More Than One Yota of Difference

Yota is busy these days. The first Russian service provider to deploy a mobile WiMAX network, Yota has signed up over 350,000 customers in the six months since its commercial launch in June 2009.

It continues to sign up 3,000 customers a day, and is the first service provider to have launched a WiMAX/GSM smartphone.  While expanding domestically, Yota has also soft-launched a WiMAX network in Managua, Nicaragua, and is planning for networks in Belarus and Peru.

As a greenfield service provider new to the telecom market, deploying a new technology and a new type of service, Yota’s success is remarkable.  The company has avoided the common trend among emerging market operators of focusing on basic fixed broadband connectivity in underserved areas.  It is instead offering mobile broadband connectivity in cities where 3G is available, and where wireline broadband, including residential fiber in some areas, is available and cheap.


Usage levels among Yota's customers

We have just published a paper that explores what made Yota’s achievements possible, and what lies at the core of its unique market approach.  We looked at the market in which it operates, at how it is building and expanding its network, and at the proposition it offers to its customers in terms of services, devices, content and applications.  We also widened the scope to follow Yota’s activities in markets outside Russia and to look at future prospects.

You can download the PDF of the paper here.
 

Sunday, February 14, 2010 in Deployments  | Permalink |  Comments (0)

Leveraging 802.16e WiMAX Technology in License-Exempt Bands

License-exempt spectrum bands make it possible for operators who do not have access to licensed spectrum to deploy wireless broadband networks.

Traditionally vendors have developed specific solutions for license-exempt operators, often based on proprietary technology that limits the flexibility and upgradability of their networks.

With IEEE 802.16e WiMAX, license-exempt operators have access to the most advanced wireless broadband technology on the market today and can take advantage of the same performance, ecosystem, and volume of scale that incumbent, nationwide wireless operators with licensed-spectrum can. 

While often positioned as a mobile broadband technology that operates in licensed bands, 802.16e WiMAX can also support fixed and nomadic services, and vertical applications in a range of frequencies up to 6 GHz, including license-exempt bands such as the 5.x GHz band and, in the US, the lightly licensed 3.65 GHz band.

As 802.16e WiMAX products for license-exempt bands are introduced in the market, operators need to know what the value proposition of using 802.16e WiMAX compared to alternative solutions is.  How do they stand to gain from a technology that was developed to support mobility? Do they need the extra features that 802.16e WiMAX offers?

Why choose 802.16e WiMAX-based equipment?

The appeal of 802.16e WiMAX-based equipment to wireless operators either serving residential and business subscribers or hosting vertical applications is driven by the ability of the technology to meet operators' requirements, both from a business model perspective and from a performance one. 

The strongest pull towards 802.16e WiMAX is that it is a technology with a well established evolution roadmap, with strong industry backing and a rapidly expanding ecosystem.  The 802.16e WiMAX has a path toward the next WiMAX version, 802.16m, which 802.16d TDD WiMAX lacks.  Operators with 802.16e WiMAX-based networks will be able to upgrade their infrastructure to 802.16m WiMAX when the equipment becomes available.  Operators with 802.16d TDD WiMAX do not have this opportunity, unless they are ready to build an overlay network or entirely replace the old equipment with the new 802.16e one. 

With the introduction of 802.16e WiMAX-based equipment for use in license-exempt bands, 802.16d TDD WiMAX is rapidly becoming a legacy technology, as it already is in licensed bands.  Wireless operators that do not have a clear migration path to 802.16e WiMAX are concerned that their vendors might cease their development of new 802.16d TDD WiMAX-based products in favor of the newer standard. 



The availability, selection, and cost of subscriber devices present even bigger constraints as they depend on overall market size.  Operators using 802.16e WiMAX-based equipment in license-exempt bands can take advantage of the economies of scale achieved in licensed bands because vendors can modify the existing network equipment and devices to operate in license-exempt bands.  Furthermore, having launched commercial products in the licensed WiMAX bands (i.e., 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz, and 3.5 GHz), some vendors are expected to extend their produce line to license-exempt bands rapidly. 

Support for mobility is another major appeal of 802.16e WiMAX, even though most operators do not yet have specific plans on how to leverage it within the fixed services they currently offer.  The prevailing attitude among operators is that mobility is a nice-to-have feature that gives them additional flexibility in how they market their services.  From a business model perspective, operators in license-exempt bands have so far been focused on fixed services and applications.  From a technology perspective, full mobility in high-frequency license-exempt bands is very challenging. 

The interest from wireless operators and vertical market players is mostly tied to the potential to offer nomadic access or limited mobility, which can be easily tied to the service currently available as an add-on service.  The ability to support mobile devices, for instance, may be valuable to subscribers who just want to access the network from different locations, but not necessarily within a fully mobile scenario.  A student with a laptop needing to access a college WiMAX network will prefer a data card or built-in module over a desktop modem.  As these types of applications do not require blanket coverage of an entire region or country, they can be supported within license-exempt bands within carefully chosen hot zones. 

Mobility will also enable operators to expand the range of services they offer their vertical customers within their coverage area, and to include applications that require, for instance, support for the mobile workforce or in-vehicle connectivity (e.g., for safety and security, government, utilities, and transportation applications).

Finally, 802.16e WiMAX-based equipment supports advanced functionality that is conducive to improved performance compared to 802.16d WiMAX and other wireless broadband technologies.  The spectral efficiency of the air interface in the two versions of WiMAX in their basic configurations is comparable, but several features that are available or required in 802.16e WiMAX are not implemented in 802.16d TDD WiMAX equipment.  For instance, QoS is available in both versions of WiMAX, but 802.16e WiMAX can provide better support for voice services though an additional QoS level that makes it possible to dynamically allocate capacity to voice traffic only when needed.  Furthermore, 802.16m WiMAX is expected to provide enhanced voice support. 

