Communications

Wi-Fi offload, not Femtocells

Mobile operators face soaring data demand (~18x in less than 30 months according to slide 10 here). The natural evolution of 2G/3G/4G infrastructure delivers about 2X additional capacity every 24 months (see slide 11, ibid).  That's a major disconnect!

(At least) two solutions are on the table, Femtocells and Wi-Fi offload.  Both approaches solve the backhaul issue by using customer or 3rd party links (DSL, DOCSIS, T1/E1, WISP or otherwise).

Femtocells are tiny mobile cellsites using the mobile operators' licensed spectrum, supporting all handsets and all services.  Thus femtocells are a great way to extend coverage.  If you want mobile voice service in a place where macrocell coverage is poor, a femtocell could be ideal.  However, that's the only place where femtocell's have the advantage.

As a solution for mobile data capacity, Wi-Fi wins, for many reasons.

First, most mobile data is destined for the open Internet, not for someplace on the mobile operator's network.  Multiple actual measurements of live traffic in different countries show 96%-99% of all bytes passed over the mobile data channel are destined for the Internet.

The mobile operator's NGN mobile core network is a complex network designed to support differential services, fine-grained billing and so forth. This makes it significantly more expensive than a best efforts network like the Internet and yet, no operator has found a way to charge for this extra capability — people just want to get to the Internet.

Femtocells are part of this complexity, and cost.

Second, the primary sources of mobile data demand are laptops, notebooks and smart phones. Laptops and notebooks have Wi-Fi connectivity. Half of smart phones have Wi-Fi already and the percentage is rising rapidly.  So the major demand comes from devices that can connect to either femtocells or Wi-Fi hotspots. Thus the only potential disadvantage of Wi-Fi hotspots is gone or rapidly vanishing.

Third, Wi-Fi access points cost less than femtocells.  Besides being somewhat simpler, they are being produced in very high volumes, far higher than the mobile operators are likely to achieve with femtocells. Femtocells might have made sense when they were first conceived, but today Wi-Fi has changed the landscape which leads us to...

Fourth, Wi-Fi access points are showing up everywhere.  People are installing them in their homes but we also see Wi-Fi coverage in enterprises, in retail establishments and in public places. 

Individuals spend most of their online time in just two locations: home and the office. Enterprises will not install Femtocells as the IT department can't control them.  Consumers, retail and public locations have already done or are doing Wi-Fi.  They won't install femtocells unless there is some form of subsidy from the operator — another cost with no net benefit. 

Summary: 

 Femtocells will flop. They do provide a way to extend voice coverage into homes that macro cells don’t reach, but they are not efficient for data offload. Since Wi-Fi is efficient for data offload, and it costs less to buy and less to operate, Wi-Fi will trump Femtocells.

What should an operator do?

Mobile operators need to focus on providing bundles of connectivity, not on whether its 3G/4G or Wi-Fi. They should be encouraging Wi-Fi offload by bundling "free" public Wi-Fi access with their mobile data plans.

In the long term, it's likely most mobile data bytes will go over Wi-Fi.  The 3G/4G network is still necessary to provide a backup path when no Wi-Fi is available. Mobile operators who recognizes this can still come out on top, if they focus on facilitating connectivity for their customers regardless of the technology involved.

Broadband Wireless — the future is 5 GHz

and eventually, spectrum from 4 GHz to 10 GHz.  

Unfortunately, the mobile industry doesn't understand the implications of MIMO or beamforming, so they are asking for the wrong thing.  They are asking for more spectrum near their current bands (below 2.1 GHz) or lower, e.g. in former TV bands below 700 MHz.  This is all wrong.

Until recently you could say: lower frequencies "work better" meaning they go farther.  But this was a technology limitation, not something in the physics. From a physical point of view, 5 GHz photons pass through the atmosphere just as well as 700 MHz photons. Today, MIMO and beamforming are correcting some of these historic technology limitations and changing everything.

• MIMO not only delivers significant performance improvement, it makes 5 GHz spectrum as useful as lower frequency spectrum for all sorts of applications.
• Beamforming delivers the next performance increment (20x and up), and it's actually easier to implement at higher frequencies.

Addressing mobile data demand

There is no doubt data consumption is growing more rapidly than mobile operators' data capacity (see slides 10 and 11 of my presentation at 4GWE). Unfortunately, US cellular operators are pressing for more low frequency radio spectrum and they are being heard in Washington. In his keynote at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said an impending shortage of wireless spectrum in the U.S. will dampen future economic growth unless action is taken to fix the problem. 

However, the short term issue is investment dollars not spectrum and the long term solution is new technology at much higher frequencies (above 4 GHz) rather than more spectrum for existing technology near existing bands.

Why 5 GHz spectrum is more useful than TV frequencies

Everyone know TV signals go long distances but remember than TV broadcasters use from 100 Kilowatts to 5 Megawatts ERP.  That's a million to a hundred million times more signal than your mobile handset puts out.  No wonder it covers a lot of distance.

There's also an equation most wireless engineers use in one form or another to calculate free space path loss which says higher frequencies have more loss. But this equation encapsulates two factors:  the true path loss and the size of the antenna.  It assumes a 1/2 wavelength antenna. Higher frequencies have shorter wavelengths, so it assumes the antenna gets smaller as the frequency goes up. Smaller antenna, less signal. With comparable antenna apertures, path loss in the atmosphere is the same from below 50 MHz to nearly 10 GHz. Thus in open air, 5 GHz photons go just as far as 500 MHz (US channel 19) photons or indeed photons for Channel 2 or Channel 50.

Multi-path and MIMO

The reason people have had trouble with higher frequencies for the past 100+ years is "multi-path" propagation.  As a signal radiates from a source, some of it goes directly to the receiving antenna but some of it goes in other directions where it may be reflected or refracted by objects it encounters. When reflected signals also reach the receiving antenna, they are slightly delayed because they traveled a slightly longer distance.  In the days of over-the-air analog TV, we saw these delayed signals as "ghosts" or shadows around images on our TV screens.  For digital data transmission, multi-path contributes to the "noise" in the signal-to-noise ratio. The historic problem with higher frequencies is their shorter wavelengths made it easier for them to be reflected and refracted by man-made objects like buildings, window frames and even closely spaced double pane glass surfaces.

 

But with MIMO, all this changes. With MIMO's multiple antennas and multiple radio front ends, it's possible to separately decode and make use of the multi-path signals.  Now "multi-path" is not only removed as a source of "noise," it adds additional signal and helps carry more data.

Beamforming

A beamformer uses signal processing to control the phase and relative amplitude of the signal at each of a group of independent antenna elements.  Radiation from multiple antenna elements causes a pattern of constructive and destructive interference in the resulting wavefront.  This can produce a tight beam just like one from a highly directional antenna.  But with beamforming, the antenna beam can be steered in software on a packet-by-packet basis.

With eight antenna elements spaced 1/2 wavelength apart (total 3.5 wavelengths), you can create a beam like this:

 

Highly directional beams significantly extend the usable range of a wireless system. And since the beam is computed with digital signal processing software, it can be steered to different directions in microseconds. What's more, the benefits of beamforming apply both while transmitting and while receiving. Either way, the beamformer accentuates the signal in the desired direction while surpressing signals to/from other directions.

But what about wavelength?  To obtain this narrow beam, the outer antenna elements are 3.5 wavelengths apart.  At 5.8 GHz, that's less than 7.5" so the whole antenna array easily fits in a ceiling mounted access point just 8" x 3" by 2".  At 700 MHz, that degree of beamforming still requires 3.5 wavelengths, but wavelengths are longer so now we need 5 feet of separation — something that may fit on a cell tower, but is difficult for a microcell and impossible for a femtocell.  For beamforming, higher frequencies are an advantage.

More spectrum at higher frequencies

Finally, there's a lot more spectrum potentially available at higher frequencies and, today, in the 5GHz band, there is over 555 MHz of license-exempt spectrum already available for applications like Wi-Fi. That's more spectrum than Verizon Wireless, AT&T Wireless, Sprint PCS and T-Mobile USA have, combined!

Wi-Fi blazes the trail

The Wi-Fi market place is vastly more diverse than the 3G/4G mobile operator market place, which means many new technologies show up in Wi-Fi years before they are deployed in mobile networks.  That is certainly true of so-called 4G modulation (OFDM) which was deployed for Wi-Fi with 802.11a (1999) and 802.11g (2003), years ahead of WiMAX (2005) or LTE (2010).

The 802.11n specification includes MIMO and optional beamforming and silicon technology is appearing to support 4x4 MIMO with beamforming.  MIMO products (2x2) have been shipping since 2007 and 4x4 MIMO in consumer products expected in the next six months. Meanwhile, many players are scrambling to deliver 11n options, including beamforming. Early systems are already deployed.

Mobile operators, please pay attention

The technology benefits of MIMO and beamforming apply to the mobile phone industry, it will just take a few years for the deliberate pace of the industry to catch up.  Meanwhile, mobile phone operators should be tracking real world measurements of Wi-Fi performance to understand what spectrum they will really need five to eight years hence.

Wi-Fi's likely impact on 3G/4G services and operators

This morning at the 4G Wireless Evolution conference in Miami, I gave a talk about how Wi-Fi is going to impact both 3G/4G operators and fixed line operators over the next 2-4 years.  The slides are on SlideShare, and here:

Wi-Fi Opportunities In A 4G World

View more documents from Brough Turner.

I think the reason I’m invited back is I manage to be controversial and since, today, I was given more than an hour all for myself, I attempted to make at least a few provocative points:

• We’re at a wireless tipping point that will dramatically drive up performance of all wireless systems, but Wi-Fi is way ahead of WiMAX or 3G/4G mobile, thus Wi-Fi is where the excitement will be over the next 2-5 years.

• Femtocells will flop.  They do provide a way to extend voice coverage into homes that macro cells don’t reach, but they are not efficient for data offload.  Since Wi-Fi is efficient for data offload, and it costs less to buy and less to operate, Wi-Fi is will trump Femtocells.

• Wi-Fi is consistently ahead of the 4G community in commercial deployments of “4G technologies.”  Specific 4G technologies that Wi-Fi has pioneered include OFDM modulation (802.11a, 802.11g, 802.11n), MIMO (802.11n) and beam forming (done via antenna element selection as early as 2002;  and done via antenna arrays with on-silicon signal processing under 802.11n, coming to market right now).

• MIMO makes 5 GHz spectrum as useful as 2.4 GHz spectrum or TV spectrum. 

• Beam forming via adaptive antenna arrays will dramatically drive up performance (for Wi-Fi beginning now and for WiMAX and LTE some years from now).  Beam forming increases range, reduces interference and allows spectrum reuse even in confined areas.

