-DO Rev A data per month via the femtocell from a coverage-constrained macro cellular network would justify an operator offering a subscriber a free femtocell. For a small but rapidly growing segment of heavy wireless data users an operator can easily halve the cost of delivering wireless data at home or in the office by offloading traffic from the macro cellular network onto a femtocell.
These latest findings follow those presented by Signals Research Group at Mobile World Congress where it was announced that even with conservative assumptions, the customer lifetime value of a femtocell user increases by as much as 125%, and even more in certain user scenarios. Additionally it was found that a European operator wanting to provide a reliable 2.5 Mbps in-building service for the most coverage challenged households, could do so for 320 per household if it used a femtocell strategy, whereas providing similar in-home service with the means of the macro cellular network alone would cost 900.
What shines through when you undertake a serious assessment of the femtocell business case is that there is no single factor required for healthy financial returns. Cost savings, incremental revenue, and retention benefits enable femtocells to be deployed successfully with a wide variety of assumptions, said J. Randolph Luening, Vice President of Wireless Economics at SRG. Instead, the business case is highly dependent on the attributes of the targeted customer segment and the specific customer proposition put forth by the operator."
To date we've seen femtocell deployments mostly focus on providing improved indoor coverage. However, the rapid take-up in mobile broadband services means we're going to see this start to change rapidly. If the mobile industry is serious about decisively moving beyond simple voice and text to providing a mobile broadband service to all its subscribers then femtocells must be a key consideration for managing the associated costs, said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum. Signals Research Group's findings illustrate the flexibility of the femtocell business case. The picture that emerges is one of a low risk investment, requiring a modest financial outlay to get started and costs which can be easily paid back based on conservative assumptions about the services offered.
Although the research found there are certain regional and country-specific influences on the femtocell business case, they are outweighed by other assumptions (e.g., ARPU, usage, etc), which transcend all regions of the world. However, operators in different regions of the world are likely to vary their go-to-market strategies based on local conditions. Operators in large geographic regions, such as North America, may leverage femtocells to provide improved coverage. Conversely, operators in regions such as Western Europe where calling plans are more expensive may place a greater emphasis on free calls. The research indicated there is nothing that precludes any of the strategies from being successful in any of the regions although some will prove to be more popular than others.
The whitepaper builds upon preliminary results detailed at this year's Mobile World Congress by presenting results for fourteen different scenarios across three 3 regions of the world Western Europe, the United States, and Developed Asia. The scenarios studied took into consideration regional specific attributes, such as the radio access technology (UMTS/HSPA or 1X/EV-DO Rev A), typical key performance indicators such as voice + data usage and average revenue per user, and realistic femtocell strategies that would be appropriate for the region being analysed.
The whitepaper is available on the Femto Forum website and the full business case modeling tool is available to full members of Femto Forum.
Source: cellular-news
Signals Research Group found that changing the perceived key assumptions associated with femtocells does not threaten the viability of the business case. For example, increasing the wholesale cost of the femtocell by 50% (from $200 to $300) only reduces the basic value proposition for femtocells by a modest 16.3%. The study also found that the business case is not contingent upon a reduction in churn even though it is a likely outcome of a femtocell deployment and has already been proven in other similar FMC product deployments.
At a time when there is a great deal of interest surrounding managing the costs associated with the growing uptake of unlimited mobile broadband data packages, the research found there to be considerable savings associated with offloading traffic via the femtocell - in particular for heavy data users. The study found that the cost savings associated with offloading as low as 1.4 GB of HSPA data or 1.3 GB of EV-DO Rev A data per month via the femtocell from a coverage-constrained macro cellular network would justify an operator offering a subscriber a free femtocell. For a small but rapidly growing segment of heavy wireless data users an operator can easily halve the cost of delivering wireless data at home or in the office by offloading traffic from the macro cellular network onto a femtocell.
