UK operators have hit out at Ofcom's proposals to allow Everything Everywhere to begin offering LTE services before competitors

The UK’s mobile operators have hit out at Ofcom’s latest proposals to allow Everything Everywhere to use its existing 1800MHz spectrum to offer LTE services ahead of its competitors.

Earlier this month, Ofcom accepted an application from Everything Everywhere , which would see the firm offering 4G mobile services in the UK by the end of 2012 using its existing spectrum. Meanwhile, Vodafone, O2 and 3UK would have to wait until Ofcom’s 4G auction in order to gain the spectrum necessary to roll out their LTE services, the first stages of which are on course to begin “by the end of 2012”, according to Ofcom.

The regulator had stated that interested parties have four weeks in which to submit their views on the proposal, and Everything Everywhere’s competitors have now voiced their discontent.

O2 said the move is contradictory to Ofcom’s objective of delivering a competitive market environment with four competing players.

“From the very start of this process, Ofcom has said that the UK must retain a competitive market environment and that it will remove the ability for operators to behave strategically over spectrum allocation,” said an O2 spokesman.

The spokesman added that, to this end, Ofcom’s auction proposals had much to commend them, and the firm was minded to support a small spectrum reservation for Hutchison or a new entrant, if Ofcom could make a stronger case for four players.

“However, we are concerned that Ofcom’s other proposal to allow one operator to launch 4G early on its existing spectrum is contradictory to its objective of delivering a competitive market environment with four competing players,” he said, adding that the firm had concerns that once Everything Everywhere was in a position to offer LTE services, it could attempt to delay the 4G auction, while it had a monopoly position for LTE in the UK.

Vodafone UK CEO Guy Laurence accused Ofcom of “taking leave of its senses”, by accepting the application from Everything Everywhere.

“The regulator has always stressed that competition is in the best interests of consumers and the British economy, yet here it is all but agreeing to grant the largest player in the market a headstart on the next generation of mobile internet services,” he said.

“This decision leaves Everything Everywhere free to prevent anyone else from launching 4G services, by bogging next year’s auction down in endless litigation.”

Meanwhile, 3UK is understood to be discussing its stance in London today, but Matthew Howett, analyst at Ovum, believes the operator would be up in arms over the decision.

“Three are likely to be most critical of Ofcom’s proposal given their on-going battle with Ofcom over what they see as the regulator’s failure to properly consider the unequal sub 1GHz spectrum holdings during Ofcom’s implementation of the EC’s liberalisation decision,” he said.

“The moment is coming when it’s in the interests of all parties to let that award happen sooner rather than later. If the plan to auction the spectrum in Q4 2012 goes ahead then we could see widespread availability of LTE in the UK by the end of 2013.”

Ofcom has responded to the concerns by allowing the operators more time to submit their opinions in writing, from 17 April 2012 until 8 May 2012.

“We have decided to extend this period following requests from stakeholders for more time to respond,” the regulator said.

Portugal's LTE spectrum auction has concluded

Portugal Telecom, Sonaecom and Vodafone Portugal have each won spectrum in Portugal’s LTE spectrum auction.

Portugal Telecom and Sonaecom’s mobile phone units, TMN and Optimus respectively, both announced that they had placed winning bids in three frequency bands. They each paid a total of €113m for nine blocks; the minimum price set by the Portuguese telecommunications regulator, Anacom.

The operators said that they plan to use the acquired spectrum to provide mobile communications services based on 4G-LTE technology. TMN has been trialling LTE since April 2011, and is already doing live tests in Cascais and Braga.

Meanwhile, Vodafone Portugal announced that it has also won a total of 123MHz (2x49MHz FDD 25MHz TDD) spectrum in the 800MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz and 2600MHz frequency bands. It will pay a total of €146m for the spectrum.

The operator plans to use this spectrum to provide mobile communications services based on 4G/LTE technology, and added that “the spectrum in the 900MHz band will further improve the coverage and quality of service, using 3G/HSPA technology, esp­ecially inside buildings.”

The LTE mobile telephony auction was launched on 28 November and the Portuguese government said earlier this year that it needed to raise €200 million through the sale of 4G licenses in 2011, as its government budget for the year already includes planned revenue from the sale of 4G licenses.

BT and Everything Everywhere are trialling LTE in Cornwall, England

Everything Everywhere, the network operator for the Orange and T-Mobile brands, and BT Wholesale have announced that they are trialling LTE broadband in the UK. 

The two companies will collaborate to provide wireless broadband to approximately 200 customers in the county of Cornwall, areas of which have low or no broadband service available. 