Similarly, 802.16d WiMAX supports only multiple input multiple output (MIMO Matrix) A as an option.  In 802.16e WiMAX, support for MIMO A-to provide more robust coverage-and for MIMO B-to increase capacity-are part of the standard.  MIMO A is especially attractive to rural operators because it allows them to deploy fewer base stations to cover the same area.  MIMO A also uses a diversity transmission scheme that helps operators to manage interference.  MIMO B is better suited to operators in metropolitan areas, where multipath environments, including indoor locations, dominate.

The use of subchannelization with orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) in 802.16e WiMAX also enhances coverage as terminal devices can receive and transmit more efficiently than with other wireless interfaces.  Hybrid automatic repeat request (ARQ) and convolutional turbo code (CTC) also provide improved coverage, but they are not supported in 802.16d WiMAX. 

Finally, 802.16d WiMAX equipment today only supports channel widths up to 7 MHz, while 802.16e WiMAX supports up to 10 MHz, and it is expected to reach 20 MHz with 802.16m WiMAX.  The increase in channel size effectively lowers the cost per bit to the operator, because each base station can transport more traffic. 

Conclusions

802.16e WiMAX is rapidly becoming the technology of choice for wireless operators, and not only for operating in licensed bands and with a strong focus on mobility.  As they plan to expand their residential or business service, or to grow their vertical market applications, wireless operators looking for a future-proof technology find 802.16e WiMAX equally compelling for license-exempt bands.  Equipment based on 802.16e WiMAX supports full mobile access, but it also supports high-performance fixed networks. 

Thanks to the wide industry support for the 802.16e version of the standard, operators using 802.16e WiMAX-based equipment will be able to rely on a stronger ecosystem than available to 802.16d TDD WiMAX operators, which in turn will translate into more robust interoperability and the availability of a wider range of affordable subscriber devices. 

To download a full copy of the whitepaper including operator case studies click here.



Monica Paolini is President of Senza Fili Consulting, a consulting and analyst firm that focuses on wireless data technologies and services.  She can be contacted at monica.paolini@senzafiliconsulting.com. 

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 in Equipment  | Permalink |  Comments (0)

Multiplying Yotas

Yota is probably the fastest growing WiMAX operator today. Just a few months after launch, it has reached the 200,000 subscriber mark in early October and has become EBIDTA positive.

At the ITU meeting a couple of weeks ago, it announced a trial for the new mobile WiMAX version, 802.16m, and a new WiMAX phone to be launched.  Yota is moving at a fast pace these days and its ambitions are no longer limited to the Russian market.

Yota has announced that it will extend its operations to Belarus, Nicaragua and Peru.  I talked to Yegor Ivanov, Director of Business Development, about how Yota plans to manage this expansion.

Just as they did in Russia, Yota does not feel constrained to follow established industry rules.  I think I found out why.  Most people at Yota do not come from the telecoms industry and this seems to be working to their advantage.  They believe they can change the way the game is played, and have tried to do so in Russia already with remarkable success. 

In the new markets, Yota is not partnering with a local operator, the most commonly followed path for international expansion.  Yota has a controlling stake in the local greenfield operators, established partnerships with non-operator players, and are trying to duplicate the Russian model where it makes sense.  In Belarus they have complete ownership of the operator.  In Nicaragua, Yota's retains 75% of the ownership, in Peru 88%. 





Yota believes that it is easier to work with a local partner that is not an operator (i.e., less potential for conflict) and with strengths that Yota can more effectively leverage.  In Nicaragua, Yota is working with a distribution player that has a good understanding of the specific domestic market.  In Peru, Yota has worked with a partner to get the desired spectrum allocation. 

Yota will use the same RAN vendor, Samsung, in all the new markets to keep a tight time-to-market schedule.  Yota got the spectrum in Nicaragua in September and they plan to be live in Managua by the end of the year.  They have a few Russian engineers on the ground to ensure that all they learned in the Russian deployment will be used in the new environment.  In both Belarus and Nicaragua, Yota has access to 60 MHz of spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band, the same band they use in Russia.  For the backhaul, they mostly rely on fiber, with wireless backhaul were fiber is not available.  In Managua, they believe fiber is available to connect the planned 20 base stations. 

At the same time, the competitive environment may different, so Yota's marketing approach is not necessarily the same as that used in Russia.  In Belarus, Yota will mostly duplicate the Russian approach, leverage the same media content partnerships, and offer comparable plans. 

In Nicaragua, however, a different approach is needed.  There, as it is the case in many Latin American countries, voice may be just as important as data in getting market share.  Voice calls, especially international ones, are typically very expensive.  An operator that offers low cost call is well placed to attract customers.  So Yota will be shifting the focus from media content, which has a key role in their Russian service proposition, to VoIP.  VoIP will be offered from service launch, while it is still not part of the service plan in Russia (the WiMAX connection can be used for VoIP of course, but Yota does not yet offer its own VoIP service, as far as I know). 

It will be interesting to see how this approach works in different markets.  Life can be difficult for greenfield operators without an established local presence in the industry, but this may also make it easier to introduce innovation and competition as they do not have legacy ties. 




Monica Paolini is the founder and president of Senza Fili Consulting and can be contacted at monica.paolini@senzafiliconsulting.com.    Senza Fili Consulting ( www.senzafiliconsulting.com) provides advisory support on wireless data technologies and services financial modeling, market research, business plan support, business development, RFPs, due diligence, and white paper preparation.    Independent advice, a strong quantitative approach, and an international perspective are the hallmarks of our work.




