Nima Pournejatian is chief technology officer of Iran’s MobinNet, the countries first and only WiMAX operator

For a company that is just a year-and-a-half old, Iran’s newest broadband player has certainly made its presence felt in its local market. Since the service was launched in August 2010, MobinNET has picked up 130,000 subscribers. The attraction of the company for its customers is that in a country where fixed line connectivity is relatively scarce and expensive, MobinNET offers the flexibility of wireless WiMAX connectivity to homes and mobile users, at an attractive price.

As such, MobinNET expects to increase its customer’s base to 160,000 customers by the end of March 2012, as its CTO, Nima Pournejatian tells Telecoms.com. It offers a number of packages for both consumers and businesses, while corporate customers can access high-level features such as dedicated point-to-point bandwidth and Enterprise Layer-3.

As a WiMAX player it is purely a data play at the moment, but a VoIP service will also be introduced in the near future. MobinNet offers speeds ranging from 128kbps to 2Mbps packages with and without download restrictions. The speeds might not be outstanding compared to the world’s fastest networks but in terms of wireless connectivity but it’s still welcome when there’s not a huge amount of choice. As WiMAX Pournejatian explains, there are no 3G operators in Iran, so WiMAX is a great solution for providing mobile broadband to eager customers. “If you look at the Iranian telecom market and infrastructure you’ll understand that there’s a lack of cable infrastructure. In European countries there are cable companies that are providing service but we don’t have that here.”

The fast expansion of fibre-optic connectivity for landline telephony is ironically boosting the attraction of WiMAX, as fibre optic connections are too expensive for consumers as a data connection, and there is no ADSL network to provide an affordable alternative.

“The ADSL implementation in Iran is restricted, because there is no copper network. There is a limitation in that [fibre optics] cannot provide ADSL – so it’s an advantage for WiMAX. You can install a modem and CPE for user and they will use the service. It’s a unique opportunity in the Middle East because of the geographical area and the population [distribution] that we have, and an advantage over the cable and copper based technologies.”

Consumers inevitably face restrictions on the certain types of traffic – P2P in particular. “Most traffic is HTTP and P2P. We have a limited amount of P2P traffic as if we open it, it will fully utilise our bandwidth. Bandwidth in Iran is very expensive compared to other countries so we need to limit this.”

Pournejatian explains that its day-to-day challenge is keeping its 450 base station strong multi-vendor network running smoothly.  “We’re the first WiMAX operator to have launched a multi-vendor integration operation. Because WiMAX technology is not as mature as 3G, or 2G, so multi vendor is a real challenge for us. As far as we know, we’re the only WiMAX operator that has three vendors on the active layer.”

The reason for this is that MobinNet wants to keep its suppliers on their toes. “We don’t want to be a single vendor and we want to keep the competition going and not depend on one vendor. Huawei is providing core, plus access and transmission network, and Samsung and ZTE are providing access plus related transmission equipment – base stations and microwave related transmissions.”

The major progress coming to MobinNet is the adding of VoIP services, which will help lower the cost of international calls for customers. “In our license we have the capability and permission to offer voice services, so we are going to launch [them] in the next couple of weeks so we can offer unmetered international calls.

As with all data enabled offerings MobinNET offers a feature enabling them to connect multiple devices via short range wifi.  Other innovations in the market are the introduction of WiMAX for IPTV services, and Iranian consumers are now able to buy Samsung smart televisions with MobinNet WiMAX CPEs attached for access to Video on Demand services.

“Right now if you look at our service it is mostly HTTP browsing and P2P. But in near future, I predict this would be more video traffic as well. Using interactive right now is a challenge and a subject to investigate. I predict that VoD will dominate. Right now we have bundled our TVs with one of the Smart TVs in the market and they are using our service as their internet.”

While MobinNet’s WiMAX service has got off to a successful start, it’s clear that the momentum worldwide is behind LTE mobile technology. Clearly this is a strategic business decision rather than a purely business one, and Pournejatian’s comments, “I don’t know if we’ll have a LTE bid or not but if there is, we will bid. We are investigating right now, but we have not decided. We look at some WiMAX operators right now that are moving to TD-LTE and it could be done for us as well. The major concern is that there will not be enough terminals in the market that will work on TD-LTE and at 3.5GHz – so that’s where we need to focus. Plus, we are analysing the FDD version of LTE as well. There will be a need for more investment in new spectrum I think.”

