Blog entries in category: Business
Sprint Coopts iPhone to Sell 4G Service
Following last week's buzz about a Verizon memo to use the upcoming Apple iPad to sell data plans, Sprint has jumped into the marketing crossover world as well.
They have unleashed one of their signature 4G ads that shows two hip guys making
the most of their iPhone by coupling it with Sprint's Overdrive wireless router.
While
Verizon's memo read ""Why pay more for the 3G version & get 3G service on
an overloaded network with limited coverage", Sprint goes after AT&T this way:
"My friend Steve's iPhone is cool, but it's limited to AT&T's 3G speeds, so I'm
going to use the Overdrive's mobile hotspot to make it up to 10 times faster."
The video goes on to show a subtly impressed "Steve" quickly downloading and
watching a video - all before his buddy can take two bites of an apple.
Nice.
Apparently Sprint saw an opening, though instead of going after a yet-to-be
released technology (the iPad is on pre-sale and will come out in early April)
they decided to piggy-back onto one of the most popular smartphones on the
market. Double nice.
The claim of 10-times faster will be argued or praised, depending on which
circle you frequent. Sprint advertises 4G performance with download
speeds averaging around 3 to 6 Mbps, depending on signal quality, considerably
faster than current 3G networks. With their partner, Clear, they have WiMAX networks deployed in 27 U.S. cities and plan to add more markets
this year on their way to covering 120 million people by the end of 2010.
Is this the first in a line of aggressive marketing ads as Sprint moves to
solidify it's 4G position ahead of competitors who are deploying LTE
technology? Time
will tell, but the clock is moving quickly for Sprint. Next week Sprint is rumored to be unveiling the first 4G-WiMAX phone at CTIA in
Las Vegas. That
will be quickly followed by the release of Apple's iPad in April and then a
summer of ramp-up for Verizon as prepares to deploy it's LTE network later this
year.
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WiMAX More Spectrally Efficient than HSPA & LTE, says Intel
A new whitepaper released by Intel asserts that WiMAX technology is more spectrally efficient than other mobile data technologies, resulting in advantages for operators including more subscribers per cell site and higher QOS data rates.
While large headline-grabbing theoretical/peak data rates of 50Mbps+ continue to
be batted around the industry by proponents of HSPA and LTE, the more important
measure is how efficiently these technologies use scarce spectrum resources.
It is widely acknowledged that mobile data traffic demand will outpace the
supply of actual network data capacity in the coming years, and therefore the
average realized data throughput is the real metric that should be compared.
The whitepaper highlights the importance of spectral efficiency and the basics
for calculating system capacity on a wireless network. The report compares
mobile WiMAX 802.16e against three other technologies - HSPA (Rel 6), HSPA+ (Rel
7) and LTE (Rel 8).
According to the report, WiMAX is able to support a higher number of subscribers
per cell site compared to the other technologies while supporting high QoS data
rate applications. For example, using a 10MHz channel, WiMAX is able to
support 20 video streaming users per sector at 256 kbps, compared to 12 users at
128 kbps on an HSPA network. Furthermore, WiMAX networks are able to
support a large number of users even with high monthly data usage of 12GB per
subscriber.
The complete whitepaper can be
downloaded here.
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WiMAX 2 Networks Ready in 2012, says Intel
Speaking at a press conference in Taipei Tuesday, an Intel executive said he expects the next version of WiMAX 4G technology to be deployed in 2012, according to IDG's Dan Nystedt.
"Standards work will be completed by the end of this year,"
said Rama Shukla, a vice president and director of the WiMAX program office
at Intel, during a news conference in Taipei.
Intel has been a major corporate backer of the WiMAX ecosystem and is a main
financial supporter of Taiwan's VMAX Telecom, which just launched a unique
consumer experience trial today in Taipei. By partnering with a leading
taxicab company, commuters in the capitol city now have access to 1000
WiMAX-enabled cabs.
The new Mobile WiMAX standard, 802.16m, will replace 802.16e and offer far
faster download and upload speeds. The new technology will support 170 Mbps
download speed and 90 Mbps upload speeds, according to Intel data, and will be
fully backward compatible with 802.16e. Users will be able to use the service
even while traveling at speeds up to 350 kilometers per hour, Shukla said.
The IEEE is expected to provide final approval for this new standard sometime
this summer. And Clearwire, the largest company to offer commercial WiMAX
services in the United States, has said it plans testing 802.16m sometime next
year in the hopes of deploying it in 2012, according to an
article in PC world in January.
"Work on the standard has been progressing very quickly," said Jose Puthenkulam,
Intel's director of WiMAX standards in a WiMax.com interview in February. "The
profile development time for 802.16m has been much shorter than with the prior,
802.16e profile - where the industry was still very much in a formulative state
with respect to MIMO, beamforming, etc. We have taken the experiences with
802.16e and even some of the learnings from LTE and built that into the 802.16m
standard."
Shukla said that this year, estimates for the number of global WiMAX subscribers
range from around 6 million to 10 million, led by users in the U.S., Russia and
Japan. Most of those users are turning to mobile WiMAX for laptop computer use.