 

Monday, October 26, 2009 in Deployments  | Permalink |  Comments (2)

FDD/TDD: WiMAX and LTE Crossing Paths?

At the ITU show in Geneva last week, there was a lot of talk on IMT-advanced technologies as expected. At this point, both WiMAX and LTE are obvious candidates for inclusion.

The timing is still uncertain, but inclusion in IMT-advanced seems to be uncontroversial for both technologies. What is interesting, however, is that the issue around duplexing is somewhat breaking down - with WiMAX using TDD (time division duplex) and LTE using FDD (frequency division duplex).

The WiMAX camp is pushing to have an FDD version of WiMAX as an IMT-2000 and as an IMT-Advanced technology (WiMAX TDD is already an IMT-2000 technology). Support for FDD is included in the IEEE standard-so nothing new from a standards perspective. Is there a market for FDD WiMAX though? Not much to date and this is mostly because TDD is almost universally accepted by WiMAX operators as the best option for the inherently asymmetric data traffic they have to transport.

Besides, there is currently no beamforming solution available for FDD wireless interfaces (either WiMAX or LTE-and this constitutes an advantage for WiMAX, although one that is seldom acknowledged). So the only reason to use FDD WiMAX is linked to regulatory requirements. Some WiMAX operators may have to use FDD in their allocated spectrum, but to date it does not seem that there are enough of them to justify FDD WiMAX 16e product development.

On the LTE side, there is a growing interest for a TDD version of LTE, mostly driven by China Mobile, but relevant to other mobile operators too, which often have TDD spectrum and do not know what to do with it. TD-LTE is currently being trialed in China by multiple vendors. Chipsets are being developed by Qualcomm, Ericsson, Huawei, Sequans, Altair. TD-LTE will support MIMO, but beamforming as well and will, like FDD LTE, use channel sizes up to 20 MHz.

A femtocell prototype from Nokia was also on display in Geneva in the China Mobile's booth. Combined (TDD and FDD) chipsets in subscriber devices will make it easier to roam across TDD and FDD networks. With China Mobile's commitment, TD-LTE has gained the needed momentum, but it still uncertain where and how TD-LTE will be deployed in other countries.

At this stage, TD-LTE appears to have better prospects than FDD WiMAX, but it is interesting to see that while it is not possible at this stage for WiMAX and LTE to converge into a single standard, they seem to increasingly cross paths and move in the same direction.



Monica Paolini is the founder and president of Senza Fili Consulting and can be contacted at monica.paolini@senzafiliconsulting.com.   Senza Fili Consulting ( www.senzafiliconsulting.com) provides advisory support on wireless data technologies and services financial modeling, market research, business plan support, business development, RFPs, due diligence, and white paper preparation.   Independent advice, a strong quantitative approach, and an international perspective are the hallmarks of our work.




 

Thursday, October 15, 2009 in Business  | Permalink |  Comments (1)

WiMAX on the Right Track

Wireless broadband on trains, buses and planes has moved beyond the pilot phase to full rollouts.

Wireless Broadband Perspectives - WiMAX.com Weekly Series Sponsored By: Featured perspectives from leading thought leaders in the WiMAX & wireless broadband industry.

There is no longer the need for proof-of-concept trials, but questions about what is the best business model, how much bandwidth is needed, and what are the best technologies to support train applications are still open.  The good news is, however, the discussion of these questions can now be grounded on experiences and data from the operators that have already taken the plunge. 




This recent article talks about the business case for train operators that use trackside WiMAX-based and cellular solutions.  Others have used satellite or cellular networks to backhaul the data traffic from trains.  Regardless of the technology used, a few trends are emerging.

Passengers love Wi-Fi on trains, but few are willing to pay for it.  A business model that crucially depends on revenues from passengers Internet access is very difficult to justify.  The addition of advertisement revenues does not usually bring the operator to profitability either. 

Free Wi-Fi access is gaining ground, with operators like National Express in the UK moving from per-pay to free access.  National Express sees the service as an amenity to passengers and a differentiator to steal customers from competing train operators and from alternative forms of transportation (car, plane).  Among their 2,000 users per day on board of Virgin Trains in the UK, 80% are from first class, where passengers have free Wi-Fi access.  With free access, National Express has seen usage rise to 6,000 connections per day.




Popularity of the Wi-Fi access means increasing demands on the backhaul network from the train.  Virgin UK passengers are connected for an average of 74 minutes and use 14 MB per session.  Traffic from National Express passengers follows a similar pattern.  MBTA in Boston has on average 12 connected passengers per car.  For a five-car train, this translates in an average throughput of 1.5 MB per train.  Peak rates are much higher as public transportation use is highly concentrated around work-commuting hours.  Furthermore, traffic demand is growing very quickly from increase adoption of mobile devices with wireless connectivity and from demand from individual users.  With more connected passengers, each generating more traffic, the demand on train networks is escalating quickly. 

Adoption of safety and operational applications is going to put additional pressure on the resources available on wireless broadband networks on trains.  While still largely in a planning mode, train operators are keen to explore applications that go beyond public internet access and may include remote surveillance, mechanical and safety monitoring, ticketing, or passenger information and entertainment.  We see this as the most interesting growing area within the rail industry and the one that may hold key to profitability for rail operators deploying wireless broadband networks. 



Monica Paolini is the founder and president of Senza Fili Consulting and can be contacted at monica.paolini@senzafiliconsulting.com.   Senza Fili Consulting ( www.senzafiliconsulting.com) provides advisory support on wireless data technologies and services financial modeling, market research, business plan support, business development, RFPs, due diligence, and white paper preparation.   Independent advice, a strong quantitative approach, and an international perspective are the hallmarks of our work.