It is to help make this type of decision that is actually drawing MobinNET to attend events such as the Broadband MEA conference. “We are looking to see what the other broadband operators do and what the LTE and WiMAX operators do. We would like to see people at C-level and to talk with them to see their strategies, what they are looking for in all parts of the business – the network side, the IT side,  the marketing as well. We think [about] networking with others and also to listen and watch the presentation from operators and vendors to decide what technologies to use. We need to understand what type of marketing campaigns can be used – I think it will help us lots.”

The timeframe for this transition is likely to be the second half of the year, and if it happens there will effectively be two networks running at the same time but Pournejatian doesn’t think this will be a problem. “As far as the air interface is concerned WiMAX is very similar to LTE. So there are many common points. Both of them use as IP core and the transmission network is common to both technologies.  The only difference is the access layer. Even at the access layer both of them use OFDMA.”

Nima Pournejatian is the chief technology officer of Iran’s MobinNET Telecom and is speaking on day one of the Broadband MEA conference, due to be held  on the 27th March 2012, at the Westin Mina Seyahi Beach Resort and Marina, Dubai, UAE. Register your interest here.

Clearwire has raised $715.5 to fund its LTE plans

US WiMAX standard-bearer Clearwire has announced that it has raised $715.5m from its shareholders to fund its deployment of 4G LTE technology.

The firm said it will use the funds for operations and maintenance as well as new network construction. It is currently in the process of adding “LTE Advanced-ready” technology to its 4G network. It has recently completed technical trials using the technology, claiming to have achieved download speeds exceeding 120 Mbps.

The company raised $384.1m from the sale of common shares and mobile operator Sprint, a majority shareholder in the firm, has exercised its preemptive rights to purchase Class B shares, which will provide Clearwire with an additional $331.4m and maintain Sprint’s majority share.

“This equity raise is a critical step for Clearwire to achieve its long-term business plan of creating the first wide-channel TDD-LTE 4G network in the US,” said Erik Prusch, president and CEO of Clearwire.

“The added resources will enable us to continue delivering 4G mobile broadband service to meet the rapidly growing demand in the industry. We remain ideally and uniquely positioned to serve both wholesale and retail customers well into the future.”

The company had been struggling in its attempts to supply ‘4G’ services based on WiMAX, as LTE became established as the global standard. However, it announced a new 4G LTE and WiMAX agreement with Sprint earlier this month worth up to $1.6bn over the next four years,

Towards the end of last year the firm began looking to sell off its spectrum—considered the firm’s greatest asset in light of its technological isolation—in a bid to raise funding. However, this summer, it announced that it had postponed those plans  with CFO Hope Cochrane saying that: “With the near-term capital needs of our current business now satisfied, we will be extremely judicious with our spectrum assets.” The latest funds raised suggest that it will no longer be forced to sell that spectrum.

Jayhun Mollazade, CEO of Azqtel. Its WiMAX network covers the city of Baku, Azerbaijan

Jayhun Mollazade, CEO of Azqtel, was a man with a vision. As an Azerbaijani citizen living in the USA he saw an opportunity to dramatically improve the ageing and archaic soviet telecoms infrastructure of the former Soviet state.

Over the past five years, Azerbaijan has put an emphasis on developing its ICT sector and as a result the country now has three mobile carriers along with several ISPs offering ADSL based fixed-line internet connectivity. But while the broadband market was growing by 30-40 per cent each year only one of the local carriers was offering 3G services and Mollazade and his partners saw that there was a real opportunity to offer high speed wireless data services.

At that time though, while LTE had a large amount of buzz and expectation about it, as far as building a real-world commercial network, the only real game in town was WiMAX as Mollazade told Telecoms.com. “In 2009 there were discussions about LTE at the Mobile World Congress, but WiMAX was more established with certified products and affordable prices – LTE was more like something which may come. [When it did] the equipment, modems, end-user device – all of them were exorbitantly expensive, so we decided to go with WiMAX and to gain a customer base of subscribers.”

Initially, Azqtel’s licence only covered downtown Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan, but in 2010 the service raised funds and was relaunched under the brand name Sazz, as a service that now covers the metropolitan areas of the capital Baku, and the nearby town of Sumquayit, covering a total of around four million people.

The service currently offers speeds of 10Mb/sec, which is on par with the real world speeds seen in most LTE networks running round the world. The price of 25 New Manat, around US$32, is affordable. Mollazade told Telecoms.com that the service has picked up thousands of customers in the past year, and is already cash-flow positive.

However, on a global scale it’s clear that while the winds of technology are driving the LTE ship forward at a pace, WiMAX is virtually dead in the water. What then are Azqtel’s contingency plans for the future?