In December 2010, Arqiva and Alcatel-Lucent also teamed up to trial LTE in the UK. The six-month trial took place in a notorious ‘not-spot’ in Wales with the firms delivering speeds of over 50Mbit/s using 800MHz spectrum, which was freed up by digital TV switchover.

However, BT and Everything Everywhere claim that their trial is the world’s first test of an LTE solution that can be deployed to both mobile and fixed-location customers. The rollout follows a successful eight-week laboratory trial which tested the network deployment in simulated conditions. 

The purpose of the laboratory testing was to prove it would be possible to share, manage and optimise radio resources between two service providers. The companies are now conducting a field trial, and this will examine the experience of customers, to help both companies test and better understand the reality of the LTE speeds that they can provide. 

The operators added that the trial in Cornwall will be key to understanding how LTE will perform in real life conditions, as data speeds can vary due to a number of factors including the number of people using the network and physical factors such as distance to a mast. 

Of the 200 traillists, 100 will be mobile users and 100 will be fixed-wireless broadband users, all living in a 25 square kilometre area within Cornwall. 

The shared fixed and mobile platform will use 10MHz of test 800MHz spectrum. 

The trial is set to run until 2012, and triallists will have access to a dedicated help desk and support website, where they can report their experience. 

“If the trial is successful, it means that LTE could provide an alternative mode of broadband delivery in rural areas to complement fibre delivered broadband,” an Everything Everywhere spokesperson told Telecoms.com.

“Once the trial is complete, and we have collated and analysed all the data we collect, we will then think about how LTE might be deployed and where.  But it’s too early at this stage to speculate.”

Nigel Stagg, CEO, BT Wholesale added that the company is working with the government to find ways of addressing broadband ‘not-spots’ in the UK. 

“The final ten per cent of the country won’t be covered by government funds and is exceedingly difficult to reach with the available standard fixed line solutions,” he said. “Our proof of concept trial in Cornwall will test the capabilities and services that a shared fixed and mobile data network can support and is just one of the technologies, along with fibre, that we are looking at to offer a possible solution to the rural broadband challenge.”

Wing Lee, CEO of Malaysian communications provider YTL

We speak to Wing Lee, CEO of Malaysian communications provider YTL, which won this year’s Broadband InfoVision Award for ‘Best New Service’ for its new Yes 4G network.

Can you tell us a little more about your entry?

Backed by the financial strength of the YTL Group, YTL Communications designed and launched ‘Yes’ – the most advanced, nationwide, converged 4G network in the world – in November 2010. YTL Communications is the first operator in the world to commercially launch a converged 4G network on a national scale.

Our service is unique in three ways:

- A nationwide footprint at launch covering more than 65 per cent of the country’s population.

- A flat-IP network architecture with full Quality-of-Service support from mobile terminal, wireless infrastructure to the IP core, that gives users unmatched performance and cost savings by bringing together mobile broadband, mobile IP telephony (we have deployed a complete IMS stack with full voice and SMS interconnect with domestic and international operators) and cloud-based application and content services, all via the elegance of a single account.

- The use of an identity-based architecture that enables that same User-ID to be used concurrently across the world’s broadest range of 4G devices. Not only our customers are able to choose their favourite User ID, they are also given a fully routable mobile number. The end result is a fully converged services where the same ID or mobile number can be used by the customers to interface with the Internet world AND the telephony world.

Additionally, we have also implemented advance IP telephony services where the same number can be use across multiple devices concurrently for in-bound or out-bound services. This has enabled a highly convenient and elegant experience where a single number can be used to reach our customers – whether they are at home, on the go, or at the office. Additionally, our IP telephony service works with any Internet connection, thereby extending the convenience to travel with the customer wherever she goes.

Identity-based architecture is a key Internet precept. We engineered our network to be identity-driven, where every account is defined by a single user ID (the Yes ID) that comes with a mobile telephone number plus a set of cloud-based services such as push email (where the Yes ID also serves as the email address), SyncML-based synchronised address book and location-based content services, as a start.

What recent industry developments does your winning entry specifically address?

Beyond providing new ways of connectivity for those using traditional computing devices such as PC’s and laptops, we are fully addressing the changing needs of the post-PC era user. Internet is an IP-based world. And IP is cross-border. The Yes ID concept elegantly support this cross border, cross-device age we are in. Coupled with the mega-trend of cloud-based services, we will help customers get to their favourite content and applications wherever they are.

But “post-PC”s is not just about smartphones and tablets. We are deploying our technology to support machine-to-machine applications and using our expansive wireless network to provide Internet connectivity on public transits. We see the world based on the vision of “Internet like air”.