 

Monday, July 13, 2009 in Applications  | Permalink |  Comments (0)

At Yota, Creativity Rules in Mobile Broadband

Increasingly, WiMAX operators in emerging markets are moving away from duplicating models that dominate in developed countries to create truly innovative models that are based on the specific dynamics of the markets where they operate.

Yota is one of the best examples of this.  I met them in February and I found them amazing, but at the same time I was a bit suspicious.  Could they really pull it off? Well, a few months later, they appear to be moving in the right direction and if anything they are doing better than I expected.  True, having deep pockets helps, but that does not guarantee innovation, and in some cases it may stifle it.

So what's special about Yota? They are one of the many WiMAX operators in Russia, but they are the ones with the strongest focus on mobility.  They have 2.5 GHz spectrum and $470 millions funding.  Since their launch in June 2008, they have signed up 76,000 customers and claim to sign up 1,300 new subscribers a day (suggesting that demand has started to pick up lately).



Of their 850 employees, 200 develop software, because Yota sees itself as a content and application provider as well.  The service offered includes voice and a subscription to video and music content, and it has been all tightly integrated since the very beginning.  They are working with major content providers, like EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner.  All the services they offer are on based on unlimited use to make the service simple and attractive to subscribers.  With the all-you-can-eat plan at $16/month, it will be challenging for Yota to offer all this and become profitable, but they may be able to generate the volumes needed.  It is a big gamble though.

Yota has been the first operator to launch a WiMAX and cellular phone.  The proposition they offer to their subscribers is very simple: they can choose the cellular operator they want and they are in charge of managing their contract with the operator as they wish.  In most cases, this probably means that the subscribers simply move their existing SIM card from their old handset to the new one.  The phone works like a regular cell phone where there is no WiMAX coverage.  In WiMAX areas, subscribers can receive calls to their cellular number and their VoIP line, and can decide whether to place a call through the VoIP or cellular line.  This leaves maximum freedom to the subscribers and removes the need for Yota to establish a partnership with one or more cellular operators.  As a result, the WiMAX phone was introduced in the market right away, since lengthy negotiation with cellular providers could be skipped.  More importantly, this approach provides subscribers with a device that combines good coverage (in cellular-only areas) with good throughput and lower cost services where WiMAX is available.

The phone is quite expensive at over $1,000, but not much more expensive than other smartphones, but that does not stop subscribers from buying it.  In February, the company said that 20% of their subscribers had a phone.  That's quite a high percentage given the cost of the phone and the fact that the core WiMAX services typically appeal to the laptop users.

More devices have been announced, including a mass-market phone and a middle-range Android phone.  It will be interesting to follow the evolution of their service.

Along with its subscriber numbers, Yota disclosed some interesting data on their subscribers' usage profiles.  Within three months, the operator has noticed a rapid shift towards mobility.  Subscribers quickly discover on their own the value of mobility and gradually expand the area where they use the service.  This is not a surprising trend, but it is remarkable how fast the process is-a month or two.  Clearwire has observed the same phenomenon in Portland and within a comparable timeframe.



The scary part comes with the traffic generated by subscribers.  Excluding idle and abusive users, the average traffic generated by a Yota subscriber is 10.3 GB per month.  This is 20% over Russian DSL subscribers and 100% than 2G/3G data users.  Yota subscribers are early adopters who are well versed in all sorts of traffic-intensive applications and are typically heavy users of video applications.  The increased availability (compared to DSL) and speed (compared to 3G) of the connection contribute to explain the higher traffic levels for WiMAX.  But this does not change the fact that that traffic levels are growing very fast and that WiMAX operators are likely to be the first to see the full extent of the increase in traffic because they have more capacity per subscriber in their networks.



The trend towards high traffic levels is confirmed by other operators as well, even though the numbers I have seen are not this extreme.  While these usage levels confirm that subscribers value the service, they spell trouble for the operator.  No matter how spectrally efficient technologies like WiMAX, HSPA and LTE are, all wireless operators are bound by limited spectrum (and funding) resources.  Eventually operators will have to start face congestion issues.  High traffic levels will push operators to operate differently.  They will have to use more sophisticated techniques to manage traffic over their networks and they will have to plan their network with an architecture that relies more on pico and femtocells that increase the overall network capacity.  The days when the brute-force approach of just adding more macro cells where needed was sufficient to keep subscribers happy are forever gone.



Monica Paolini is the founder and president of Senza Fili Consulting and can be contacted at monica.paolini@senzafiliconsulting.com.  Senza Fili Consulting ( www.senzafiliconsulting.com) provides advisory support on wireless data technologies and services financial modeling, market research, business plan support, business development, RFPs, due diligence, and white paper preparation.  Independent advice, a strong quantitative approach, and an international perspective are the hallmarks of our work.




 

Monday, July 06, 2009 in Deployments  | Permalink |  Comments (1)

Can Developing Countries Afford Wireless Broadband Technologies to Deliver Healthcare?

While working recently on a paper on WiMAX healthcare applications in developing countries, one of the key questions faced was whether wireless and wireless broadband in particular can truly help rural and underserved communities - where people may subsist on less than a dollar a day, houses have no running water or electricity, and kids only have access to the most basic education.

Wireless Broadband Perspectives - WiMAX.com Weekly Series Sponsored By: For the next 3 months, WiMAX.com and Cisco will be featuring weekly perspectives from leading thought leaders in the WiMAX & wireless broadband industry.  For this week, Monica Paolini with Senza Fili Consulting explores the trade-offs that healthcare providers in developing countries must between delivering basic medical services to providing access to new technologies to improve treatment and ultimately save more lives.