"We see very strong momentum [for WiMAX] in notebook PCs today," he said in his
interview with Nystedt.
Of all the WiMAX member companies, none has been more vocal in their commitment
to 802.16m than Samsung and Russian WiMAX operator Yota. Last October at the ITU
World conference, Yota and Samsung demonstrated a test of an 802.16m network and
Yota plans to be one of the first operators in the world to install the
technology once it becomes available. As one of the fastest growing WiMAX
operators in the world, Yota can certainly use the extra capacity. In one month
alone last year, the service provider carried over 2,290 terabytes of data on
its network.
To learn more about this new standard, see WiMax.com's article:
WiMAX Act2: 8021.16m Provides Evolution Path to 4G.
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Cisco Exits WiMAX Access Business to Focus on Network Core & Edge
Company confirms that it will discontinue designing and building new WiMAX base stations and will instead focus its mobility efforts on the IP core and network edge.
Cisco confirmed the change in its mobile strategy during a call last week.
"We have decided to focus our efforts on delivering value in the edge and core
of the network, and direct future investments on the access side to femto and
Wi-Fi technologies," says Sai Subramanian, Director of Product Marketing for
Cisco's Wireless Business Group. "We will discontinue building and
designing new WiMAX base stations, but will continue shipping existing equipment
and supporting existing customer networks."
Cisco entered the WiMAX RAN (radio access network) business through its $330
million acquisition of Dallas based Navini Networks in October 2007.
Navini was a pioneer of so called "beamforming technology" that provides
additional quality and signal strength by concentrating radio signals in the
direction of the receiver - providing additional coverage compared to non-beamforming
solutions. Recent studies have shown that beamforming enabled base
stations can reduce the number of towers needed by half, providing significant
cost savings to WiMAX operators.
Beamforming technology is currently supported in the current mobile WiMAX
802.16e profile and will be included in future revisions of WiMAX (802.16m) as
well as LTE. While many vendors have plans to include the technology on
their roadmaps, to date few vendors except Cisco have commercial equipment
available.
Departing the WiMAX RAN business will allow Cisco to focus on the IP core and
network edge where it's a more dominant player. In October 2009, Cisco
acquired Starent Networks which offers network agnostic mobile gateway solutions
that support a broad range of access technologies including CDMA, GSM, UMTS,
WiMAX, Wi-Fi and LTE among others. Over the past few years, Starent has
racked up an impressive list of customers including Vodafone, Verizon, Sprint,
KDDI and China Unicom, and was selected to provide its technology in Verizon's
upcoming LTE network.
While leaving the WiMAX RAN market, Cisco remains an important player in the
WiMAX space in providing core and network edge equipment. "We expect to
continue to be a significant player in the WiMAX market," says Subramanian.
"We will continue to be big players in the WiMAX space, just not in the access
part of the network."
Cisco is following a trend in the industry in which base stations are becoming a
smaller percentage of the overall capital budget. While costs are also
coming down, the intelligence of the network is migrating into the core and edge
of the network, and base stations are becoming "dumb radios" relative to other
parts of the network. Under this scenario, operators will leverage many
different types of access technologies including WiMAX, LTE, Wi-FI, 3G depending
on a number of factors including spectrum owned, subscriber density, devices,
applications and business models.
While exiting the macro-level base station market, Cisco will continue to pursue
smaller radio access technologies including femtocells and Wi-Fi.
Femtocells are essentially wireless access points used by mobile operators to
improve network coverage in small areas and off-load data traffic from their
network. Femtocells can use a wide range of technologies and leverage a
broadband connection to route the connection back to a carrier, bypassing the
operator's macro-cell towers. While femtocells could conceivably include
WiMAX or LTE technology, no decisions have been made at this time according to
the company. "As we examine the market, we will certainly look at all
different types of technologies required and where there is an area we can
delivery significant value, rather that is WiMAX, LTE, 3G, etc.," says
Subramanian.
While Cisco was not one of the top WiMAX RAN providers, its departure may none
the less be seen as a psychological blow to the industry. Cisco's exit
leaves Motorola, Alvarion, Samsung and Huawei as the dominant WiMAX RAN vendors
in the industry. Cisco follows Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks
who also left the WiMAX market to focus on other access technologies such as LTE.
While WiMAX detractors will surely use this as opportunity to show waning
support for the technology, this is not un-similar to other telecommunications
markets like CDMA, where a handful of infrastructure providers serve the market.
In some ways, industry consolidation is to be expected and is an indicator that
the market is maturing.
While the WiMAX equipment market is projected to be $6-$8 billion over the next
3-5 years, it may have been too small relative to Cisco's other markets and
opportunities. Although it was involved in around 50 WiMAX networks from
an access perspective, it was never in the top 3-4 vendors in the WiMAX RAN
market and paled in comparison to its involvement in other parts of WiMAX
networks. The company is involved in most all WiMAX networks in some form
and is the leading IP core provider for Clearwire's U.S. nation-wide
network build out.
