Daria

Mobile Market in Sub Saharan Africa

 

With a population of 650 million people in 43 countries and only 163 million mobile subscribers, Sub Saharan is one of the interesting markets for mobile network vendors. However the main reason for why only 25% of population have a cell phone is poverty as 51% of population live bellow poverty line. About 300 million people earn less than 1 dollar per day and 200 million less than 2 dollars per day. 

Main 3G vendors in Sub Saharan are Ericsson and NSN. For 2G networks, Ericsson has the biggest market share and Moto, ALU, NSN and Huawei (and ZTE) share the rest.

MTN, Vodafone, Celtel, Etisalat, Orange and Millicom are all carriers in Sub Saharan.

Some of the countries have 3G networks and some only 2G. Some of countries with 3G networks are; Angola, Tanzania, Nigeria, South Africa, Namibia and Kenya.

Landline or cell phone?

Today an article in cellular news says that the percentage of only cell phone households in US has increased to 18%.

The same trend is obvious in Europe as well. Many people specially young people and high educated singles prefer to have only cell phones. For youngs the main reason is the economy. Many high educated singles do not use landline phones much and eventually these devices become useless.

Also just like many developing countries there people with low income usually own cell phones instead of landline (due to bringing cable to the area is costly), people with low income in developed countries prefer to have only cell phones and cut the cost for landline.

Not strange that landline is on its way out. Today people are carrying their cellphones everywhere. It is not expansive to call and it is very easy to get a subscription. Along with the fact that a cell phone is much more than a phone; it is your (video) camera, your watch, your calender, your calculator, your photo album, your address book, your internet browser, your notebook and more. 

Thanks to handsfree devices, using cell phones has become very comfortable and talking on the phone is not an obstacle for doing something else(like driving) at the same time.

Mobile users have become so attached to their cell phones that it is not a surprise if mobile industry will fare in this hard economic times much better than other industries.  

How long will WCDMA live?

I had an interesting discussion for a couple of days ago about the future of WCDMA/HSPA/HSPA+. Will the technology live a long life or be pushed out by other RF technologies?

There are operators (specially in emerging countries) who believe that the future belongs to GSM and LTE. They believe that GSM will survive because it is the best option for speech, both when it comes to quality and cost. Most of the mobile operators have wide GSM installed base and can use it for many years ahead. However GSM technology does not fulfill the requirements for today's advanced data applications. LTE and LTE advanced with data speed over 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps are the best options here.

If this scenario becomes a reality then vendors must not only have SDR units in the base station but also RNC must be reconfigurable to BSC and/or eNB when the time is in. Big challenge!

LTE Physical Layer

LTE is estimated to be commercially available in end of 2009/ beginning of 2010. Qualcomm pushes for UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband), Intel for WiMax and Ericsson for LTE. Some believe vendors are pressing operators for new technologies like LTE just to earn more money. But many of today's end-users have high demand on quality and latency when using mobile applications. LTE offers 100 Mbps in downlink and 50 Mbps in downlink. End user Latency is bellow 10 ms. These are very good figures for applications like online interactive gaming and VoIP.

LTE Physical Layer:

Transmission bandwidth: It can vary between 1.4 to 20 MHz with sub-carrier spacing of 15 KHz.

Duplexing Techniques: To support transmission on paired and unpaired spectrum, FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) and TDD (Time Division Duplex) are supported. 

Multiple Access Schemes: MSC for LTE in Downlink is OFDMA (Orhogonal Frequency Multiple Access) and for Uplink is SC_FDMA (Single Carrier Frequency Division Multi Carrier).

Modulation and Coding: Like HSPA, LTE uses AMC (Adaptive Modulation and Coding). Examples are QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM, Zadoff-chu.

Poverty

  It is difficult for me to write about poverty and mobile wireless in the same post so I decided to focus on poverty in this one.

I ask myself many questions everytime I think about poverty and how life can be so unfair to some people. Most of the time I can not find any answer but still keep asking myself same questions again and again. What is good about it is that by asking these questions I do not allow myself to become indifferent.

Knowing how life can be difficult for some people, does not remind me about how lucky I am, it makes me sad and disappointed. Of course I am thankful for what I have but I don't want to forget about those who have to survive everyday.