Without doubt, wireless broadband, and more specifically, WiMAX can improve the quality of health care and access to services, and provide better training for the medical workers - but is this the best way to use the scarce resources available to hospitals, non-profit organizations or health care agencies? Wouldn't they be better off providing the basics of health care-vaccinations, drugs, more doctors in remote or poor areas? Would wireless broadband deliver high levels of care in the handful of villages selected for a trial, but be too expensive to benefit entire regions or countries?

Simply put, we do not know the answer to this question yet and, in most likelihood, different communities will develop a wide range of approaches, and some will be more successful than others.  Right now, we are in the very initial phase of exploring the opportunities that wireless broadband brings and there is hardly any historical data to measure the impact of wireless broadband on health care in emerging markets.

However, the indications we have so far are extremely encouraging and fascinating.  In developed countries we still think of wireless broadband as a luxury service mostly limited to the business users that afford a $60/month contract.  In emerging countries, wireless broadband can address basic community needs and not just health care: education, ability to develop small businesses, access to government services can equally benefit-by making scarce resources available more widely and more efficiently.  This is because wireless technologies are often the first communication technologies to reach the communities that need most assistance.  In these communities, wireline connectivity is often not available, and people are often quite isolated as they do not own cars or live in villages only reachable by foot.

Emerging countries have shown to be extremely quick at adopting wireless technologies.  Even in the most remote villages, cell phones are widely used, as they offer the only way to keep in touch with friends, relative or customers.  In health care, SMS messaging to remind people to take their daily pills or to encourage them to get HIV testing have proven to deliver substantial results with little cost. 

Wireless broadband provides the next step.  For sure, developing countries have limited funding available for health care.  But what they crucially lack are resources - there are few doctors and most of them do not want to work in remote or poor areas.  They often do not even speak the same language as many of the people in these communities.  To get care, people living in rural or poor areas have to spend huge amounts of time to travel to the hospital and wait to be seen by a doctor-and, because of this, they often postpone the trip to the hospital until it becomes much more expensive and difficult to treat the condition.

According to Dr.  Manuel Dayrit, Director of the Department of Human Resources for Health at the World Health Organization, "even if you have the medicine, the vaccines, and the bed nets, you need the health workers to deliver the service.  With the experience of the last few years, where you have had huge global funds move into an activity to provide resources.  ...we've found that the bottleneck is really the delivery."

This is exactly where wireless broadband and WiMAX fit and where cellular technologies, powerful as they are for narrowband applications, are not sufficient.  The ability to establish a data connection between visiting nurses in remote or underserved areas and doctors in urban hospitals brings affordable health care exactly where and when it is needed.  A broadband connection allows the nurse, which has often very limited training, to get immediate answers from attending doctors and to avoid costly referrals.  Basic tests can be done remotely and the data can be analyzed in real-time at the hospital.  VoIP and video sessions allow doctors to interact directly with the patient and the nurse.  Remote learning courses can be made available on-line to give additional training to nurses without taking them away from the community where they operate. 

Wireless broadband applications encourage a shift from the still dominant urgent-care treatment that is often administered too late, to more effective preventive and early-stage treatment that reduces both the medical and social costs of health care. 

These wireless broadband applications play are uniquely positioned to bring health care closer to the patient, where the need is strongest and the resources more scarce.  This new approach has been recently championed by the World Health Organization to address the very basic needs that current health care systems struggle to meet.  It is an approach that certainly requires some initial funding, but that also promises to deliver a more cost-effective, equitable and effective framework to provide primary health care services in emerging countries.


Countries with a critical shortage of health care workers.  Source: World Health Organization.  The World Health Report 2006
 

Monica Paolini is the founder and president of Senza Fili Consulting.  She is an expert in wireless technologies and has helped clients worldwide to understand technology and customer requirements, evaluate business plan opportunities, market their services and products, and estimate the market size and revenue opportunity of new and established wireless technologies.  She has frequently been invited to give presentations at conferences and has written several reports on wireless broadband technologies. 

She has a PhD in cognitive science from the University of California, San Diego (US), an MBA from the University of Oxford (UK), and a BA/MA in philosophy from the University of Bologna (Italy).  She can be contacted at monica.paolini@senzafiliconsulting.com.

 

Monday, May 18, 2009 in Applications  | Permalink |  Comments (2)

Rapid-Link: Reaching small businesses with the 3.65GHz band

Initially, the 3.65GHz band was presented as a way for small, independent, rural operators to have easy access to affordable licensed spectrum, offering broadband connectivity in underserved areas. Many 3.65GHz operators, however, have their sights set on urban and suburban markets, where they face competition from wireline and wireless operators.

Rapid Link follows a very different market approach than Nex-Tech, the ISP we portrayed in the previous article.  It exclusively targets business subscribers in selected metropolitan areas across the country (Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Omaha, St.  Louis, and Washington, DC), and it has adopted 3.65GHz equipment to reach a very specific market-small to mid-size business sites-that are not cost effective to serve with PTP links.
 
The wireless broadband operations were added to Rapid Link through the acquisition of One Ring Networks, an alternative access carrier based in Atlanta, in March 2008. 

Core Market and Services Offered

As a vertically integrated service provider, Rapid Link provides extensive voice and data services to business subscribers through its own facilities-based IP network to business users, enterprises, and carriers.  Rapid Link subscribers rely on a network that is physically independent from the wireline one and that therefore can provide true redundancy to subscribers.  Vertical integration also allows Rapid Link to offer a wide array of carrier-grade voice and data services.

