Communications

Open right-of-way leads to FTTH galore in Bucharest

Esteemed reader Jim Van Meggelen was in Romania last summer, in part because both the YATE and OpenSER/OpenSIPS/Kamailio open source projects are based in Bucharest.  That's fascinating, but look at what else he found, Fiber to the Home - a lot of it!

To quote Jim:

I was in Romania this summer and they had a fascinating approach to the last mile: run your own fibre. It was really funny to see the massive numbers of fibre strands running all over Bucharest, hung willy-nilly from lampposts, power poles, balconies, traffic signals, weather vanes, and pretty much any structure that one could figure out a way to attach a cable to. Messy? Yes. Unregulated? Effectively, yes (you simply sneak up the pole late at night). The upshot of all this is that most of the urban centres in Romania have massive amounts of bandwidth right to the residence. It is common to be able to download data as fast as the NIC in the PC is able to consume it. They have access to last-mile bandwidth that we in North America can only dream of, for the same cost as we get DSL.

  Here's some more local color from one of Jim's later emails:

Pretty much all the cables you see in that picture are fibre.

Given the fact that Romanians don't have much respect for authority (which is probably true of most former-Communist countries), the concept of anyone owning the last mile is not something I think is given much thought. They've got a lot of worse problems to sort out before they worry about that sort of thing. It is fascinating to see them taking their economy from Communist through corruption to Western. I am no economist, but my gut feeling says they're on the right track.

The locals feel that all that cabling is an eyesore, but what is far more funny is to see a rusted out Dacia on cinder blocks, parked right next to a brand new Ferrari, and then an old Trabant ready for the scrapyard, flanked by an Aston Martin or similar. Bucharest is a bit of a mess, but not in a way that is unpleasant. For some reason it reminded me of a Mexican city somehow. I'm not sure why. It is certainly not an ugly city (at least not to my eye), but it is clear that they have a long ways to go, yet.

The Romanian people are wonderfully polite and generous, although they seem surprised that anyone would want to visit their main city (they laughed when I asked where to go to get Bucharest souvenirs). They have a fantastic sense of humour, but at first they seem a little stone-faced. What was a really pleasant surprise was that since Romanian is a Latin language, anyone with a passing French, Spanish or Latin vocabulary stands a fair chance of reading much of the signage and such.

Romania was not on my list of places I wanted (nor expected) to visit. I ended up there because both the YATE and OpenSER/OpenSIPS/Kamailio projects are based in Bucharest, and I was doing some writing on those projects, so I figured a trip out there was in order. Although the list of places I have yet to visit is fairly long, Romania is a place that I would be happy to visit again.

Regards,
Jim

Strangely, Bucharest's do-it-yourself fiber reminds me of mobile service providers in Somalia, a country with no central government and no regulation of radio spectrum.  None-the-less, Somalia has multiple GSM service providers who share standard GSM frequencies in semi-cooperative fashion.  In each case there is no law enforcement, yet people work out ways of coping, and of arbitrating disputes.  Likely this is what common law was before it became Common Law.

A reason why Asia leads in mobile apps and is advancing with Internet apps

A picture is worth a thousand words.  Thanks to Ben Joffe for this picture, which is slide 21 of his presentation, The Digital Silk Road.

Of course, this is a simplification, as it misses China. 

China doesn't have 3G yet but they have more mobile phones than any other country and they are fast to adopt what can work on 2.5G.  For example, the Chinese adopted ringback tones very very rapidly after the application emerged in Korea -- years ahead of Europe or the US.  And, even at 2.5G speeds today, China supports a rich variety of mobile applications.

Likewise, while China's relative proportion of Internet connections above 5 Mbps is relatively small, there are more broadband Internet connections in China than in the US and China is adding new fiber Internet connections faster than any other country in the world.

Coverage comparison for wireless systems at various frequencies

One of the items I've been meaning to add to my wireless tutorial is a discussion of actual coverage areas for different frequency bands.  This matters because, with today's mobile radio technology, lower frequencies cover more distance and do better at penetrating buildings.  That means fewer cell sites for equivalent coverage and thus lower infrastructure costs.

Indeed, a little discussed issue in the US is that Verizon and AT&T own the 850 MHz cellular spectrum and they were the big winners in the recent 700 MHz auctions.  Sprint PCS and T-Mobile USA use spectrum at 1900 MHz or 1700 MHz, so they need more cell sites to achieve similar coverage.  They are at a cost disadvantage.

Signals go even further using the 450 MHz spectrum that's available in some countries.  I've argued publicly that the best thing developing countries can do to bring mobile coverage to rural areas (for example in India), or to remote areas in general, is to make 450 MHz spectrum available to mobile operators.

To get a sense of how significant these effects are, here's a table that Qualcomm submitted to the ITU's Working Party 8F several years ago.  (Thanks to Joe Nordgaard for the pointer).