• But with beam forming 5 GHz spectrum becomes more valuable than 2.4 GHz or TV spectrum as shorter wavelengths (at higher frequencies) allow tighter beams.

• As Wi-Fi performance and range increase, it’s becoming useful for broadband wireless service delivery, thus driving down costs and helping fuel rapid growth in the Wireless ISP community.  (There are over 2000 WISPs in the US today.)

In my talk, I backed up these statements with data and arguments that may not be clear from the slides alone.  If there is any point you don’t agree with or don’t understand, fire away in the comments below and I’ll endeavor to answer within a day or two, or elaborate in a separate blog post.

White spaces could be the broadcasters best hope

For years, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) fought the White Spaces Coalition and others interested in making US "TV white spaces" available for broadband, Wi-Fi or indeed, any new purpose. When the FCC voted 5-0 to permit license exempt use of TV White Spaces, the industry brought suit in Federal court. And they did this, despite rules in the FCC's decision that are so restrictive that, for now, white spaces devices are doomed to commercial failure. The NAB are savvy in the ways of Washington

But fighting the White Space Coalition is short sighted. The NAB faces a much bigger and more powerful enemy — mobile operators.

The White Spaces Coalition merely seeks permission to use spectrum where NAB members are not using it, i.e. on a non-interference basis as "secondary users" with purely secondary rights.  

The mobile industry wants it all.  They'd prefer that broadcast spectrum be taken back and auctioned off for mobile use. Discussions on recapturing broadcast spectrum ramped up after an October comment by FCC broadband czar Blair Levin. For example see the transcript of this December 1st panel discussion. Or consider last week's appointment of Duke Law Professor Stuart Benjamin as the FCC's first Distinguished Scholar in Residence. Benjamin is a vocal proponent of reclaiming the TV broadcast spectrum!

Broadcasters beware!  

Unlike the White Spaces Coalition, the mobile operators are political experts. They are part of a 100+ year telecom lobbying heritage. The Bell System was lobbying government agencies before the broadcast industry existed. Now Congress is considering spectrum policy. The FCC is considering spectrum policy.  

Broadcasters may eventually extort large sums of money out of the public, but over the next decade they will lose more and more of their spectrum.  I am no fan of the broadcast industry. Even after converting to more modern "digital" broadcasting, they are sitting on spectrum they don't need in order to deliver a limited number of channels of broadcast TV to the 14% of households who don't subscribe to cable. I'm one of those 14% and I don't even watch TV, so I have no interest in broadcasters' survival. But I can't help noticing there is one thing broadcasters could do that would block mobile operators from taking over broadcast spectrum.

White spaces can save broadcasters' spectrum rights

If license exempt white space devices are commercially successful, it will become increasingly difficult and then politically impossible for Congress or the FCC to recapture TV spectrum for exclusive use by the mobile industry. If Wi-Fi, WiMAX and other consumer devices appear using TV frequencies, it will become harder and harder to displace these consumer uses and recapture the exclusive use the mobile industry requires.  

So, if the broadcast industry really wants to hold onto their current spectrum rights, they should get as many non-interfering "secondary users" into their band as possible.  Otherwise, they will eventually lose their primary rights to the quest for more mobile broadband.

Wireless tipping point! My presentation at EU eComm today

My presentation this morning was entitled "A Wireless Tipping Point, Open Spectrum Implications."

A Wireless Tipping Point, Open Spectrum Implications

View more documents from Brough Turner.

The abstract:

Are we using radio spectrum efficiently? No.

Is this likely to change? Not soon.

"Smart" radios have the potential to support much more efficient and productive use of spectrum, but spectrum regulation is a political issue with well established stakeholders. What's more, our limited experiments with commons-based spectrum management have had widely differing results: WiFi, enormous success; UltraWideBand, disappointment. WiFi's success happened in "junk" spectral bands where established players weren't interested. That will be difficult to repeat, but Brough will describe some very simple physical principals of radio propagation which, when combined with the next five years of Moore's law progress in semiconductors, suggest a path forward that's very different from TV white spaces. Indeed, the most important result of regulatory decisions on UltraWideBand and TV white spaces is they validate the concept of secondary access.

Leaving for eComm in Amsterdam - Will tweet conference talks

I'll be leaving for Amsterdam this afternoon to attend Fall eComm 2009. 

I plan to record my notes as I did at the HD Communications summit in NYC in September, i.e. I'll write my notes on Twitter in real time and then, after the conference, collate the results into one giant blog post (for my own sake as much as for yours, esteemed reader).

If you're interested in live coverage, follow my tweets at: http://twitter.com/brough

Whoever and whatever you follow, I assume the common tag people will be using (as before) will be "eComm" so that's another approach...

Shameless self-promotion:  My part in the conference:

On Wednesday morning, I'm speaking on Open Spectrum issues.  I will point out some laws of physics and emerging technology changes that, together, suggest a new, better focus for open spectrum efforts.

On Wednesday afternoon, I'm a panelist on Andy Abramson's panel, "Are current wireline and wireless eco-systems still relevant?."

And then on Friday afternoon, I'm moderating a panel that I've organized on "Spectrum 2.0 - What's really happening?"

Has AT&T Wireless data congestion been self-inflicted?

We've all heard or read stories about how iPhone usage has overloaded the AT&T Wireless network but it's likely at least some of their problems are the result of configuration errors ― specifically, congestion collapse induced by misconfigured buffers in their mobile core network.

In early September, David Reed sent this interesting message to the IRTF's "end-to-end" email list.  List members include some world experts on Internet protocols.  During the next couple of days, there were over 40 messages in related threads.  While some of these experts were over-thinking the problem, if you are patient enough to read through the many messages, what emerges is clear.  At least in the case David measured (from a hotel room in Chicago, while he had 5 bars of signal strength, using an AT&T Mercury 3G data modem in his laptop), the terrible throughput and extreme delays he experienced appear to result from overly large buffers in the routers &/or switches in AT&T's core network.  Note:  if you don't want to read all the list messages the short summary is:  >8 second pings times!  What's more the effect was bymodal:  either ping times under 200 ms, or over 5 seconds.

Recently I was talking with a friend whose company continuously operates (and monitors) multiple 3G data links on the Verizon Wireless, AT&T Wireless and Sprint  PCS networks.  His data shows periods when the round trip time for http requests goes over 8 seconds, on the AT&T Wireless network only!  I don't have a copy of his data that I can examine in detail, but when combined with David Reeds report, it certainly appears AT&T Wireless has configuration problems.  If you read on you'll see this may not be the result of gross stupidity, but someone at AT&T Wireless should be a little embarrassed.

My (techie outsider's) Analysis of What's Happening

Buffers in Packet Networks

Routers (& switches) in a packet network have to include buffering in order to absorb transient traffic bursts.  Unfortunately, despite decades of research and operational experience, there is no simple formula for how much buffering is optimal at any given location in a network.  If you're interested in more detail, Ravi Prasad has a good review of the literature on pages 10 & 11 of his (April 2008) PhD thesis.  But decades of operational experience have yielded some basic precepts and it appears AT&T Wireless is violating at least one basic precept.

The buffer in front of a congested link must induce some packet loss.  TCP (the dominant Internet protocol) continuously increases it's transmit rate until it experiences packet loss, then it cuts its rate in half and enters a congestion avoidance mode.  If the network becomes full but there is no packet loss, each TCP sender will keep increasing it's rate causing the network to suffer a congestion collapse.

In the case of a mobile network, the limited resource is over-the-air capacity.  Backhaul may also be expensive, but it's relatively easy to over provision anything else in the operator's network.  So the issue is, how big should the buffer be in the last router between the high capacity core network and the actual over-the-air data path to a subscriber?  Ideally we'd like enough buffer to absorb momentary packet bursts that, averaged out, don't exceed the available over-the-air capacity.  But as soon as the offered traffic exceeds the available over-the-air capacity, we want some packet loss.  The complicating factor is the way 3G wireless networks schedule over-the-air traffic.

Jitter in 3G radio networks

One cellular base station serves multiple users and the quality of the connection to any specific user depends upon instantaneous wireless propagation characteristics.  These can vary second by second and even millisecond by millisecond when a user is moving.  To deal with over-the-air losses, the basestation (the "Node-B" in a 3G network) keeps copies of each packet until a positive acknowledgement (ACK) is received, retransmitting the packet if the ACK is not received in time. Of course retransmissions introduce delay and jitter.  Furthermore, at any given instant, some users wireless links are better than others.  In order to maximize the total traffic in a cell, the 3G MAC layer schedules transmissions to individual users based on who has the best instantaneous throughput.  This is an efficient solution but it also introduces different amounts of jitter into each user's data path.  Luckily these effects are well understood and not that severe.  With HSDPA, the basic transmission time interval is 2ms so total delay variation is relatively small.  This graph from Jang et al (1) is typical of measured values in an HSDPA network.

Most jitter is below 15 ms.  Measurements of ping latency between 3G wireless devices and the first IP server at the edge of the mobile core network (typically the GGSN) can extend out to over a second as this graph from Mun Choon Chan and R. Ramjee (2) shows:

but most of the time, total IP latency is a few hundred milliseconds. As mentioned earlier, David Reed reported bimodal operation on the AT&T Wireless network with normal behavior yielding ping times under 200 ms.

Likely cause of AT&T's problems

So what is happening in the AT&T Wireless network when ping times go over 8 seconds?  We know how a customer's IP packets are passed through an operator's mobile core network.  They are tunneled all the way from the handset to the Gateway GPRS Signaling Node (GGSN), i.e. to the router where the mobile core network connects to other networks.  The protocol stacks for this tunneling look like this:

More recent versions replace the ATM and AAL5 with Ethernet and IP, but the user never sees this as user IP data is tunneled across the top of the diagram (carried by PDCP and GTP-U).  As a result, user traceroutes can't reveal the detail of what's happening in the core network.  The first thing the user can see is the GGSN (the gateway to the next network).  So we can't make conclusive measurements from outside the network, but we do know a few more things.

The bottleneck link is the over-the-air link, i.e. the connection from radio access network or UTRAN to the Mobile Statation (MS) in the above diagram, therefore the critical buffers are those at the UTRAN.  In practice the UTRAN includes both the basestations (called Node-Bs) and the Radio Network Controllers (RNCs) which coordinate handovers between basestations (among other things).  Because of hand-overs, the amount of data buffered at the Node-B is relatively small. It's the buffers at the RNC that must be large enough to deal with the delay variations in the radio network and yet small enough to induce packet loss when the network gets congested.