Rapid Link's approach to date has been to target business users with high bandwidth requirements (over 5 Mbps) and to provide service with fiber or PTP connections, depending on availability and customer preferences.  Subscriber ARPU is $1,266 per month, with an average bandwidth of 10 Mbps (see Table 4 for more information on product offerings).  This includes both wireless and fiber subscribers, with 80% of subscribers using wireless links and accounting for 60% of revenues.  Because of the high revenues per subscriber, it is easy for Rapid Link to justify the cost of a PTP link for each subscriber.
 

Table:  Rapid Link product offerings


Why the 3.65GHz band?

The PTP model breaks down entirely when trying to reach a new market segment that includes smaller businesses that need only a 2-5 Mbps connection.  Even with the low churns levels that are typical of Rapid Link customers, the cost of a PTP link for each customer becomes difficult to justify.

Compared to existing Rapid Link customers, 2-5 Mbps customers generate lower revenues and margins, but they are an attractive market because the number of medium-size enterprises is high.  Furthermore, a cost-effective service for this segment allows Rapid Link to offer connectivity to branch offices of existing customers. 

The 3.65GHz band is a "safe choice" that finally allows the operator to address this market, according to Matt Liotta, Rapid Link's Chief Technology Officer.  Liotta had considered using the 5.8GHz band, which the operator uses extensively for PTP links, but decided against it.  While interference can be managed effectively with PTP links, it becomes more difficult to do so in PMP networks.  Liotta thought that the risk of damaging the operator's reputation with unreliable connections was too high, and he preferred to wait for the 3.65GHz band to become available. 

Interference in the 3.65GHz band comes only from other operators, and this makes it much more manageable.  Liotta does not expect to see much direct competition in the market in the long term.  There may be multiple operators initially, but there will eventually be consolidation.

In addition to reduced impact of interference, the 3.65GHz band allows Rapid Link to use WiMAX-based technology, with its full support for QoS which is crucial for VoIP services.  Good NLOS capabilities are also highly valuable in areas like Atlanta, where tall trees make radio planning more challenging. 

Early Results

The 3.65GHz-based service was launched commercially in June 2008, and as of September 2008, seven base stations had been installed in Atlanta.  Rapid Link plans to expand the service to other cities in the future.  The operator has been very impressed with the performance of the new gear.  Most customers that have been moved from a PTP link to a 3.65GHz one have not noticed any difference in service level.  This is quite impressive, as a PTP link provides a dedicated data channel, while the 3.65GHz link is contended. 
As voice support is essential to Rapid Link, Liotta has adopted an aggressive approach to ensure the availability of network capacity for voice calls.  In each sector, Rapid Link dynamically allocates capacity for 48 voice lines (3.8 Mbps, or about 40% of the available capacity).  Effectively, this establishes a dedicated channel for voice calls-which, however, becomes available for data traffic if otherwise unused.

The Business Model

Despite the different market approaches, the deployment models followed by both Nex-Tech and Rapid Link are similar.  In both cases, the 3.65GHz infrastructure is deployed as an overlay to the existing network, thus leveraging the existing backhaul links and core network infrastructure, doing so in response to demand from subscribers or to the need to provide additional capacity.

In the case of Rapid Link, the dependency on subscriber demand is even more direct, as the 3.65GHz gear is used to address a new market segment.  When a new subscriber requests a connection, Rapid Link decides whether to provision it with a PTP link or with a 3.65GHz PMP base station.  If a 3.65GHz base station is used, Rapid Link markets the new service in the area directly and through its sales partners. 

The downside of this approach is that installing a new base station (in addition to the CPE at the customer site) extends the time needed to connect the first subscriber.  However, the time required is not going to be significantly longer than installing a PTP link, and the delay affects only the first customer on a base station.  (Rapid Link expects to have 5 to 12 subscribers per sector and to use three-sector base stations.)
Within this model, Rapid Link expects to reach a breakeven point for all capex within about nine months for both PTP and PMP subscribers.  The ability of the operator to do so depends crucially on the ability to leverage existing backhaul and core network assets and to combine the new services with the existing ones. 

This growth approach minimizes the capital required for the buildout and directs it to areas with proven demand.  It allows Rapid Link to avoid an expensive and ambitious rollout plan, and to start collecting revenues on each new base station right away. 

Monica Paolini is the founder and president of Senza Fili Consulting and can be contacted at monica.paolini@senzafiliconsulting.com.  Senza Fili Consulting provides expert advisory services on wireless data technologies and services.

 

Tuesday, January 27, 2009 in Deployments  | Permalink |  Comments (1)

Nex-Tech: Bringing broadband to Northwest Kansas, one base station at a time

Operators agree that the 3.65GHz band improves their business case and their ability to successfully serve their customers. However, there are substantial differences among operators as to what these goals mean and how they plan to achieve them.

In the first article, we look at Nex-Tech, a rural ISP that targets primarily residential subscribers.  In the next, we present a case study of Rapid Link that uses the 3.65GHz band to target small- and medium-sized business that it could not previously address in a cost-effective way using point-to-point links. 

Nex-Tech in many ways fits the model of the operator targeted by the 3.65GHz regulation.  It has a very clear regional focus in Northwest Kansas, where it serves a mix of residential and small business users with multiple wireline and wireless technologies.  Nex-Tech coverage areas include Hays (pop.  20,000) and many other cities in the region, including Salina (46,100), Great Bend (15,500), Russell (4,700), Phillipsburg (2,700), and WaKeeney (1,900).  Smaller centers such as Lenora (306) are also covered.

Nex-Tech is a subsidiary of Rural Telephone, the local phone operator that has been serving the area since 1951.  In addition to wireless Internet access, Rural Telephone offers local and long distance voice services, cellular voice, cable TV, and broadband connectivity through DSL and fiber.

