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.

2011: Predictions for the year ahead

A report from US firm Pyramid Research which details its expectations for the telecoms market in 2012 predicts that managed-network IPTV services will be in one per cent of households worldwide next year.

The global telecoms market is projected to grow four per cent in 2012, compared to seven per cent this year, with the weaker growth attributed to rising volatility and uncertainties facing the global economy. Total worldwide service revenues are expected to reach $1tn (2.4 per cent of global GDP) in 2012.

Mobile broadband is expected to be one of the largest growth areas for telecoms next year, particularly as the price of high-speed mobile computing devices such as smartphones and tablets come down, enabling further penetration in emerging markets.

Broadband penetration is expected to pass 10 per cent globally next year, creating opportunities to provide consumers with new information, entertainment and value-added services.

Pyramid Research does however expect to see a slowdown in Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) deployments worldwide in favour of VDSL rollouts, due to the latter being a much less expensive way to extend higher capacities to customers. This is “certainly the case” in Western European markets, where operators are focused on VDSL expansion.

The largest markets for fibre rollout will continue to be Russia and China, which are favouring a less-expensive Fibre-to-the-Building (FTTB) versus FTTH configuration, according to the report. Middle Eastern operators will continue their push for last-mile fibre access, particularly in the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, with FTTx rollout driving IPTV adoption in a number of countries in the region.

Another bold prediction made by the research firm is that we will witness the beginning of the end of WiMAX in Asia next year, as operators in countries such as Taiwan and Malaysia opt to use LTE instead. Waning operator support is expected to result in declining vendor support and higher prices for the technology and, crucially, the price of end-user devices, which “ultimately determine a technology’s success”, according to Pyramid.

Qualcomm admitted it only bid for the licences to stifle WiMAX

Qualcomm stands to lose over $1bn and its wireless broadband service permits in India, after a spokesperson for the Department of Telecoms (DoT) said that the company’s application for licences was invalid.

A senior official from India’s DoT has said that the company did not apply for and acquire licences within three months of the wireless broadband airwaves (BWA) auction. Although the auctions ended in June 2010, Qualcomm did not apply for permits until December.

The DoT concluded that “this was beyond the validity period for applying and acquiring the relevant licence”, and the official added that Qualcomm was informed about the application rejection over the weekend.

Qualcomm shelled out over $1bn (Rs 4.9bn) for permits in Delhi, Mumbai, Haryana and Kerala in the June 2010 auction and the cancellation of permits could result in Qualcomm forfeiting the entire fee that it had paid. However, a final decision on the amount will be made after the DoT has evaluated the company’s response.

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs admitted last year that the firm’s spectrum purchase was a deliberate bid to block the progress of WiMAX technology in India, in favour of LTE.

“I really believe that [the BWA] spectrum was all headed for WiMAX,” he said at the time. “Our big bet is on LTE and we wanted to make sure that there was a place for LTE in India. We were concerned that if both of those bands had gone to WiMAX it would have helped to reinvigorate that ecosystem.”

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

Sprint Nextel's CTO Stephen Bye

Ahead of the LTE North America conference in Dallas on the 8-9 November, at which he will be a keynote speaker, Telecoms.com speaks to Stephen Bye, CTO of US carrier Sprint Nextel.

As the world transitions away from 3G to next generation mobile services, the US market in particular is in a state of flux. MetroPCS and market leader Verizon have launched LTE and AT&T is due to follow suit imminently; and if regulators allow, AT&T will next year swallow Deutsche Telekom’s US play, T-Mobile.

Big changes are also afoot for third-place mobile player Sprint. The company drew the first ‘4G’ blood when, in late 2008 and in conjunction with partner Clearwire, it launched a WiMAX network across the US. However, it is LTE that has come to dominate the next generation mobile network landscape over the last couple of years, and it’s an open secret that Sprint will soon be making a move towards LTE.

When Telecoms.com spoke to Stephen Bye, chief technology office of Sprint, that move had yet to be made official. What the firm has been talking about is its Network Vision program, a comprehensive network upgrade strategy that, as Bye says, will enable it to, “very easily upgrade and support whatever’s coming down the pipeline”.

If any operator is experienced enough to take on the challenges of a new technology it is Sprint, which as Bye wryly puts it, supports “an interesting mix of different technologies”. This is a reference to the fact that as well as the WIMAX at 2.5GHz, it also runs a CDMA EVDO 3G network at 1900MHZ as well as, uniquely, an iDen network, operating at 800MHz.

