The LTE World Summit 2012 proved to be a great success

The curtain has come down on another successful LTE World Summit event, which took place this week, in Barcelona, Spain. More than 2,000 delegates attended the event, representing more than 100 countries from around the world, indicating LTE’s impact the world over. There were over 100 exhibitors and also a series of masterclasses for the more technically minded to enjoy.

There was a wide range of speakers across the packed 11-track program and those attending the main keynotes were treated to speeches and presentations from some of the leading operators and vendors in the industry. They addressed some of the big topics and issues of the day, including signalling issues, strategies for lowering rollouts cost, the use of small cells, the problems with wifi offload, pricing strategies and general concern over LTE monetisation.

The actual event was prefaced by a Signaling Day that, as the name implies, focused on the signaling issues that are affecting all operators. It was well received and by the end of the day the phrase, ‘signaling storm’ had clearly taken over from last year’s ‘data tsunami’ as the buzz word of choice.

There was also the Operator Mindshare, a new format that involved executive from major operators hosting round table discussions on key topics to encourage new innovative thinking. There was much lively discussion and it all went off without any fisticuffs, with is either a relief or a disappointment, depending on your point of view.

The main event in the Catalan capital was opened by a welcome from Spain’s telecommunications minister, Mr Victor Calvo Sotelo, and followed by comments by the CTO of Orange Spain, Eduardo Duato. After admitting that operators in the region were having a particularly hard time, Duato called on the communications minister to make things easier for local operators, by freeing up more spectrum and helping to promote site sharing.

Also beamed via a live video link was the CTO of Deutsche Telekom, Germany, Bruno Jacobfeuerborn.  Jacobfeuerborn admitted he didn’t have to worry about bandwidth, with a 70MB/s LTE connection in his office. “But what about the rest of Germany?” the host Informa’s chief research office Mark Newman, cheekily quipped.

Other key figures appearing on stage included the CTO of 3, UK, Ed Candy, the CTIO of Etisalat Marwan Zawaydeh and the animated Yoshiki Chika, the CTO of Japan’s SoftBank. In his keynote speech Chika gave an animated talk highlighting the benefits of using TD-LTE spectrum as the most suitable technology for mobile broadband.

Another keynote highlight was the chief policy officer of Russian LTE provider Yota, who revealed that it was learning to deal with being one of the most congested network in the world with ouver 100 users per cell.

Meanwhile, Sung Man Kim, president of the network business unit for Korea’s KT Corporation said that the industry needed a paradigm shift in its approach to dealing with data traffic, and put forth its cloud-based RAN as the way to go forward. With speeds of 35Mbps and rising at its busiest location in Seoul Gangnam area, it seems to be doing a good job.

Clearly the event was a major success for the industry and all now look forward to the next one, LTE Asia, taking place on 18-19 September 2012 Marina Bay Sands, Singapore.

Pakistan's Mobilink has had its bank accounts frozen by the FBR

­Pakistani operator Mobilink has had all of its bank accounts frozen by the country’s Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), as the operator allegedly owes Rs8.6bn ($93m) in taxes to the authority.

The amount is owed to the exchequer on account of mis-declaration of sales tax and federal excise duty, the authority said in a statement.

The FBR claims that Mobilink collected the sales taxes from consumers but failed to pass them on to the government. It is now seeking to “recover the amount from the company through attachment of Bank accounts, blocking of imports and recovery through suppliers of the company, which include other telecom companies as well as the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.”

Responding to FBR’s action, Mobilink said it has clarified that the FBR’s ruling on Sales Tax and federal excise duty is still under consideration.

In its statement, the firm said that it is one of the largest corporate tax payers in Pakistan, and has “always remained at the forefront of making its due contribution to the nation’s exchequer”, noting that it paid Rs34bn in taxes in 2011 alone.

“Over its 17 year history of operations, Mobilink has remained committed to Pakistan, and respectful of all laws, including tax laws, which govern over Pakistan”, Mobilink’s statement concluded.

Bharti acquires 49 per cent stake in Qualcomm's India unit for a mere $165m

India’s Bharti Airtel has signed an agreement with Qualcomm to acquire 49 per cent of its Indian BWA entities.

Qualcomm acquired the wireless broadband service permits in India for four states in the country in 2010 for $1bn. The purchase was made in a deliberate bid to block the progress of WiMAX as an alternative 4G technology in the country, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said at the time. Now, it has sold the 49 per cent stake to Bharti for just $165m.