A number of factors may have attributed to the slow adoption of the Navini/Cisco
WiMAX base stations. Although fewer base stations are needed due to
beamforming technology, the per-unit cost of the base stations were more
expensive than competitors which often put them at a disadvantage in RFPs.
Although research showed that operators could actually lower total network costs
by utilizing beamforming, many of the decision makers were looking for cheaper
base stations, especially in the race to put up networks quickly.
Given their complexity and longer sales cycles, the WiMAX macro base stations
may also have been more of a challenge for Cisco's channel partners, who are
used to selling more established products such as Wi-Fi with higher margins and
shorter sales cycles. While many WiMAX networks today support advanced
features such as MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) antenna technologies,
few operators are using these capabilities. Most operators will eventually
utilize more advanced MIMO and beamforming technology, but it will take time to
implement these capabilities.
Cisco will continue to be active in the WiMAX Forum and the WiMAX Open Patent
Alliance according to the company."We are supportive of the WiMAX market and
will continue to have WiMAX solutions and serve those customers," says Andy
Capener, Director of Service Provider Marketing for Mobility at Cisco. "We
are just now going to now focus our efforts on where our expertise resides."
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Maravedis: WiMAX Subscribers Increase 80% According to Latest Findings
This week in its quarterly 4G Counts webinar, telecom market research firm Maravedis revealed its latest findings, including strong growth of WiMAX subscribers and other developments in the broadband data ecosystem.
This week in its quarterly 4G Counts webinar, telecom market research firm
Maravedis revealed its latest findings, including strong growth of WiMAX
subscribers and other developments in the broadband data ecosystem.
The webinar follows a press release issued by the company last week and provided
additional details on their latest report. According to the firm's research,
there were 4.73 million global BWA/WiMAX subscribers served by more than 200
operators at the end of Q3 2009 (the most recent quarter available),
representing an 80% growth from Q3 2008. Also, for the first time the number of
mobile WiMAX (802.16e-2005) subscribers surpassed the number of fixed WiMAX
(802.16-2004) subscribers worldwide. In the fourth quarter, the company expects
to see another 1.5 million new BWA/WiMAX subscribers for a total subscriber base
projected at 6.5 million by the end of 2009.
The webinar was based on analysis from Maravedis and its
4G Counts service that tracks 4G operator
deployments and provides details on the 4G ecosystem from over hundreds of
operators worldwide. The service provides information on subscribers, revenue,
ARPU, services offerings, base stations, devices and more.
During the webinar, Maravedis provided an updated list of the top WiMAX
operators globally in terms of number of subscribers projected for the end of Q4
2009. Toping the list again was Clearwire, followed by Yota in Russia, Inukshuk
in Canada, Korea Telecom and Telmex in Mexico.
Maravedis also compared the pricing plans of leading 3G and mobile WiMAX
operators by region. One interesting observation was based on those surveyed,
85% of WiMAX operators reported offering unlimited data plans, compared to only
41% for 3G operators. This was possible due to the better performance of the
WiMAX networks and more efficient usage of spectrum, but WiMAX operators may be
forced to adjust their plans as more subscribers are added to the networks.
WiMAX operators also reported some of the heaviest usage on their networks,
including more than 10GB/month for Russian WiMAX provider Yota and nearly
8GB/month for Packet One in Malaysia.
The webinar also provided insight into the latest developments with LTE,
including 51 operator commitments by the end of Q3 2009. According to the
company, LTE dongles will become available in the second half of 2010, but not
until 2011 for handsets and lower power devices such as portable integrated LTE/Wi-Fi
routers.
The presenters concluded that 2010 would be a more prosperous year for the
industry, but that traffic growth will continue to be a challenge for operators.
As for WiMAX or LTE, most decisions will be made based on spectrum owned,
business models and support for legacy systems. Furthermore, while many LTE
networks will be operational by 2011, WiMAX is the only option presently
available.
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Clearwire Releases Year-End Results, Plans to Triple 4G WiMAX Customers in 2010
U.S. WiMAX operator Clearwire announces a strong finish in 2009, reporting record subscriber growth as it sets the stage for an ambitious market expansion into 2010.
The company ended the year with 688,000 subscribers, a 45% increase from the
prior year, including 642,000 retail subscribers and 46,000 wholesale
subscribers from partners Comcast, Sprint, and Time Warner Cable. In the fourth
quarter alone, the company added a record 87,000 subscribers, greater than the
prior 3 quarters combined.
Clearwire's wholesale partners is clearly an area that the company wants to
leverage and grow. CEO Bill Morrow told investors on the earnings call that he
plans to expand the wholesale channels by adding other types of partners
including ISPs, fixed-line operators, retailers and consumer electronics
companies.
"Over the past year, Clearwire established its leadership in 4G mobile
broadband services by building the largest 4G network in North America, raising
additional financing to fuel our growth, supporting the 4G wholesale service
launches for three of the most prominent communications companies in the U.S.,
and delivering solid financial results in a challenging economic environment,"
Morrow said.