While I don't personally have experience managing a 3G HSDPA network, my impression is UTRAN buffers are normally less than 200 ms.  Recently Yerima and Al-Begain presented an interesting paper (3) on buffer management in 3.5G wireless networks in which they concluded that 120 ms buffers were ideal for downlink traffic in a specific UMTS-HSDPA configuration.

Zero Packet Loss

It appears AT&T Wireless has configured their RNC buffers so there is no packet loss, i.e. with buffers capable of holding more than ten seconds of data.  Zero packet loss may sound impressive to a telephone guy, but it causes TCP congestion collapse and thus doesn't work for the mobile Internet!

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References

(1) 3G and 3.5G Wireless Network Performance Measured from Moving Cars and High-Speed Trains, by Keon Jang† (keonjang@an.kaist.ac.kr), Mongnam Han† (hgma11@gmail.com), Soohyun Cho∗ (shcho1@kt.com), Hyung-Keun Ryu∗ (hkryu@kt.com), Jaehwa Lee∗ (jhlee@koren21.net), Youngseok Lee‡ (lee@cnu.ac.kr), Sue Moon† (sbmoon@kaist.edu)

  † Computer Science Department, KAIST

  ‡ School of Computer Science & Engineering, Chungnam National University

  ∗ KT Central R&D Laboratory
http://an.kaist.ac.kr/~sbmoon/paper/intl-conf/2009-micnet-3g.pdf

(2) TCP/IP performance over 3G wireless links with rate and delay variation,

by Mun Choon Chan and R. Ramjee, Bell Labs  (presented by Jinqiang Yang)
http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ghosal/Teaching/ECS289I/Lectures/jinqiang-yang-wirelessTCP.pdf

(3) Dynamic Buffer Management for Multimedia Services in 3.5G Wireless Networks,

by Suleiman Y. Yerima and Khalid Al-Begain

Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering 2009 Vol I

WCE 2009, July 1 - 3, 2009, London, U.K.
http://www.iaeng.org/publication/WCE2009/WCE2009_pp857-862.pdf

Walled gardens have collapsed

Yesterday, Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley gave her annual state of the economy and the Internet presentation at O'Reilly's Web 2.0 conference.  I wasn't there but her presentation is on line and it has some interesting insights.  Many others are commenting.  The one thing I'd like to draw to your attention is slide 46.

In one year (2007 -> 2008), UK users abandoned their wireless carriers' portals and went directly to numerous open mobile internet services.  I'd love to see comparable data for the US.

Download speeds of GSM & 3GSM networks

ARCchart is selling a new report entitled Mobile Broadband Performance of Carrier Networks.  I can't personally justify the purchase, but I notice this wonderful graph in their sample.

ARCchart gave mobile users free speed test applications, first for iPhone beginning in August 2008, then for Android and BlackBerry.  By June 2009, they had over 2 million tests across 268 wireless operators in 103 different countries.  For this graph, the data was filtered to focus on major urban areas.  That left 648K individual test results which were used to form the graph above.

What does this tell us?

• First, 2G GSM data rates are usually 50-60 Kbps.
• While EDGE data rates might go as high as 250 Kbps, a good bet is 140-200 Kbps.
• And finally, deployed 3GSM networks are good for 600 Kbps to perhaps 1.4 Mbps.
• Anything faster is extremely unlikely (at least as of 2Q09).

In a world of endless hype, it's nice to have some real data.

Mobile phones: Economic benefits, but also safety and strengthen family bonds

Aparna Ray, writing at Global Voices, provides an excellent set of references on the economic benefits of acquiring a mobile phone.  Most of the articles she points to appear in the mainstream press and most provide stories and anecdotes about economic benefits, so they are much more readable than the dry economics papers I typically reference, e.g. here, here, here or here.

While Aparna and I have both focused on the economic benefits of acquiring a mobile phone, it's interesting to note that economic benefits come second in the minds of those at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP), when they think about getting a phone.  This classic study by LIRNEasia shows:

- At the BOP, convenience, in terms of anytime accessibility, is the biggest driver in the purchase of both fixed and mobile phones.

- BOP users make an average of one call per day, mostly local, mostly 2-3 minutes long, mostly to stay in touch with family and friends.

Reading the text in detail, the idea comes across that phones provide a sense of safety, i.e. it's easier to find family members in an emergency, as well as comfort and connection.  Indeed, in all the studies, economic benefits are real but are secondary to why people want to acquire mobile phones.

eComm agenda is on-line ―Check out the speakers!

There's a fascinating agenda building for eComm in Amsterdam in October.  Here's the latest list of talks, but what's best is the set of speakers who are giving these talks.  I personally know quite a few and know of many more (who I look forward to meeting).  The group includes a preponderance of innovators -- new views on what's happening, new ideas for how to drive change.  If you don't read through this list of talks, look at the speakers list here.  Then come to Amsterdam and meet these people.

21st Century Economics: Lessons for Telcos - Umair Haque (Havas Media Lab)

Advances In Spectrum Transparency, Software Defined Radio/Cognitive Radio - Darrin M Mylet (Spectru-Station)

Almost all Marketing & Product Management of Telco Services is Wrong - Rudolf van der Berg (Logica)

Current Trends in Community Wireless Networks and Beyond - Aaron Kaplan (FunkFeuer)

Death of the Handset: Evolving from Mobile Devices to the Mobile Digital Life - Mark Rolston (frog Design)

Edge As Value - Value As Edge - Graham Brierton (Voicesage)

Enslaving Humans using Communications Technology for Fun and Profit - Thomas McCarthy-Howe (Jaduka)

Entrepreneurial Advantages with New Open-Source Technologies - Jay Phillips (Voxeo)

European Telecoms 2015: Silent Death or Generative Bazaar? - Julien Salanave (IDATE Telecoms)

Finding Disruption - Michael Jackson (Mangrove Capital)

Goodbye Minutes, Hello Moments - Martin Geddes (BT)

Google Wave - David Wang (Google)

How the "Internet of Things" will Change the Way we Connect - Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino (Tinker.it)

How to get More Value out of Customer Interactions by Blending Online with Voice - Stefan Hopmann (Swisscom)

Humans as a Service: Abstracting Communications to Reach New Applications - Todd Landry (NEC Sphere)

Is LTE being Held Hostage by Ordinary Voice Telephony? - Dean Bubley (Disruptive Analysis)

Lifestyle Segmentation from Carrier Location and Call Data - Greg Skibiski (Sense Networks)

Lifestyle Segmentation from Carrier Location and Call Data - Tony Jebara (Sense Networks)

LTE - Long Term Employment or Less Than Expected? - Moray Rumney (Agilent)

Open Access Makes Economic Sense - Benoît Felten (Yankee Group)

Open Screen Project: Next Generation Contextual Applications - Andrew Shorten (Adobe)

Opening of the Terahertz Region - Robert Horvitz (Open Spectrum Foundation)

Opportunities in Post-Telecom Connectivity - Bob Frankston (Frankston Innovating)

Post Financial Trauma - How is the Telecom Value Chain Now Positioned? - James Enck (mCapital)

Redefining Gifts in the Digital Space - Katie Lips (Little World Gifts)

Slowing Down Communication: Designs Inspired by Quality, Intimacy, and Humanity - Stefan Agamanolis (Distance Lab)

Spectrum 2.0 – What's Really Happening? - Brough Turner (Ashtonbrooke)

Stealth Approaches to Legislating Open Spectrum - Brough Turner (Ashtonbrooke)

Technology and Biological Evolution: What This Means for Media and Communications Technologies - Tomas Rawlings (University of the West of England)

Telemedia Futures - Gerd Leonhard (MediaFuturist.com)

The Emerging Telecology of Social Networks and the Status Update - Stuart Henshall (Phweet)

The Future of Interconnection - Rudolf van der Berg (Logica)

The Global Battle for Communications Justice: An Open Spectrum Manifesto - Sascha Meinrath (New America Foundation)

The Next Wave of Communications Applications - Cullen Jennings (Cisco)

The Practical Edge of Speech Technology - Moshe Yudkowsky (Disaggregate)

Ubiquitous Voice over Broadband - is There a Future Role for the Smart Pipe? - Martin Taylor (MetaSwitch)

Unlicensed Spectrum: Future Regulation - Prof. William Webb (Ofcom)

Video Killed the Telephone Czar? - Jan Linden (Global IP Solutions)

When Will HD Voice Become a Reality? - Martyn Davies (Dialogic)

What Would Telephony be Like if we Designed it Today? - Matt Ranney (RebelVox)

If you've read this far, there's a 10% discount via this registration link - register here.  And for more information, visit http://eComm.ec.  This one conference is at the top of my list for:  interesting, productive and an excellent set of contacts.

HD Summit wrapup - my twitter stream condensed

Here are my notes from  last week's HD communications Summit, i.e. my twitter stream condensed.  I've followed that with a copy of the day's schedule just in case the original on-line version disappears.  :)

Brough’s Twitter stream from the HD Communications Summit in NYC
September 15, 2009 – See http://tinyurl.com/nu843b

— Dan Berninger kicks off with a picture of Europe where Moldova is highlighted. See http://tinyurl.com/n3jst9 for Orange's PR.

— Jeff Pulver is talking about two friends in Paris who have HD voice on their triple play VoIP service and love it.

— Jeff passes a rumor that a US incumbent may launch HD on triple play in San Antonio. I wonder what he's heard. Nothing via GOOG.

—" Jeff promoting "HD Connect Now" a trade group that I know Dialogic has joined. http://hdconnectnow.org/

— Aside - Dialogic has published a white paper based on stuff I wrote last spring. http://tinyurl.com/qjsfda - needs Moldova update..

— Alan Percy of Audiocodes focuses on the problem of HD peering. It doesn't happen today! Is he volunteering to drive an effort?

— Alan Percy says VoIP peering at 2% of VoIP-to-VoIP traffic. I don't know where he got that data but it sounds plausible (or high).

—" Jan Linden of GIPS has the first audio samples of the day. Nothing new for me, but it's got me thinking about the audience today."

—" Jan Linden points out good HD also needs acoustic echo control, packet loss concealment & noise suppression - & device tweaks!"

— Mike Eastman of WYDEvoice announcing an all-software wideband audio conference bridge. http://bit.ly/1B8Y7

—" Robert Graves of ATSC Forum speaking. Are there lessons to learn from the HD TV industry? No surprise, he's a fan of Forums."

—" Robert Graves - indeed as ATSC Forum wraps up, he's available for hirer. :)"

— Robert Graves boasting about the efficiencies of HDTV spectrum usage.  But no mention of the industry resisting TV white spaces!