“We are looking in the next couple of years to be in line with the wireless capabilities of broadband”, admits Mollazade. “But we haven’t made any specific decisions”, he adds. “Technology always changes. Maybe five years from now there might be something different.”

Mollazade tacitly admits though that a transition to LTE is very much on the agenda, though exactly what it does choose to do is tied to what happens in terms of spectrum. As a WiMAX operator, Azqtel has a generous 60MHz of 3.5GHz, and though that’s frequency that isn’t widely deployed for LTE it’s an option it would take up if it could. “WiMAX operators round the world are at 3.5GHz and all of them, including us, are really strongly urging vendors to come up with a migration for LTE based on 3.5GHz. However, if we decide to go to LTE we would ultimately require LTE licenses if 3.5GHz is not going to work for us.”

“It’s all going to depend on a number of factors. Whether LTE will be available on 3.5GHz or not, whether we can acquire 2.6GHz or 2.3GHz or 700MHz frequencies. Or whether we need to skip all of this, and wait for LTE Advanced. We are weighing all options. But at the moment the customers in Baku are happy with what we are offering.”

In particular they are happy with the fully unlimited service that they currently enjoy. Is that a situation that Mollazade thinks is sustainable going forward? “It’s a true unlimited. In our legal contracts we warn that we may restrict user torrents, but quite frankly at this early stage, we don’t have any policies. As an operator we will be looking into given priority to VoIP over browsing and over YouTube, so at the moment we are looking at different technologies that will give us a DPI solution. However, at the moment with WiMAX we think we can keep unlimited. That gives us an advantage. The other carrier’s unlimited [services] are twice as expensive.”

In the meantime though, the focus is on expansion with the aim to move beyond its current city limits. “We are planning to expand nationwide. We have secured some contracts on education, in health and sports. We are planning in 2013 to go beyond the capital. Azerbaijan has a developing economy, but there is a need for broadband in the second, third and fourth cities. And we have a plan to deliver triple-play across the nation.”

Mollazade is quick to highlight the advantage its service has over the rival fixed-line ADSL services. “ADSL customers have to wait for a couple of weeks for it to come to them. And they normally get half [the performance] that they pay for – and we add a nomadic experience. So for a quality, speed and price perspective I think we are more competitive.”

The big challenges over the next 12 months Mollazade says will be keeping a close watch on capacity, particularly as its customer base grows in order to maintain the three pillars the company is based on, good service, affordability and good customer support.

Mollazade is enthused about the possibilities that Broadband Middle East and conference, taking place in Dubai in March will provide, such as the chance to learn first-hand about how others in a similar position have dealt with change. “We are also curious to know about the experience of others, so we are looking at Sprint and Clearwire and P1 and Yes in Malaysia.

He also is enthusiastic about selling the benefits of the Azerbaijan market, which with its oil and gas economy presents an economy with great investment potential. “The market has not reached yet its potential in terms of its subscribers. It’s still in play, and I would urge investors and technology groups and applications service providers to look at this market with more attention. It’s has huge infrastructure development based on oil and gas cash. There are opportunities here.”

Jayhun Mollazade, CEO of Azqtel is speaking on Day One of the Broadband MEA conference, taking place on the 25-27th March 2012, at the Westin Mina Seyahi Beach Resort and Marina, Dubai, UAE. Go to the website now to register your interest.

Greenpacket insists Wimax still has a part to play in bringing broadband to EU households

Mobile broadband and networking solutions provider Greenpacket insists that WiMAX technology still has a place in bringing 4G to consumers in Europe after it announced that it has secured 4G device deals with EU operators Aria in Italy and Max Telecom in Bulgaria.

The firm said that its 4G WiMAX devices are deployed in one in three EU countries and are gaining traction in countries such as Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Spain. The firm added that its sales shipment grew four-fold last year, a significant increase since the company entered the market in 2009.

“Our consecutive wins in the region prove that operators have confidence in our products. We see 4G WiMAX playing a significant role especially in Eastern Europe,” said Kelvin Lee, senior general manager at Greenpacket.

“The technology is well-suited as the most cost effective fixed-DSL replacement for rural connectivity; serving areas where wireline broadband is unavailable and 3G wireless broadband is limited and of low-quality.”

The firm argues that with digital divides between rural and urban areas and huge gaps in economic stature between EU countries, there is vast potential for further growth in broadband penetration.

And Lee is adamant that 4G WiMAX is set for a new wave of growth in the fast developing and underserved EU regions.

