Lack of LTE Devices, Still a Worry?

At this years Mobile World Congress, vendors were announcing LTE devices of all shapes and sizes. Besides modems, vendors showed netbooks and portable Wi-Fi hotspots that are compatible with LTE.

Perhaps the most impressive of the devices was the E398 modem unveiled by Huawei. The E398 is the world’s first triple-mode LTE modem compatible with all three major network standards: LTE, UMTS, and GSM. The triple-mode modem is based on Qualcomm's MDM9200TM chipset and will enable end users to seamlessly switch from LTE to either UMTS or GSM. The modem also supports multiple mainstream LTE frequencies.

The Huawei E398 modem will be initially launched in the world's first LTE/GSM shared network in Sweden operated by Net4Mobility, a joint infrastructure venture between Tele2 Sweden and Telenor Sweden.

Toshiba at the Mobile World Congress show this week showed off its Satellite T130 notebook PC with an integrated LTE network module from Sony Ericsson. During demonstrations at MWC the PC-maker demonstrated data download speeds of up to 16Mbps. This is significant as the PC is one of the first few with the high-speed connection option.

The AL600 from ZTE is being developed for the North American market and will operate in the 700MHz band, which Verizon will use in its upcoming network. The modem will also operate LTE in the 2.6GHz band,to cater for European operators. ZTE is also working on a portable Wi-Fi hotspot that lets users share an LTE connection using Wi-Fi.

Samsung’s new LTE netbook, bolstered with the presence of its own in-house designed LTE modem chipset Kalmia has been dubbed the world’s first LTE netbook PC. The device was also demonstrated at the MWC. Kalmia, which enables the development of a small form factor netbook with LTE capability, was brought to the fore by way of a live video streaming via the company’s own LTE network equipment on the Samsung netbook N150.

LG announced its LD100, a LTE data card, at CES in January. Anritsu demonstrated data throughput of up to 100 Mbps downlink and 50 Mbps uplink speeds on the LG device at MWC. LG also demonstrated handover between LTE and CDMA with their VD13 device. The company came up with a device for the Handover back in August, the M13, but the VD13 is an even slimmer device!

Perhaps less well known is that Ericsson is also working on integrating LTE into laptops and notebooks. The company is most known for its mobile networks, but it also sells modules for integrating mobile broadband into laptops and netbooks. Ericsson's module will operate in multiple frequency bands for LTE and HSPA. But it won't start shipping the module until LTE has become a "mass market" technology, and that won't happen until the beginning of 2012, according to Ericsson.

Huawei and ZTE will ship its modems -- the E398 and the AL600 or AL620, respectively -- by the end of the year. Samsung promises to ship its modem during the first half of 2010, according to a spokesman. But operators only expect to get their hands on a limited number of modems, with volume shipments starting in the beginning of 2011, according to Magnus Zetterberg, CTO at Telenor Sweden.

One of the things vendors have to think about more about when designing products for LTE is which frequencies they will operate on as operators will be using various frequency bands for LTE. LTE pioneers Verizon Wireless, NTT DoCoMo and TeliaSonera will all use different frequency bands for their respective LTE network. So for roaming in the U.S, Japan and Europe to work, modems will have to support 700MHz, 2100MHz and 2600MHz with more bands likely to be needed in the future.

With the GSMA focusing its efforts on roaming for LTE, this should help to encourage device manufacturers that there is sufficient momentum and demand for LTE devices. It should also make operators that think that LTE is not ready, think again...

Has Telefonica Been Lagging a Little too far Behind with LTE?

Telefonica has become the latest global operator to LTE trials and has has selected six vendors to launch test projects in six different countries in preparation of rolling out LTE-based networks

Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks will represent Europe while Japanese vendor NEC and Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE will fill out the remaining three slots making the selection of vendors quite the East-West mix.

Telefonica isn’t limiting its trials to Europe. In addition to building networks in Spain, the UK, Germany and the Czech Republic, Telefonica will also run trials in Argentina and Brazil, interesting as they have only recently rolled out HSPA and it seemed to most that LTE is still a really long way off. Each vendor will be given a different country and will deploy its e-Node B base stations this year for the six-month testing period. Telefonica also said that the trials won’t necessarily be limited to six vendors or six countries. It will be open to other suppliers, which could leave the door open to players like Fujitsu and Motorola of Telefonica does indeed decide to cast the net wider.

Telefonica has no projected timeline for deploying LTE and in most of its markets doesn’t even own free spectrum. In fact, Telefonica said that the results of the trials will largely inform its LTE rollout strategy rather than the other way around.

Telefonica is certainly not a leader in the the market, an example of this was when it was named and shamed in the UK for not meeting the regulator's requirement of having 80% coverage in the UK. It is more likely that they just want to have a strategy in place for when the handsets and devices are ready (leaving the voice over LTE problem for everyone else to sort out?) This could be years away, or if other operators such as Verizon Wireless continue to push for handsets and devices then this "critical mass" that needs to be reached for the followers in the industry to start deploying LTE, may be sooner than we all think.

The announcements of new devices from LG, Samsung and Nokia has probably made executives at Telefonica sit up and take notice of how the Industry is rallying around LTE - and that their competitors are perhaps a little too far ahead of them than they would like.

CSL Crystal Clear About Their LTE Strategy

Tarek Robbiati, the CEO of CSL opening the LTE Asia conference in Hong Kong last week. The problem: 3G was always going to be disadvantaged against 2G spectrum bands of 900 and 1800 MHz. It set the scene for the rest of the conference, where spectrum was the topic discussed the most.

CSL will be launching UMTS900 and are looking to have a LTE ready network, by leveraging the SDR capabilities of ZTE. SDR (Software Defined radio) is a topic that has been talked about for years, but always looked like something that was ahead of its time. CSL have put in the time and the investment to make it work for them. They want their equipment to be software upgradable, so that they can quickly and smoothly to improve their time to market with LTE and save on costs.

CSL owns spectrum in the 900, 1800, 2100 and 2600MHz bands (the latter acquired in the recent auctions in 2009). They are going to start by addressing UMTS coverage by deploying it in the 900MHz band. LTE is then going to be rolled out across multiple bands! Whilst some operators are mulling over what band they will choose for an LTE deployment, Tarek simply stated that thay will use whatever spectrum they have and as much as they can for LTE. LTE will therefore be deployed in all four of the spectrum bands that they own.

Concerns were raised about standards that still need to be defined for voice services and the need for devices, but all of the CSL employees at the conference could not praise the Hong Kong regulator OFTA enough for the way the recent spectrum auction was managed. They must be over the moon with all of the spectrum they have and what they will be able to achieve with it.