37 Femtocell deployments in 23 countries

Growing number of operators are committing to LTE small cell deployments which are expected to form a key market trend in 2012, said a recent Informa Telecoms & Media femtocell market status report.

There are currently 37 commercial deployments with regional US operator, Mosaic Telecom, being the latest to deploy femtocells. Telecom Italia announced its plans to launch before the end of the year and SK Telecom revealed it is set to launch the world’s first LTE femtocell service. Furthermore, Telefonica O2 has disclosed pre-launch details of its ‘Boostbox’ femtocell service in the UK for both consumers and enterprises. Separately, a number of deployed operators have passed 100,000 units, demonstrating the scalability and mass-market appeal of the technology.

Over the past quarter, Sprint, the first operator to deploy femtocells, announced it has rolled out 500,000 units and expects to exceed 1 million by 2013. With AT&T constituting the world’s largest femtocell deployment, it is clear that the US continues to be the most mature small cell market. However, several European and Asian operators including Vodafone UK, Japan’s Softbank and France’s SFR, announced they reached scale by surpassing 100,000 deployed units. Vodafone, which recently launched a marketing campaign around its UK femtocell offering, now offers femtocells in 12 countries and plans to deploy across the whole group.

Vodafone UK recently announced it is to offer public access rural femtocells that will be placed on BT telephone poles in order to bring coverage to “not spots” and areas where traditional base stations have not been economical. The report also highlights growing operator commitment to LTE femtocells with Verizon and Sprint announcing support in the past quarter and SK Telecom promising a commercial deployment before the end of the year. A previous survey conducted by Informa Telecoms & Media showed that 60% of operators believe small cells will be more important than macrocells in LTE networks.

CDMA operators continue to aggressively deploy femtocells with both Sprint and Verizon launching enterprise services which allow several femtocells to be linked together to cover large buildings. To assist CDMA operators, the Femto Forum and 3GPP2 recently published an operator guide detailing best practice for deployments.

There are now 37 femtocell deployments spanning 23 countries and 15 further operator commitments. In June 2011, Informa Telecoms Media estimated that there were in excess of 2.3 million femtocells active both privately in homes and offices, as well as publically in metropolitan and rural environments. As such, there are more 3G femtocells than conventional 3G base stations globally and Informa forecasts growth to continue with 48 million access points in use globally by 2014. Eight of the top 10 mobile operator groups (by revenue) offer femtocell services – this includes AT&T Group, France Telecom Group, NTT DOCOMO Group, Sprint, Telefonica Group, Deutsche Telecom Group, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone Group.

Dell’Oro Group: LTE Nearly Half of Total Market Growth

According to a recently published reports by Dell’Oro Group, 44% of third-quarter annual growth in the total Mobile Infrastructure market resulted from 4G LTE network infrastructure spending. The total mobile infrastructure market, covered by Dell’Oro Group in four primary reporting segments, Mobile Radio Access Network (RAN), Wireless Packet Core (WPC), Wireless Voice Core, and Microwave Transmission, grew year-over-year in double digits for the fourth consecutive quarter in 3Q11.

Report further states that during the same quarter, LTE RAN posted fastest sequential growth rate ever at 68% and significant VoLTE revenues were recognized for the first time ever. Evolved Packet Core captured highest portion ever of total Wireless Packet Core revenues at nearly 5%.

“Nearly half of the revenue growth in total mobility infrastructure for the third quarter resulted from LTE spending to cope with an expected influx of LTE capable handsets in 2012,” said Stefan Pongratz, Analyst at Dell’Oro Group.

“The wireless industry is responding to changes in user behavior and accelerating data demand by shifting priorities towards Evolved Packet Core (EPC), Voice Over LTE (VoLTE) and LTE radio equipment,” added Chris DePuy, Analyst at Dell’Oro Group.

Dell’Oro Group’s 3Q11 reports show that Ericsson’s four quarter trailing revenue market share in mobile RAN, WPC, wireless voice core, and microwave transmission increased by four percentage points over the same quarter last year, while Nokia Siemens Networks and Huawei each captured about 18% of the market.

source:LteWorld.org

RCA CEO on LTE, Devices, T-Mobile and AT&T Merger

RCR Wireless interviews RCA CEO Steve Berry at LTE-North America 2011.

Sprint to launch LTE-Advanced network in 2013

Sprint will deploy a LTE-Advanced network on its 800MHz spectrum from 2013. Sprint’s Vice President of Network Development and Engineering, Iyad Tarazi, told attendees at the 4G World conference that during the first half of 2013, sprint plans to launch an LTE-Advanced network.