“We are committed to the European market, and will continue to build relationships and evolve our products to suite the specific needs of our EU clients and the EU market at large,” he said.

Greenpacket is currently deploying to operators including Clearwire, Zapp, MVM and 2K Telecom.

There is potentially a number of pinch points in both the RAN (Radio Access Network) and the core network, and signaling traffic management techniques addressing these areas will vary accordingly. However, much of the extra signaling traffic will be created by applications which, though they may generate relatively low volumes of actual data traffic, have a very high signaling overhead. Indeed, some of these applications may the drop the connection by overloading the signaling channel long before the bearer network is threatened. This is known to be a problem on existing mobile networks, but dealing with it on LTE networks is still a relatively unexplored area.

Although flat-IP core networks in 3GPP Release 8 (LTE) and subsequent releases are expected to reduce signaling overload, mobile operators are still unfamiliar with the effects of smartphones on these networks. Moreover, LTE networks are launched with smartphone devices only, in contrast to earlier networks where smartphones arrived much later than feature phones. This will cause LTE networks to experience heavier signaling traffic, which may have adverse effects on network operation.

Typical examples include smartphone applications such as gaming which contain large volumes of advertisements and social networking in which users typically remain connected to multiple platforms for long periods of time. Indeed, social networking sites such as Facebook are increasingly featuring on-line games such as Farmville and various role-play games, all of which ramp up the signaling requirement. In addition, signaling growth is also triggered by attempts to reduce battery drain for ‘always on’ devices. Again, while this is something that has been tackled on existing networks by defining different ‘states’ for end user devices which minimize both battery consumption and signaling, the lack of available devices means this is still a relatively uncharted area in the LTE environment.

The lack of paid applications in Android have forced developers to use in-app advertising and in the case of games, different advertisements may be displayed for different levels or when the same level of the game is replayed. This causes a significant amount of additional signaling messages due to advertisement downloads, especially when compared with paid applications or games that do not include advertisements.

To some extent it is the responsibility of developers to ensure that their apps offer a positive customer experience which is not achieved at the expense of heavy battery drain and high signaling overheads. It is also in their own interest for operators to encourage the development of such applications. However, OSS/BSS vendors also have to factor an incremental increase in signaling traffic in to the design of next-generation platforms, particularly with regard to real-time functionality and dynamic network optimization. Significant additions to the growing signaling overhead will only degrade the quality of service seen by the end user – which will negate one of the main reasons for implementing LTE.

Sales were up a lot less, increasing just 14 per cent from Q210, due in part to the strength of the Swedish Kroner. Geographically Ericsson saw “especially strong growth” in Brazil, China, Germany, Korea and Russia, the firm said, which contributed to a 31 per cent growth in network sales. In the managed services unit, where Ericsson has performed so strongly in recent times, sales were actually down year on year.

Back in the day Ericsson and Nokia were head to head on both networks and handsets. They went their separate ways, spinning out their less-favoured businesses into joint ventures—Sony Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks—and it seems to be working a lot better for Ericsson than its erstwhile competitor.

Nokia turned in an operating loss for the quarter, misplacing €487m, compared to an operating profit of €295m for the same period last year. “The challenges we are facing during our strategic transformation manifested in a greater than expected way in Q2 2011,” said CEO Stephen Elop, before making a limp effort at positivity:

“Even within the quarter, I believe our actions to mitigate the impact of these challenges have started to have a positive impact on the underlying health of our business. Most importantly, we are making better-than-expected progress toward our strategic goals,” he said. The “better than expected” part that makes the Informa wonder just how slow they were expecting progress to be.

It was Apple that pulled the rug out from under the Finnish handset player and Jobs and Co turned in numbers that were in marked contrast to Nokia’s, to say the least. It’s become routine for Apple’s quarterlies to lead with the news that the firm’s had a record three months and this set was no exception. Sales of the iPhone are up 142 per cent, iPad sales are up 183 per cent and net profit hit $7.31bn on revenues of $28.57bn. Those numbers translate into year on year increases of 125 per cent and 82 per cent. Tidy.

Number cruncher Strategy Analytics said this week that Apple picked up 61 per cent of the tablet market for the second quarter, which is the one number that appears to be on the decline for Cupertino’s finest. That’s the problem with kickstarting a market; you lose share when everyone else gets in on the action. Strategy Analytics said that for the second quarter in 2010 Apple’s tab share was 94 per cent.