Operating all these technologies together makes for a large, bulky and relatively inefficient macro  base station set-up, something the firm’s Network Vision upgrade is intended to address, by moving to one-cabinet, multi-mode units.

“We’re putting into place basestations that allow us to use different RF technologies on different frequency bands,” Bye explains. “So for instance on one side we can have a combination of CDMA, LTE or WIMAX across different radio bearers, be it 800, be it 1.9, on all the frequency bands that we have support for. We’re well on the way to deploying Network Vision, which gives us the flexibility to carry a lot of traffic over different bands on the basestations on the core network”.

While Bye isn’t able to nail Sprint’s colours to the LTE mast just yet, he says that the network refresh will give Sprint, “the opportunity to upgrade to whatever technology we decide to adopt going forward—at a much lower cost. It future proofs our business and it also gives us the flexibility to take advantage of other spectrum, as and when that comes to market”.

Bye also says that, as well as enabling it to keep up with next generation mobile technology, Network Vision will also be of great benefit to those replying on the older 3G CDMA network. “There are things that we’re doing to substantially improve the coverage and capacity on that network. Because what you can buy today in terms of technology is far superior to what we were deploying five or ten years ago. The one thing that we will see is much better coverage and much better quality.”

At the time Sprint was hoping that its early move into WiMAX would enable it to build up an unassailable lead in 4G. Of course it didn’t work out that way and Verizon’s relatively early move into LTE has, to a large extend headed it off at the pass. But has that speculative WiMAX play given Sprint any first mover advantage at all?

“There’s a benefit to that experience to having been in the market earlier, and the experience of building and managing capacity in that network is not lost us as we go forward,” he says. “How do you engineer the network? How do you optimise the network? How do you tune the protocols to maximise performance? That absolutely gives us a competitive advantage. And that’s really the benefit of having time to market.”

It can also be argued that, on a technical level, there are a lot of similarities between LTE and WiMAX, as Bye points out. “That knowledge that we have developed over WiMAX is easily transferable and extendable to any other OFDM technology, because WiMAX is OFDM – LTE is no different from WIMAX in that respect. The structure of the MAC layer and the uplink is different but there’s a lot of learning about our technology that is easily transferred over.”

Bye also offers up some thoughts on the FDD vs TDD debate running in the industry and believes that it’s not an either-or scenario. In fact, he points out that the selection of one over the other is actually unlikely to be a technology decision.

“The spectrum allocation will determine which of those solutions you end up deploying. If the licences are granted in paired blocks, then FDD is really only the feasible solution you can use. You can argue the merits of one technology over the other, but it really comes down to the licensing and the band structure that will determine how much TDD and what FDD you use, and how do you maximise the available spectrum that you have. So it’s likely that you’ll end up with a combination of the two.”

The only real downside, he says, is that having to support both will inevitably push up the complexity, and therefore cost, of end-user devices. That said, he believes this to be a price worth paying in order to solve the data challenges all carriers are facing.

“If we can at least get to a common baseband technology, then I think there will be economies of scale that will be afforded by that”.

Bye also reveals that Sprint will be using small cells to ensure that it deals adequately with capacity issues which, like all carriers in the industry, is a challenge that Sprint is facing. In fact it’s been a victim of its own success according to Bye. “Of all the carriers in America, we probably have the highest penetration of smartphones and of 4G devices—we are seeing tremendous consumption on those”.

It certainly not an issue that’s going to go away, especially if Sprint is looking to continue to stand alone in offering an unlimited data package, as it currently does for its WiMAX customers—something of which Bye is evidently proud. “We have an unlimited data plan and we are the only carrier in North America that continues to have one. And of course that is good for our customers. Most carriers in North America have chosen to go for tiered data offerings and that just makes it complex for customers. But we’ve stayed with a simple unlimited offer.”

One topic that draws no response from Bye is Sprint’s deal with LightSquared. As part of the proposal, LightSquared would pay Sprint a total of $20bn towards the build out of an LTE network, and Sprint would then lease those towers back from LightSquared as a customer. According to reports, LightSquared owner Philip Falcone has already written to its investors informing them of the deal, but with the would-be wholesale LTE operator currently mired in regulatory troubles over its GPS interference issues, Bye declines to comment.