"Our all-IP network and unmatched spectrum holdings have truly enabled us to
become the 4G 'network of networks.' We now provide the underlying capability to
Comcast, Sprint, and Time Warner Cable to serve the growing demand for mobile
broadband services, and we are well positioned to expand our wholesale business
even further. When coupled with the success of our own CLEAR retail brand,
record subscriber growth, and our extensive market build plans for this year, we
are confident that we remain on a strong growth trajectory for 2010."
At the end of 2009, Clearwire was operating 27 Markets Across the U.S. Covering
34 Million People, including Chicago, Dallas-Ft.Worth, Las Vegas, Atlanta,
Philadelphia, Seattle and Honolulu. The company plans to begin offering
commercial service in Houston, Texas in the coming weeks along with coverage in
New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Houston, the San Francisco Bay Area, Denver,
Minneapolis, and Kansas City later this year. In total, the company plans to
provide coverage to 120 million people by the end 2010, a four-fold increase
from 2009.
For 2010, the company plans to triple its 438,000 WiMAX subscribers at the end
of 2009 which would put it on pace to add approximately 1.3 million WiMAX
subscribers in 2010 *. To keep pace with this growth, the company will increasing
their number of towers from 5,000 to nearly 20,0000 according to Clearwire's CTO
John Saw.
* Editor's Note: According to Reuters, Clearwire subsequently
issued a correction to say it expects its total subscriber base of 688,000 to
triple, instead of its WiMAX subscriber base of 438,000, which would imply a
projected 2.0 million total subscribers in 2010.
From a financial perspective, the company still has some challenges ahead. While
increasing revenue 19% for the year to $274.5 million, the company reported a
larger net loss than analysts had predicted ($0.55 per share compared to $0.45
per share). The higher net loss was likely influenced by increases in SG&A
expenses and a higher customer acquisition costs driven by the new markets
launched in the fourth quarter. Clearwire expects new markets to become EBITDA
profitable after aground 18 months, so we should start to see some signs of
improvement around the end of 2010.
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U.S. Broadband Stimulus Round Two & Implications for WiMAX Operators
Despite confusion and delays around the first round of the process, improvements and clarification on rules in the second round of the U.S. Broadband Stimulus Program should provide better opportunities for WiMAX operators and last mile projects.
Wireless Broadband Perspectives - WiMAX.com Weekly Series Sponsored By: For the next several months, WiMAX.com and Cisco will be featuring weekly topics and perspectives from the WiMAX & wireless broadband industries. This week we talked with Mark Pagon, CEO of WiMAX service provider Xanadoo Networks on the latest developments with the U.S. Broadband Stimulus Program. |
When announced in early 2009, the U.S. Broadband Stimulus Program was
seen as a potential boon for WiMAX and broadband wireless access (BWA)
providers. With both licensed and unlicensed equipment readily available,
WiMAX was seen as the perfect solution for providing low cost broadband
connectivity quickly and efficiently, and reportedly made up 25% of the last
mile proposals submitted in the first round of the process. Overall, the
U.S. Broadband Stimulus Program was so popular that over 2,200 applications
totaling $28B were submitted during the first round, nearly 4 times the combined
$7.2B funding allocated for the programs. The agencies were also flooded
with over 11,000 public comments and challenges, many from entrenched incumbents
looking to block potential new entrants into markets already served.
With the exception of announcements in the last few weeks, very little funds
have been awarded under either program and little, if any, have been awarded to
wireless or WiMAX projects. Of the $7.2B in the combined programs, one
year later only $900M has been awarded under the programs. Furthermore,
most of the awards had been given to a hand-full of "Middle Mile" programs
consisting of high-speed fiber initiatives connecting the national internet
backbone into community anchor institutions such as schools, libraries,
community colleges and other institutions of higher education.
But first a little history of the program. The U.S. Broadband Stimulus
Program was created from the Obama administration's American Recovery &
Reinvestment Act of 2009 which designated $7.2B in stimulus funding to be
disbursed by two government organizations - the National Telecommunications and
Information Administration (NTIA) and the Rural Utilities Service (RUS).
Being a stimulus program, the goal of the program was to quickly create tens of
thousands of jobs and connect millions of rural communities to broadband -
providing additional economic development, healthcare and educational benefits.
In the original statute, the NTIA was allocated $4.7B for the Broadband
Technologies Opportunity Program (BTOP) to support the deployment of broadband
infrastructure, enhance and expand public computer centers, and encourage
sustainable adoption of broadband services. The RUS was allocated $2.5B
for the Broadband Initiative Program (BIP) to support broadband infrastructure
projects, mostly in rural and underserved areas. While the two
organizations had somewhat distinct charters, there was overlap between the two
programs and lack of clarification in definitions and rules caused confusion in
those submitting applications.
Under the original plan, proposals were supposed to have been awarded in three
separate rounds (including the first one last year). Given the latest
delays, awards will now be completed in just two rounds. Round 1 award
announcements started over the past few weeks and will be completed by the end
of February. Round 2 applications are being accepted through March 15th,
with award announcements starting in July and completed by September 30th, 2010.