A lot of firms have joined the fray, with Android the favoured platform. Google’s OS captured 30 per cent of the tablet market, the analyst said, adding that no vendor has managed to come up with a “blockbuster” product to rival Apple’s definitive iPad.

RIM’s Playbook, the performance of which has been muted in the market, got a bit of a lift this week when the US Government approved it for use by federal agencies. Still, that’s hardly the consumer market that RIM’s going after and may, in fact, be a nail in the coffin in terms of desirability. You have to wonder at what kind of deal was made to win that contract.

Silicon vendor and IP warehouse Qualcomm was in the billions again, with net profit up 35 per cent year on year to $1.04bn on revenues of $3.62bn.

On the carrier side, Vodafone – which keeps quarterly profit numbers to itself – managed revenues of £11.66bn, an increase of 3.6 per cent. US player AT&T fared less well, meanwhile, dropping its profits by just over ten per cent to $3.5bn on revenues of $31.5bn. The numbers weren’t all down, however, as AT&T reported an increase in churn from 1.29 per cent to 1.43 per cent.

Emerging markets specialist Millicom saw its profits on the up, hitting $175m, compared to $134m for the same period in 2010. Revenues were up by more than a fifth to $1.12bn. The firm has for some time been cutting its costs by disposing of its infrastructure through a series of deals with tower ownership companies.

This week Millicom said that its Colombian subsidiary had agreed to sell 2,126 cell towers to American Tower for $182m in cash. Millicom-owned Colombia Móvil will transfer the towers to a newly formed Colombian operation called ATC Infranco. Following the deal, Millicom and Colombia Móvil’s other shareholders will have an option to acquire an indirect, substantial minority equity interest in ATC Infraco. Colombia Móvil and ATC Infraco will enter into a long term leasing agreement and build-to-suit agreement, whereby ATC Infraco will provide Colombia Móvil with towers for its network.

Last week we had a good look at O2’s new Priority Moments location-based rewards programme but the location news this week is less celebratory in nature. Location technology specialist TruePosition is suing the weighty triumvirate of Ericsson, Alcatel Lucent and Qualcomm, alleging that it’s being “illegally cut out of future mobile positioning standards, despite having the only high-accuracy network-based technology that is proven to work.”

TP reckons the three are in cahoots and have “hijacked” the standards bodies responsible for selecting location technologies to be used in LTE networks. The end game for the dastardly trio, TP said, is to exclude the TruePosition solution, widely used in the US for emergency location solutions, and install their own products for economic gain. Taking a civic stance, TP CEO Stephen Stuut said: “When it comes to locating 9-1-1 callers and protecting U.S. citizens, no one should be playing games with public safety.” ETSI and 3GPP are also named in the suit.

While we’re on LTE, the seers at Ovum have proclaimed that unlimited data bundles must be axed for LTE. Analyst Nicole McCormick said that operators should be wary of repeating the mistakes that have led to the capacity crunch in 3G networks. “While LTE delivers video more efficiently than 3G, operators offering flat rates for LTE could quickly overstretch their LTE networks and find themselves having to invest more than expected to alleviate this congestion,” said McCormick. She added that she was disappointed to see a lack of innovation in early mover LTE pricing strategies. “Big bucket and unlimited pricing dominate LTE offerings across the globe,” she said, shaking her head like the parent of a naughty child.

Meanwhile US carrier Verizon Wireless has announced that it has extended its LTE network to an additional 28 markets, taking the total number of cities the network covers to 102. Areas now enjoying LTE include Colorado Springs, Portland, Oregon, and Honolulu. “In fewer than eight months we have introduced our 4G LTE network to more than 100 markets and we are continuing to aggressively expand our 4G LTE network; by the end of 2013 we plan to bring 4G LTE mobile broadband to our entire 3G coverage area”, said David Small, the firm’s CTO.

Sticking in the US for a moment longer, troubled aspiring wireless broadband player NextWave is negotiating its second brush with bankruptcy. It’s secured a brief stay of execution with a waiver that will now expire on August 1^st. The firm had been under obligation to repay $129m in secured debt by June 30^th. It doesn’t look to good for the company spun out of Qualcomm in 1995, after which it bought up a huge chunk of US spectrum. After filing for bankruptcy it sold off the spectrum and maintained a presence with proprietary chipsets and related network and device products based on the WiMAX standard as well as wireless video technology. It has since sold off all these other assets in a bid to stay afloat but a second bankruptcy now looks likely.

