Last year, with a deft move that left its competitors fuming, Everything Everywhere became the first UK operator to offer LTE services. This week, as Ofcom’s LTE spectrum auction got underway, Everything Everywhere has become—rather less auspiciously—the first UK operator to slash its LTE retail charges.
Half of the data traffic on US carrier Verizon Wireless is now carried on its LTE network, its CEO announced last week at CES, marking a significant increase on its October 2012 watermark, when just 35 per cent of its data traffic was LTE.
T-Mobile, the last major US carrier not to offer LTE, will correct this with a Las Vegas launch, according to reports coming out of CES. T-Mobile’s CTO Neville Ray told journalists at a Citi Global conference at CES that LTE would be turned on in Las Vegas in a week or two. He hinted that T-Mobile has tried to get the network ready in time for a CES launch, but has just missed the mark.
Tony Gray, chair of the TETRA & Critical Communications Association (TCCA) Critical Communications Broadband Group (CCBG) will be speaking at 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 speak to him to get a snapshot of why LTE is proving to be such as great fit for Critical Communications.
South Korean operator SK Telecom has become the latest carrier to throw its weight behind the GSMA’s Joyn initiative after announcing the availability of its joyn.T rich communications service to subscribers. The Joyn proposition, announced by GSMA at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last year, is the group’s response to the increasing popularity of network independent, OTT messaging applications.
The presence of BT and PCCW – which owns fixed-wireless 4G operator UK Broadband – among the bidders in the UK’s upcoming 4G spectrum auction has put a new twist on the narrative for the country’s mobile market. In the run-up to the auction, which will see regulator Ofcom sell off the 800MHz and 2.6GHz frequencies, the perceived wisdom was that challenger operator 3 UK would pick up the 800MHz block reserved for an operator that holds no sub-1GHz spectrum, and the rest would be business as usual. However, with these companies entering the fray, the picture becomes much murkier.
UK operator O2, part of the Telefónica group, has selected Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) to prepare its network to deliver LTE services across London and the South East of England. The operator is preparing to launch its 4G services soon after the UK’s spectrum auction in early 2013.
They sold out of wifi-enabled iPad mini tablets at 8.30am this morning at the flagship Apple store in Regent Street, London. It has been a similar story every day this week. The nice Apple lady in the shop told me that the queues were now starting at around 6.00am.
Seven firms have qualified to bid in the UK’s 4G spectrum auction, including three new entrants. Joining EE, 3UK, O2 and Vodafone are HKT – a subsidiary of PCCW; MLL Telecom; and Niche Spectrum Ventures – a subsidiary of BT.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has announced that it will auction off around 200MHz of the radio spectrum it owns. The sale of spectrum, all of which is below 15GHz, will provide the country’s operators an opportunity to beef up their spectrum portfolios as they look to roll out LTE services.
Ethiopia’s monopoly operator Ethio Telecom has announced plans to deploy LTE services in the country’s capital, Addis Ababa.The operator recently launched a program of 26 projects aimed at improving service provision, customer handling and communication, and network expansion.
Alcatel Lucent’s vice president for the global Vodafone account has jumped ship to Nokia Siemens Networks, where he will perform the same function. In an internal memo to senior management seen by Telecoms.com, NSN’s head of European customer operations René Svendsen-Tune announced that Wolfgang Hackenberg had joined the firm to assume control of the Vodafone account, which has been under interim management since the middle of the year.
MTN has chosen equipment vendor Ericsson to launch its LTE network in South Africa, which following a year-long trial is now live in the Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban areas. LTE has not been deployed in the city of Cape Town at present.
Bengt Nordstrom, founder of industry consultancy NorthStream, shares a series of predictions for the mobile industry in 2013. In this fourth instalment he says that the managed services market will consolidate next year, down to a three-player market, as competition intensifies.
Bengt Nordstrom, founder of industry consultancy NorthStream, shares a series of predictions for the mobile industry in 2013. In this third instalment he says that LTE rollouts will result in operators requiring less small cells than had previously been the case, ending the “small cell debate”.
Malaysians will not have to wait much longer to use LTE services, after the country’s Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) announced it has allocated spectrum in the 2600MHz band. Eight operators have been allocated licences to the band: Celcom Axiata, DiGi Telecommunications, Maxis Broadband, Packet One Networks, Puncak Semangat, REDtone, U Mobile and YTL Communications.
Swisscom has turned on its LTE network, becoming the first provider of next-generation 4G services in the country. At launch the LTE network will be available in 26 locations and it said that it plans to cover 70 per cent of the population with LTE by the end of 2013. The network will operate at 800MHz, 1800 MHz and 2600 MHz frequencies.
Calls conducted on VoIP over LTE (VoLTE) consume twice as much power as those over a 2G CDMA network an investigation has found.
Sprint, the third largest operator in the US, has activated LTE in 11 more cities taking the number of markets in which it offers LTE to 43.
Last week, LTE North America reaffirmed itself as North America’s premier networking event for the 4G community as it welcomed a record-breaking 1,000 visitors at the Fairmont Dallas Hotel, a 66% growth in attendees since 2011. Renowned for attracting a high quality audience, LTE North America once again drew great interest from the mobile carrier community [...]
Consolidation, convergence and competitionCalls 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.
It is testament to Telstra’s aggressive approach to mobile broadband that an operator in a country of just over 23 million people should rank in the top ten operators worldwide in terms of LTE subscriber numbers. Mike Wright, Telstra’s executive director for networks and access technologies talks to Telecoms.com about the firm’s plans for further enhancing its LTE operation with fresh spectrum and LTE-Advanced capabilities.
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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With 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.