Broadband Stimulus - Round Two
Round two of the process has fortunately provided much clearer objectives and
rules compared to round one and many applicants have been encouraged to reapply
under the new guidelines. The most significant change is a clearer
separation between the two programs - essentially all middle mile
applications are being directed towards the NTIA, while last mile
applications will go to RUS. The reasoning and focus on middle mile
projects by the NTIA was to ensure that sufficient infrastructure was in place
to enable last mile connectivity.
In the second round, NTIA has $2.6B left to allocate of which approximately
$2.3B will be available for infrastructure projects. The balance of funds
will be allocated to public computer center projects and sustainable broadband
adoption projects including training and resources for groups where broadband
technology has traditionally been underutilized.
For WiMAX operators, the best opportunity will come from the RUS program which
has $2.3B left to allocate in the second round, mostly for last mile projects.
This will be good news for those applying in the second round since only $300M
was awarded in the first round. A number of regional WiMAX operators
including Digital Bridge Communications, Open Range and ERF Wireless applied for
funds in the first round and are still waiting to hear the results. One
such provider is Xanadoo Networks which operates WiMAX networks in Texas,
Oklahoma and Illinois and submitted a first round proposal to cover rural
communities in eastern Kansas.
"WiMAX projects should do essentially better in the second round," says Mark
Pagon, CEO of Xanadoo Networks. "Lack of clarification in the rules for
the first round created confusion and lead to many applications being denied,
but improvements in the process should give applicants with sound proposals the
opportunity to reapply in the second round."
In the second round, RUS has also simplified the rules around the mix of grants
and loan and has adopted a 75/25 grant/loan ratio for all projects along with
the flexibility to seek a waiver if additional grant resources are needed for
areas that are difficult to serve. Unlike the BTOP program under the NTIA,
the BIP under RUS has no matching requirement in order to qualify.
"Under the first round, the maximum grant that could be received was 50% of the
project, except for in unusual circumstances," says Pagon. "With the new
rules, applicants can receive 75% of the project cost as a grant and can apply
for up to 100% if needed, providing a better chance for projects that may not
have otherwise received funding."
Separate notices of funds available (NOFAs) have been issued for NTIA and RUS,
and applicants are directed to apply for either NTIA or RUS, but not both
organizations. Round two application packages for both programs were made
available electronically on February 16th, and barring any further extensions
are due back by March 15th.
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Mobile World Congress 2010: Mobile Network Architecture Takes Center Stage
Amid the buzz of operator deployments and new product announcements, mobile network architecture solutions that help service providers better manage the explosion of mobile data are finding a captive audience. Interview with Andy Capener, Director of Service Provider Marketing for mobility at Cisco.
Wireless Broadband Perspectives - WiMAX.com Weekly Series Sponsored By: For the next several months, WiMAX.com and Cisco will be featuring weekly topics and perspectives from the WiMAX & wireless broadband industries. This week, we talked with Andy Capener, Director of Service Provider Marketing for mobility at Cisco (formerly with Starent Networks) on the recent acquisition, the growth of the mobile internet and what it means for service providers. |
With the enormous opportunities on the horizon for 4G wireless networks, new
companies are leveraging their advantages to help service providers better
manage their mobile networks. While traditional infrastructure vendors
such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Huawei have been offering complete, turnkey
mobile network platforms, new vendors such as Cisco and Juniper Networks are
leveraging their extensive enterprise and IP-core experience and have recently
announced competing products.
The driving force behind these solutions is the tidal wave of data forecasted
for mobile networks. Last week, Cisco released the results from its Global
Mobile Data Forecast for 2009 to 2014. What was interesting was not the
conclusions themselves, but the size and magnitude of the growth.
The Internet is becoming mobile. As with mobile phones, more people
will be getting online wirelessly than with a fixed broadband connection.
While the first 50 years of internet was defined by a "wired" connection, the
next five will be defined the wireless internet. By 2014, Cisco predicts
that mobile data traffic will increase a staggering 39 fold from 2009 to 3.6
exabytes per month globally (an exabyte, by the way, is equal to one billion
gigabytes). Today, the average mobile broadband connection generates 1.3
GB of traffic per month, but by 2014 that number is projected to grow to 7 GB
per month.
Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Growth
More video on mobile networks. Following a similar trend with the
fixed internet, video content will account for 66% of all data traffic on mobile
networks by 2014, a 66-fold increase from 2009 to 2014. While watching
video on current generation mobile networks is often slow, faster WiMAX & 4G
networks will create a better user experience driving consumption and demand
even further. While most video traffic today consists of watching YouTube,
faster network uplinks and integrated video cameras on handsets will make true,
two-way video conferencing possible for the first time.
More mobile devices & new form factors. According to the report, by
2014 there will be an estimated five billion personal devices connecting to
mobile networks, as well as billions of machine-to-machine devices. There
will also be new larger, more media-rich types of devices such as tablet PCs as
well as the Apple iPad. If the current performance issues of AT&T's
network resulting from the iPhone are any indications, operators must manage
network resources more efficiently or risk deteriorating network performance and
loss of customers.