Over in the UK, the CEO of Everything Everywhere, the merged operations of Orange and T-Mobile, has resigned citing personal reasons. Tom Alexander was put in charge when the firms merged and will be replaced by France Telecom’s Olaf Swantee, head of FT’s European operations, and an Everything Everywhere board member since its inception.

Orange and T-Mobile’s co-operative efforts are extending to Poland as well, where the two have announced that they are to share networks.  Orange-owned Centertel and T-Mobile’s PTC are setting up a third party JV to manage their merged network, dubbed NetWorkS!, and that’s their exclamation mark – what is it with awkward names for network management ventures? The contract is set over a term of 15 years and is limited to technical elements of the RAN. Orange and T-Mobile will remain respective owners of their core networks and frequencies. But through the venture, the operators will be able to eliminate duplicate base stations, serving both customer bases from a total of 10,000 installations. At present PTC has around 7,000 and PTK around 6,400. The project is scheduled for completion in 2014.

Finally this week, the UK’s public service broadcaster, the BBC, has decided it’s going to hold the UK networks to account on their mobile coverage claims and is launching its own coverage map of the UK. The broadcaster has developed an Android app in conjunction with test specialist Epitiro that, when downloaded by consumers, will feedback data on the availability and strength of signal at different locations throughout the UK.

The use of a smartphone app is an interesting experiment into crowd-sourcing, with the BBC citing UK regulator Ofcom’s assessment that there are some 12 million smartphones in use in the UK. Analysts have suggested that as many as half of these could be Apple iPhones, although if only ten per cent of Android users—effectively the remainder of smartphone users—in the UK sign up to the trial, the test base would be substantial.

The BBC and Epitiro have said that all data will be anonymised and no personal data will be stored. Ofcom’s own research into mobile coverage and performance in the UK will be published later this year.

Take care

The Informer

Sequans is developing dual-mode LTE/Wimax devices

Sequans, the 4G chipset maker, is working with Malaysian operator Packet One and networking provider Greenpacket to develop reference designs for dual-mode LTE/WiMAX devices. The intention is to create a complete eco-system of 4G networking solutions and devices by the end of 2011.

“We are testing Sequans’ system-on-chip technology to develop LTE reference designs, including a dual-mode WiMAX/LTE reference design for our operator customers primarily in Asia, CALA and Middle East,” said, James Wang, senior vice president of innovation, strategies and development at Greenpacket.  “We intend to offer our solutions to early adopters of LTE such as P1 in support of its LTE/WiMAX coexistence strategy.”

The move is part of the recently announced 4Sight program, which is aimed at Sequans creating technologies enabling operators to smoothly transition from WiMAX to LTE.

Michael Lai, chief executive of Packet One said that, “we are collaborating with Sequans because of Sequans’ operator-proven WiMAX and LTE chipset technology and because of the company’s real-world experience in deploying operator-certified 4G technology in high volume around the world.”

Packet One launched a WiMAX operation in Malaysia in 2008 and is now in the process of transitioning to LTE. The move to create an eco-system of devices is an important one for the operator as it looks to lower the costs as it moves over to the global LTE standard.

“As ever, the availability of devices is a limiting factor”, Lai told Telecoms.com in a recent interview. “Once it starts to get more mature, especially from the handset and smartphone perspective, we will move a lot more aggressively into the TD-LTE market. There’s no need to move our 300,000 subscribers to LTE for the time being until the eco-system in terms of handsets is there.”

Packet One expects to have 65 per cent of the local market covered with its WiMAX/LTE network by the end of 2012.

“Greenpacket and P1 are taking a leading position in the 4G world by establishing a dual-4G network while they transition to LTE and this will benefit not only P1 and its customers, but also other operators who adopt this strategy,” said Georges Karam, Sequans CEO, in a statement. “P1 now has the flexibility to rollout LTE at the rate they choose and have it coexist peacefully with WiMAX, and P1 customers will have devices that work in any part of the network at any time.”

The sixth annual LTE Asia conference, takes place in Suntec, Singapore, on the 5-7th September 2011

NextWave has sold almost all its assets

Troubled US wireless broadband player NextWave Wireless is seeking to stave off a second bankruptcy with a waiver that will now expire August 1. The firm had been under obligation to repay $129m in secured debt by June 30.

The firms said it has been engaged in discussions with the holders of its secured notes relating to a maturity extension, but these discussions have not yet borne fruit. The company’s financial advisor is also seeking alternative sources of financing, but so far this has not yet been identified and cannot be assured.

