Networks
Innovation and investment are key to encouraging greater adoption of telecommunications services in Africa
It was a case of Groundhog Day. Here we were gathered for another conference to hear about the “success story” that is the African telecommunications industry. The message is consistent: The growth in consumer use of mobile telephony has been rapid, there is potential for more, and increased competition has provided the backdrop for this growth. And yet, we still listened to the frequently repeated discussions about whether regulators should encourage tower sharing, the state of play of universal-service funds and complaints centered on heavy tax burdens on carriers. Read more »
LTE looms on the horizon, but GSM still has a long shelf life, says Thomas Wehmeier
I recently chaired the keynote session at our flagship LTE World Summit in Amsterdam. The event was packed with a who’s who of the LTE sector – more than 600 attendees from all around the world and all parts of the LTE ecosystem. Perhaps not an obvious occasion upon which to switch discussion toward the useful life of 2G. But with Seizo Onoe of NTT DoCoMo confidently outlining the Japanese operator’s aggressive plans to switch off its 2G network within two years and many other operators wondering how long they’ll have to operate multiple costly radio access networks (GSM, UMTS, LTE), the discussion was entirely valid. Would other operators join DoCoMo in moving away from their 2G networks so early? We’re not yet convinced and believe the Japanese situation is a very market-specific issue based both on the choice of a proprietary and niche technology (PDC) for 2G and on an unusually high level of 3G coverage and user migration in that market. Read more »
China Mobile rallies operator support for TDD-LTE
China Mobile, the world’s largest operator by subscriptions, has reached an agreement with 11 operators worldwide to co-operate on TDD-LTE. The move underlines China Mobile’s intent to create a sizeable global market for TDD-LTE, a technology the operator is heavily invested in. Read more »
The need for a migration path to LTE sounds like surrender for WiMAX, but the technology’s supporters are fighting on
A number of high-profile setbacks in recent weeks have further dented the already weakened
business case for WiMAX Read more »
Tiered services are a step backward
The dominoes are beginning to tumble. The move toward tiered pricing for mobile data services started by AT&T is spreading, with the news that O2 UK is also abandoning flat-rate subscriptions in favor of tiered services, and more are bound to follow. However, in an age and an industry in which the new focus is on what customers want, rather than what their service providers think they want, it seems incongruous for operators to offer services based on their own needs rather than those of their customers. Read more »
It was all going so well until the mobile guy turned up, says Tony Brown
The WiMAX Forum Congress Asia 2010 in Taipei was going swimmingly with lots of good news stories for the WiMAX community to get excited about and then Jan Nilsson, president of local 3G and WiMAX operator Far EasTone, took to the stage and brought everybody back to earth with a bump. Read more »
4G, mobile broadband and emerging devices key at CTIA Wireless 2010
4G, mobile broadband and emerging devices were the key themes at CTIA Wireless 2010, held April 23-25 in Las Vegas, US.
Although LTE and Mobile WiMAX may not be true 4G, as defined by the ITU, they are close enough as far as most in the mobile industry are concerned. In any case the US is leading the charge and will be the dominant 4G market through 2014, when it will account for 31% of the world’s 4G subscribers, far ahead of the next-largest markets of Japan and China.
Small cells challenge the macronetwork model at the MWC
The fragile economic climate and continued downward pressure on operator spending probably helped ensure that this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was a more grounded and businesslike affair than has been the case in some previous years. It’s clear that the explosion in mobile data traffic, coupled with the squeeze on operators’ capex and opex, is prompting some radical thinking about the future shape and structure of the network. Increasing network capacity will be critical, but until operators start to see data traffic turning into revenues, they need to focus on optimizing network performance and lowering costs. Read more »
Highlights from Day 3 of the MWC in Barcelona
RIM champions BlackBerry traffic efficiencies
In Asia-Pacific markets, operators are putting pressure on Apple to address some of the signalling issues made increasingly worse by continued growth of smartphone adoption, in order to reduce the iPhone’s impact on the network. We’re hearing from the operators we speak to that the device is proving more inefficient in the way it handles signalling versus other competing devices. Somewhat controversially citing BlackBerry devices as a solution to the capacity crunch, RIM CEO stated that ‘you could carry five BlackBerry devices for each iPhone on the network’. Whether true or not, this bears no relevance to consumer purchasing decisions – whether it convinces operators to push the BlackBerry more aggressively is unclear.
Highlights from Day 2 of the MWC in Barcelona
Voice takes centre stage
It’s the end of day two here in Barcelona and despite the wind, rain and the long queues at the entrance gates (not to mention the food halls), it’s been another overwhelmingly positive day. The hustle and bustle in and around the stands here at MWC is obvious and there’s clearly an upbeat mood generally, a marked contrast to last year’s event.
Perhaps one reason for the general positive feeling is that operators have remembered just how big this business is. There’s a lot of talk about the importance of data and whilst it will, of course, be the main revenue driver in the future, it’s worth taking stock of just how much the mobile industry has grown. Informa’s latest forecasts suggest that more than US$700 billion will be generated in operator service revenues from voice in 2010 alone.
Read more »
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