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.

USO bid for setting rural telecom towers

The Department of Telecom has received bids from 22 stand-alone infrastructure providers and all telecom operators for the setting up 8,000 telecom towers in rural India at an estimated cost of over Rs 3,000 crore. The government will provide the capital to set up these towers from the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) through a bidding process. All Telecom companies pay 5% of their adjusted gross revenues towards the USOF, which is used for funding telecom infrastructure in rural India. Last year, the government had allocated Rs 1,500 crore towards the USOF in the budget. As per the Economic Survey released on Tuesday, off the Rs 10,787 crore collected towards USO fund till March 2006, only Rs 4,232 crore has been disbursed so far.

India now the third largest CDMA market in world

Indian wireless customer numbers moved close to 150m by the end of January 2007, an increase of 85% year on year. Customer numbers climbed over 6.6m in January alone with over 213,000 net new connections being made per day during the month.



The total CDMA base which accounted for just over a quarter of the total wireless customer count at the end of January stood at 39m customers.
India is now the third largest CDMA market in the world, having overtaken China towards the end of December 2006.



It is estimated that by the beginning of March the size of the Indian CDMA customer base will exceed that of South Korea, which ended 2006 with 40.2m CDMA customers, moving India into second place behind the United States.


Indian wireless market is also expected to go third in the world overall, ahead of Russia. Russia itself broke the 150m barrier in December, but is growing much slower than India - around 2.05m customers per month on average in 2006, versus 5.55m on the sub-continent



By early 2008 India may reach the second place, overtaking the United States which currently occupies the position.


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

Fixed-mobile convergence - The new kid on the street

One of the latest phenomemn in telecom sector is fixed-mobile convergence.
ABI Research has found that, by 2011, some 250 million users will be making and receiving phone calls over converged fixed-mobile networks and access points, and the firm expects capital expenditure in fixed-mobile convergence infrastructure to exceed $450 million by 2011. That equates to around 10 percent of households and 8 percent of enterprises using some form of fixed-mobile convergence access point on the premises. This will include UMA and SIP-based solutions, both supporting voice call continuity.

There are several competing technologies for fixed-mobile convergence including use of UMA to aggregate traffic from femtocells and Wi-Fi access points in the home, and picocells in the office. In the longer term, IMS-based solutions will be deployed using SIP to offer rich voice sessions over converged devices.

325 Million subscribers use CDMA2000?

According to the CDMA Development Group, there were 100 million new CDMA2000 subscriber adds in 2006. Today, there are more than 325 million CDMA2000 subscribers, including 55 million CDMA2000 1xEV-DO broadband subscribers, representing a 125-percent increase in EV-DO subscribers from the previous year. Including cdmaOne, there are now more than 370 million CDMA subscribers worldwide, with most of the growth coming from the Asia Pacific region, followed by North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The group also reports more than 100 operators have deployed CDMA2000 in the past three years, including 47 CDMA2000 1xEV-DO networks. As many as 40 of these operators had been GSM carriers.

VoIP - Giants battling for patents

Vonage is facing Verizon in the U.S. District Court in - with Verizon claiming patent rights to key technology used by Vonage and possibly many others in the industry. Verizon is charging Vonage with violation of seven of its patents. The patents cover a broad swath of VoIP technology, including the completion of calls between VoIP users and the public network, authentication of VoIP callers, validating VoIP callers' accounts, monitoring VoIP usage, fraud protection, enhanced features, and the use of Wi-Fi.

At the same time reports have started spreading through the industry that Vonage is launching an annual pre-paid VoIP plan in a move some theorize is designed to generate some fast cash, and that the VoIP house is also about to become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).

Verizon filed its suit in June. In July 2006, Vonage said it had acquired three VoIP-related patents from Digital Packet Licensing that address compression techniques related to the public network, a move seen as an attempt to find technology work-arounds to the Verizon patents if they are upheld.
In the extreme, should Verizon win, then Vonage could theoretically be forced to shut down its VoIP service. Such an outcome, though, could typically take years of litigation, and few industry observers expect that to happen. The most likely outcome is thought to be a license payment from Vonage if it loses, or is losing, the case. Estimates are also that, if it knocks off Vonage, Verizon will then go out after as many other VoIP industry players as it can get its hands on.

Vonage is expected to become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).

Nokia has 79% share of Indian GSM handset market?

The annual TNS CellTrack 2006 study, which covered around 3,000 Indian mobile users and 1,057 multi-brand retail outlets across 17 telecom circles, found that Nokia’s rule of GSM markets is overwhelming.Nokia, retained top spot in the Indian GSM market with 79 percent market share, while Motorola more than doubled its share to seven percent in 2006.Motorola’s gain was Samsung’s loss for the latter’s GSM market share dropped from 6 percent in 2005 to 4 percent in 2006.

Meanwhile in the CDMA market, Nokia again managed to retain its share, while Samsung lost market share from 17 percent to 8 percent, and Motorola too lost market share from 12 percent to 4 percent.LG had 49 percent of the CDMA market vis-à-vis 43 percent in 2005

The Indian wireless market - Share of different operators (as on 31st Dec 2006)

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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