—" Robert Graves makes it very clear the broadcasters want to hold onto their spectrum to add new services - mobile, handheld, etc."

— Brough's HDTV summary - very political because it required FCC approval. At least we don't have that to deal with.

— Robert Graves summary - increased quality essential; all-format decode (old & new) from day one; consistent government policies.

—" Nxt up: HD Innovation Panel. Robert Messer, ABP Tech; Tobias Kemper Nimbuzz; Alan Percy, Audiocodes; Ryan Heidari, Qualcomm."

—" Robert Graves says HDTV tipping point was getting critical mass of programming, but this due to satellite, then cable! Not ATSC!"

— Tobias Kemper - turning point will be when mobile subscriber can just press the green button and get HD w/o knowing it.

—" HD Innovation Panel is thrashing around transcoding; too many coders; extra latency - Good business for Dialogic, Audiocodes, etc."

—" Ryan Heidari, Qualcomm.comments that Bluetooth has adopted HD stds but low power, low computational capacity."

— Ryan Heidari also lists five codecs approved by Bluetooth community. Sounds like too many to me!

—" 2nd HD innovators panel: Ben Lillenthal Citrix; Jim Toga, Vivox; Tim Panton, PhoneFromHere; Richard Romagnino, Voiceage"

—" Tim Panton is focused on zero install PC-based HD voice interfaces for web, facebook, etc."

—" Jim Toga focused on applications, currently at Vivox which does HD voice for gamers and in Second Life."

—" Richard Romagnino takes us back down into the mud. Codec licensing patent pools. Maybe necessary, but ugh!"

— Tim Panton says opportunity for innovation is in 3D sound - but need speakers and other consumer I/O devices

— Jim Toga - the microphone is in the iPhone is digitized at 32 KHz sampling rate. It could support really excellent telephony.

— Jeff Rodman co-founder & CTO Polycomm also starts with audio demos but promises 10 reasons people want HD voice.

— Jeff Rodman #1 Understand yr overseas team. #2 understand yr young kids. #3 it's easier - don't have to ask for repeats.

— Jeff Rodman #4 save yr energy for dancing. #5 like being there.

—" Jeff Rodman #6 enhance emergency abilities. #7 It's ""cool"" (if your old) or ""sick"" (if your young)."

— Jeff Rodman #8 no incremental cost. #9 everybody's making it. #10 Yr competitor sounds good when speaking to yr customers.

—" Jeff Rodman - responding to Q:. ""Polycom HD Voice"" is copyright, but no copyright on ""HD Voice"""

—" Rick Krupka of Uniden is focused on cordless phones. Claims, despite mobiles, cordless phones are still a hot seller."

— Rick Krupka was head of DECT Forum and is also promoting DECT 6 phones.

—" Rick Krupka gives Uniden pitch, nothing about HD yet... turns out they are ""backing into"" HD - still pitching non-HD stuff."

—" Rick Krupka - ""Conversational gain"" compares the end-to-end volume of a phone call with two people speaking live at 1 meter apart."

—" Rick Krupka - his only tie to HD is the idea that HD needs something like ""conversational gain."" Why was he invited to speak?"

—"#hdcomm Dan Petrie, SipEz; Jeff Rodman, Polycom; Dave Beckemeyer Televolution; Joyce Kim, GIPS are now on a panel ""HD in Action"""

—#hdcomm Dan Petrie was at Pingtel years ago when they tried to push wideband audio. It was way too early. No traction until 2 yrs ago.

—#hdcomm Jeff Rodman on early Picturetel experience where they needed wideband audio to make video ok - back in the mid-1980s!

—"#hdcomm Joyce Kim suggests people don't understand HD voice well enough to pay extra for it. My point: not revenue, but mkt share!"

—"#hdcomm Jeff Rodman - Polycom biz is coming from enterprise. Also large businesses understand HD now, e.g. multisite HD conferences."

—"#hdcomm Dave Beckemeyer says Svc Providers 1st Q is ""how much will people pay"" and that won't work. People won't pay extra for HD voice."

— Q: in what namespace will we make our HD calls? The panel is stumped. My answer - mobile. Tim Panton says DNS .tel.

— Chris Fine VP Goldman Sachs shows graphs that suggest IT spending has past the trough.

— Chris Fine ranks CIO priorities: Risk Reduction; Revenue Increase; Cost Reduction; Productivity Increase; everything else...

—" Chris Fine lists 7 possible scenarios for HD voice adoption, but this is just an exhaustive list. What does he believe?"

—" Chris Fine - at Goldman Sach, HD voice is being delayed while two ""large"" vendors fight over standards and interfaces."

— Chris Fine is not hearing anything about HD voice from the large carriers.

— Chris Fine gets others at Goldman to notice HD by putting MS Communicator on their desktop and then calling them.

— Josh Bottum of Cisco talking HD voice ecosystems - expects upstart svc providers to start and become thorn in side of big guy.

—" Josh Bottum admits HD voice is low on Cisco's radar, but he expects it to be a check box and to be on >50% of their desksets soon."

— Josh Bottum says high end users are demanding HD so smaller businesses are getting HD by default. But EU different than US.

—" Mike Rude of DSPGroup makes cordless phone technology, e.g. they are in the Gigaset phones (and Uniden?)."

—" Mike Rude pushes DSPGroup. They have DECT+VoIP+Wi-Fi+ and app processor in 1 chip, for DECT phones etc. Have 70% of 4M HD devices."

—" Michael Stanford, WireEvolution; Mike Jablon, Time Warner; Tony Storella, snom; are on a panel entitled ""The HD value chain."""

—" Mike Storella of snom expects there is a lot of money to be made in HD voice - but in products and conf svcs, but not for operators"

— Tony Stankus of Gigaset gets a round of applause as they have given cordless phones to everyone at the conference.

— Mike Storella of snom complains his VARs need more education as they still don't sell HD.

—" Correction: Michael Stanford, WireEvolution; Mike Jablon, Time Warner; Tony Stankus, Gigaset; Mike Storella, snom;"

— Mike Jablon answers question about Skype - Time Warner doesn't see them as competition.

—" Mike Jablon (TimeWarner) sees reciprocal comp as an issue today, but one that will eventually go away. I sure hope he's right."

— Mike Jablon points out the cable MSOs have enough of a customer base but he estimates 3-5 yrs to make them all HD capable.

—" Candice Malmstrom, FreedomVoice; Kevin Groth, XConnect; Rodrigue Ullens, Voxbone; Dave Frankel, ZipDX; on a panel HD Interconnect."

—" Rod Ullens provides e.164 numbers in various countries, also in inum (a new non-geographic country code) registered with the ITU."

— David Frankel need to program every IP-PBX with routing for IP-accessible e.164 numbers. Big hassle - guarantees islands of VoIP.

—" David Frankel: Have to solve the directory lookup issue, for originating phone or phone system. The rest is simple."

—" David Frankel: who runs the directory? Some contenders: Intelepeer, XConnect, NetNumber, Neustar, e164.org, VPF, Verisign, others"

—" Kevin Groth, XConnect: One source of resistance is carriers unwilling to reuce their reciprocal compensation revenue. Wow!"

— Rod Ullens talks about inum (new international phone #s) and HD support. He's still in the very early stages...

— Alla Reznik of Verizon discusses a global HD deployment by a biz customer but only in their corporate HQ island. It's Verizon NJ!

— Alla Reznik claims HD needs FCC to drive adoption. VoIP regulation is mixed or regulated as PSTN voice. Should be treated as IP.

— Alla Reznik answers Q about enterprise wide HD - problems in some countries about access links; otherwise waiting for PBX upgrades.

— Alla Reznik sees early adoptor HD beginning to happen. Today and in 2010 it's still early adoptors (who are large enterprises).

—" Alla Reznik simplified mkt study says joint wire-wireless offer would be attractive, but she can't comment on any plans. (far off?)"

— Alla Reznik comes back to pushing FCC to treat VoIP as IP (not voice telephony) - presumably this gets them free of term. fees.

—" Thomas Lemaire, FT-Orange, different telco, different accent (French). But his slide deck doesn't work."

—" Thomas Lemaire has 7M VoIP subs, >680K with HD, on triple play. Note: BT also has > 500K HD subscribers. Mobile HD just launched."

— Thomas Lemaire also notes that T-Mobile Germany has announced they are launching HD service.

— Thomas Lemaire - pitch is emotional - be closer to the people you love. HD provides a better sense of intimacy.

—" Thomas Lemaire - Sagen, Thomson & Siemens are providers of CPE for HD VoIP services in France & Spain."

—" Lemaire - HD telephones have better acoustic performance, so even when calling a non-HD phone, the quality is a bit better."

—" Lemaire - fixed: France, Poland, Spain,; mobile UK, Belgium, France in 2010 plus of course its already in Moldova mobile."

— Lemaire - why not faster? Time and money - and it's a complex endeavor - much coordination...

— Lemaire frustrated that they don't have MAR-WB to G.722 adaptation (so mobiles can't talk to HD VoIP).

—" Lemaire - HD mobile initially only on 3G networks, partly for use of 3G core network, partly to induce adoption of 3G."

— Lemaire hopes AMR-WB becomes the norm. They are working on transcoding but won't be able to do it when service launches in 2010.

—" Lemaire says pressure in France is coming from CLECs, i.e. there HD program is driven by competitive threats."

— Up next: Julian Spitka of Skype (with a potential 480M registers users who might use HD)

— Julian Spitka is pushing Skype SILK coder as a royalty free codec that everyone should be using...- proposed to IETF.

— Missed reporting on my panel...

—" Next panel Doug Mohoney HDConnectNow; Rich Buchanan, Ooma; Anatoli Levine, RADVison & IMTC; Ben Arnold, Consumer Electronics Assoc."

— Ooma announces they will be launching HD voice.

— Ben Arnold makes analogy to HDTV adoption; need critical mass of device in hands of consumers (as HDTV needed content).

— Anatoli (& IMTC) is focused on HD voice and video and on pitching the IMTC. No $ in HD voice - it enables other applications.

— Rich Buchanan sees chip and product companies as benefiting from HD voice.

— Doug Mahney promotes Digium & Asterisk as beneficiaries of HD Voice either directly or indirectly.

— ooma has already provided G.722 but they use ILBC on constricted access links.

— Robert Graves from audience - HDTV: satellite went first; Cable noticed (in 2002) and broadcasters came last.

—" From audience: quality of DECT HD phones in France is so good, that even non-HD calls sound much better than normal."