These latest findings follow those presented by Signals Research Group at Mobile World Congress where it was announced that even with conservative assumptions, the customer lifetime value of a femtocell user increases by as much as 125%, and even more in certain user scenarios. Additionally it was found that a European operator wanting to provide a reliable 2.5 Mbps in-building service for the most coverage challenged households, could do so for 320 per household if it used a femtocell strategy, whereas providing similar in-home service with the means of the macro cellular network alone would cost 900.
What shines through when you undertake a serious assessment of the femtocell business case is that there is no single factor required for healthy financial returns. Cost savings, incremental revenue, and retention benefits enable femtocells to be deployed successfully with a wide variety of assumptions, said J. Randolph Luening, Vice President of Wireless Economics at SRG. Instead, the business case is highly dependent on the attributes of the targeted customer segment and the specific customer proposition put forth by the operator."
To date we've seen femtocell deployments mostly focus on providing improved indoor coverage. However, the rapid take-up in mobile broadband services means we're going to see this start to change rapidly. If the mobile industry is serious about decisively moving beyond simple voice and text to providing a mobile broadband service to all its subscribers then femtocells must be a key consideration for managing the associated costs, said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum. Signals Research Group's findings illustrate the flexibility of the femtocell business case. The picture that emerges is one of a low risk investment, requiring a modest financial outlay to get started and costs which can be easily paid back based on conservative assumptions about the services offered.
Although the research found there are certain regional and country-specific influences on the femtocell business case, they are outweighed by other assumptions (e.g., ARPU, usage, etc), which transcend all regions of the world. However, operators in different regions of the world are likely to vary their go-to-market strategies based on local conditions. Operators in large geographic regions, such as North America, may leverage femtocells to provide improved coverage. Conversely, operators in regions such as Western Europe where calling plans are more expensive may place a greater emphasis on free calls. The research indicated there is nothing that precludes any of the strategies from being successful in any of the regions although some will prove to be more popular than others.
The whitepaper builds upon preliminary results detailed at this year's Mobile World Congress by presenting results for fourteen different scenarios across three 3 regions of the world Western Europe, the United States, and Developed Asia. The scenarios studied took into consideration regional specific attributes, such as the radio access technology (UMTS/HSPA or 1X/EV-DO Rev A), typical key performance indicators such as voice + data usage and average revenue per user, and realistic femtocell strategies that would be appropriate for the region being analysed.
The whitepaper is available on the Femto Forum website and the full business case modeling tool is available to full members of Femto Forum.
Source: cellular-news
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Femtocells to Dominate Market for Indoor Cell Coverage
While femtocells were virtually nonexistent in 2006, and deployed by one operator in 2007, they will make up 61% of small cellular base station revenue by 2013, reports In-Stat.
As mobile operators migrate from larger base stations to smaller access points, the number of units deployed will explode dramatically, says Allen Nogee, In-Stat analyst. In-Stat expects the smaller and cheaper cells to be more immune to the recession, compared with more expensive macro and micro base station shipments.
Recent research by In-Stat found the following:
Source: cellular-news
As mobile operators migrate from larger base stations to smaller access points, the number of units deployed will explode dramatically, says Allen Nogee, In-Stat analyst. In-Stat expects the smaller and cheaper cells to be more immune to the recession, compared with more expensive macro and micro base station shipments.
Recent research by In-Stat found the following:
- Femtocells, picocells, and microcells are expected to surpass 15 million units by 2013.
- Worldwide annual femtocell semiconductor revenue will approach $400 million by 2013.
- Sprint was the first to market with a femtocell-based service in 2007, while others entered the market in 2008.
- In mid-2009, Airwalk introduced a new enterprise femtocell. These products have the capacity of a traditional picocell and the ease-of-use of a femtocell.
Source: cellular-news
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Are you ready for your own cell?
Ubiquisys, the 3G femtocell company, and picoChip, the industry's leading supplier of femtocell silicon, today announced that they are working together to integrate the picoChip PC302 processor into the Ubiquisys ZoneGate femtocell. picoChip will continue to be one of Ubiquisys' strategic suppliers, extending a five-year working relationship.