So what are the implications of this data growth on mobile networks? How are
mobile operators going to deal with this tidal wave of data demand and more
importantly, how are they going to do so profitably?
One of these companies helping to solve this challenge is Starent Networks which
was acquired by Cisco last October. While preserving the organizational
structure of the former organization, the company has been quickly integrated
into Cisco's new Mobile Internet Technology Group under the leadership of former
Starent CEO Ashraf "Ash" Dahod. The group is headquartered in Tewksbury,
Massachusetts just north of Boston and has around 1,000 employees.
For the past 10 years the company has focused on the mobile operator
infrastructure with its multi-media core and packet-core gateway solutions.
The company has racked up an impressive list of more than 100 customers
including Vodafone, Verizon, Sprint, KDDI and China Unicom among many others.
Verizon announced last year that Starent had been selected as one of the mobile
core vendors for its upcoming LTE network.
The company offers mobile gateway solutions that are network agnostic and
supports a broad range of access technologies including CDMA, GSM, UMTS, WiMAX,
Wi-Fi and LTE among others. In the WiMAX space, the company has developed
an ASN gateway that leverages the company's expertise in developing one of the
industry's leading packet core network infrastructures and has been deployed by
Taiwanese operators FiTEL and Tatung InfoComm.
"With the recent acquisition by Cisco and the integration of Starent's products
into Cisco's solutions, we are now able to offer a more comprehensive end-to-end
IP solution," says Andy Capener, Director of Service Provider Marketing for
mobility at Cisco. "We can offer complete solutions from the cell site, to
the mobile-packet core, all the way to the IP core of the network."
Cisco has quickly integrated the new company's mobile data solutions into its
own portfolio and has re-packaged Starent's flagship product the ST40 mobile
gateway with its own Unified Reporting System platform and renamed it the
ASR5000. The combination allows the mobile data core to share subscriber
and network information easily with other systems.
According to Capener, operators will need to focus on two attributes of their
network: Performance and intelligence. With performance, operators will
need to understand how their mobile networks are being used to better design
policies to help manage the growth and to ensure that networks are operating
efficiently. With network intelligence, operators will be able to gain
valuable insight in how their networks are being used and be in a position to
target new, differentiated and personalized services based on these
opportunities.
"Service providers will be able to keep up with the demand of mobile data and
remain profitable, but they cannot do so passively," says Capener. "The
intelligence of the network will be crucial and operators will need to
understand how their customers are using the network in order to offer them more
differentiated and premium types of services."
Cisco will be Mobile World Congress this week in Hall 8, stand 8A70.
Carl Townsend
Editor & President, WiMAX.com
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Report: Beamforming Networks Reduce Basestations, Provide Cost Savings & Benefits
A new report by Senza Fili Consulting finds significant benefits for operators in using beamforming equipment in their WiMAX networks - reducing by one-half the number of base stations needed and achieving lower deployment costs and faster time to market advantages.
Wireless Broadband Perspectives - WiMAX.com Weekly Series Sponsored By: For the next several months, WiMAX.com and Cisco will be featuring weekly topics and perspectives from the WiMAX & wireless broadband industries. This week, we talked with Monica Paolini with Senza Fili Consulting on her latest Beamforming study and the implications it has for WiMAX operators. |
A new report by Senza Fili Consulting shows that WiMAX operators can achieve
significant benefits and reduce overall operating costs by utilizing WiMAX
beamforming networks. According to the study, operators using beamforming
along with multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) technologies are able to
reduce the number of base stations up to 57%, resulting in cost savings of 34%
over a five year period. The reduction in the number of cell sites driven
by fewer base stations has other benefits on the operator's business model as
well, including greater flexibility in deployment and faster time to market.
The study reached similar conclusions, although with somewhat different
assumptions, to another
recent study conducted by UK research firm Analysys Mason.
Beamforming is a signal processing technique used to increase coverage and
capacity compared to more traditional radio systems. In a beamforming
system, the base station is able to better tune-in to distant CPE devices by
blocking out interference and directing a signal back based on the location of
the receiver.
With the advantages of beamforming clearly documented, why are more operators
not deploying these types of networks? While supported in the mobile WiMAX
802.16e profile, very few operators so far have deployed networks utilizing
beamforming, including Clearwire - the largest WIMAX operator in the U.S.
deploying a nationwide network. From a certification perspective, all CPE
(customer premise equipment) devices are required to support beamforming, but
operators can chose whether or not to utilize it in their networks.
"It really comes down to the initial cost during the vendor RFP (request for
proposal) process as well as the operator's other priorities when building their
networks," says Monica Paolini with Senza Fili consulting. "The network
planning process is often complex, with decisions made by different people in
the organization at various steps in the process. During the RFP process
to select the vendors, operators often select a solution on the basis of
equipment cost, but that may turn out not to be the most cost-effective
solution. Operators need to look at the big picture and consider the total
capex and opex over a few years when building their networks."