It doesn’t sound good for the company spun out of Qualcomm in 1995, after which it bought up a huge chunk of US spectrum. After filing for bankruptcy it sold off the spectrum and maintained a presence with proprietary chipsets and related network and device products based on the WiMAX standard as well as wireless video technology. It has since sold off all these other assets in a bid to stay afloat but a second bankruptcy now looks likely.

It is hard not to carry this attitude across into my working life, and there has been no better example of this in recent years than my writing about the Asia Pacific mobile broadband market, in which I have covered the gradual decline of Intel-backed WiMAX technology and the inexorable rise of LTE.

Of course, I have nothing against LTE as such; it is just that it has been really fun over the last couple of years to watch the WiMAX guys land the odd counterpunch and give themselves a bit of hope that they might just stave off Armageddon after all.

That’s Tokyo calling
If you are looking for a regional WiMAX champion, you don’t need to look much farther than KDDI-backed Japanese operator UQ Communications, which launched in July 2009 and within two years had more than 1 million subscriptions, and which expects to have 2 million by end-March.

Of course, even having reached the magic seven-figure subscription count, UQC remains a relatively small fish in the Japanese pond and a long way behind the big three operators – NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank – in the mobile broadband market. It even trails smaller player eMobile.

Nonetheless, UQC is not only offering faster downlink speeds than those offered by DoCoMo’s nascent LTE-based Xi service – which launched in December – but is setting its sights on launching 802.16m next-generation WiMAX 2 services in 2013.

UQC staged its first public WiMAX 2 trials in Tokyo July 6, demonstrating downlink speeds of 150Mbps. The firm says the launch of the next-generation technology will enable it to compete head-on with the market’s fixed-broadband providers.

What’s more, UQC’s management says WiMAX 2 will ultimately be able to provide theoretical downlink speeds of 330Mbps, comfortably matching the downlink speeds being offered by fixed-broadband providers – even over FTTH services.

UQC’s management says that when the firm upgrades to WiMAX 2 services in 2013, it will offer downlink speeds of up to 165Mbps, which will enable subscribers to download a full-length HD movie in just six minutes.

What does this mean?
There is little doubt that UQC’s heavy emphasis on the speeds available via WiMAX 2 is an effort to pave the way for a more serious assault on the market as a fixed-broadband replacement rather than acting as primarily a mobile broadband service.

The reasoning behind this move is clear: Japan’s mobile broadband market is already saturated, and the established mobile operators are already getting into position to go to the next level as they launch LTE services. Market leader NTT DoCoMo launched LTE services in December.

DoCoMo’s LTE services are available to less than 10% of the population but are set to be available to about 70% by 2014, offering downlink speeds of about 100Mbps.

Since UQC is not in a position to compete on a level playing field with the established big three operators in the mobile market – principally because it can’t offer the same range of handsets as the mobile players – it makes sense for the firm to target as wide a market as possible and try and make inroads into the fixed-broadband sector.

This ties in nicely with the fact that KDDI – even after acquiring a stake in leading cable MSO Jupiter Telecommunications – has only a limited fixed-broadband footprint compared with NTT East and NTT West, which on a combined basis have a nationwide fixed-broadband presence via xDSL and FTTx.

In addition, UQC’s management says the fixed-broadband market remains a relatively soft target, because fixed-broadband prices remain high and because IPTV services have yet to seriously take off on the country’s fixed-broadband networks, largely because of the strong free-to-air market.

UQC says many local fixed-broadband subscribers are far less attached to their services than in other countries in the region and are liable to defect to UQC’s high-speed mobile broadband services if they are of sufficient quality.

The Wi-Fi factor
UQC says subscribers are demonstrating an increasing demand for mobile broadband services, citing as evidence the moves by fixed-broadband providers such as NTT East and NTT West to provide widespread Wi-Fi coverage in urban areas.

As part of its Wi-Fi expansion strategy, NTT East has struck a deal with major local retailer Seven & I Holdings to deploy Wi-Fi hot spots in 1,300 of the firm’s stores by March and eventually expand to 8,700 outlets in eastern Japan. Sister firm NTT West is deploying hot spots in more than 5,000 Seven & I Holdings outlets in western Japan.

NTT East and NTT West say their huge fixed-line infrastructure will enable them to provide far better wireless-broadband connectivity via Wi-Fi than any of their rivals.

NTT East – the leading fixed-broadband player in the market – has already sold 90,000 Hikari Portable Wi-Fi modems, which give broadband subscribers access to its Wi-Fi network, taken principally by users of iPads and other tablets.