Bharti is acquiring its stake by purchasing a 26 per cent share held by two Indian partners in the Qualcomm broadband venture, Global Holding Corporation and Tulip Telecom and by subscribing to fresh equity. Once commercial operations are launched, subject to certain terms and conditions, the plan is for Bharti to assume complete ownership and financial responsibility for the BWA entities by the end of 2014.

“This partnership will combine the strength of Bharti’s national telecom footprint and Qualcomm’s technological leadership in the LTE TDD space,” said Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and managing director, Bharti Airtel.  With a broadband ready network across India, Bharti is well positioned to lead the next phase of Indian’s telecom revolution.”

Paul Jacobs added that one of the firm’s key objectives has been to include a strong partner in the Indian venture with the scale, experience and resources to deploy LTE TDD networks.

“GHC and Tulip have been great partners in facilitating this transaction. Qualcomm remains dedicated to the continued progress and success of the BWA venture and to fulfilling our commitment as a key equity stakeholder,” he said.

Qualcomm’s licences cover Delhi, Mumbai, Haryana and Kerala, and Bharti already has BWA licences of its own in four circles: Kolkata, Karnataka, Punjab and Maharashtra, as well as and 3G licences in thirteen circles. It has already launched 4G services in Kolkata and Karnataka.

Qualcomm said that it expects to provide technical assistance to Bharti in connection with network architecture and optimization, infrastructure and device testing, as well as continuing to develop and support the underlying technology and the LTE TDD ecosystem.

EE is trialling a mobile ticketing service in the UK

Network operator Everything Everywhere is deploying a mobile contactless transport ticketing service in the UK, which could lead to a nationwide roll out across select bus and rail services in 2013.

The operator, formed by the merger of T-Mobile and Orange in the UK, announced its partnership with transport firm Stagecoach Group to launch the country’s first commercial deployment of such a service.

A trial of the service is already underway in the county of Cambridgeshire and has enabled a small sample group to receive, store and validate their bus tickets using their mobile phone.

The operator has given each participant in the trial an NFC-enabled Quick Tap handset installed with an app to make them compatible with the local bus network’s smartcard readers, allowing them to travel on Stagecoach buses in the county.

The trial uses the Department of Transport’s Integrated Transport Smartcard Organisation (ITSO) smart ticketing technology, and aims to monitor the levels of customer convenience the Quick Tap service provides.

The UK Government is working to deliver, along with transport operators and public sector bodies, the infrastructure to enable most public transport journeys to be undertaken using smart ticketing by December 2014.

According to Informa Telecoms and Media, sales of NFC-enabled devices are expected to accelerate from 2013 onwards, with the availability of a larger range of mobile NFC handsets and an improved contactless POS infrastructure. Total NFC handset shipments are expected to grow from almost 44 million in 2011 to over 630 million in 2015, representing 40 per cent of all new handsets, up from 3.5 per cent at present.

“Smart phones are playing an increasingly important role in helping people manage their busy lifestyles and are already used across many areas of life,” said Stagecoach Group Finance Director Martin Griffiths. “We believe this technology can also make public transport easier and more convenient to use. Once this trial is complete, we will carry out a review of the findings and assess the potential to expand the scheme further for our passengers.”

The games are seen as a major driver for mobile roaming

At the recent Roaming World Congress hosted by IIR an animated panel session highlighted a number of challenges and opportunities imminent in the forthcoming London Olympics. These Olympics have been heralded as a major opportunity for medals to be won and sport to be celebrated but there are also a number of reasons to celebrate the games as a major driver for mobile roaming.

Millions of inbound roamers (forecast at around seven million) will enter the UK market as a result of the games while the countries operators will see their networks having to deal with billions of additional voice minutes and MB of data over the duration of the games and within the relatively small footprint of London and a number of regional centres. This demand is also likely to be ‘bursty’ being tied to particular events (finals) and the respective national sporting obsessions of the Olympic visitors. This issue was highlighted at a recent IIR Roaming Summit held in Barcelona when discussing the last roaming mega event, the World Cup held in South Africa. At key points during this event operator’s experienced dramatic increase in demand related to key matches and specific events within them. Jaques Bonifay CEO of Transatel, went on to state that it would have been better from a roaming perspective if France had won as international calls were expected to have ‘gone through the roof’. This aside there are serious ramifications of mega-events, like the Olympics for roaming service providers and London 2012 is of particular concern as the first mega-event in which smartphones and data will be an integral part.

