Daria

Swedish 2.6 GHz spectrum auction

Sweden was the second county in the world (after Norway) to auction 2.6 GHz frequency band. Last week it was done and the 2.6 GHz spectrum was divided between five participants. The spectrum auction raised totally US$3502 million and took 16 days. The total spectrum was 190 MHz (14 FDD- and 1 TDD-block) and the licences are valid 15 years.

HI3G Access, Intel Capital Corporation, Tele 2, Telenor and TeliaSonera each got a piece of 190 MHz-bandwidth. The four mobile operators above are planning to use the frequency for LTE deployment and Intel will likely use the spectrum to build a Wimax network with a partner(s).

Why the rush with LTE?

WCDMA and HSDPA are still not available in many places around the world. Then why all the rush with LTE?

At Mobile World Congress (MWC), February 2008 in Barcelona, LTE was everywhere. Ericsson and Nortel had demos and many operators have already stated their commitment to the technology. T-Mobile International was showing off a demo of LTE at CeBIT, March 2008 in Hannover with Ericsson equipments. Also world's first 3G operator, NTTDoCoMo says it will offer LTE services with Nokia equipments in 2010.

LTE specifications have been approved and going to be included in release 8 of 3GPP standard which could be ready end of this year or beginning of 2009. The first commercial products are estimated to be available end of 2009 or beginning of 2010.

2009/2010 LTE is baseline which means that it can provide 100 Mbps DL speed. A second trial conducted by LSTI (LTE/SAE Trial Initiative) recently shows that even 300 Mbps can be reached by LTE in DL. This was achieved by 4x4 MIMO and single user in a cell. Even though being the only user in a cell almost never happens in a real network, the test at least shows it is possible to reach 300 Mbps.

I believe the main reasons for the rush are a) The competition between the vendors and between the operators. Today's telecom technology is improving fast and one of the major elements to survive as a vendor or operator is to be future proven b) Technology is fun and exciting to most of technology lovers. Talking in advance about what can be achieved in future and how far a new technology can push the limits is fun and creates the excitement. So the excitement and fun is the other driving factor for all the rush by people involved.

LTE vs Wimax!

LTE, Wimax or both? This question has been around for a while and there are different opinions. One that I find it most realistic is that both technologies will survive and own a piece of the wireless market. However since LTE is an evolution of UMTS, I believe LTE will be the dominating 4G technology in future.

One of the today's obstacle with Wimax deployment is lack of the best bandwidth. In Europe bandwidth below 2,5 MHz is occupied by analogue TV and GSM. However the analogue broadcast is palned to be switched off in coming future. For example it is already switched off in Sweden. By that, one of the biggest obstacles for Wimax in Europe is removed. Today 3.5 MHz and even 5 MHz are used for Wimax trials in EMEA. In US, Sprint Nextel has decided to deploy Wimax on 2.5 MHz. 

One big advantage of LTE compare to Wimax is that for Wimax a whole new network must be built however LTE is an evolution of UMTS and the existing UMTS network.

LTE and Wimax are fourth generation IP networks based on OFDM. Wimax is an open standard based on IEEE standard 802.16. LTE is not a standard but results in new evolved release 8 of the UMTS standard.

When it comes to market availability, LTE is planned for 2012 and Mobile Wimax (208.16m) which offers same speed as LTE should be ratified in 2009. Then probably 208.16m is available in the market more or less at the same time as LTE.

Mobile Advertising is taking off

Internet advertising has been successful for more than a decade. According to Price WaterhouseCoopers, Internet advertising will comprise 14% of the entire global advertising market and reaches $73 billion by year 2011.

Following to internet advertising, Mobile Advertising is one hot topic within telecom world and becomes more and more interesting as a new way of advertising for many companies. According to Strategy Analytics, advertisers will spend over $14 billion on mobile advertising in year 2011 (chart).

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at the All Digital conference in May 2007 that mobile ad is profitable more than double than non-mobile ads because mobile ad is more personal.

Many operators have shown serious interest in mobile ad, a few examples are Sprint Nextel, Vodafone and Verizon Wireless. However this is not a one man show and there are other player involved, like ad agencies, mobile ad technology companies, publishers and advertisers.

So far text-driven mobile advertising has been the main category of mobile ad but with affordable mobile internet connections, videos can become the next mass-market mobile ad category. Ads can even reduce the costs for en-user.   

The USA-based Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is a global organization that includes operators, advertisers, agencies, mobile suppliers, service providers, retailers, software providers and companies with interest on mobile ad for their products. MMA has more than 500 members representing over forty countries. The association's work is focused on growth of mobile marketing and its associated technologies. MMA has put together several guidelines for mobile marketing.