But he is happy to reiterate Sprint’s robust views on the proposed AT&T and T-Mobile USA merger. “We actually think it’s bad for customers,” he said. “We think that the deal is basically an opportunity for AT&T to consolidate and remove a viable competitor from the market. We think customers will be the losers in that and we think the industry will suffer for that consolidation, given the market structure post that kid of merger. That being said, what with being the 3rd largest in the US with or without that deal, we still have 50m+ customers. We just think that that proposed merger is no good for consumers and not good for the industry. We are very public in our opposition to that deal.”

For the time being, though, Sprint has enough consolidation issues of its own to focus on. It is widely accepted that the firm’s mix of network technologies is unsustainable and the firm’s future will look a lot brighter once it has embarked on the next stage of its technological evolution.

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

The GSMA has told Taiwan that LTE has won the NGMN battle over WIMAX

The GSM Association (GSMA) has suggested to the government of Taiwan that the country should move away from WiMAX and focus instead on LTE, in order to take advantage of the economies of scale provided by the now mainstream next generation mobile standard.

Taiwan has been a big backer of WiMAX technology, predominantly due to the backing of global computer chip maker Intel. The country has no less than six WiMAX operators: FarEasTone, Fitel, Global Mobile, Tatung, Vee Telecom, and VMAX Telecom.

However, local confidence in the technology has been shaken since Intel closed its Taiwanese WiMAX office in 2010.

WiMAX has seen its global market share greatly shrink over recent years, while globally LTE has dominated operators’ agendas over the last 12 months.

“Although local demand will drive the WiMAX market, given the smaller market size in terms of lower demand, it is in Taiwan’s best interest to focus on the manufacturing of HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) wireless networking and LTE equipment rather than WiMAX equipment,” Chris Perera, GSMA director of spectrum policy and regulatory affairs for the Asia Pacific region told the second 4G International Forum in Taipei.

Perera also offered called upon the local regulator, the National Communications Commission (NCC), make it easier for local WiMAX operators deploy spectrum best suited for LTE, such as the 700MHz band.

“The NCC’s most important task is to ensure that the reallocation of spectrum in the 700MHz band is as efficient as possible. The regulator must also facilitate changes in WiMAX operators’ licensing conditions to deploy LTE,” she said.

Recently, Michael Lai, of Malaysian operator Packet One told Telecoms.com that it plans to refarm 20MHz of its 2.3GHz bandwidth from WIMAX to LTE. Lai also hopes to gain access to 700MHz spectrum for LTE as soon as it becomes available.

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

LTE has been hailed by the Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) as the fastest growing mobile network technology ever, outstripping all previous standards in terms of the pace of deployment. But while LTE is a global standard, there are variations in how it is being deployed around the world.  Chief among these variations is the choice, depending on spectrum allocations, between Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) and Time Division Duplexing (TDD).

FDD is a two-way system that uses two distinct radio channels of equal bandwidth for uplink and downlink and requires paired spectrum. TDD is a time division variant and uses a single frequency, unpaired, to transmit signals for both upstream and downstream.

The advantage of FDD is that it stands as a tried and tested approach, having been the basis for 3G deployments around the world. Contrastingly, TDD was viewed as a niche technology favoured mainly in China. TD-LTE’s predecessor, the TD-SCDMA 3G standard, was seen by many as having been foisted on the incumbents in China by the government, which wished to create its own standard and so lessen its dependence on Western technology. For LTE, TDD is once again dominant in China, but this time the chances are that time division technology will become widely adopted outside the People’s Republic, with significant TD-LTE deployments taking place all around the world.

The gathering momentum behind TD-LTE technology was emphasised at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2011. There, the Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI) was launched with the goal of creating and extending the TDD ecosystem to maximise economies of scale and lower costs. Founder members including China Mobile, Bharti Airtel, Softbank Mobile, Vodafone, Clearwire, Aero2 and E-Plus represented a major combined force in the LTE industry.

China Mobile naturally, leads the way, and is engaging in large scale TD-LTE trials consisting of 1,000 base stations across its market with commercial services expected to launch in 2012. Meanwhile Clearwire in the US has signalled its intentions with TD-LTE trials in Phoenix, Arizona. European based TD-LTE trials have also taken place, such as in Denmark (Hutchinson), in France (France Telecom) and Germany (E-Plus).

Other operators trialling TD-LTE include Vivid Wireless in Australia, Yota, in Russia, Global Mobile Corp in Taiwan and Packet One in Malaysia. What these carriers have in common is their WIMAX background. Many WIMAX operators around the world are planning their transitions to LTE and, for them, TD-LTE is a natural choice as it taps into key WIMAX benefits of TD operation and spectral efficiency.