—" Jake MacLeod, VP/CTO, Bechtel Comms. 31 yrs; built 110k cell sites; Jake is summarizing the conference - spkr by spkr?"

—" Jake MacLeod - I'd like to get his slides (the summary of the conference) but I don't need to hear it now, at least not this detail"

—" Jeff is planning to do an event in California next spring. He's also investigating a possible event in Europe, sooner."

Event Schedule

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

8:30 9:00	Registration / Networking
9:00 9:05	Welcome - Daniel Berninger, CEO, FWD and Executive Director, HDConnect
9:05 9:20	Jeff Pulver - CEO, pulver.com - "Accelerating the Conversion to HD"
	Step 1 - The HD Technology Roadmap
9:20 9:40	Alan Percy, Director Market Development, AudioCodes
9:40 10:00	Jan Linden, VP Engineering, Global IP Solutions
10:00 10:20	Mike Eastman, VP Sales, WYDEVoice
10:20 10:40	Case Study: Lessons Learned from SD to HDTV Robert Graves, Chairman, ATSC Forum
10:40 11:10	HD Innovations Panel - Part I: Moderator - Robert Messer, President, ABP Tech - Tobias Kemper, VP, Nimbuzz - Alan Percy, Director Business Development, AudioCodes - A. Ryan Heidari, Director Technical and Product Marketing, Qualcomm
11:10 11:40	HD Innovations Panel - Part II: Moderator - Ben Lillenthal, founder and CEO, VAPPS - Jim Toga, co-founder and VP Engineering, Vivox - Tim Panton, CEO, PhoneFromHere - Richard Romagnino, VP Business Development, VoiceAge
11:40 11:50	AM Break
	Step 2 - Triggering End User Demand
11:50 12:10	Jeff Rodman, co-founder, CTO Voice Division, Polycom
12:10 12:30	Rick Krupka, VP Business Communication Services, Uniden
12:30 1:00	HD in Action Panel: Moderator - Daniel Petrie, CEO, SIPEz - Joyce Kim, VP Marketing, Global IP Solutions - Jeff Rodman, co-founder, CTO Voice Division, Polycom - David Beckemeyer, CEO, Televolution
12:50 2:00	Lunch
2:00 2:20	Field Report: HD Voice in the Enterprise Chris Fine, VP, Goldman Sachs
	Step 3 - Toward a Fully Functioning HD Ecosystem
2:20 2:40	Josh Bottum, Director Business Development, Cisco
2:40 3:00	Mike Rude, VP Business Development, DSPGroup
3:00 3:30	The HD Value Chain Panel Moderator - Michael Stanford, WireEvolution - Michael Jablon, VP Digital Phone Strategy, Time Warner - Tony Stankus, PM Emerging Technologies,Gigaset Communications USA - Mike Storella, Director Business Development, snom
3:30 4:00	HD Carrier Interconnection Panel: Moderator - Candice Malmstrom, Dir of Marketing, FreedomVoice - Kevin Groth, VP North America, XConnect - Rodrigue Ullens, CEO, Voxbone - David Frankel, CEO, ZipDX
4:00 4:20	PM Break
	Step 4 - The Path to HD Mass Market Adoption
4:20 4:35	Alla Reznick, Dir Product Management, Global Advanced Services, Verizon
4:35 4:50	Thomas Lemaire, Director Business Development, FT-Orange
4:50 5:05	Julian Spittka, Product Manager and Sr. Engineer, Skype
5:05 5:35	Mobile HD VoIP Panel: Moderator - David Bluenstein, co-founder, The Hatchery - Brough Turner, Chief Strategy Officer, Dialogic - Diego Besprosvan, CTO, MailVision - Mahesh Makhijani, Director Technical Marketing, Qualcomm
5:35 6:05	Perspectives on HD Tipping Points Panel Moderator - Doug Mohney, Editor in Chief, HDConnectNow - Anatoli Levine, Dir Product Management, RADVISION and President, IMTC - Richard Buchanan, Chief Marketing Officer, Ooma - Ben Arnold, Sr Research Analyst, Consumer Electronics Association
6:05 6:30	Wrap-up - Jake MacLeod, VP and CTO, Bechtel Communications
6:30 7:30	Networking Reception

at HD Communications Summit in NYC

I'm at the HD Communications Summit in New York today.  I will be posting real time to my Twitter account, so if you are interested in live coverage, follow me there.

I'll be speaking near the end of the day, on a panel called Mobile VoIP.  My point is not that VoIP matters - VoIP is just a technology - but mobile is significant and will drive the tipping point for HD voice.

So far, high definition voice, i.e. wideband audio telecom, has been enabled by most IP-PBX vendors and some VoIP service providers.  There are also wideband audio telephone sets available from many providers.  But mostly these systems operate as standalone islands.  When you call someone outside your island, the audio reverts to PSTN quality.

The problem is IT directors are making the adoption decisions and their budgets have just been cut.  Even if the incremental cost of HD voice was zero, why would they sign up for more support hassles?

Once HD voice becomes possible on mobile, the adoption decision flips to individual consumers.  They make the choice when they buy their next mobile phone.  True, only one mobile operator has announced support for HD voice, and they are in Moldova.  But Orange is promising to extend this to their networks in the UK and Belgium and then to all of Europe.

Five years from now, most 3G handsets in Europe will be HD voice enabled and there will be consensus that mobile HD was the tipping point for HD voice.

Note:  The tag on Twitter and Technorati is:  hdcomms

LTE: another way to estimate when it will be real

Hardly a week goes by without a press release touting how soon we'll be using a Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless network.  Verizon has promised a major commercial launch in 2010 and a two-city trial before the end of 2009.

Let me show you a little chart I put together for my 3G Tutorial and have repeatedly updated (e.g for my 3G / 4G Tutorial and for the cellular wireless history "Our G-enealogy" presented at 4G Wireless Evolution.  This tracks the different releases of wireless specifications by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the body that controls the GSM family of wireless specifications.

Release	Specs complete	Commercial deployments	Major new features defined
98	1998		Last purely GSM release
99	1Q2000	2003	W-CDMA (UMTS) air interface
4	2Q2001	2004	Softswitching & IP in core network
5	1Q2002	2006	HSDPA and IMS
6	4Q2004	2007	HSUPA, MBMS, GAN, PoC & WLAN integration
7	4Q2007	Future (2010 seems likely)	HSPA+, Better latency & QoS for VoIP
8	4Q2008	Future	LTE, All-IP

If every other release has taken ~3 years from specs complete to commercial deployments, why is LTE going to be so much faster?  Especially when we remember the 3GPP Release 8 specification freeze was ahead of schedule only because parts were delayed until March 2009.

Based on this chart, an sane person would project LTE in 2011 and wouldn't be surprised if substantial deployments didn't begin until 2012.

Now it's true, I define commercial deployments as at least two operators (somewhere in the world) selling commercial services to the general public who also have access to an assortment of compatible mobile devices.  On the other hand, if Verizon has just one or two USB modems that receive data from the LTE network and they deploy that LTE network beyond their first two cities, Verizon will declare they've met their plan.  So most likely we'll both be "right."

Speaking at 4G Wireless Evolution conference next week

I'll be at 4G Wireless Evolution next week.  It's being held in Los Angeles, co-located with Internet Telephony Expo (ITEXPO West 2009).

My first session is:

TUE 9/1 - 9:00-10:15am

"Mobile Broadband- New Applications and New Business Models” (4G1-01)

ROOM #: 501A

Whether it's LTE or WiMAX or local WISPs using combinations of Wi-Fi, WiMAX and other technologies, we are on the verge of having affordable mobile broadband in the US (it's already available in the UK and Scandinavia and becoming available elsewhere in the EU). What services can be provided over the top and what services need or can benefit from operator capabilities (QoS, security, ...)? The iPhone store, Android store and similar initiatives suggest power is shifting away from the operators and into the hands of application developers and the end user. How can operators leverage their core capabilities (QoS, security, billing, customer relationships, call detail, ...) to provide applications and remain relevant to their customers?

And the second session a day later:

WED 9/2 - 8:30-9:45am

"Our G-enealogy” (4G3-01)

ROOM #: 501A

The Generations do not flash cut from one version to another so 4G should not be considered an end point, but a process. Looking at the history of cellular technology helps us gain an understanding of the converging 4G model of the world. Based on cellular technology, and the progress to date, how long will it take for Long Term Evolution (LTE) to be delivered? Where do we stand in the process of delivering wireless broadband services?

If you will be at 4GWE or ITEXPO, please say hello.

WiMAX to be a fringe technology by 2015

Recently I was interviewed by the folks at TMC because I'm giving two presentations, “Mobile Broadband – New Applications and New Business Models” and “Our G-enealogy” at the upcoming 4G Wireless Evolution conference in Los Angeles September 1st-3rd.  The first talk's subject should be clear. The second talk, "Our G-enealogy," is a high level version of my 3G-4G wireless tutorial.

In any event, they asked a bunch of questions, including my thoughts on WiMAX and I answered.  For all the Q&A see the interview, here.

Apple sets itself up to fail ― again

Yesterday, Apple blocked Palm Pre smart phones from accessing iTunes.  The Pre smart phone has been able to access Apple's on-line music store since it went on sale in early June, but apparently Palm didn't have a formal deal with Apple.  This is bad for Palm, and for Pre users, but it's also bad for Apple.  Apple is holding onto their integrated solution just when the market is about split into segments, and explode!

But of course this is not the first time Apple has been in a leadership position and lost it. 

In 1980, Apple controlled 50% of the emerging PC market and had dominate mind share.  Over the next 15 years they became a niche player, not because IBM entered the market, but because they clung to an integrated solution while the exploding market split into segments (chips, PC chassis, peripherals, operating systems, applications and more) with different players in each segment.

Today, Apple has dominate mind share and significant market share in on-line music with iTunes and the iPod devices, and in smart phones with the iPhone and the iPhone application store.  Apple has captured the hearts and minds of people around the globe and gotten real money from at least tens of millions of wallets.  A big reason for their success has been Apple's complete integrated solution that provides a seamless experience.  There is no doubt the iPhone is the best device for mobile Internet access and, in part, that's because Apple controls everything about the user interface (even while opening application programming to hundreds of thousands of 3rd parties).

But the market is just beginning.  Our mobile devices are where PCs were in 1980.  As this market explodes, it's going to break into segments, with specialists in each segment.  Already, a  half-dozen application stores have been announced, each hoping to trump the iPhone application store. MP3 players abound, particularly in Asia.  Indeed, most youth in Asia do not have smart phones (iPhone or otherwise) and their music players do not come from Apple.