A single beamforming base station may cost up to twice as much as a typical non-beamforming
WiMAX base station. This can be one factor that turns away operators.
When multiple vendors are compared side-by-side during the RFP process, it can
be difficult to convince the procurement and other groups within a service
provider's organization on the benefits of investing in the equipment, even
though with half as many basestations, the total CAPEX of the network would be
the less due to the other costs associated with building cell sites.
"During the RFP process, operators are trying to figure out what equipment to
select and their first cost item is often base station equipment," says Paolini.
"Operators are under tremendous cost pressure, but often underestimate the
installation costs."
The study examined three types of WiMAX network deployments: those using MIMO
only, those using beamforming only, and those using a combination of MIMO +
beamforming. The model utilized detailed operational and financial
assumptions including coverage type (urban, sub-urban and rural areas),
population density, subscriber growth, networks usage, site acquisition costs
and opex to support the network among others. Based on these assumptions,
the discounted RAN (radio access network) costs were calculated over a five year
period.
Key Findings
Half as many sites needed. While the CAPEX from each of the more
expensive beamforming base stations are off-set by fewer base stations needed,
the cost savings achieved were driven by the reduced build-out and support costs
of operating half as many sites.
Better network management. More spectrally efficient beamforming
networks also allows operators to better manage the trade-off between network
coverage and capacity- better managing resources by providing fewer sites in
areas with less traffic and increasing cell site density in in high traffic
areas to boost capacity. "Initially, operators don't know where demand is
going to be especially with mobile subscribers," says Paolini.
"Beamforming provides flexibility for operators to deploy where capacity is most
needed."
Faster time to market. With fewer sites, operators are able to
enter markets faster and avoid the risk of putting up sites before they know
exactly where demand will be from their customers. This can have a
profound impact on cash flow, allowing service providers to conserve desperately
needed cash by delaying capital expenditures, and providing a quicker return on
the operator's business case.
Operator Priorities
Another explanation on the slow adoption of beamforming in WiMAX networks could
be operators need to focus on the build-out of their networks as quickly as
possible, adding more advanced features such as MIMO and beamforming as they
have the resource to manage the upgrade. In fact, many WiMAX operators
including both Clearwire and Yota in Russia have yet to even begin using the
capabilities of MIMO, much less beamforming. While, these technologies
provide performance and cost advantages, many operators are just starting to
roll out their networks and may not want to introduce additional complexity
until they are more established.
"In the beginning, the top priority for operators is to have a stable system
that supports their initial users," says Paolini. "As the number of
subscribers-along with traffic volumes-grow, operators will need to introduce
MIMO and beamforming technologies to increase capacity."
With increasing customer data usage, operators such as Yota are beginning to
realize the importance of advanced antenna techniques to increase capacity are
planning to implement these technologies on their networks.
"MIMO and beamforming may not be an operators top priority initially, but once
they have their network stable and need additional capacity, operators are keen
to deploy at these technologies," says Paolini.
The Senza Fili Beamforming Whitepaper is available for
download here.
_____
tags:
WiMAX Act 2: 802.16m Provides Evolution Path to 4G
As current-generation 802.16e mobile WiMAX networks are deployed globally, work continues on the next generation of the technology known as 802.16m, which will provide greater performance, capacity and flexibility over existing legacy networks.
Wireless Broadband Perspectives - WiMAX.com Weekly Series Sponsored By: For the next several months, WiMAX.com and Cisco will be featuring weekly topics and perspectives from the WiMAX & wireless broadband industries. This week, we talked with the WiMAX standard's groups at Intel and Cisco on the latest developments with 802.16m and what it means for operators and their customers. |
Broadband wireless technologies have continued to evolve to keep pace with the
ever-growing demand for high-bandwidth data requirements and applications.
From proprietary BWA (broadband wireless access) technologies came fixed WiMAX
in 2004 based on the IEEE 802.16d standard - providing a common platform for
fixed and nomadic wireless broadband services.
Recognizing the importance of mobility, the WiMAX Forum™ released the mobile
WiMAX profile in 2005 based on the IEEE 802.16e standard - providing full
mobility in addition to fixed and nomadic broadband services. Advanced
antenna designs including MIMO (multiple-input/multiple-output) along with other
techniques including adaptive beamforming were subsequently added to increase
performance, capacity and coverage of the networks.
While mobile WiMAX provided performance capabilities that far exceeded other
standard technologies currently available to date, it still fell short of the
International Telecom Union's (ITU) key requirements for consideration as an IMT
advanced (4G) technology - specifically, providing downlink speeds of 100 Mbps
in a wide area with high-mobility. Last October at the ITU Telecom World
2009 conference in Geneva, Switzerland, the WiMAX Forum™ and member companies
announced their support of the IEEE's submission to the ITU of the 802.16m
standard as a candidate for consideration as an IMT advanced technology.