Also, our innovation pricing model also lead the way to enable convergence. In our price plan, we charge based on data tonnage, voice minutes and SMS using a single service plan that works across devices. And we have created a usage-based pricing model to support that. The end result is that the customer gets to save money from having only one account across all products, and they only pay for what they actually use – much like a utility bill.

What plans do you have to improve it in the coming months?

While we have the largest 4G footprint in Malaysia covering 65 per cent of population, we will further expand our network from the current count of 2,000 base stations to 2,500 base station by year end. We will reach close to 4,000 base stations by the end of next year. All these activities will ensure that we continue to extend the reach of mobile Internet and our innovations to more and more people to enable life changing opportunities.

We’re also working toward the launch of the world’s first converged 4G smartphone that supports 4G and legacy GSM/2G/3G. While in Malaysia, customers can use 4G solely for both mobile Internet and mobile telephony. As they travel, they can easily switch mode to any legacy networks using the built-in SIM slot. With the phone and SMS modules we built ourselves, this Android-based smartphone will feature deep integration with our IMS to deliver advanced IP telephony functions include multi-way video call and a cloud-synchronised address book.

We are still working on other existing new concepts, but let us to keep mum on those for now.

What changes do you believe are ahead for the broadband industry as a whole?

The next big shift will come in the form of what you can do (applications and services) and what you do it with (mobile Internet-enabled devices). Broadband as a plain data pipe is a downward spiral. The next generation players must aspire to the vision of providing “smart pipes”.

Granted, there are certain factors that many 3G operators must fix before aspiring to this vision, such as the unsustainable surge in demand for bandwidth from smartphone and tablets. So I truly have empathy for them. But given that we had a clean slate and started with a pure-breed converged 4G footprint, it is our calling to show how 4G network is more than a fast pipe, it is one that enables new innovations.

The “smartness” could come in may ways – from using context awareness to improve service delivery to machine-to-machine type opportunities – all it takes is for us to have the curiosity and courage to ask “why not?”.

What do you see as being the biggest single challenge to the broadband industry in the next few years, and why?

The biggest challenge for operator currently is to make the switch from a telephony-dependent business model to an IP-based business model. Operators around the world have been slow to embrace the Internet and the onslaught of mobile data demand. Many of them are still very happy with the fat margin from the traditional circuit switch business of mobile voice. But we all know these days are numbered.

We know fighting the legacy mindset internally is hard. But it is better for one to initiate disruption from within than to be disputed involuntarily. The sea change in user habit is around all of us.

How do you think the industry should start preparing to meet this challenge?

Transitioning to 4G technology is a critical step as there is not much headroom left for 3G to scale to meet user needs, but it is equally important to ensure that the business model is correct.

How does being named for this award benefit your business?

It is a fantastic honour and validation for us as an innovator on the global stage. We hope to draw attention to the new model of mobile Internet innovation we are doing here in Malaysia and the paradigm shift we have embarked on. We also hope to share our real world experience to help like-minded industry peers advance further. Together, we can use mobile Internet as a platform to unleash human potential from economies of all scale.

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This year’s Broadband InfoVision Awards were announced during a gala dinner held aboard a river cruise in Paris on September 27th, 2011. For a complete list of winners, please click here

UAE's Etisalat becomes the first LTE provider in the country

Etisalat has announced the launch of its 4G LTE service in the UAE.

The LTE-FDD mobile network will cover all major cities in the country in the first deployment phase, with Etisalat promising data download speeds of up to 100 Mbps for its customers.

More than  700 base stations have been renovated and equipped to provide 4G services in the country for the LTE network. Etisalat is planning up to 1,000 fully operational base stations by the end of 2011.

The technology is integrated with the country’s fibre optic network. The ongoing work aims to continue to cover the entire UAE with this network, which will also offer potential in terms of fixed internet services, offering speeds of up to 100MB/s and advanced high definition TV services, Etisalat said.

“Advanced telecommunications are a key basis for a developed society, and this 4G network can contribute to developing various sectors including education, finance, healthcare as well as the economic and business sectors, the latter of which will be a direct beneficiary of 4G,” said Nasser Bin Obood, acting-CEO at Etisalat.

Matthew Willsher, CMO at Etisalat, added: “In recent times, there has been a tremendous surge in both, subscriber numbers and data usage. Smartphones are growing at almost 90 percent a year. A whole new computing platform for mobile broadband has emerged, creating a thriving market for mobile apps – and changing the way we interact with the Internet.”

