Suresh Sidhu, chief corporate and operating officer at Celcom Axiata Berhad, Malaysia, is taking part in the ‘Quiz the CxO’ segment on Day Two of the LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, taking place on the 24th-26th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Ahead of the show we find out more about Sidhu’s views on how networks can best be optimised for LTE and where RCS/VoLTE fit into the operator picture.
Jayhun Mollazade, CEO of Sazz Internet, Azerbaijan will be speaking on Day One of the inaugural TD-LTE Summit, taking place on the 23 April 2013 at the Fairmont Singapore Hotel, Singapore. We speak to him about how as a WiMAX operator he thinks TD-LTE is of crucial importance, and how operators should go about migrating to the technology.
US carrier Sprint has announced the launch of three LTE smartphones for users on its Virgin Mobile USA and Boost Mobile prepaid MVNO brands, making it the first tier one operator in the US to market LTE services to prepaid customers.
There is a significant disconnect between what drives loyalty among mobile consumers and what mobile operators believe drives loyalty as well as churn. Research released at MWC this week suggests that consumers in general will focus on a single aspect of their mobile service – such as device, tariff, or coverage – whereas operators tend to believe that a collection of issues drive positives and negatives in churn and loyalty.
Australia’s leading telecoms operator Telstra has signed an extension of its partnership with Swedish vendor Ericsson that will see the two collaborate on the expansion of Telstra’s LTE network. In a briefing at Mobile World Congress on Monday the firms’ CEOs, David Thodey and Hans Vestberg signed a three-year expansion contract that Thodey described as “another multi-billion dollar deal”.
Mobile operators are moving to a data-centric world. LTE has become the most rapidly deployed cellular network technology in the industry’s history and the demise of circuit switching—while still on the distant horizon—is now in sight.
The UK LTE spectrum auction concluded this week, with much of the focus on the fact that—as a revenue generating exercise—it was a bit of a flop. Chancellor George Osborne had been hoping for £3.5bn for his purse; what he actually got was £2.34bn.
It was hardly surprising; during the auction UK LTE pioneer EE cut its prices and 3UK announced that it wouldn’t be pricing its new network services at a premium to existing offers. Clearly UK operators are wary of the investments required for LTE and a little more realistic about returns on those investments than they were when they spent ten times the amount on WCDMA spectrum just before the bubble burst.
Japanese operator NTT Docomo has selected vendors Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and Panasonic to develop its next generation LTE-A network architecture. In one of the earliest roll out of the technology, the two vendors will provide the operator with base stations that are optimised for LTE Advanced.
The UK’s four mobile network operators have secured 4G spectrum, along with BT subsidiary Niche Spectrum Ventures.However, much of the discussion following regulator Ofcom’s announcement was around the revenue generated for the public purse. Just £2.34bn was raised; Chancellor George Osborne had hoped to secure £3.5bn from the auction.
Andy Sutton, Principal Network Architect, EE is speaking on the Mobile Backhaul track on Day One of the LTE World Summit, taking place on the 24th-26th June 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. EE was the first to launch a national LTE network in the UK and ahead of the show we spoke to him about its progress on rolling out its LTE network and found out more about its approach to backhaul.
The UK’s four mobile network operators and a subsidiary of fixed line incumbent BT have won LTE spectrum, regulator Ofcom has announced. But bidding was cautious, with the auction raising £2.34bn; £1bn less than the UK Treasury had hoped.
After the UK’s latest auction of spectrum for the delivery of 4G services fell short of Government revenue targets earlier today, successful bidder Everything Everywhere has warned that 2013 will be a critical year for operators to address the “mobile video tsunami” before it is too late.
Nima PourNejatian, CTO, MobinNet, Iran, is appearing on Day Two of the LTE MENA conference, taking place on the 13th-14th May 2013 at the JW Marriott Marquis, Dubai. Ahead of the show we catch-up with him to get an overview of how the operator is looking to transition from WiMAX to LTE.
Ajay Khanna, CTO at network optimisation specialist Celcite, explains how the company has evolved from working on the resource needs of US operators a decade ago to one of the hottest areas in LTE network infrastructure: the Self-Optimising Network (SON).
LTE will account for 31 per cent of all mobile service revenues by 2017 according to a new report from Juniper Research. The report says that, by 2017, global LTE revenues will exceed US$340bn compared to US$75bn in 2013 and nearly 70 per cent of this will be generated by the North America, Far Eastern and China markets.
As emerging markets deploy and expand their LTE networks, national regulators are gravitating towards the 700MHz band to provide spectrum harmonisation internationally.
Two US navy ships will soon take the waves equipped with LTE networks. The USS Kearsarge and USS San Antonio are heading to the Persian gulf in March with a microwave-based wireless wide area (WWAN) LTE network.
The Czech Republic’s largest mobile operator by subscriber numbers T-Mobile Czech Republic has selected Chinese infrastructure vendor Huawei to roll out its LTE network. The operator said that the deal was signed following a successful trial with Huawei in the city of Mlada Boleslav.
Adnan Salkic, Senior Consultant for Strategy on projects for Middle-East telecom operators, is speaking in the HetNets track on Day One of the LTE MENA 2013 conference, taking place on the 13th-14th May 2013 at the JW Marriott Marquis, Dubai. Ahead of the show we speak to him about the technology and techniques that operators in the region, and worldwide, will have to employ to cope with the incoming data onslaught.
Apple will next week add another 36 networks to the selection of carriers that are permitted to offer the iPhone 5 with LTE support enabled. Tim Cook, CEO of the handset vendor, made the revelation as part of the company’s earnings call earlier this week. However, the expanded list does not extend to carriers in parts of Asia and Russia.
Lean and MeanWith summer supposedly fast approaching, many look to trim some fat and get in shape for the sunny months. The Informer has never been a huge fan of gyms; in fact his favourite machine in the gym is the one that sells chocolate. Telefonica’s UK arm O2, is one business that is looking to get lean for the holidays, though, and this week it announced that it is to trim 3,500 UK employees.
Cross-border opportunities are there, but Telenor has work to do in BulgariaPan-European operater group Telenor is making another move into Eastern Europe, this time buying Bulgaria’s Globul. The move makes sense for several reasons, but success won’t come easy in a country with high mobile penetration and a sluggish economy.
Telecoms.com speaks with Ali Agan, who has risen through the ranks of TeliaSonera Group to become CEO of KCell in Kazakhstan. With a young population Agan is keen to deploy LTE and exploit nascent demand for data services.
Jonathan Bell, VP of Marketing at OpenCloud, discusses how policy and pricing are just two dimensions along which telecoms operators can differentiate their propositions. By adding a third dimension, the service behaviour itself, operators can define and bring true innovation to the market that surpasses the traditional approaches of the past, he says.
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Calls for consolidation in the European mobile market grow louder by the week and four-operator markets look increasingly challenged. Now, those mobile operators that have already built scale seem to be suggesting that there is no option but to expand yet further through diversification.