Motorola Making a Success with TD-LTE Trials in China

Motorola has just successfully completed a joint over-the-air trial with operators in China (including China Mobile) as part of ongoing collaborative TD-LTE trials continuing throughout 2009. Key trial results include:

• First company to complete download throughput up to 70 Mbps in a 20 MHz bandwidth channel
• Mobility and hand-over with live applications
• Multi-User Equipment (UE) testing under one sector

Globally, Motorola is working on both TD-LTE and FDD-LTE solutions as are all of the major infrastructure manufacturers, with initial commercial products due out in Q4, as TD-LTE is said to be about 3-6 months behind FDD. This latest trial success follows other milestones during 2009, which included the launch of an LTE advanced self-organizing network (SON) solution back in May, deployment and demonstration of a live LTE network at CTIA in April, and the opening of a new testing centre in the UK back in February. As far as the Asian market goes, Motorola currently provides GSM/GPRS/EDGE, CDMA2000, and WCDMA network solutions in China.

China Mobile has been the main operator globally that is pushing for TD-LTE, which Bill Huang, GM for China mobile Research Institute giving a keynote at the LTE World Summit in London in November. China Mobile will also have a strong presence at the LTE Asia conference in September in Hong Kong with over 15 participants confirmed.

For more information on Informa's LTE Asia conference, please visit www.lteconference.com/asia

LTE Real World Performance, Hitting the Target?

LTE performance in "real world" conditions has been a very big topic of discussion at Informa's LTE World Summit conferences for a while now and we have slowly been getting a better idea of what to expect from operator and vendor trials that have been taking place as well as from the LSTI.

Nokia Siemens Networks today demonstrated a 35 Mbps LTE service at its offices in Centurion. The system handled bandwidth hungry applications like high definition movie streaming, video conferencing and online gaming with ease, while voice quality over the test network was excellent. NSN had previously demonstrated peak data rates of 160 Mbps.

It was about a year ago when I was speaking with a senior level executive from Vodafone, who said he expected average data rates of about 30Mbps from LTE, far higher than what we get with highly congested HSPA networks at the moment one might add. It certainly seems that LTE is hitting the mark when it comes to expectations of average data rates. Vodafone only came out and endorsed LTE very recently, one of the last major tier 1 operators to do so. They clearly wanted to be absolutely certain that LTE was up to scratch!

LTE Will be Cheaper Than WiMAX

LTE will be for WiMAX what GSM has been for CDMA. It is all a matter of customer acquisition costs and the cost of equipment to enable WiMAX operators to compete on equal terms with UMTS/HSPA. This does not imply total abandonment of the technology, just that it has evolved from being considered as the primary access in remote zones (a market that WiMAX has been trying to champion) and into a niche technology and not achieving the economies of scale to lower the cost of deploying it.

Another important factor has been the decision by Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks to concentrate their efforts on the development of LTE as the technology for 4G, following the lead of Ericsson and Qualcomm. These two vendors have had a very good level of success with WiMAX and so this has a huge impact on the possibility of WiMAX achieving economies of scale similar to those of LTE. The announcements by these manufacturers have relegated WiMAX to a niche technology position in the market.

It can already be seen that the test equipment and optimisation vendors are also following the money; toward LTE. The fact that niche WiMAX deployments that comprise of both fixed and mobile deployments means that it reduces the imperitive to test. Test equipment vendors are said to be "dabbling" in WiMAX, but see LTE as the real area to focus on. Optimisation in this case also becomes less important and niche operators deploying WiMAX cannot afford to spend vast amount of money on optimisation anyway. This may in turn lead to a poorer quality of service for customers, making it even more difficult for WiMAX to compete.

LTE Americas Brochure Available to Download!

The LTE Americas conference is part of Informa's World Series of LTE events and will be taking place on the 4th and 5th Of November in Dallas. The brochure for this exciting event is now available to download at www.lteconference.com/americas.

The brochure includes information on the speakers, which include Anthony Melone, CTO of Verizon Wireless and Kris Rinne, VP Architecture & Planning at AT&T.

There are a limited number of free passes for carriers in the Americas region. To claim your free pass, please email sabah.hussain@informa.com

Is HSPA+ a Distraction or a Real Stepping Stone on the Path to LTE?

HSPA+ is gaining momentum as a stepping stone on the path to LTE. The Japanese operator eMobile has just announced that it has launched HSPA+ services in the country, using kit supplied by Huawei.

eMobile is promising mobile data speeds up to 21.6Mbps on the downlink and covers cities such as Hokkaido, Sendai, Niigata, Hiroshima, Fukuoka and Nagasaki. The service provider will offer internet access, streaming media and VoIP and will connect the end user with a Huawei supplied data card.

So why have certain operators opted for HSPA+ instead of migrating directly to LTE? NTT DoCoMo was the first operator in the world to launch W-CDMA and the network is not due an upgrade. W-CDMA was deployed by Softback in 2003 and Other operators such as Softbank deployed in 2003 and eMobile only launched its 3G service in 2007. These operators cannot justify a major overhaul of the network to the shareholders, where as DoCoMo can say that that they have made a good return on their investment and its time to reinvest for the future with LTE.

eMobile customers have reported congestion problems in some locations at peak times and the problems are only going to get worse. HSPA+ works out as a cheaper option for operator that needs to upgrade its network in order to cope with the ever increasing amount of traffic. LTE will just have to wait for its turn in these sorts of cases.

Can Nortel Survive as a Patent Business?

According to Rethink Wireless, Nortel may still have a game plan to survive Chapter XI and preserve its brand and a couple of business activities.

Most of Nortel's valuable wireless patent portfolio was excluded from the sale of LTE and CDMA businesses to Ericsson, This could arguably become the basis of a much smaller, but profitable, business focused mainly on licensing. This is only dependant on whether Nortel can raise sufficient funds from the sale of its other businesses to pay off creditors to the satisfaction of the US and Canadian bankruptcy courts. Avaya is currently looking at buying Nortel's enterprise unit. Nortel apparently plans to keep back patents from the enterprise unit sale too.

The fact that most of the IPR was excluded from the Ericsson deal would also explain the interest of RIM. RIM could see the patents as giving it a headstart over larger rivals in creating LTE BlackBerry devices and services going forward, and may also welcome the boost to its licensing arsenal, both for future revenues and also as a defensive tactic. The company has always engaged in significant patent licensing (and litigation) activity in its core mobile email markets and could aim to increase its value and its ability to 'trade' IPR with rivals.

Confusing reports have been coming from Nortel attorneys over which patents Ericsson was acquiring - one said 125 of the total portfolio of 5,500, another said 600. Ericsson will also license other Nortel IPR. Based on Nortel's estimate that the patents could command a 1% royalty on every relevant LTE device sale in the years to come. JPMorgan recently made the calculation that the patents could be worth between $950m and $2.9bn.

Alcatel-Lucent Deploys LTE Network in Canada

Alcatel-Lucent has been awarded a multi-million dollar, three-year contract to help build Globalive Wireless’ new nationwide 3G/3.5G mobile network in Canada, according to a report.

As per the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will supply Globalive with LTE-ready 3G radio access network equipment including radio network controllers, node Bs and a flexible wireless network management system, and will also deliver solutions for the start-up’s mobile backhaul requirements, including deploying IP service routers, service aggregation routers and microwave packet radios, whilst also providing professional services including site acquisition and construction, radio frequency network design and optimisation as well as overall network planning and design.