Apple could leverage their leadership in iTunes, iPods and the iPhone to define the future market segments and dominate at least one segment.  Indeed, with internal functional separation (separate profit and loss units), they might aspire to dominate two or three segments.  But if they stick to the integrated solution which won them their fame, they will repeat what they did with their 1980 PC leadership ― fritter it away and end up a niche player once again.

eComm in Amsterdam ― shameless self promotion

I've just wrapped up a focused effort that delayed blogging and many other things.  As a result, I finally submitted the detailed description for my plenary slot at eComm Fall 2009 which will be happening in Amsterdam October 28th-30th.  My abstract is not up on the website yet, but hopefully the next few weeks will bring details on my talk and many others.  For now, let me just say my title is
   Stealth Approaches to Legislating Open Spectrum
in which I propose what I hope is a novel approach to dramatically expanding the capabilities and commercial success of license-exempt consumer devices.

This will be the first time eComm has been held in Europe but, based on the first two eComm conferences (2008 and Spring 2009), this is the meeting for the future of communications.  It's not a trade show and it's not a mass event.  Instead, it's three days of rapid paced information ― high level, insightful and non-commercial.  Even more important, the people are very, very interesting.  It's not cheap, but it costs less if you sign up now (especially if you sign up before July 21st).  What's more, because I'm such an enthusiast, and I'm on the conference's advisory board, I've been given a discount code.  For an additional 20% off type in "BroughTurner" as the eComm discount code, i.e. where the registration form says "Click here to enter a promotional code."

I hope to see you in Amsterdam in October.

Opportunity Doesn't Always Knock. Sometimes It Calls.

The mammoth telecom industry ― fixed and cellular ― is in the process of being re-written. You can stand on the side and be written into history or join with the growing community that's writing the future. Opportunities have never been so great ― to influence how humanity connects, communicates and collaborates and to profit from radical restructuring.

More cloud-based telephony services

One thing (of many) that struck me during this morning's session at eComm 2009 was multiple companies going after cloud-based communications platform services.  Three which had their public launch announcements today were Grid.com, Tropo.com from Voxeo and Mobivox.  They're not the first to tackle this area and they each have a somewhat different focus, but there's a clear interest in producing Web 2.0 service platforms that developers can use to access communications services without hassle.

Grid.com is from a couple of developers who were frustrated that they could mash up an application quickly but then had to spend months getting SMS short codes and other communications services.

 

Tropo.com is an offshoot of Voxeo and makes the underlying Voxeo platform services available to Web 2.0 developers.

 

Similarly, Mobivox has launched a cloud services platform based on the platform they build for the Mobivox service.

There is certainly room for someone to get this right.  On the other hand, there must be a dozen companies going after portions of this space.  The first round were telephony calling platforms like CallFire, Angel.com and five9.com focused on allowing developers to access traditional calling, switching and IVR platforms - call centers and business process automation were early targets.  It will be interesting to watch the evolving focus of this new round of entrants.

Wireless Tutorial slides posted

The slides we used for our four part Wireless Tutorial at the 4G Wireless Evolution conference in Miami last week are now up on the web.

History and Evolution of Mobile Radio

Part One covers the history of mobile wireless from the earliest days

to the latest 4G technology.

Part one is also available as a webinar recorded in 3 sections last fall.

IEEE Wireless Ethernet Keeps Going and Growing

Part two covers the IEEE wireless systems:  WiFi, WiMAX and more...

Mobile Broadband: New Applications and New Business Models

Part three covers emerging world of mobile broadband access and some of the applications it enables.

White Spaces and Open spectrum Issues

Finally, part four focuses on Open spectrum and the recent decision by the FCC to permit unlicensed devices to operate on unoccupied TV channels - the so called TV White Spaces.  In the end, there's alot more that will be possible eventually...

Wireless Tutorial - 2G, 3G, 4G and beyond - in Miami today

I'm in Miami for the 4G Wireless Evolution conference which is being held in conjunction with Internet Telephony Expo.  Fanny Mlinarsky and I are kicking off the conference with a comprehensive wireless tutorial starting at 10:30 this morning.  So no pictures of Miami Beach or warm weather until after our all day event is complete.

Where's the money in Communications for 2009 & beyond?

Sorry, no magic answer.  But I look forward to eComm 2009 to provide a lot of ideas in the first week of March.  The speaker lineup is posted and the list is both impressive and diverse.  Like last year, the format is a single track with a veritable firehose of information, mostly in 15 minute and 5 minute talks.

Based on last year and what I know of the speakers on this year's list, it fair to say Lee Dryburgh has done an excellent job of picking interesting and bleeding edge speakers.  I'm also on the speakes' list and I have to say I'm working hard to make sure my 15 minutes lives up to expectations.

Even though this is a terrible time for conferences, eComm has signed up an impressive list of sponsors.  The facility (The San Francisco Airport Marriott Hotel) is larger this year and so there is still room for additional attendees, but early bird prices end this week.  Also the extra 20% off you can get my mentioning my name ends this Friday, so if you are thinking of attending sign up this week.

So here's the deal, if you mention my name you get 20% off.  More specifically, if you enter the promo code "BroughTurner" (case-sensitive) at the appropriate point during registration, you'll get 20% off the registration fee.

Can You See Me Now? Video-enabled call centers...

Some weeks ago, CRM magazine asked for an article on video-enabled call centers.  This idea is a bit futuristic for the US market, but such call centers are actually showing up in Asia and the EU, at least experimentally.

Think of calling a help line and being asked to point your video telephony handset at the control panel of the appliance that's causing problems.  That's becoming possible in some Asian and EU markets where most 3G handsets support video telephony and 3G penetration is well over 50% (and much higher in Japan).

In any event the article,

Can You See Me Now? 
Video-enabled call centers will change the company-customer relationship

is up on the DestinationCRM website.

Best conference bet for 2009 ― eComm 2009, March 3-5, San Francisco

I attended a number of conferences in 2008, both interesting and not so interesting.  One conference stands out, for the range of interesting speakers and the variety of interesting people I met.  That was the first Emerging Communications Conference, eComm 2008, organized by Lee Dryburgh.  Many of talks from this conference are available on Slideshare and as podcasts on IT Conversations.

eComm 2009 is scheduled to take place at the San Fransico Airport Marriott, March 3-5, 2009.  I highly recommend you check it out.

This is not a trade show with vendors hawking today's products and multiple tracks full of vendor product pitches. 

Presenters have been chosen for the quality of their proposals:  is it new?  is it disruptive?  what will the audience learn?  (As an adviser, I've been in on those discussions).  Like last year, the format is one track spread over three days, with 15 minute presentations, 5 minute lightning presentations, panel discussions and social time.  It all adds up to a veritable fire hose of information.

There's a list of speakers here.  Major topics for 2009 (so far) include:

* Mobile Social Networking (MoSoSo)
* Open Handsets & the Open Ecosystem
* Both Voice and Video Evolution
* Convergence of Media with Personal Communications
* Open Spectrum
* Open Communication Platforms
* Leveraging Cloud Computing
* Social Computing
* Towards 4G Wireless
* P2P and Decentralization of Telecoms
* Communications enabling business processes, especially B2C
* New Forms of Contactability and Connectability
* Emerging Markets

And last, but by no means least, if you mention my name you get 20% off.  More specifically, if you enter the promo code "BroughTurner" (case-sensitive) at the appropriate point during registration, you'll get 20% off the registration fee.  This works now, while early bird rates are in effect, and I'm told it will also work right up to the last minute ("late", not on-site registration), although then it's 20% off the full conference rate, and only if the event is not sold out!

I hope to see you there.

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.

eComm 2009

The eComm 2009 website is live.

As some of you already know, the date was picked through a feedback process conducted on Facebook.  It's March 3-5, 2009 in California.

I attend a lot of conferences and trade shows and, as I look back at the past year, the most interesting conference I attended was eComm 2008.  Typically conference organizers start with a list of sponsors and/or exhibitors and then do their best to build an interesting conference, given their primary objective of facilitating sponsors' and exhibitors' promotional efforts.

For eComm, Lee Dryburgh (the principal organizer behind eComm), started with an idea ― emerging communications ― then went after speakers who had something relevant to say and were known to be good at saying it, finally he sought sponsors and attendees interested in discussing emerging communications.  The result was a really interesting set of talks and a fascinating set of people in attendence.

If you are at all interested in where communications is going, subscribe to the eComm 2009 blog and think about attending eComm 2009.

Off to LA for IT Expo and Communications Developer Conference

I'll be at Internet Telephony Expo West in Los Angeles beginning late morning tomorrow.  I have a few meetings scheduled tomorrow afternoon and two presentations later in the show.  NMS also has a booth on the show floor where I should be when I'm not otherwise engaged.

At 9am on Wednesday, I'm giving a Wireless Tutorial (3G, 4G and beyond).  Caution:  it's nearly two hours and goes into mobile communications in some depth!

Then on Thursday at 1pm, I'm on a panel, Exploring Next-Generation Video Standards, with Jeff Van Dyke (of Dialogic, and formerly of Snowshore).

So far those are my only commitments, but there many people I hope to catch up with.  If you want to meet, send me an email (rbt at NMSS dot com) or call my mobile (617-285-0433).

PS:  Next week I'll be at AstriCon in Phoenix (actually Glendale, AZ), Tuesday-Thursday, if by chance you'll be in Phoenix.

African telecom: corruption mostly limited to publicly run operators

The latest issue (#421) of Balancing Act News Update has an interesting story based on the prosecution (in the US) of former sales agents for ITXC found guilty of bribery in arranging VoIP connectivity contracts.

Six of the seven telcos involved were state owned businesses and in the one with private ownership (Sonatel, the PTT in Senegal that's partially owned by France Telecom), it was France Telecom that got suspicious.  Balancing Act News goes on to point out the problems with bribery:

It will be clear from the summary of the available public documents that this approach to business has a number of pitfalls. The bribed employees in two instances subsequently had to sort out “cost disputes” which were the pretext for asking for more bribes. In one instance, the bribed employee failed to share his gains with the managing director. In the only company with a private shareholder (which also sells wholesale minutes), the bribed employee became isolated under commercial questioning: this provides a strong if not always decisive argument for privatisation.

Based on their conclusion, it appears there is no viable way to do business with the state controlled Telcos in Africa:

From the telco side, what has been known privately for years is now revealed clearly and publicly by the Rwandatel and Sotelma examples. Corruption is systemic and goes right to the top and bribes are expected to be shared with the boss of the organisation and woe betide anyone who tries to keep the money to themselves.