Core market and services offered

Nex-Tech has carved a niche for itself as the trusted, local service provider that has competitive service offerings, but is not necessarily the lowest-cost one.  Its focus is on the quality and reliability of service and on being able to provide services to its customers regardless of location.

In this context, wireless broadband technologies allow Nex-Tech to provide coverage in areas where DSL and fiber are not available.  Of its 15,000 broadband subscribers, 6,000 use wireless broadband access.  These customers are served by a mix of equipment from different vendors and operating in various frequencies (700MHz, 900MHz, 5.xGHz), with the 3.65GHz base stations being the latest addition to the mix.

In many instances, new subscribers do not even know they will receive wireless connectivity.  The price, reliability, and quality of the service are expected to be the same across technologies. 

The main customer focus is on the residential market, which accounts for 80% of subscriptions, many of which include bundled services.  Examples of Nex-Tech Internet access services are shown in Table 3.  Because of the company's long-term presence, reputation, and strong community links, churn is very low.  Nex-Tech does not even feel the need to charge installation or early termination fees to keep churn under control, despite the fact that it operates in a market where it is competing head-to-head with DSL and cable operators.  Subscribers are free to terminate the service when they want. 

Why the 3.65GHz band?

Justin McClung, Internet Solutions Manager at Nex-Tech, describes the company's 3.65GHz deployment as the "obvious choice." Nex-Tech has learned a lot from previous wireless broadband solutions it used, which suffered from interference, limited NLOS, insufficient throughput, and lack of reliability and QoS support.  The availability of affordable 25MHz of clean spectrum with good propagation characteristics, and of a next-generation wireless broadband technology like WiMAX, makes the 3.65GHz band a compelling choice indeed. 
 

Table 3.  Nex-Tech product offerings for residential subscribers


In particular, McClung notes the following key advantages afforded by WiMAX-based equipment in the 3.65GHz band:

Spectrum.  So far, Nex-Tech has not faced any interference or competition in the 3.65GHz band in its coverage area, and it does not expect to see much in the future.  The market is already served by multiple wireline technologies (including growing fiber coverage, also driven by Nex-Tech).  A second wireless operator would face considerable challenges in penetrating the market and achieving profitability in areas with a low density of households. 

Performance.  With a single-sector base station, Nex-Tech expects to support up to 200 subscribers.  A base station can cover a radius of 2-3 miles in LOS, and 1-2 miles radius in NLOS. 

Propagation.  WiMAX-based solutions allow for much-improved NLOS capabilities that make it easier for Nex-Tech to reach customers outside the LOS path to the base station.

QoS and advanced traffic management.  The ability to manage traffic and assign priority to different applications or subscribers is crucial to Nex-Tech, as it enables it to monitor the subscriber experience more closely.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) support.  Although Nex-Tech offers copper-based local and long-distance voice services, McClung considers VoIP crucial to attract new customers.  Nex-Tech does not advertise VoIP and, as a fixed and cellular operator, does not need VoIP to support voice services, but it is a service the subscribers have come to expect.

Early results

Nex-Tech's experience to date in the 3.65GHz band has been very positive.  The company has initially installed three base stations as an overlay in areas where it needed additional capacity (Figure 2).  The installation took only 6-8 weeks to complete, and Nex-Tech expects the installation time to be considerably shorter for future base stations. 

Extensive engineering support from the vendor was crucial to the fast rollout.  Integration of the 3.65GHz infrastructure within Nex-Tech's existing core network is something McClung feels still needs more work.  Feedback from subscribers has been very positive, for both voice and data services.

While indoor CPE would clearly lead to lower installation costs and faster subscription activation, Nex-Tech feels more comfortable with professionally installed outdoor CPE.  Indoor CPE in the 3.65GHz band is subject to power limitations too strict to be widely used and is simply "too much trouble," according to McClung.  He cautions other operators to be very skeptical about business cases that rest on the assumption of a wide use of indoor CPE.  Nex-Tech estimates that the installation cost is about $500 per connection, which translates into 14-17 months for payback (based on Internet connectivity revenues alone-i.e., excluding revenues from the same subscriber for voice or cable TV).  McClung does not expect the price to come down to DSL modem levels over the next few years, either, simply because the volume for outdoor CPE will remain lower than for that for DSL.

With its low churn levels, Nex-Tech does not appear to be overly concerned about the installation costs, as it views them as part of the requirement to provide a wide array of reliable services (data, voice, TV) to its customers.  If Nex-Tech cannot provide Internet access, customers may decide to move all their bundled services to a competitor that does provide them. 

The Business Model

Being an established service provider, Nex-Tech uses the 3.65GHz network to improve service and increase capacity in areas already served.  It plans an organic, demand-driven rollout that targets areas where there is a known potential for revenue growth. 
In some cases, it may deploy new base stations to retain customers who need more bandwidth.  In this context, McClung does not expect funding to become an issue for Nex-Tech, as funding requirements are contained, and matched against a clear forecast of expected revenues. 

The Nex-Tech business model is very low impact in terms of effort and funding required, and it promises a steady increase in revenue that closely matches the financial outlays.

Monica Paolini is the founder and president of Senza Fili Consulting and can be contacted at monica.paolini@senzafiliconsulting.com.  Senza Fili Consulting provides expert advisory services on wireless data technologies and services.


 

Thursday, January 22, 2009 in Deployments  | Permalink |  Comments (0)

Testing WiMAX performance in the Clear network in Portland

On the day of the Clear launch in Portland, I had the opportunity to test the network with a laptop. The performance of the Clear network was consistently good, with throughput typically over 3 mbps in the downlink and between 350 and 400 kbps in the uplink.