MMA has also an established relationship with GSMA and dotMobi Advisory group.   

LTE hits the market faster than UMTS

UMTS has been available in the market since 2001/2002 however it still needs more time to become the dominating technology in the global market. There are a few reasons behind that. First of all building a network is expensive and it takes time before a global 3G coverage is built. So simply, UMTS has not been an option (and still is not) in some pats of the world. For the second, the habit of replacing cell phones with new ones often, is something new. For four, five years ago majority of people were not used to purchase a new cell phone every other year.

I believe that it will take less time for mobile users to start using LTE once the technology is available, compare to UMTS.

Mobile phones are a part of people's life especially for today's teens. Sending videos, pictures and using other data applications is a habit and a new way of communication in people's life. Faster and more user friendly applications are welcome and encourage people to use their mobile phone more often.

In 2007 mobile handset shipment hit 1.12 billion units. Many people purchase a new mobile phone every other year or even sooner. That means that it will not take long time for many people before they replace their mobile phones with LTE-mobile phones.

However when it comes to the operators and building a new network, it is different. Deploying LTE means new investments and it will take time before a new technology is commercially available in the market.

Femto Cell and new market for Mobile operators

Femto cells give operators the opportunity to target fixed telephony market. Today a Femto cell with a size of 10m is the smallest cell in a cellular network compare to Macro (30km), Micro (2km), Pico (200m). Femto cell covers a house and as a matter of fact if the operator and regulatory body in a country agree, the Femto cell can be a property of the consumer. That would mean each household can have his own Femto cell that can cope with any mobile operator's network.

To promote Femto cell deployment worldwide, UK-based Femto Forum was founded in 2007 with two main area of activity; a) Marketing and promotion of Femto solution, b) standardization and interoperability.

Some of the advantages with Femto solution are: 

- One phone, one phone number and one phone book.

- Femto CPE works as a base station and of course radiation is of concern to many people. However Femto cells have very low output power compare to Macro cells. Also output power of mobile phone in a Femto cell is less than in a Macro cell.

- Less expansive tariffs (Home tariff) at home. Actually depending on operator's decision, calls can even be free of charge at home. No Home tariff can be one way to compete with VoIP.

- In case of power outage, an emergency call can still be initiated. This is because the mobile can cope on Macro network for the emergency call. With VoIP is not possible to make an emergency call if the power is gone.

Ericsson (2G /3G Femto cell), Nokia Siemens (3G Femto Home Access), Samsung (WCDMA Femto cell), UK-Based IP.access (Oyster 3G Femtocell) and US-based Airvana (UMTS Home Base station) are some of companies who have Femto cell in their portfolio.

Mobilizing the web

Number of mobile users around the world increases everyday and mobile devices are not only used for making phone calls but also for other ways of communication and gathering information.

However getting web content on a mobile device can both take time and be costly. That is because of high amount of data that must be downloaded to the mobile device when visiting a web page.

What is needed is simply a slimmed-down version of web content for cell phone browsers. There are a few solutions to make mobile web more user friendly. Some of them follow here: 

- Adapting of web pages into mobile screens

Mowser, google and mippin are applications that adapt web pages to mobile screens. However the mobile user has to initiate it manually. An improvemnet would be that the mobilized version of the page was downloaded to the mobile without user interaction.

- Customizable portal for mobile content is another solution to make mobile web accessing more pleasant. When using these services, no need to type URL link using multi-tap. The portals are normally free of charge.

Widsets is one of those free mobile portals that makes web browsing on mobile much easier. It is an icon-based system. After downloading the application and choosing interesting Widgets, a click on a Widgets gets access to a page. Each Widgets represents an URL.

Rocketshotz: is another icon based system for web browsing on mobile. It works pretty much like Widsets. The service does not need any download, however the set up has to be done on line.

- Mobile domain for mobile web

.mobi is a Dublin-based company that registers domain for mobile web pages. General registration of name.mobi began on September 2007. dotmobi pages must have appropriate design and size for mobile devices.

December 27, a sad day for democracy

Benazir Bhutto killed

Football on your mobile

Orange UK , has signed a content agreement with International sports broadcaster, Setanta to broadcast Setanta Sport 1, Sport 2 and Golf channels. 

Mobile number one platform for music

Mobile music is becoming more and more interesting. According to a report from Understanding & Solutions, mobile music stands for 30% of music retail by 2011. Today it is around 13%.

Mobile music is the term used for when mobile is delivered to mobile by operators.