Luckily, the mobile telecom industry in Africa is mostly private and increasingly competitive, with the result that mobile phone adoption is soaring in Africa.  It would be nice to think the PTTs will be cleaned up, but in any event, the benefits of telecom are reaching African citizens via mobile phone services.

Why the Danes text while the US talks

Recently I can by some interesting data on monthly voice and SMS usage in Denmark.  But first let me set the stage.  It's well known that people are price sensitive ― as per minute prices fall, telephony usage goes up.  It's also true that people prefer flat rate pricing as it reduces their mental transaction costs.  This graph (from Andrew Odlyzko) shows what happened to mobile minutes of use when flat rates were introduced in the US.

AT&T launched their Digital One-Rate plan in 1998 offering a block of minutes for one monthly fee with no long distance or roaming complications.  This plan was so popular that all operators were forced to respond, with the results visible in the graph above.

Today US mobile voice usage is approaching 800 minutes per month and that's average.  Leap Wireless and MetroPCS subscribers use 1500-2000 minutes per month.  One wonders how much time people can spend on the phone...

So here's the new (to me) data from Denmark.

The Danish regulator has a wonderful set of statistics available in half-year increments.  Those above are from 2H02 thru 2H07.  Voice minutes are out-going traffic in millions of minutes per period (6 months).  The population of Denmark is 5.5 million (82% are over the age of 14) so this represents ~330 voice minutes and ~225 messages per person per month.

Wireless minutes of use continue to rise, but fixed line minutes are falling faster so total voice minutes are falling.  But total person-to-person communications is still increasing because SMS and E-Mail usage has soared, growing to roughly 40% of all communications.

This is very interesting as flat rate pricing for monthly bundles of SMS messages was introduced in Denmark in 2002.  Meanwhile, Danish mobile voice calls are mostly charged per minute (very typical in Europe) and are expensive compared to the US.

So price matters, but flat rate monthly bundles (rather than per minute or per message charges) is even more important in driving usage.

WiMAX will be successful, as a fringe technology

A recent Infonetics press release says “WiMAX has gained such momentum across so many regions that it is no longer sensible to suggest that WiMAX growth will be flattened by the emergence of LTE in the next few years."

Probably true, but it's also clear WiMAX will never reach the scale of either mainstream wireless family, i.e., WiFi or GSM/3GSM.  By comparison with these giants, WiMAX will be a fringe operation.  The critical issue is volume, and what counts is the wireless technology brand, not the technology itself.

Both WiFi and GSM/3GSM have already evolved through multiple generations of technology while maintaining backwards compatibility and thus interoperability.  Within the GSM community, there may be no commercial LTE subscribers as yet and relatively few HSPA subscribers, but more than a billion GSM/3GSM devices are manufactured each year with individual chip set product lines running multi-hundred million units per year.  WiFi chipsets also run at hundred-million units per year rates.  These volumes (and the guarantee of interoperability) mean GSM/3GSM and WiFi devices will always be substantially lower cost than anything WiMAX aspires to.  [Note:  today there are slightly less the 2 million WiMAX subscribers while optimistic projections suggest there will be more than 100 million in 2012.]  WiMAX may have technology leadership, but it can't catch up.  WiFi and GSM are the wireless families that will prosper, each in it's sphere – WiFi for unlicensed, GSM for licensed spectrum.

WiMAX will benefit from technology specific licensing in some emerging markets, i.e., valuable spectrum tied to specific technologies,  So WiMAX will survive, even while it's more expensive than LTE or WiFi.  As for market share, the optimistic parallel is "CDMA cellular", i.e. IS-95/ CDMA One/ CDMA 2000.  CDMA had technology leadership and it managed to capture nearly 20% of the 2G cellular market at it's peak, but it could never overtake GSM and, today, major operators are jumping ship to join the 3GSM crowd.

There may be a decade of contention, but in the end, WiMAX will die or be absorbed into the GSM brand.

Asian innovation in mobile social networking

I'm continually amazed at the East-West cultural gap (that's between Asia and the US/EU, not between Boston and Silicon Valley).  It goes both ways, but as an American Internet and mobile enthusiast with Asian connections, I'm usually struck by US ignorance of Asian Internet and mobile services.

Today, China has the worlds largest mobile population and the worlds largest Internet population.  Korea is a leader in high speed broadband, as is Japan.  Japan is also the #2 economy in the world and arguably the world's leading mobile society.  Surely it's worth the time to understand what's happening in their markets!

For a change, over the weekend, I stumbled on an excellent presentation, What Asia can tell us about mobile social networks, from O'Reilly's conference, Graphing Social Patterns East, held in June in Washington DC.  The presenter was Benjamin Joffe who resides in Beijing where, among other things, he's the founder of Mobile Monday Beijing.

Some of his numbers may be a year old, but the impact is clear.  Asian services like QQ (740M registered users), CyWorld (used by 90% of young Koreans) and Mixi (10M mobile users in Japan) typically started before Facebook, have many more features, and are profitable!
Here's Benjamin's features list:

Check out the entire presentation.  Well worth the effort!

Another analyst under estimates mobile subscriber growth

From a recent press release

Worldwide mobile subscriptions will rise from 3.9 billion in 2008 to 5.6 billion in 2013, according to a new Strategy Analytics report.

Sorry guys, you're forecast has fallen into the same trap as almost all the five year forecasts I've seen since 1995.  About the only credible analyst's statement in this area is one by Mark Newman, head of research at Informa, who said (in 2007):

The mobile industry has constantly outperformed even the most optimistic forecasts for subscriber growth.

The problem is analysts' forecasts are consistently pessimistic.  Consider Strategy Analytics' numbers.  They project 1.7 billion new subscribers in 5 years (60 months).  By every measurement I've seen, mobile subscription growth has been over 50M per month at least since 2004-2005.  For example, 2 billion subscriptions in September 2005 and 3.3 billion subscriptions in November 2007 comes out at 52 million new subscriptions per month.  If you believe Strategy Analytics' forecast of 3.9 billion by the end of 2008, that's 54 million more per month for the balance of 2008.  If we merely sustain current rates, we will hit Strategy Analytics' December 2013 forecast in just 31 months, i.e. in July 2011.  So they expect current growth rates to decline rather substantially in coming years. 

Why would they think this?  I haven't spoken with anyone at Strategy Analytics, but in discussions with other analysts over the past ten+ years, a frequent answer is "current growth rates will have to slow as we're running out of people who can afford mobile phone service."  Wrong!  This is the view of someone who doesn't understand Moore's law.  Whether it's transistor density or wireless performance, innovation drives exponential improvements in price-performance.  Per-capita GDP is improving slowly, but the cost of mobile phone infrastructure and mobile handsets is dropping substantially every year.  Today, those at the bottom of the pyramid are in a position to at least use a phone and increasingly to acquire their own mobile phone.

In addition to innovation ― at work since the introduction of mobile services ― political obstacles are falling in many countries.  Since 2000 it's become clear, mobile phone adoption brings significant economic advantages, and the best way to get mobile phone adoption is to attract multiple competitive mobile phone operators to your country.  Increasingly, even the most backward dictators are realizing there's more money to be made taxing multiple competitive mobile phone services than in keeping all the profits from one government phone company.  So country after country are encouraging competitive mobile phone operators and allowing substantial foreign investment.  This political trend serves to increase mobile phone adoption rates.

Of course, adoption rates will saturate at some point.  When might that be?  The best evidence we have is for 2G and 2.5G services in developed countries.  It appears things slow down a bit around 120 subscriptions per 100 people.  Of course this may change with 3G.  It's too early to tell.

Technology adoption generally follow an S-curve:

If saturation is at 120 or above, and we're currently around 50, we have at least another five years of rapid growth.  Perhaps a five year forecast made in 2013 will be justified in projecting a decrease in adoption rates.  But by then we'll also understand the impact of 3G.  Who knows? 3G may drive things even faster. 

Or perhaps by 2013, I will have a single mobile data subscription for a gateway device on my body, that in turn provides connectivity for all my other devices.

In any event, I expect 5.6 billion mobile phone subscriptions by the summer of 2011 and more than 6 billion by mid 2012.

Service Creation - Traditional Telecom Still Doesn't Get It

TMCnet is republishing, on their website, articles I originally wrote for my monthly column, "Next Wave Redux", that appears in Internet Telephony Magazine.  Here's from the April 2008 column:

In the late 1980s and through the 1990s the telecom industry defined and then adopted standards for the “Intelligent Network” (IN). The objective was to make it easy to create and deploy new applications and new services. More recently the industry has defined various next generation networks, most notably the IP Multimedia System (IMS). Besides convergence economies (all services on IP), the objective is to facilitate the rapid development and deployment of new applications and new services. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, it’s not going to work any better the second time around.

Go here to read why.

Webinar tomorrow on mobile value-added services

I'll be presenting a webinar entitled "Trends in Mobile Value-Added Services" through TMCnet.com tomorrow Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 11:00am EDT (i.e. GMT-4).

Two-thirds of the presentation addresses global trends and the remainder touches on four specific services where NMS Communications has specific (and sometimes extensive) experience, i.e.

• Voice SMS
• Ringback Tones
• Mobile TV
• Video SMS

There's a blurb from the TMCnet marketing group here and you can register for the webinar here.

Please join me tomorrow.

Monopolists, caught in a time warp

This afternoon, I was in a local shopping area and noticed a new storefront advertising Verizon FiOS service.  I've been a FiOS subscriber for two years now, but I'd never seen a FiOS storefront.  Unfortunately, the store wasn't open.

There was a T-Mobile store 50 feet away and a Verizon Wireless store two blocks away.  They were both open, as was an AT&T store about a half mile away.  The Verizon Wireless store hours were typical of all the mobile phone stores, i.e.
  M-F    10am-8pm
  Sat      9am-8pm
  Sun   10am-6pm

Indeed, these hours are typical of retail stores in the neighborhood.  Weekday openings are at 9:30am or 10am and closing times are 8pm or 9pm.  And all retail stores are open at least a half day on Sunday.

The Verizon FiOS store hours:
  M-F   9am-6pm
  Sat   9am-1pm
  Sun    closed

I remember when retail stores were closed on Sundays.  It was a long time ago.  I even remember, as a child, when some neighborhood stores were only open a half day on Saturday.  That was a very long time ago.

Apparently the FiOS store was opened because Verizon is now competing with Comcast for TV subscribers in our neighborhood.  Comcast is another long term monopolist, so it was interesting to drive (about a mile) to ther retail storefront.  It was also closed on Sunday.  In fact their only store hours were M-F 9-5.  Wow!

I suppose two sources of wired TV services is better than one, but this is another case where it's clear a duopoly provides very little competition (for example, compared to our mobile market with 6+ players).