Monica Paolini
Senza Fili Consulting
January 2009

 Internet browsing was fast, so I decided to spend most time checking video applications (YouTube, New York Times, and even a full screen movie from Hulu) and video-conferencing with Skype.  All worked reliably well in areas with good coverage.  The major limitation of the network were a few areas without sufficient coverage - which I visited twice during the day, but this is to be expected in a new network still being optimized.

The connection manager was very simple to configure and use (Figure 1).  On the downside, it did not provide detailed information on network availability, so when the laptop could not establish a connection, no explanation was given as to what the cause was.  However, the connection manager was sufficiently straightforward to use and within seconds of switching the laptop on, I was connected.  This is probably the most important feature to subscribers.  Establishing or re-establishing the connection was fast, and the connection manager client has an option to allow the laptop to automatically connect to Clear when coverage is available.



Figure 1. Laptop client, detail information panel


As the stationary throughput was quite good and consistent where I checked it, I decided to test in more detail the performance of the network in indoor locations and in a mobility scenario-environments where all wireless networks face a challenge.  The results of the tests are available on Google maps (see links at the end).


Indoor locations

For the indoor locations, I picked a garage building (Figure 2, Figure 3), where I could freely go where I wanted; a big bookstore (Powell's Books, Figure 4); a hotel; a restaurant; and the public library.  Clear stated objective is to provide first-wall coverage-you need to be close to the outside perimeter of the building to expect a good connection (this is also the case for 3G networks).  This was consistently the case.  Furthermore, the throughput was usually good even in deep-indoor locations, even though there was some degradation in performance or in some cases lack of coverage. 


Figure 2. Indoor location at parking garage



Figure 3. Top floor in parking garage



Figure 4. Powell's Books


At the parking garage, I tested throughput at multiple floors and locations within each floor (Figure 5).  As expected, the highest throughput was on the rooftop and near the outside walls.  Throughput at deep-indoor locations was tested right behind thick cement walls, at multiple locations. 


Figure 5. Throughput in parking garage


Indoor coverage at the RiverPlace Hotel and at Powell's Books was very good.  I actually tested more locations than reported on the map, but found very similar throughput levels across the buildings.  In the public library, I had to find a remote location where I could make a phone call without disturbing library patrons, and that was in an area where cellular voice connectivity was available, but WiMAX coverage was not.  It was in the most central part of the building by the elevator.  The library Wi-Fi network also had some trouble covering this spot-the downlink speed was only about 600 kbps. 

As I got for dinner to Ken's Artisan Pizza, coverage was not sufficient to establish a connection (although the laptop could detect the presence of the Clear network).  Too bad, but at least I was able to enjoy one of the best pizzas (Figure 6) in the US without being distracted by work!


Figure 6. Reward at the end of the day


Mobile locations

Most of the tests in a mobile environment were done from the streetcar in downtown Portland (Figure 7) and from buses.  Portland is blessed with one of the best public transportation systems in the US, so the plan worked out pretty well.



Figure 7.  Portland streetcar

Testing from the streetcar allowed me to check coverage along a well-defined path.  The throughput in the streetcar or buses was somewhat lower than that at the same location outdoors.  This is to be expected as the train car reduces the strength of the signal.  As a result, the tests within the streetcar should not be taken to represent the network performance in a stationary, outdoor environment.  Tests in the streetcar, buses as well as indoor locations are relevant however because most users will access the networks from indoor or mobile locations rather than from outdoor locations, especially with laptops.

The median throughput in the downlink was 3031 kbps, in the uplink 382 kbps.  The maximum throughput recorded was 5034 kbps in the downlink and 425 kbps in the uplink.  In the area between NW 18th Ave and NW 23rd Ave, the coverage was not sufficiently strong to keep the connection.  Throughout the rest of the streetcar route, however, the coverage was reliable and handoffs worked well-the connection was maintained throughout the route. 


Putting things in perspective

How does the Clear service compare to alternative wireless data services available in the US? Table 1shows what operators advertise on their websites, but there is considerable variability in performance, depending on location and, increasingly, on traffic on the network. 

 

Table 1.  Downlink and uplink data rates for WiMAX and 3G in the US.  Source: Operators' websites.


Some 3G networks have started to experience congestion at some locations.  As the wireless link is shared among all the subscribers connected to same sector in a base station, network performance degrades as the number of subscribers grows.  This was not a concern for the Portland network, as it is not yet running at capacity.

While it is difficult to generalize and at each specific location any given network may outperform the others, the performance that I saw on the Clear network was consistently and significantly above what I observed for 3G networks in the US in previous informal tests.  The improved performance is in line with the industry expectations and it is enabled by the use of wider channels and more advanced modulation techniques. 


Methodology

Date: January 5th and 6th, 2009.

Laptop used: Lenovo X301, Intel Core Duo CPU U9400 1.4GHz, 4GB Ram.

Speed test: FrontierNet Network Speed Test

Location: Tested locations are shown on the Google map listed in links.  When using public transportation, the tests were mostly done while the streetcar or bus was moving and it is therefore difficult to pinpoint the location precisely.  I recorded the closest streetcar/bus station was to the tested location, but the tests were done either immediately before (more often) or after the stop.  For tests at indoor locations, the Goggle map includes data from multiple locations, as described in the map placemark.

Monica Paolini, Senza Fili Consulting,
monica.paolini@senzafiliconsulting.com

A PDF of the report is available at

www.senzafiliconsulting.com/downloads/SenzaFili_PortlandTests_090111.pdf


 

Tuesday, January 13, 2009 in Deployments  | Permalink |  Comments (8)