Trazi expects speeds in 12Mbps to 15Mbps range with LTE-Advanced using 4x4 antenna array devices. Sprint plans to launch CDMA-LTE devices by mid-2012, with approximately 15 devices coming throughout the year – including handsets, tablets and data cards.

At 4G World, Bob Azzi, Sprint's SVP Networks, explained on where Sprint is headed with LTE also the benefits of using Lightsquared's spectrum, see below

Earlier this month Sprint had announced plan to launch 4G LTE on its 1900MHz spectrum by midyear 2012 and complete the network build-out by the end of 2013. By the conclusion of 2013, Sprint’s expect to provide 4G coverage to more than 250 million people.

Sprint has already signed a 15-year agreement with LightSquared that includes spectrum hosting and network services, 4G wholesale, and 3G roaming. Under the agreement, LightSquared will pay Sprint to deploy and operate a nationwide LTE network that hosts L-Band spectrum licensed to or available to LightSquared.

Soure: LteWorld

Airtel likely to contract multiple vendors for LTE deployment?

Indian service provider Bharti Airtel is close on signing LTE deals for offering 4G services in four circles. Airtel is rumored be ready to offer contracts to four different vendors for each of the circle.

While ZTE and Huawei are frontrunners for bagging the contract in Kolkata and Karnataka , respectively, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens could get the deal for Punjab and Maharashtra respectively. Though none of the players confirmed the deal, insiders said that talks had reached advanced stage.

Bharti had won broadband spectrum in the four circles for Rs 3,314 crore during the auctions held last year. Reliance Industries, Qualcomm, Tikona, Augere and Aircel are the players which have broadband spectrum in various circles but none of them have started services.

Augere, which has spectrum in Madhya Pradesh circle, has announced a deal with Ericsson for equipment supply and launch of services by second quarter of 2012.

source: LteWorld

United Mobile Introduces Cross-platform 3G/LTE Connection Manager UConnect

United Mobile has unveiled UConnect, a cross-platform software with intuitive interfaces to discover, customize, control and connect to LTE and WiMAX networks. According to company, UConnect is already integrated with two of the worlds’ leading semiconductor company’s LTE chipsets and is seeing strong traction from several other firms as well.

UConnect is a 4G Connection Manager. It manages the UE/CPE such as a LTE dongle from an operator/carrier and makes sure that the user is connected to the right network. It also manages the IP interfaces on the host, by receiving the IP from any underlying signaling protocols and configuring the IP/IPV6 interfaces accordingly. UConnect has been designed keeping both the end user and ODM needs in mind (different compiled out flavors).

For seamless connectivity, from LTE=>3G the handoff is signaled from the underlying chipset, and from LTE->WiFi, UConnect policies will do a break-before-make.

In addition, UConnect manages multiple connections and offers strong debug support with extensive statistics which are very useful for field testing.

UConnect works on Windows XP, Vista, 7, Linux (Kernel 2.6 and above), Mac OS X. As LTE will not be limited to laptops/desktops and will proliferate the handheld devices such as tablets/ cameras etc. UConnect also supports Android.

UConnect offers benefits to both end users or device manufacturers. The end user gets a very intuitive interface to seamlessly connect to any network of choice and also monitoring tools such as data transfer rates, bytes downloaded/ uploaded. UConnect has simple USSD interface to query / get balances on prepaid connections.

The device manufacturer will get comprehensive statistics and field testing support. As LTE networks are being deployed all over, it is exceedingly important to have very detailed handles on signal quality and strength. UConnect provides all this and more with a delayed event logging and reporting feature. Also for device manufacturers It provides an integrated CLI.

Based in Bangalore, India, United Mobile is a software product company with focus on Mobile connectivity and management solutions.

source:LteWorld

GSA: LTE user devices grow 155% in 6 months

According to recent GSA report 45 manufacturers have announced 161 LTE-enabled user devices, representing 155% growth in the number of products reported by GSA in early February 2011.

Most devices are designed to ensure ubiquitous mobile broadband coverage by supporting existing mobile network technologies – i.e. dual mode working. The report indicates for each device where complementary modes are supported e.g. HSPA, HSPA+ and/or EV-DO and TD-SCDMA as appropriate, in addition to the LTE mode. Around 100 products support LTE and HSPA (or HSPA+) modes.

Breakdown of 161 LTE user devices are shown below.

Source: GSA report Status of the LTE Ecosystem