Operators have taken a proactive stance in preparing for the event with capacity planning and additional cell tower support. However the panellist were quick to point out that when Germany hosted the UEFA European Football Championship (2008) Deutsche Telekom was somewhat over-prepared with an abundance of repeaters and portable cell towers but a decided lack of roaming. This approach has been emulated with London 2012 with temporary cell towers popping up at both staging centres and sporting sites. In respect of the UEFA experience the consensus was that roaming prices were still prohibitively high when the event was held which would have dissuaded use. However, it was felt that this would be less of an issue with London 2012, at least if roamers were from the European Union, due to the price cuts legislated in this region.

The agreements reached on May 10 regarding Roaming III regulation have come at a particularly fortuitous time. The radically reduced roaming rates will provide a strong incentive to experiment with roaming at the London 2012 event with both roaming voice and data service set to benefit.

It was the panellists view that cellular use would be huge over the period of the Olympics, indeed panellist member Duncan Hill of Europa technologies stated they were rolling out additional support for their coverage mapping service to clients and end customers in Olympic hotspots; as Europa’s main customers are operators there is obviously some concern regarding coverage. Duncan went on to share the fact they are also providing wifi mapping adding further credence to this assumption. Paolo Silvi of Keynote SIGOS argued that coverage for roamers during the Olympics was the tip of the iceberg. He argued that without demonstrable quality of service roamers would simply not make use of cellular services claiming that QoS as well as coverage needed to be guaranteed to facilitate such mega-events.

The panellists agreed that capacity planning for the summer months already incorporated expected increases based on vacationing patterns but they were divided as to whether this would be enough to cope with both holidaymakers and the inspected influx of Olympic visitors. Edward Van Kuijk, EVP Sales and Marketing Hub services for Vodafone roaming was relatively downbeat on the potential for roaming during the Olympics. His assertions came on the back of his own analysis of the number of international roamers expected and their likely avoidance of high tariff international roaming charges.

A challenge from an unexpected quarter was highlighted by Jaques Bonifay who stated MVNOs could potential impact the roaming opportunity at London 212. Bonifay highlighted a particular approach his company was taking in cooperation with the Chinese Olympic delegation in which they are partnering with China Unicom. Transatel will be setting up an MVNO for the duration of the event providing a local calling alternative for the Chinese Olympic delegation and Chinese nationals. The service is being marketed via China Unicom. Fielding questions Jaques agreed that while he sees this approach as a highly attractive one for users visiting international mega-events it does require a pre-existing relationship to be in place between the roamers home network operators and any potential partner MVNO. Without this it is not a cost effective based on the setup costs, COA and relatively short time in which the MVNO can generate revenues.

Whether the Olympics will be a great opportunity for all roaming players bearing in mind preferred partners and steering will be remain in place is debateable.  Whether roaming data use will increase over the Olympics or impact the consumption habits of roaming users is also unknown. What is known is the London 2012 Olympic Games will be an important testing ground for data roaming in a regulated market and an opportunity for data usage profile testing within an international mega-event.

Senior analyst Michael Inouye said: “On the CE side, TVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes are expected to lead in shipments. As pay-TV operators continue to push new services and features, such as multiscreen initiatives and whole home DVRs, connectivity will increasingly come to the forefront of the digital living room.”

Wifi is expected to remain the most common technology used to connect these media devices (in most cases greater than 60 per cent), although other wired networking technologies such as MoCA, G.hn, power line communication, and HomePNA, are expected to start gaining additional traction.

The growing popularity of these devices with pay-TV and broadband operators looking to extend the delivery throughout the home is expected to increase consumer acceptance of them.

“The market vision is to enable a seamless networking environment that will rely on a number of technologies,” adds Mr. Inouye. “A consumer, for instance, might start a file transfer to a media tablet using 60GHz wireless technology, then switch to a 5GHz technology as the device moves about the home, and then again, unbeknownst to the consumer, switch to MoCA to finish the download as the tablet is docked.

“Even with working groups such as P1905.1 building toward a connected networking environment, this future will still need the support of all companies throughout the value chain, considering the large number of consumers who in past primary studies have shown a general lack of awareness about the networking technologies currently in their homes.”

Connected cars have been getting a lot of attention in 2012 so far

Connected cars are fast becoming the topic that has the telecoms industry’s tongues wagging excitedly. This year, Ford’s chairman gave a keynote presentation at Mobile World Congress, RIM showcased a connected Porsche at its BlackBerry World 2012 event, and Google secured the first ever self-driving car licence in the US. And as the connected car market continues to evolve, mobile operators are finding that they have a key part to play in the ecosystem, and are having to invest time and resources to ensure they are not overlooked as the connected car market matures.