Ahead of the LTE Conference in Asia, at which he will be a speaker, Telecoms.com spoke to Michael Lai, chief executive of Malaysian operator Packet One about its plans for transitioning from WIMAX to LTE.

Lai is first and foremost proud of the fact that Packet One has gone from a standing start less than three years ago to becoming an established 4G player. “We started off with zero brand, zero subscriber base, and zero base stations and today we cover over 45 per cent of the market. We [Malaysia] have a population of 28m and we cover about 12m right now using WIMAX technology.”

While Lai stresses that Packet One will continue to press ahead with WIMAX, he is chomping at the bit to roll out LTE services, having acquired 20MHz of 2.6GHz bandwidth from the local regulator. “We’re eagerly awaiting approval from our regulators to proceed with the TD-LTE deployment,” he says. Packet One uses 30MHZ of its 2.3GHz spectrum for WIMAX, but plans to re-farm 20MHz of this for LTE leaving 10MHz for its legacy WIMAX subscribers. This will happen in a gradual process over the next two years, Lai says.

As ever, the availability of devices is a limiting factor. “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. Once that is there, which I anticipate will be in the second half of 2012, we will naturally progress all the customers who are ready to upgrade to LTE.”

One vital element in making the transition possible, says Lai, is the carrier’s software upgradeable base stations, provided by ZTE. “The base stations we have now are all software upgradeable – there’s no need to upgrade the Radio Unit RRUs or the Base Band Units at all. In fact, when we tested, it took about half an hour to upgrade our current base station to TD-LTE without any change in hardware”.

Further software upgrades are due down the line which will enable WIMAX and LTE to interoperate on the same base station at the same time – which will be essential for Packet One to move forward with its plans to re-farm part of its 2.3GHz spectrum to TD-LTE.

But why has Packet One chosen to employ TD-LTE rather than the FDD? Lai offers several reasons, firstly explaining that spectrally, WIMAX and TD-LTE are closely aligned. “Our current 30MHz 2.3GHz, which we definitely have a plan in the future to use for LTE, is all unpaired spectrum which is contiguous, so it’s a natural progression to go to TD-LTE. And also our 20MHz allocated to us on 2.6 is also contiguous spectrum. So from a spectral perspective it’s very natural for us to use TD-LTE”.

Secondly, he says, in the 2G and even the 3G world, the emphasis was on voice communications which were more suited to FDD, as the talk and respond nature of conversations fits well with the use of two dedicated radio channels. Packet One’s experience as a WIMAX provider, though, has shown it that things are different now.

“In a 4G WIMAX world our download to uplink ratio in terms of utilisation of our bandwidth has gone from 5 to 1 to about 3 to 1. So now there’s a lot more uplink, and that’s due to sites like Facebook and YouTube – as user generated content becomes more pervasive. So with the very nature of the internet and data right now I believe that TD-LTE can work out better, because of asynchronous nature of the spectrum requirements for uplink and downlink”.

He also very much bolstered by the Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI). “Pretty much the five founding members of the GTI have already tapped the world’s market potential. So with that it will bring the economies of scale and a much better eco system.”

On that note, Lai is also keen to point out that the not inconsiderable might of Apple could soon weigh heavily in TD-LTE’s favour. “There were also rumours that Apple’s COO Tim Cook was meeting China Mobile recently for iPhone 5 on TD-LTE,” Lai says. “So the economies of scale and ecosystem cannot be ignored. With [the GTI] all coming into the TD-LTE movement. I believe TD-LTE will not take second billing to FDD in a data world”.

That said, Lai is not presenting it as a TD-LTE vs. FDD LTE showdown. The two should be able to coexist quite comfortably, he says, pointing to Packet One’s chipset supplier Qualcomm as the enabler here. “From [Qualcomm’s] perspective whether it’s FDD or TDD, it’s going to be quite universal as the chipset can handle both simultaneously. So whether it’s FDD or TDD, when you roam to any country it will be as seamless as possible for the end user”.

The challenge over the next 12 months, Lai believes, will not be chipset issues but the network basics of coverage and capacity. Lai argues that the biggest challenge for his network is one familiar the world over – trying to satisfy the demand for wireless broadband, which he describes as a “data tsunami.” Lai says that the average subscriber on the Packet One network uses 12GB of data each month, which seems like an eye watering figure. But, as he explains, Packet One provides a WIMAX package that includes fixed wireless access as well as mobile broadband on the same account, which accounts for the higher figure.

