Smartphones: Data Tsunami Coming

Smartphones are double-edged swords for carriers. They attract big-spending customers, but tax networks designed for simpler times, explains Fortune.

Independent telecom analyst Chetan Sharma estimates that the typical wireless subscriber consumes 120 megabytes each month; typical iPhone owners use four times that.

And it’s just getting worse. By 2010, global mobile data traffic is expected to exceed 200 terabytes per month, six times last year’s levels, according to Cisco Systems.

“3G networks were not designed effectively for this kind of usage,” says John Donovan, AT&T’s chief technology officer, referring to the current generation of broadband wireless. “We fight the day-to-day guerrilla warfare as the customers move around.”

Many of AT&T’s 60,000 cell towers need to be upgraded, with new 850 MHz gear and backhaul. That could cost billions of dollars, and AT&T has kept a lid on capital spending during the recession. AT&T will delay their LTE upgrade, upgrading its HSPA 3G network from 3.6 Mbps to 7.2 Mbps, instead.

Verizon plans to have 30 US LTE Markets by 2010. Verizon will use their nation-wide 700 MHz band. The carrier hopes to have a data-only LTE trial service available in Seattle and Boston later this year.

It can’t come soon enough. The tsunami is about to hit. Android phones from Samsung, LG, and Motorola are due in stores by early 2010. Motorola will launch their Android portfolio on September 10th. The data-oriented Palm Pre, which operates on Palm’s WebOS platform, is already on Sprint and should be in Verizon stores early next year.

A Cisco Mobile Forecast for 2008-2013 noted that a single high-end data phone today generates more data traffic than 30 basic-feature cell phones, while a single laptop air card generates more data traffic than 450 basic-feature cell phones. Cisco projects that mobile data traffic will increase a thousand-fold over the seven years from 2005 through 2012, with video being a significant component.

AT&T offers free Starbucks WiFi (with a paid data subscription) while Verizon is partnering with Boingo to deliver free WiFi access at hotels, airports, restaurants and coffee shops (with a data plan). PCCW, the Hong Kong operator, has started using Wi-Fi hot spots to ease the load from smartphones and its digital TV service.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has said that the most active 5% or so of data users are causing problems for the other 95%. AT&T is working on a revamped data plan whereby light data users would pay less, and heavy users would pay a premium rate — or leave.

Source:  Dailywireless

LTE Marketing Ramps Up

Motorola launched its LTE drive tour in Sweden today, to demonstrate their Long Term Evolution technology to operators from across Scandinavia. During the drive tour, visitors will witness LTE’s mobile broadband performance on the move in an urban environment via an LTE-enabled van. The demonstration will include hand-over between sectors and a number of demanding, bandwidth hungry video applications – including live TV over LTE.

The LTE network, which includes two Motorola LTE eNodeBs running on commercial hardware, is operating at 2.6GHz. It was deployed and optimised in just 10 days, says Motorola. Inside the van, which also toured the streets of Barcelona at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, visitors will see Standard Definition (SD) and High Definition (HD) streaming video from a Motorola video-on-demand server, as well as voice over IP calls, web browsing, file downloads and other high bandwidth and low latency Internet-based applications. Swedish cellular operator TeliaSonera selected Ericsson to build the world’s first commercial LTE site in Stockholm. There are no paying customers on it, but it will be part of the Nordic carrier’s commercial LTE network in Sweden’s capital city. It is scheduled to go live in 2010. The Swedish carrier will also use LTE gear from Huawei Technologies. Huawei has been aggressive in LTE development. Ericsson is currently the largest LTE proponent. Ericsson expects 80% of mobile broadband services will be enabled by cellular by 2012, using HSPA and LTE technologies. Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg said the bulk of mobile broadband deployments in the coming five years will be based on HSPA. But Huawei faces little competition in the market for LTE gear, opines Om Malik, with Nortel and Alcatel-Lucent in financial difficulty. Vodafone will use Huwaei gear in its LTE trials where Vodafone Germany and Huawei will test the performance of LTE in the 790-862MHz band using Huawei’ s end-to-end LTE solution. Huwaei opened a Long Term Evolution laboratory in Richardson, Texas. In June, Huawei launched what it proclaimed the world’s first commercial WiMax distributed base station (DBS) with four transmitters and four receivers (4T4Rs).

Motorola is actively involved in LTE trails with operators in North America, Europe and Asia, and earlier this year launched its LTE trial network and testing lab in Swindon, United Kingdom. Earlier this year, Motorola deployed a live 700MHz LTE demonstration network in Las Vegas, replicating their 2.6GHz live LTE experience in Barcelona. In addition to the collaborative trials with operators, Motorola is actively engaged with the TD-LTE trials initiated by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as part of its efforts to develop a globally competitive TD-LTE industry.

Ericsson’s CEO believes LTE will always have a price advantage — through volume — reports Om Malik. Ericsson drew a comparison to India, where GSM-enabled handsets enjoy a price advantage over their CDMA counterparts. “It will be the same for LTE and WiMAX,” he said. “In the end it will be about the economies of scale.” The ITU says their IMT-Advanced specification will be the only “true” 4G system. It calls for 100 Mbit/s downloads and a 1 Gbit/s link for stationary or local area connections. The ITU has said two specifications, 802.16m (or WiMax 2) and LTE-Advanced, will be considered, and it’s also possible that the Chinese government will submit its own specification for consideration.

Meanwhile, Motorola’s WiMAX infrastructure was used by Clearwire in Portland, Atlanta and Las Vegas. The Atlanta area is served by more than 400 cell sites that utilize Motorola’s WAP 400 and WAP 450 Diversity Access Point products. The WAP 400 and WAP 450 utilize tower top power amplifiers linked by their fiber optic cable with the base control unit housed in a small outdoor cabinet situated at the bottom of the tower. Source: Dailywireless.org
Source: http://www.dailywireless.org

Latest Devices – 21 May 2009

New devices to hit our provisioning platform in the last 7 days. Notables are the Samsung Android device, the BlackBerry 9630 aka Niagara and the first sightings on a Nokia S40 6th edition running the WebKit browser. Source http://www.paxmodept.com/telesto/blogitem.htm?id=785