In-car connectivity can be enabled for a range of applications, such as navigation, safety, such as for emergency calls, usage based insurance to monitor how safe a driver you really are, entertainment and even congestion charge or toll payment.

Currently, revenues that operators are seeing from the connected car market are modest. Both 3UK and the Netherlands’ KPN told Telecoms.com that the income they receive from their efforts in the connected car market are “negligible”. However, the telecom industry will benefit from the growth in connected cars although the size of the opportunity will depend on the type of connectivity that prevails in the car.

There are two different approaches to providing in-car connectivity; the built-in approach and the brought-in approach. The built-in approach involves the automobile-OEM embedding all of the hardware required for the connectivity into the vehicle at the point of manufacture. With the brought in approach, the user is required to bring in their own device, whether its phone to tether or a broadband dongle to plug in.

Smartphone integration and tethering will lead to greater data consumption in the car, according to industry body the GSMA, but will effectively restrict the value of telecom operators to selling more data. Embedded telematics, however, provides telecom operators with a much broader opportunity to provide more advanced M2M support to vehicle manufacturers.

Research conducted by automotive technology consultancy and research firm SBD on behalf of the GSMA concurs that today, the global total revenue for the automotive embedded telematics market stands at around €1.5bn. But the association’s research forecasts that it will grow at CAGR of 24.6 per cent over the next 15 years to reach €20bn by 2025, by which point all cars on the road are expected to have broadband connectivity.

The bulk of this revenue is expected to be from the sales of vehicle-related services and content. However, SBD also forecasts that connectivity revenues alone will increase to almost €4bn by 2025.

For the operators, this requires ensuring that geographically, their network coverage is extended.

“We’re investing in expanding our coverage,” explained KPN’s strategic partnership manager Alan Beveridge. “Covering the population is one thing, but cars go to places where people don’t live, such as motorways, so we need to ensure that we can provide coverage in these areas.”

This involves spending large volumes on infrastructure and venturing into new markets. Although KPN’s mobile business operates in Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, the operator is taking a global approach to the connected car market. Beveridge explained that, because consumers often take their cars across national borders and car manufacturers don’t always tailor their vehicles to specific markets, operators cannot be too narrow in their approach to connected cars.

“This means that we have to reach roaming agreements with operators abroad – it’s much the same way as we facilitate roaming for handsets,” he added.

Another challenge lies in the fact that operators are dealing with a new type of manufacturer, not just handset and tablet manufacturers. Automobile manufacturers are new entrants to the telecoms market, and according to Toyota’s general manager for telematics and special projects, Derek Williams, ascertaining value for money is no easy task.

“We can only pick operators to work with based on the tenders that they bring to the table. We select operators based on the offers they submit, so at this stage, we don’t really know whether we’re getting value for money.”

He added that the firm is also having to venture into unchartered territory, by agreeing SLAs with operators, using its own IT departments expertise to ensure network security in the cars and dealing with customer complaints when there are network issues.

In addition, the GSMA believes that car manufacturers will need to begin setting up app stores for the applications that will be delivered in-car. Renault is one example of a car manufacturer that has set up its own app store, R-Link.

The Android based in-dash control, communications and entertainment system can download apps for drivers to run in their cars. Initially, 50 apps have been made available and the open philosophy of Android is clearly a major feature when deciding which platform to run its future portfolio on.  

RIM too, could have a part to play in the delivery of software to cars, since its QNX platform is used in 60 per cent of the cars on the road today, the firm claims.

Regardless of the software players that take the lead in the car space, operators will still have to compete for business of car manufacturers. And while the future looks bright for operators, with the forecasted revenues suggesting that it will become a lucrative revenue stream for them, KPN’s Beveridge warns that they must act today or risk losing out to rivals.

“Although the revenues from telematics that we’re currently seeing are negligible, we have to invest today. We need to invest for the connected car market to take off. We can’t wait for customers to demand these services first, because they don’t know what capabilities will be available – there’s nothing to demand yet.”

Yahoo has launched Axis, a web browser for iPhones, iPads and desktop PCs.

Yahoo has launched a web browser for iPhones, iPads and desktop PCs.  Axis aims to improve how people search and browse the web, and according to Yahoo, offers a search experience that allows users to enter their search and see and interact with visual results, without leaving the page they are on.