“LTE technology will deliver customers the dual benefits of super fast data speeds and much lower latency. It is a transformational force that will improve the digital lifestyles of our customers.”

Ofcom claimed that mobile operators will not be able to roll out LTE until 2013

Mobile network operators will not be able to roll out 4G LTE services until 2013 at the earliest, due to technical issues, according to UK regulatory body Ofcom, rendering speculation about whether the spectrum auction will be delayed as irrelevant.

The regulator has altered its forecast for the timing of the auction from 1Q12 to the “first half of 2012”, whilst admitting that it could yet happen in the first quarter of the year.

“It is a very complex programme with a number of different parts and processes and all of them have to happen at the same time, which makes it difficult to judge at this point when the auction will take place,” said an Ofcom spokesperson.

“We don’t want to say that it will definitely happen in the first quarter, but it might. It will happen in the first half though, and we’ve actually told operators this over the past three or four months.”

The spokesperson added that the UK’s mobile operators would not be ready to roll out the service until 2013 anyway as spectrum needs to be made available, and there are currently stumbling blocks in place.

Part of the 800MHz spectrum that is required for 4G is currently being occupied by digital terrestrial television and there are issues with 4G interfering with neighbouring bands, which need to be mitigated. Until these issues are resolved, operators will not be able to use the spectrum, and the earliest would happen is in 2013. Therefore, Ofcom argues that any issues with the timing of the auction will have no impact on operators’ plans.

The spokesperson added that speculation that the delay was caused by legal threats from mobile operators is “not true at all”. Everything Everywhere, Vodafone and O2 have each recently denied that they had attempted to delay the auction.

There is room for a ten-fold increase in mobile broadband subscribers and possibly up to 100 times higher traffic per user

Global demand for mobile broadband is accelerating as more people start to use more online services. Data-hungry services like video and mobile gaming will become more popular, while the rise of machine-to-machine communications will only add to the pressure on mobile networks.

There is room for a ten-fold increase in mobile broadband subscribers and possibly up to 100 times higher traffic per user (more than 1 GByte/sub/day), with smartphones and super-phones experiencing the fastest growth. Networks need to be prepared to cope with this total mobile broadband traffic, which could rise a thousand-fold by 2020.

It is clear that today’s wireless networks will need significantly better capabilities to meet these demands. Dubbed ‘Beyond 4G’, future networks must deliver low cost per bit, be highly scalable and able to adapt to “fluid” demand from users at different times of the day and at different locations. Network performance must be hugely better in terms of coverage, reliability, quality of connection, speed of response and energy efficiency.

There are some pretty big challenges ahead for communications service providers (CSPs). These include a probable shortfall in the amount of spectrum being made available, revenue growth falling short of traffic growth and rising network complexity which needs to be managed cost effectively.

Meeting these challenges will take considerable global research and development “Beyond 4G” over the next decade, with consolidated efforts from all players in the ecosystem –  standardization bodies and the industry at large – to develop the required innovative technologies and deployment options. As well as evolving existing technologies, research must also identify technology leaps.

There are three key goals to be met:

• Ten times more spectrum will need to become available for mobile broadband
• Networks will need to use spectrum ten times more efficiently than existing mobile broadband technologies
• Networks will need ten times more base stations

At Nokia Siemens Networks, we strongly believe that these goals could be met through a concerted action by operators, vendors and standardization bodies. Nokia Siemens Networks is at the forefront of the research effort required to make Beyond 4G systems a reality. It is already introducing new architectures, such as Liquid Radio including baseband pooling, active antenna systems and unified heterogeneous networks, to deliver the necessary technological developments.

To know more, please download our white paper 2020: Beyond 4G: Radio Evolution for the Gigabit Experience or visit our website.

This post is by Nokia Siemens Networks Fellow Harri Holma.

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The first AT&T LTE network has been detected in Chicago ahead of an official launch

Ahead of an official launch, glimmers of LTE coverage from AT&T have begun to appear in Chicago, USA, according to reports. The second largest carrier  in the US behind Verizon Wireless, had said that its LTE network would go live in the summer, but as September approaches, it has still not officially launched.

Gadget blogs BGR and This is My Next have reported though that is possible to connect to an AT&T LTE service in Chicago using the terminal devices that AT&T released earlier his month, the Momentum 4G dongle and the Mobile Hotspot Elevate 4G.

It is very much a soft launch at this stage with only one bar of coverage reportedly available. According to BGR this delivered a download speed of around 13Mbps and an upload speed of 2Mbps, similar to the real world speeds available on Verizon Wireless. As these are unloaded network speeds it is unclear if performance will drop once users begin to come onto the network, but this is likely to be mitigated by stronger coverage at more cells come online.