Second-ranked mobile operator KDDI is also deploying an aggressive Wi-Fi network rollout. The firm has already opened 10,000 hot spots and plans to open 90,000 more by March 2013.

This strong trend toward providing high-quality mobile broadband connectivity is clearly a positive one for UQC, given that the firm is able to provide a high-quality mobile broadband experience in comparison with the other mobile broadband operators in the market.

UQC, which has already deployed 5,000 Wi-Fi access points nationwide, might well be able to use the higher quality of its mobile broadband services to persuade a sizable – though still relatively small in terms of the overall market – number of fixed-broadband subscribers to switch from FTTx and xDSL services to its own offerings.

That really would give the WiMAX guys something to finally smile about. After all, everyone loves an underdog, don’t they?

Google Wallet will launch this summer

Web giant Google has unveiled its plans for NFC mobile payments via the handset and promptly got itself into hot water. PayPal has taken issue with Google Wallet, and small wonder, given that the two people heading up the initiative used to work for the payments firm.

At the moment, Google Wallet is in the field trial phase and won’t become a commercial reality until later in the summer. At that point it will be supported by the Nexus S 4G (WiMAX) handset on the Sprint network in the US, with the 3G version of the Nexus S, also sporting an NFC chip, expected to follow soon after.

Citi, MasterCard and First Data are the launch partners, supporting two payment solutions: a PayPass eligible Citi MasterCard and a virtual Google Prepaid card. Most people who already have a PayPass eligible Citi MasterCard can simply add it to Google Wallet over the air, using First Data’s service. Or, the Google Prepaid card can be funded with any payment card.

The retail side will be based on the MasterCard PayPass network—a merchant point of sale service covering more than 124,000 PayPass-enabled merchants nationally and more than 311,000 globally. The first Google Wallet field tests are focused in New York and San Francisco, where many retailers, Coca-Cola vending machines and even taxis are PayPass-enabled, including major outlets such as CVS, Jack in the Box, Sports Authority and Sunoco.

Google, naturally, will also be involved in the delivery of relevant deals, promotions and loyalty rewards as it steps up its presence in the buoyant coupons and vouchers space.

Stephanie Tilenius, vice president, commerce and payments, Google, said: “With Citi, MasterCard, First Data and Sprint we’re building an open commerce ecosystem that for the first time will make it possible for you to pay with an NFC wallet and redeem consumer promotions all in one tap, while shopping offline.”

Yet just minutes after the announcement, Google was hit with a lawsuit from PayPal and parent eBay, over the misappropriation of trade secrets. Tilenius was named in the suit, having worked for PayPal/eBay between 2001 and 2009, largely in the field of payment services. Another Google employee named as a defendant was Osama Bedier, who worked for PayPal from 2002 to January of this year as VP of mobileand was allegedly poached by Tilenius in violation of a contract she signed, pledging not to solicit PayPal employees.

That Tilenius did the alleged poaching via Facebook probably doesn’t help her defence either. In the lawsuit, PayPal claims that in July 2010, Tilenius initiated contact with Bedier through a message on Facebook, writing: “I heard from a little birdie that you might be open to bigger and better challenges, I have a HUGE opportunity for you, would love to chat if you are interested.”

The legal waters are further muddied by PayPal’s claim that between 2008 and 2011, Google and PayPal were “negotiating a commercial deal where PayPal would serve as a payment option for mobile app purchases on Google’s Android Market.” Apparently, during that time, PayPal provided Google with an extensive education in mobile payments and the crux of PayPal’s complaint is that prior to his departure, Bedier allegedly met with Android founder and SVP of mobile at Google, Andy Rubin, not to talk about what PayPal could do with Google going forward, but rather how Bedier could help Google compete against PayPal.

As Fred Huet, managing director of Greenwich Consulting points out: “This is potentially about much more than mobile payments. The frontiers between m-commerce and e-commerce are blurring, becoming encompassed in what we call ‘digital money’ where a digital wallet is accessed through many different channels… and this could indeed be the start of ‘digital money.’”

Currently, Samsung, Nokia and RIM have or are planning to implement NFC in future devices. The fact that large retailers such as Subway and Toys ‘R Us have signed up to the scheme in the US may signal that something similar could be on the way to the UK, Huet said.

In terms of deployment, Google Wallet is engineered to enable secure payments and goes beyond what’s possible with traditional wallets and cards. It will require an app-specific PIN and in the first release, all payment card credentials will be encrypted and stored on a chip, called the secure element, that is separate from the Android device memory and is only accessible by authorised programs.

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