Mobile Telecoms Technology & Market Disruptions

Sometimes its good to take a step back and look at the new applications and services that are already happening or may be happening sometime soon. Some of these have a possibility to disrupt the existing industries and markets, giving rise to not only new players but a completely new order.

Embedded below is a presentation from Dean Bubley of Disruptive Analysis. While there are a few things that I look at differently, there are many interesting points that the industry should already be looking at.

A good example of disruption would be the SIM card evolution that Apple introduced in iPadAir2 and iPadMini3. While they had great expectations, it didnt work out exactly as they had hoped due to the operators not letting Apple use the feature they wanted. In fact John Legere, T-Mobile US CEO, took to twitter to explain the problem. See here.

Another example is the new MVNO model by Google (Fi) in the USA. The problem in USA compared to Europe is that the operators have monopoly in many areas (fixed and mobile) and they can also get away with charging far higher amounts.

In addition, the problem that the operators have is that they focus on areas where they don't have issues; crying wolf if required. An example is taking advantage of 'data tsunami' and using it to hoard spectrum, as be seen from the tweet below:

Verizon Wireless admits to hoarding spectrum, ends any argument about a spectrum crunch http://t.co/0aqpGxlEvm
— Kevin Ahoy (@FlightsimGeek) February 23, 2015

Anyway, here is the presentation. Let me know what you think.

3GPP Release-13 work started in earnest

The 3GPP news from some months back listed the main RAN features that have been approved for Release-13 and the work has already started on them. The following are the main features (links contain .zip files):

• LTE in unlicensed spectrum (aka Licensed-Assisted Access) - RP-150055
• Carrier Aggregation enhancements - RP-142286
• LTE enhancements for Machine-Type Communications (MTC) - RP-141865
• Enhancements for D2D - RP-142311
• Study Item Elevation Beamforming / Full-Dimension MIMO - RP-141831
• Study Item Enhanced multi-user transmission techniques - RP-142315
• Study Item Indoor positioning - RP-141102
• Study Item Single-cell Point-to-Multipoint (SC-PTM) - RP-142205

Another 3GPP presentation from late last year showed the system features that were being planned for Rel-13 as shown above.

I have also posted a few items earlier relating to Release13, as follows:

• LTE Category-0 low power M2M devices
• Update on Public Safety and Mission Critical communications
• 3GPP Rel-12 and Future Security Work
• Elevation Beamforming / Full-Dimension MIMO
• LA-LTE and LAA
• LTE-Hetnet (LTE-H) a.k.a. LTE Wi-Fi Link Aggregation (LWA)

Ericsson has this week published a whitepaper on release 13, with a vision for 'Networked Society':

The vision of the Networked Society, where everything that benefits from being connected will be connected, places new requirements on connectivity. LTE is a key component in meeting these demands, and LTE release 13 is the next step in the LTE evolution.

Their whitepaper embedded below:

It should be pointed out that 5G work does not start until Release-15 as can be seen from my tweet

Nice picture of "5G Radio Interface development timeline" by @alainmouradUK pic.twitter.com/ANFfujJGS5
— Zahid Ghadialy (@zahidtg) April 4, 2015

xoxoxo Added Later (26/04/2015) xoxoxo
I came across this presentation from Keysight (Agilent) where Moray Rumney has provided information in much more detail.

LTE-Hetnet (LTE-H) a.k.a. LTE Wi-Fi Link Aggregation (LWA)

We have talked about the unlicensed LTE (LTE-U), re-branded as LTE-LAA many times on this blog and the 3G4G Small Cells blog. In fact some analysts have decided to call the current Rel-12 non-standardised Rel-12 version as LTE-U and the standardised version that would be available as part of Release-13 as LTE-LAA.

There is a lot of unease in the WiFi camp because LTE-LAA may hog the 5GHz spectrum that is available as license-exempt for use of Wi-Fi and other similar (future) technologies. Even though LAA may be more efficient as claimed by some vendors, it would reduce the usage for WiFi users in that particular spectrum.

As a result, some vendors have recently proposed LTE/WiFi Link Aggregation as a new feature in Release-13. Alcatel-Lucent, Ruckus Wireless and Qualcomm have all been promoting this. In fact Qualcomm has a pre-MWC teaser video on Youtube. The demo video is embedded as follows:



The Korean operator KT was also involved in demoing this in MWC along with Samsung and Qualcomm. They have termed this feature as LTE-Hetnet or LTE-H.

The Korean analyst firm Netmanias have more detailed technical info on this topic.

Link aggregation by LTE-H demonstrated at MWC 2015 (Source: Netmanias)

As can be seen the data is split/combined in PDCP layer. While this example above shows the practical implementation using C-RAN with Remote Radio Head (RRH) and BaseBand Unit (BBU) being used, the picture at the top shows LTE Anchor in eNodeB. There would be a need for an ideal backhaul to keep latency in the eNodeB to minimum when combining cellular and WiFi data.

Comparison of link level Carrier Aggregation technologies (Source: Netmanias)

The above table shows comparison between the 3 main techniques for increasing data rates through aggregation; CA, LTE-U/LAA and LTE-H/LWA. While CA has been part of 3GPP Release-10 and is available in more of less all new LTE devices, LTE-U and LTE-H is new and would need modifications in the network as well as in the devices. LTE-H would in the end provide similar benefits to LTE-U but is a safer option from devices and spectrum point of view and would be a more agreeable solution by everyone, including the WiFi community.

A final word; last year we wrote a whitepaper laying out our vision of what 4.5G is. I think we put it simply that in 4.5G, you can use WiFi and LTE at the same time. I think LTE-H fulfills that vision much better than other proposals.

Some interesting April Fools' Day 2015 Technology Jokes

Here is a quick roundup of some interesting tech #AprilFools day jokes from the web. Click on the links to learn more

Samsung Galaxy Blade Edge - Chef's edition

Selfie Shoes by Miz Mooz - Shoefie



com.google - You can try it in chrome browser, it was working

We're always looking ahead, but sometimes it's important to reflect. Change your perspective: http://t.co/oTkpNeurqj pic.twitter.com/4RDyBgjSES
— Google (@google) April 1, 2015

Smartbox by Inbox: the mailbox of tomorrow, today - by Google




HTC Re-Sok - the "world's first truly smart sock"






Bing's Palm Search technology




Introducing #MotoSelfieStick - By Motorola



Twitter’s Twelfie Stick

Domino’s Domi-No-Driver Service

The #DomiNoDriver spotted out and about delivering Greatness on-the-go! Visit http://t.co/TdlR2vKVK8. https://t.co/e4mJA2QDWZ
— Domino's Pizza UK (@Dominos_UK) April 1, 2015

Iltasanomat news on April 1st 2015 (source not available): Finnish Police is having their own air forces with 250 seagulls with TETRA radio and camera


And finally, these old style pranks still work :-)

RT @ValaAfshar: So many people are falling for this :D #AprilFools - via @paulcoxon pic.twitter.com/gMde1IHoLC
— Benjamin Robbins (@PaladorBenjamin) April 1, 2015

If you like them, you will enjoy the last year ones too. Here.