The WiMAX Forum also announced that WiMAX Release 2, which is based on the
standard, would be finalized in parallel with 802.16m, to ensure that the next
generation of WiMAX networks and devices will remain backward compatible with
WiMAX networks based on 802.16e. (It's worth noting that the first release
of LTE also does not meet ITU's definition as a 4G technology).
"Work on the standard has been progressing very quickly," says Jose Puthenkulam,
Intel's director of WiMAX standards. "The profile development time for
802.16m has been much shorter than with the prior, 802.16e profile - where the
industry was still very much in a formulative state with respect to MIMO,
beamforming, etc. We have taken the experiences with 802.16e and even some
of the learnings from LTE and built that into the 802.16m standard."
While some companies are taking a "wait-and-see" approach before committing to
the technology, companies expressing support include Beceem and Intel on the
chip side, and Samsung, Huawei, ZTE, Alvarion and Cisco on the infrastructure
side. Recent reports in the media of Clearwire being "in no hurry to test
802.16m" seem to have been taken out of context. According to Clearwire
CTO John Saw, the operator will consider preliminary trials in 2011, which is in
line with when the first available commercial equipment will be available.
Understandably, Clearwire is more focused on growing their existing network and
POPs coverage from 30 million to 120 million in 2010 based on commercial
equipment that is available today.
Of all the WiMAX member companies, none has been more vocal in their commitment
to 802.16m than Samsung and Russian WiMAX operator Yota. Last October at
the ITU World conference, Yota and Samsung demonstrated a test of an 802.16m
network and Yota plans to be one of the first operators in the world to install
the technology once it becomes available. As one of the fastest growing
WiMAX operators in the world, Yota can certainly use the extra capacity.
In one month alone last year, the service provider carried over 2,290 terabytes
of data on its network.
What is the Significance of 802.16m to Operators?
While 802.16m will provide increased performance for users, the main, driving
factor for operators adopting the technology will be capacity. With more
users with smartphones, tablets and other devices, wireless bandwidth will
continue to grow.
"The driving force behind the development of 802.16m is capacity," says Intel's
Jose Puthenkulam. "As you start to add more use, you start to see more
capacity constraints. This will provide capacity for operators to grow
their networks."
The new 802.16m standard will also provide increased performance advantages.
From a technological perspective, 802.16m is capable of providing up to 120 Mbps
down and 60 Mbps up in an urban setting, using 4x2 MIMO antennas on a single
20MHz-wide channel. Even higher data rates can be achieved with additional
spectrum resources or more complex antenna schemes. While impressive,
actual commercial performance will be considerably less based on spectrum used
and other factors.
In addition to capacity and performance advantages, 802.16m will be backward
compatible with existing WiMAX networks, providing ease-of-mind for operators
deploying networks today. Most mobile WiMAX operators can easily convert
from 802.16e to 802.16m by updating some circuit plate units and software in
their bases stations. All of the 802.16e units in the field will continue
to work and customers will see no disruption in service.
"One of the most important aspects of the 802.16m networks will be the backwards
compatibility with legacy systems," says Dave Marez with Cisco. "Because
of this, operators don't have to wait for time to market to deploy their
networks and they will never have to worry about "orphaning" their existing
devices."
LTE vs. WiMAX? It Depends on the Spectrum…
Of course, no discussion of the future of WiMAX is complete without the context
of how it compares with other technologies - specifically LTE (long term
evolution). Both LTE and WiMAX Release 2 achieve their extraordinary
performance and capacity by providing the ability to support wider 20MHz
channels (in addition to 10MHZ channels). But performance is only as good
as the spectrum available.
Performance of an LTE network was recently highlighted in the launch of
TeliaSonera's commercial network in Stockholm. According to the company's
web site, the operator was offering down load speeds of "up to 50 Mbps," but
according to initial independent tests, only reached about 12 Mbps on the down
link. Subsequent test provided slightly better results, but showed some of
the limitations and uncertainties inherent with new technologies.
It is also worth noting that the TeliaSonera LTE network was able to deliver its
extraordinary performance because it was operating using two, 20MHz channels -
one for the downlink and one for the uplink. Essentially, the channel size
is the size of the "wireless pipe" that operators have to work with when
delivering data to users on their networks. Most 3G networks operate using
up to 5MHz channels, WiMAX 802.16e networks operate using up to 10MHz, and
802.16m and LTE networks will operate using up to 20MHz channels.
To achieve the significantly higher performance as reported by TeliaSonera, LTE
operators need to use the wider 20MHz channels, but that spectrum is not always
readily available. In the US, Verizon which is planning to deploy its LTE
network in 700 MHZ only has two, 11MHz channels nation-wide. ATT, which
also plans to deploy an LTE network, only has two, 12 MHZ channels.
"Lots of the spectrum allocation are in 10MHz chunks," says Intel's Jose
Puthenkulam. "The places you will find contiguous 20MHz channels do exist,
but they are few and far between."
The 802.16m profile is currently under evaluation and is expected to be ratified
along with WiMAX Release 2 later this year. We should then expect to start
seeing the first 802.16m dongles in late 2011 and more wide-spread commercial
deployments starting in 2012.