Nonetheless, Lai says that more is to come and that that the hard work and investment needed to manage future growth is only just beginning. He has a message to operators in other emerging economies.

“We have proven over and over again over the last two and a half years that our biggest challenge is that we just can’t serve [our customers] fast enough. So I believe that emerging economies should start looking into 4G, especially at LTE moving forward. So any countries, any regulators in all emerging economies that have not started their spectrum planning should know that 4G’s time is now.

“Some countries in Asia have not even begun to use their 3G spectrum, let alone 4G! We’re fortunate for the foresight of the Malaysian government to have started the 4G journey three years ago”.

Reflecting the opinion of many in the industry, Lai is passionate in his belief that it’s incumbent on the governments to bring broadband to their citizens. “It’s no longer a privilege, but a right for all citizens of any country. Wireless broadband 4G will be the electricity of the digital world.”

Michael Lai will be a keynote speaker at the sixth annual LTE Asia conference, which takes place in Suntec, Singapore, on the 5-7th September 2011

Does Clearwire's agreement with Ericsson spell the end of its WiMAX offering?

US WiMAX player Clearwire has announced a managed services deal with Ericsson, lending further weight to the expectation that the carrier will soon abandon WiMAX technology in favour of LTE, now established as a global standard. Ericsson also has a managed services deal with Clearwire parent Sprint, another carrier widely believed to be about to switch technological horses to LTE.

The two carriers’ technology shift is all but an open secret in the industry, with only the timing up for debate.

Ericsson’s pedigree in managed services is well documented, but it has little experience of, or interest in WiMAX, having long since dismissed the technology as a viable contender in the evolution of the wireless industry. The deal will see Ericsson absorb some 700 Clearwire employees and assume responsibility for network engineering, and operations and maintenance for Clearwire’s core, transmission and access networks.

The deal will provide a welcome respite from some of Clearwire’s financial pressures, not least in terms of human resources. “We greatly appreciate the tireless contributions the talented people on our network services team have made in building Clearwire’s 4G network and laying the foundation for our success,” Clearwire COO Erik Prusch said in a statement, adding:  “We are pleased they will have new opportunities within Ericsson to support our customers, and further position Clearwire as the leader in mobile broadband.”

As well as bolstering Ericsson’s already sizeable managed services customer base, the deal further entrenches the Swedish vendor in a market where, just five years ago, it was a bit player. “There has been a fundamental shift in the US market for Ericsson that proves our commitment to North America has actually paid off for the whole business,” Arun Bhikshesvaran, Ericsson’s VP for strategy and market development, North America, told Telecoms.com in a recent interview.

European carriers have called on vendors to support LTE devices using the 1800MHz band

In a major shift in operator preferences for LTE spectrum, three of Europe’s most influential carriers have joined together to encourage vendor support for LTE devices operating in the 1800MHz spectrum. Making their announcement at the LTE World Summit in Amsterdam, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom and TeliaSonera earmarked the soon-to-be-re-farmed 1800MHz spectrum as their preferred choice for rolling out LTE networks.

The 1800MHz band was initially used for extending GSM (and later EDGE) capacity beyond its original 900MHz allocations, but a recent announcement from the European Commission mandated the re-farming of the band, calling on all operators to make room on the spectrum by the end of this year. The Commission also released guidelines for ensuring that UMTS, LTE and WiMAX can co-exist on 1800MHz, paving the way for LTE roaming.

According to Nokia Siemens Networks, licence allocation on this band tends to be less fragmented than, for example, 900MHz. Research undertaken by Informa indicates that there are currently 19 distinct frequency bands in which LTE has been commercially deployed, creating something of a headache for handset and chip manufacturers, not least because ongoing support for voice on 3G networks also has to be included.

European networks have, to date, focused on the 2.6GHz and 800MHz bands; Deutsche Telekom launched its commercial LTE services in the latter, digital dividend, band, while TeliaSonera looks for device support in the 800, 1800 and 2600MHz bands. Despite its ability to pick up the slack in the capacity department, many operators view the 2.6GHz band as inefficient and expensive, however. 1800MHz is generally well regarded in terms of both coverage and capacity for LTE.

If 2.1GHz is included, Europe will now be offering four designated or preferred spectrum bands for LTE.