Frequency (MHz)	Cell radius (Km)	Cell area (Km2)	Relative cell count
450	48.9	7521	1
850	29.4	2712	2
950	26.9	2269	3.3
1800	14	618	12.2
1900	13.3	553	13.6
2500	10	312	24.1

Source: Qualcomm ITU 8/F Submission, June 11, 2001, “Coverage comparison of systems at various frequency ranges, including 450 MHz”

2G, 3G, 4G Wireless Tutorial

Recently I put a lot of effort into updating an earlier wireless tutorial.  Part of the resulting material was presented at the Communications Developer Conference in Los Angeles in September 2008.  Other versions have been used internally at NMS Communications.  Last week our marketing team recorded me presenting the tutorial and, today, the complete Wireless Tutorial:  2G, 3G, 4G and beyond became available as a slide deck and as three recorded segments of audio with slides (.wmv files).  Here's the abstract:

This comprehensive tutorial is designed to benefit both the technical and general telecom audience. Brough Turner reviews the history and evolution of mobile radio, evolving network architectures, services, applications, and business models; considers alternative 4G paths and the potential for convergence of GSM/LTE and WiMAX; and discusses the longer term impact of new WiFi standards on fixed and mobile wireless services. In this wireless tutorial, Brough also covers core network architectures and their evolution to all-IP, new wireless applications and application frameworks, spectrum licensing and more.

This work started as a 3G Tutorial that Marc Orange and I put together back in 2002.  Although the 3G Tutorial has not been updated since early 2003, it has remained one of the most frequently accessed pages on the NMS website.  So clearly there's interest.  Hopefully this new version will be even more useful as it covers the whole range from pre-mobile radio days to the latest 4G proposals.  Here's the outline:

• History and evolution of mobile radio

• Brief history of cellular wireless telephony
• Radio technology today: TDMA, CDMA, OFDMA
• Demographics and market trends today
• 3G, 3.5G, WiMAX, LTE and 4G migration paths

• Evolving network architectures

• GSM-MAP (EU) and IS-41 (US) origins
• Softswitches, VoIP and SIP in NextGen Networks (NGN)
• 3GPP and NGN convergence: releases, features and schedules

• Evolving services

• SMS, MMS, location, rich presence, video
• IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) vs. “dumb pipe”

• Applications and business models

• Killer applications & killer platforms
• 2-sided business models

• Related technology, Issues and Futures

• WiMAX, Backhaul, Bluetooth, NextGen WiFi
• Mobile device diversity / application environments

But there's still more needed...

There is much more I could add.  The current tutorial barely touches on mobile handsets, handset software and handset applications frameworks.  There's also a lot more to say about WiFi evolution, but I don't want to promise an update that could be significantly delayed.  After all, it did take me five years to get around to updating the original 3G Tutorial.   :-)

GSM Association flunks 'Branding 101'

The GSM community can rightly claim some enormous successes.  Today GSM technology provides services for 88% of all mobile subscribers worldwide.  But there are a limited number of vendors selling GSM technology to a limited number of mobile operators, many of whom have government mandated, GSM-specific licenses.  If the GSM vendor community had to sell to consumers or enterprise IT directors, they would fall flat on their faces, because neither the GSM vendors nor the GSM Association (GSMA) have any concept of branding!

Today's email brought the GSMA's newsletter, Mobile Brandband Weekly Update.  Although the newsletter ends with this statement:  "Copyright 2008 GSM Association. GSM and the GSM Logo are registered and owned by the GSM", neither the term 'GSM' nor the GSM Logo are used anywhere in this newsletter!

There are 13 news items, all about 3GSM technology, but here are counts of how often various terms appear:

1   EDGE
7   HSDPA
4   HSUPA
6   HSPA
1   HSPA Evolved
1   LTE

and even though they are all GSM technologies promoted by the GSM Association:
0   GSM
0   3GSM

As I look at years of GSM hype, the diversity of acronyms is unbelievable.  "3GSM" is a good way to talk about 3rd generation GSM, but why actively promote the use of:  UMTS, W-CDMA, HSDPA, HSUPA, HSPA, HSPA+, LTE and so on, without also saying GSM or 3GSM?  This is massively confusing.  What are they thinking?

By comparison, consider the brand recognition achieved by the WiFi Alliance.  People may mention 802.11b, a, g or even n, but they always do so in the connection with the name WiFi.  There is one WiFi brand even though, internally, WiFi has gone through as many or more changes in modulation and protocols.

The difference of course is that WiFi is sold to individuals and businesses around the world.  WiFi vendors can't afford to get this wrong.  Apparently, GSM vendors and the GSM Association can.

Here's a suggestion for the GSMA.  Adopt the terms GSM, 3GSM and 4GSM and stick to them.  If you want to refer to specific protocol versions, do so only in the context of a name that includes the letters GSM.

The Mobile Web: Limited But Getting Better

I had an interesting discussion with Katrin Verclas of MobileActive.org as an event last month covering a range of topics including the prospects for mobile web access in emerging markets.  As a result, she and Patty Mechael pressed me to write up my thoughts on the mobile web today and over the next few years.

Very roughly, I'm depressed about today's still prevalent walled gardens, but very optimistic that open mobile access to the Internet will become available in coming years.  You can read my reasoning here.

MMS has missed its window

Multimedia Message Service (MMS) is the mobile industry's successor to SMS.  MMS goes beyond texting to support pictures and graphics, voice messages and video clips sent as messages.  Unfortunately MMS was a technology design not a service design.  It can support a variety of services but the specific services are not standardized and thus not widely adopted.

Of course the much simpler Short Message Service (SMS) also took a while to be adopted, but MMS services are more diverse and they have a shorter window of opportunity.  Now there are signs that window is about to close.

A few weeks ago MobileIN asked me for an article on this subject which I wrote last Friday while flying back from AstriCon.  My article has been published so click through for the details.