It is also rumoured that the Samsung Impulse 4G will be the first LTE enabled smartphone to appear in the network, while the tablet market will be covered by the HTC Jetstream, a 10in screened device with an LTE chipset built-in.

The FCC, the US telecoms regulator, is continuing to review a proposed merger between AT&T and the US arm of T-Mobile, owned by German operator Deutsche Telecom.

The LTE North America 2011 conference takes place on the 8-9 November 2011 in Dallas, Texas.

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

Despite opposition from the GPS industry, investors are still keen on LightSquared

Would-be LTE wholesaler LightSquared may be struggling to get around its opponents in the GPS industry, but that hasn’t stopped investors from beating a path to its door. The company announced today that it has raised an additional $265m in additional funding, bringing the company’s total investment haul for the past year to more than $2.3bn.

According to LightSquared, the capital was drawn from both existing as well as new investors; beyond that, it’s not naming names. The company further added that it would use the cash injection “for general corporate purposes, which includes constructing its world class 4G-LTE wholesale network.”

Chairman and CEO of LightSquared, Sanjiv Ahuja, said that latest round of financing “signals another endorsement by the financial markets of our business model and LightSquared’s intent to use private capital to build out a new network to meet the growing demand across this entire nation for wireless broadband access.”

Demand may well be there, but LightSquared’s fate currently lies in the hands of US regulatory authorities, currently being lobbied hard by the country’s GPS industry, which claims the company’s technology interferes with the GPS and poses a public safety threat. The carrier made an announcement two weeks ago claiming that it had resolved interference issues by switching bands but GPS industry body Coalition to Save Our GPS dismissed those claims as “bizarre.” A US House of Representatives committee followed on with a bill blocking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from granting LightSquared a waiver the company needed to move forward with its launch.

LightSquared had until July 1^st to deliver a report to the FCC detailing the results of a testing programme into the claimed interference. While the results have yet to be fully disclosed, early indications are that the proposed technology does interfere with a variety of public safety devices – something LightSquared continues to deny vigorously. The firm recently hit back against naysayers with the launch of its own public policy initiative, sponsoring a study that has found that the GPS industry in America receives and effective $18bn subsidy from the government because it uses GPS spectrum free of charge.

US operators could be forced by law to define 4G more clearly

US operators could be forced to state the capabilities and coverage of their networks more clearly if a bill introduced into the senate this week becomes law.

The confusion over the blanket marketing of all types of next generation networks as 4G has long been a contentious issue in the industry, with all the major networks touting 4G services, regardless of the technologies on which they are based and the speeds they actually deliver.

Now Senator Anna Eshoo is looking to bring more clarity to the situation by introducing a bill called the “Next Generation Wireless Disclosure Act.” This states that, “providers and other sellers of advanced wireless mobile broadband service should be required to make accurate and reasonable disclosures of the terms and conditions of such service in order to give consumers the necessary information to make informed decisions about such service and to promote greater transparency in the market”.

As speeds are often widely dependant on coverage the bill also suggests creating a “reliability rating” based on the initiations and successful conclusion of data sessions.  The customers should also have up front information on coverage, the minimum data speed they should expect and a clear explanation of the issues that could affect performance, such as network management, traffic shaping and traffic prioritisation based on applications and services.

“The wireless industry has invested billions to improve service coverage, reliability and data speeds, and consumer demand for 4G is expected to explode. But consumers need to know the truth about the speeds they’re actually getting, said Senator Eshoo in a statement to explain the bill.

“My legislation is simple – it will establish guidelines for understanding what 4G speed really is, and ensure that consumers have all the information they need to make an informed decision.”

In October 2010 the ITU mandated that only services offering 100Mbps download speed on the move could be classified as 4G, but two months later expanded the definition to any service that offers a significant increase in throughput over initial 3G deployments, a decision based on the realities of US marketing strategies. Verizon Wireless describes its LTE network as 4G and says that it can deliver 5-12Mbps. MetroPCS promotes its networks as 4G-LTE, while Sprint refers to its slower Wimax offering as 4G. AT&T calls its HSPA+ service 4G and plans to launch its LTE network this summer. T-Mobile USA even defines its HSPA 14.4Mbps network as 4G.

The US bill will be able to do little about the marketing of next generation services in other countries, however, which is unfortunate considering that last week, Rogers Wireless of Canada took things to another level by touting its forthcoming LTE offering as “beyond 4G.”