Axis is currently downloadable only for iOS devices and as a desktop plug-in for HTML5-enabled browsers.

“Our search strategy is predicated on two core beliefs: one, that people want answers, not links and two, that consumer-facing search is ripe for innovative disruption,” said Shashi Seth, senior vice president, Connections, Yahoo.

“With Axis, we have re-defined and re-architected the search and browse experience from the ground up.”

Yahoo said that Axis gives users instant answers and visual previews in a way that keeps people moving forward rather than “constantly returning to a page of endless blue links”. Once on a search results site, Axis lets people simply swipe or click to the next result.

It also allows users to move seamlessly across devices. Upon downloading Axis, people can start a search on their computer, flip through the results while out on their iPhone, and finish the search at home on their iPad.

CTExcelbiz was launched through the operator’s subsidiary China Telecom Europe, and its MVNA partner, Transatel.

China Telecom has introduced anMVNO into the UK market, becoming the first Chinese operator to launch a service outside of China. CTExcelbiz is running on Everything Everywhere’s network and offer a customised service to the UK’s Chinese population.

CTExcelbiz was launched through the operator’s subsidiary China Telecom Europe, and its MVNA partner, Transatel.

The service is a tailored Pay-As-You-Go service that will offer Chinese language voicemail services, bi-lingual Chinese-English customer service hotline and website, unlimited free calls among  CTExcelbiz users and low-cost bundles, available in-stores and online.

“With increasing numbers of Chinese visitors to the UK, we will be rolling out innovative and targeted mobile services to our customers,” said Yan Ou, Managing Director of China Telecom (Europe). “These will include the provision of a local Chinese number for friends and family to call; a chat application for customers to share content with each other; and an information service hotline in Chinese targeted at travellers to the UK, to name just a few.”

Francesco Radicati, research analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media, explained that there has been a rise of ethnic MVNOs that target specific communities in the UK market.

“Traditionally, the UK operators weren’t able to get into these communities, so MVNOs such as Lebara and Lyca Mobile sprung up in response to that. Those were never really primary SIMs, most people generally used a UK operator SIM, such as Vodafone, for example, and then for calling home they’d use a Lebara or Lyca SIM,” he said.

“That’s changing now though. O2 for example has launched its international calling rates and there is Skype and other OTT options.”

“For China Telecom it’s a way to reconnect with customers who have moved to the UK, and to hold on to existing users while they’re visiting, whether as students, businesspeople or tourists. It’s also a way for companies such as Everything Everywhere to get access to this market.”

Sanjay Jha, former CEO of Motorola Mobility

Sanjay Jha, who revived Motorola’s devices business and led the company through its acquisition, has been replaced as CEO, after Google finalised its takeover of the firm.

Dennis Woodside, who had overseen integration planning for the acquisition and previously served as president of Google’s Americas region, has been installed as CEO in his role. Jha will continue to work with Google to help ensure a smooth transition.

“I would like to thank [Jha] for his efforts and am tremendously pleased that he will be working to ensure a smooth transition as long-time “Googler” Dennis Woodside takes over as CEO of Motorola Mobility,” said Google CEO Larry Page.

“I’ve known Dennis for nearly a decade, and he’s been phenomenal at building teams and delivering on some of Google’s biggest bets. Dennis has always been a committed partner to our customers and I know he will be an outstanding leader of Motorola–and he’s already off to great start with some very strong new hires for the Motorola team.”

Woodside said that he aims to focus Motorola Mobility’s “remarkable talent on fewer, bigger bets, and create wonderful devices that are used by people around the world”.

Google is further refreshing the management team, as Woodside has also brought on board new members, including former Director of DARPA Regina Dugan, former supply chain VP at Amazon Mark Randall, former CFO of Marsh & McLennan Vanessa Wittman, former head of HR at Visa and Nvidia Scott Sullivan, and former Google VP of consumer marketing Gary Briggs.

“Motorola Mobility has many outstanding leaders, including people who were behind the original RAZR in 2004 and recent successes like the Droid and RAZR MAXX,” said Woodside. “Our colleagues joining the team come from varied backgrounds, from DARPA to Amazon and NVIDIA, but they all share a track record of leading innovation at speed, and a great deal of excitement about the mission ahead.”

Woodside started his career at Google spearheading investment across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. He was responsible for the overall go-to-market, product offering and acquisition strategies in these markets, which saw a 20-fold increase during his tenure, according to the firm, and revenues grew to over $2bn.