When I see kids growing up at streets, I ask myself what these little angels have done for wrong to grow up like this? Nothing,it is just their destiny. They just don't know anything better. what are their chances to get a better future? Not much, isn't it obvious? They never get a chance to go to school. Who is willing to give them a job when they have grown up? How can they get out of the situation they was born in and never asked for? 

I wonder how they can go to sleep at nights when they are hungry and how their beautiful faces can smile when they are carrying so much pain inside? How they get strength to start a new day when there is not much hope around.

Let's do more than thinking and take one step further. Being a "father" to kids who need one is an effort which does not take much of our time and resources. By helping at lest one kid, we can make a better world.

Mobile banking and Security

 A couple of days ago I was reading an article about Mobile banking. As we all know Mobile banking is not a new concept. It has been around for a while. I asked myself so when will mobile banking take off? According to the article mobile banking is going to have its second push and will take off 2009. 

I believe one of the most reason for not being used by many people is the security issue. Given that the security issue can still be improved, many people are afraid of using their cell phones for mobile payment services. According to a report from Javelin Strategy & Research (year 2007) nearly half of the customer perceive mobile banking unsafe.

Some carrier deliver phones with pre-loaded banking application and even though it makes mobile banking easy to access, it has its fallback. What if someone losses his/hers mobile? Banks with such an application say they are able to remotly clear the mobile from all personal information in case it is lost or stolen.  

For me it would feels much better if biometric technology is used for authorization for payment services over the air.

Nokia has implemented steganography on some of its mobile phones. What is doen here is that information is hidden in a picture and the address of the picture is sent to the customer by an SMS. The information is password protected so the customer has to enter the password in order to see the hidden information. 

The other issue has been that banks and credit card companies have not done much work on pushing mobile banking so far. Maybe because of the time and cost needed to make it ready for public use.

On the other hand, even though it is another step towards easy and fast access to bank accounts for majority of people using internet over DSL, cable... can do almost the same and there is not much market demand for Mobile banking at the moment.  

LTE Live Handover test by Nortel

Norte has announced early this week that they have completed successfully LTE handover test sending HD video to a LG prototype LTE mobile phone while moving at speed of 100 km/hour.

Nortel is the first LTE vendor that completes LTE live Handover. However Nokia Siemens has already  tested mobile LTE while sending data with over 100 Mbps data rate late 2007.

According to Notel, LTE is ready for commercial deployment end of 2009.

10 Gbps for the first time!

Ericsson is showing its 10 Gbps GPON system at NXTcomm08 in Las Vegas, June 16-19. Ericsson will also introduce an 8-port GPON board which makes EDA 1500 terminal capable to serve more than 7100 homes with IPTV access.  

Vodafone - fastest in UK!

According to a survey done by LCC International, Vodafone has the fastest mobile broadband network in UK. Rivals like 3, T-mobile, O2 and Orange all take more time to download files or webpages.

Network testes were done during March, April and May this year using USB modems or data cards.

Vodafone offers 3GB data for £15 a month at the speed of 7.2 Mbps in downlink (HSDPA) and it is called " The fastest, most reliable mobile broadband in the galaxy".  

The Mobile Web 2.0 Summit 2008

About 40 speakers participate two days The Mobile Web 2.0 summit which will be held in London on 11th and 12th June.

There also will be roundtable discussions there people from different companies are going to exchange ideas, discuss different opinion and share experience in smaller groups.

According to Oseny Media which is running this event, roundtable discussions create opportunities for networking and benchmarking discussions, the two main attractions of any conference.

Paul Goods from M:Metrics will talk about differences in Internet usage on mobile and PC which I find very interesting to listen to. Ajit Jaokar (co-writer of Mobile Web 2.0) talks about Implementing Mobile Web 2.0. 

Some other speakers will talk about the latest in Mobile Web 2.0, definition of Mobile Web 2.0, creating a business model for Mobile Web 2.0, Mobile Web 2.0 and advertising (which is another very interesting subject to me), how to promote sites, LBS and Mobile Web 2.0, Social networking on mobile, Billing model for Mobile Web 2.0, QoS, comparing Mobile Web 2.0 and Web 2.0, operator strategy, platform/handset capabilities and the BIG question: which will be prevail, Mobile or PC?

Good two days around Mobile Web 2.0.