The picoChip PC302 is a highly integrated baseband processor that offers a combination of high performance and low cost. It is designed to support the advanced features of the ZoneGate femtocell, such as cognitive radio techniques, grid technology and application services.
Current ZoneGate femtocells use picoChip's PC202 processor, and this experience has informed the development of the PC302.
"We have worked closely with picoChip on both requirements and timelines," said Will Franks, founder and CTO, Ubiquisys. "picoChip's roadmap is aligned with our rapid development of next generation ZoneGate femtocells."
"Ubiquisys and picoChip are in the vanguard of the femtocell market; we are delighted to continue as a strategic supplier for the next generation of Ubiquisys femtocells," said Pete Claydon, co-founder and COO, picoChip. "We have a close relationship, spanning nearly five years of co-operation and joint development. This will be the third generation of femtocells we have worked on together, with ever-increasing performance and reduced cost."
SOURCE: picoChip
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Conference
Yes, I am writing this week about the conference I joined last week. I will not say the name of the conference but it is about 4G wireless technologies which is known as next generation wireless technologies.
I drove 3 hours from my house to the exhibition center, I left my home around 5:30am !!! and I was there around 8:30am. Traffic was awesome!!! I had fun on the road!!! The conference started around 9:00am. The first talk was about the definition
of 4G. The speaker is from Yankee group, and he was presenting some of the key issues about the 4G and some statistics about the wireless communications. Lots of predictions, assumptions, comments, questions .....
I was able to join the conference for one day, because the participation was very expensive. For the day I joined, I tried to get most out of it, I was filtering each information I received from presenters, and at the end of each session I was able to get couple of key words from the presentations. One of them is that in order to migrate from 3G to 4G, we need more time than expected. There are lots of issues that should be agreed upon, for instance standardization issues. Lots of wireless operators want to invest money on 4G technologies, but they can not even define what 4G is. Every company and every people has different definition, approach and totally different mindset about enabling 4G. Everyone talks about convergence of the systems, but converge to what???? Converge to divergence???
Unless the definitions, and technologies are not stated clearly, we really can not get benefit of 4G in the most efficient way. It is a great set of technologies if we agree on the purpose of it! We can not see how deep the water is unless we reach the bottom! The thing that makes me very happy about 4G, it seems it is a very deep water! Have you ever thought about 5G,6G,..., 100 G, 1000 G, 10^6 G?:) We should jump into the space. World is so small for 1000Gs!
I drove 3 hours from my house to the exhibition center, I left my home around 5:30am !!! and I was there around 8:30am. Traffic was awesome!!! I had fun on the road!!! The conference started around 9:00am. The first talk was about the definition
of 4G. The speaker is from Yankee group, and he was presenting some of the key issues about the 4G and some statistics about the wireless communications. Lots of predictions, assumptions, comments, questions .....
I was able to join the conference for one day, because the participation was very expensive. For the day I joined, I tried to get most out of it, I was filtering each information I received from presenters, and at the end of each session I was able to get couple of key words from the presentations. One of them is that in order to migrate from 3G to 4G, we need more time than expected. There are lots of issues that should be agreed upon, for instance standardization issues. Lots of wireless operators want to invest money on 4G technologies, but they can not even define what 4G is. Every company and every people has different definition, approach and totally different mindset about enabling 4G. Everyone talks about convergence of the systems, but converge to what???? Converge to divergence???
Unless the definitions, and technologies are not stated clearly, we really can not get benefit of 4G in the most efficient way. It is a great set of technologies if we agree on the purpose of it! We can not see how deep the water is unless we reach the bottom! The thing that makes me very happy about 4G, it seems it is a very deep water! Have you ever thought about 5G,6G,..., 100 G, 1000 G, 10^6 G?:) We should jump into the space. World is so small for 1000Gs!
Volkan Sevindik
Copyright 2008
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