3G's biggest success is as a dumb pipe

Thanks to Dean Bubley for pointing out this presentation by Antero Kivi on the use of 3G mobile networks in Finland.

92% of all data traffic is from PCs

Furthermore, of the 4% of traffic from Symbian devices, 79% of that is for web access and 10% is for email.  So users are paying for mobile data for the sole purpose of connecting to the Internet.

Put another way, mobile operators have failed to provide any operator-specific data application of any relevance.

Why invest another penny in IMS?

Voice telephony needs priority, but after that all people want is a dumb pipe. In a competitive market that what they'll get. So IMS is vastly more complex than appropriate.

The cost effective solution is simple (i.e. two) priorities on the radio link, softswitch-controlled circuits-over-packets for voice telephony and straight off-load to the public Internet for everything else. An IP/MPLS core network is more than sufficient.  And existing GSM voice telephony protocols are both adequate and appropriate for voice telephony.  Existing GSM signaling is already being carried over Sigtran over IP, so the pieces are falling in place.

What I've just described matches what I've seen of China Mobile's new 3G backbone.  If true, that means the Chinese network equipment providers (Huawei, ZTE, etc.) are well positioned to win 3G business in high growth emerging markets where costs are key.

It certainly sounds bad for IMS.

Youth smoking falls with rising mobile phone ownership

Now that's a wacky statistic, but it's the fifth "key fact" from the MobileYouth survey posted by Graham Brown at mobileyouth.org. 

This is a global study that includes other interesting facts like:

• 1.1 billion youths own a mobile phone
• 10% of youths' disposable income goes to mobile products and services
• Youth spending on mobile will reach $300B by 2010
• Youths spend 8 times more on mobile than on music
• Only 27% of youth said they "trusted" their mobile operator

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US Mobile Internet access prospects looking up

This is a very good week for the mobile Internet in the US.  Our best prospect for open mobile Internet access is not legislation or regulation, but having four or more competing networks that are technically able to offer mobile broadband access.

We have three such networks today — Verizon, AT&T and Sprint — but three is not enough to break the walled garden mentality.  What's changed?

1.  T-Mobile USA has launched their first 3G service using the spectrum they won in the 2006 AWS auctions.  For now, it's only New York City, but Reuters reports that T-Mobile plans to launch in 20 to 25 new markets by the end of the year and T-Mobile's stated intention is a full national HSPA network. In 2009, this will be our fourth national 3G network fully capable of multi-Mbps down and multi-hundreds Kbps up.

2.  Clearwire has cut a deal to take over Sprints WiMAX network.  As the Wall Street reports (subscription required) today:

Sprint Nextel and Clearwire are close to announcing a $12 billion joint venture that plans to roll out ultra-fast wireless Internet access for cellphones and laptops in coming years, with the backing of an unlikely alliance of technology and cable companies. Sprint has agreed to merge its wireless broadband unit with Clearwire, a Kirkland, Wash., firm founded by cellphone pioneer Craig McCaw. The new company has raised a total of $3.2 billion in outside financing from several heavyweights -- $1.05 billion from cable provider Comcast, $1 billion from Intel, $550 million from Time Warner Cable and $500 million from Internet giant Google. Smaller cable provider Bright House contributed $100 million. The investments value the new company at more than $12 billion.

This also reduces Sprint's financial exposure and hopefully reduces the likelihood they will be taken over or their network consolidated, at least in the short term.  I've been negative on the prospects for WiMAX in the past, but if anyone can make this go, Craig McCaw is good bet.  So Clearwire represents our fifth national network capable of delivering mobile broadband Internet access.

Assuming all this holds together, we will see affordable flat rate open mobile Internet access in the US by 2010.

Talking about Voice SMS, Video SMS and MMS in a webinar tomorrow

Tomorrow (May 6th) at 9 am EDT (1300 GMT) I'm doing a webinar on:

Mobile Messaging- Its Not Just About Texting

Mobile Text messaging has created new opportunities for additional revenue resources for global mobile operators.  Industry analysts predicts mobile messaging to reach $65B in annual revenue by 2010.  As a result of this messaging explosion, operators continue to look for ways to differentiate themselves in messaging services and to increase the revenue realized from text messaging.  Adding voice and video messages to the standard text message service is just one of the services operators are using to enhance the texting experience within their subscriber base. This webinar will examine video and voice short messaging services(SMS), discuss the technical considerations of implementing these types of services and review various operator successes with media messaging services.

Multi-Media messaging (MMS) has been very successful in some markets, e.g. the UK, while in others, like the US, it's used only for sending photos.  In other markets, it's hardly used at all.  Part of the problem is handset interoperability, especially when it comes to exchanging video clips.  In some cases, there are handset-specific user interface issues and in some markets the problem is enabling MMS operation, e.g. roughly half of the MMS-capable handsets in the Philippines haven't been "activated" (as the operator needs an SMS from the customer indicating their handset type).  Finally, there are markets where MMS inter-connection between operators.doesn't work, either technically or commercially.

But where there's a failure, other solutions emerge.  That's what I'll be talking about tomorrow.

I've written in the past about Voice SMS and about Video SMS, two services that fill the gap by being very simple to use and by working with every handset and every operator.

If you're interested, sign up here and listen in tomorrow.

eComm 2008 Panel: What Will Drive Wireless Innovation?

Here's the complete video of the panel discussion I ran at eComm 2008 in March, all 86 minutes.

My panelists were:

• Martin Geddes (STL Partners),
• Stanley Chia (Vodafone),
• Sumit Agarwal (Google),
• Jonathan Christensen (Skype),
• Christopher Allen (iPhoneWebDev.com),
• Benoit Schillings (Trolltech/Nokia)

Time permitting, I'll see if I can index some interesting highlights and have a follow up post with direct links — that's just in case you're hesitant to invest 86 minutes in the whole session...

China's 3G license delay is a smoke screen

Last week there was a flurry of stories about China's 3G plans after Jonathan Dharmapalan of Ernest & Young was quoted as saying he expected it to take 12 to 24 months from the start of China's commercial TD-SCDMA trials, i.e. from now, until 3G licenses were issued.  But there was little analysis or comment on what's really happening.

3G licenses are a formality.  They delay the deployment of 3GSM & CDMA 2000 which could otherwise happen rapidly — just plug new cards into existing radios and offer established handsets (already being manufactured, in China, for the world market).

China 3G is happening, without licenses.  China Mobile Group already has deployment-scale TD-SCDMA radio networks on assigned, but not "licensed" frequencies, in eight cities.  The bottleneck is TD-SCDMA handset silicon.  Commercial trials were finally enabled by the recent delivery of an initial batch of 60K handsets.  This also allows China to meet, at least technically, their pledge to have 3G service in time for the Olympics.

Dharmapalan is speculating that it will take 12-18 months of commercial trials to get the bugs out and the system to scale.  That's plausible.  If so, it will be 12-24 months before "licenses" are granted, i.e. before 3GSM and CDMA 2000 deployments are allowed to proceed in parallel with TD-SCDMA.

The problem is China's patent position.  The core patents for 3G and for 4G are already held by the likes of Ericsson, Nokia, and Qualcomm.  TD-SCDMA provided a way for China to obtain patents on a specific 3G implementation and the size of China's market makes that implementation interesting to Ericsson, etc.  Since China missed the boat on core patents for both 3G and 4G, expect TD-SCDMA and it's 4G successor to exist on a parallel path for the next 10-20 years.

The good new is commercial TD-SCDMA deployments have finally started.

I'm most interested in 3G applications.  China has a vibrant market in value-added services for 2G.  As more and better TD-SCDMA handsets get deployed, we should see some really interesting innovation coming out of China — innovation that will be applicable to any 3G technology, anywhere in the world.

Mobile video-on-demand Yes! Mobile broadcast TV not so hot

I have an article, Going Mobile (TV), that's recently been published by MobileIN, a wireless and mobile information site.  In it I basically argue that major investments in mobile TV broadcast capability are less likely to pay off than investments mobile video-on-demand.

The biggest trend in commercial television viewing is personal video recorders like TiVo.  People want to watch TV content when they want, not when broadcasters schedule it.  The only exception is major sports events (the Superbowl or World Cup matches).  Even the evening news is frequently rescheduled for later in the evening.

The second relevant trend is growth in YouTube and similar web-based video content.  Broadcast TV went from 2-3 channels in the 1950s to hundreds of channels on a typical cable system today.  But consumers are also interested in the long tail of millions of videos that can only be served over the Internet today and, potentially, over the mobile Internet in the future.

Finally, survey's of early adopters of mobile video show music videos, movie trailers, weather, sports action clips, comedy videos, cartoons and amateur video shorts – typically a few minutes long at most – are the most popular content. In addition, it appears 85 percent of mobile video viewers watched viral videos (content sent or pointed out by others) rather than content they found themselves.

All and all, mobile consumers are looking for video -on-demand, not pre-scheduled broadcast TV.

So what's the logic for massive investments in spectrum, followed by even more money in new wireless infrastructure, followed by the need to sell everyone new handsets that can receive the new broadcast mobile TV channels?

WiMAX in the US, a limited window of opportunity?

Their first service launch has been delayed, but Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse repeated his vow to blanket the US with a WiMAX network in his talk at CTIA this week.

I sincerely hope he succeeds.  We need as many competing data networks as possible, if we're to see any measure of open mobile Internet access. However, I'm worried.

WiMAX has been quite successful in emerging markets, providing fixed wireless Internet access in countries as diverse as Pakistan, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Georgia, Ethiopia and Georgia (the country!).

The US is another story.  The only significant US deployment is Clearwire's with roughly 400K subscribers, but on a mostly “pre-WiMax” network.  Again, the application is fixed wireless Internet access. 

It’s one thing to use fixed WiMAX to provide Internet access in Pakistan.  It’s another thing to compete for fixed access in the US.  Yes, our telephone & cable duopoly is moving slowly, but they are going after all the more profitable neighborhoods with broadband offerings substantially faster than what fixed WiMAX provides.

What about mobile WiMAX?  Mobile WiMAX is in trials today, using technology and providing performance that the 3GSM community will only see 2–3 years from now.  Sprint clearly hopes to use WiMAX as a springboard past its competitors and past concerns about its declining user base.  Presumably, in the longer term, they hope to converge their dissimilar networks (Sprint EVDO and Nextel iDEN) on mobile WiMAX.  But can mobile WiMAX build a large enough market soon enough? 

Volume drives down cost and cost advantages win in the end — witness Verizon’s announcement that they are jumping ship on Qualcomm’s CDMA evolution in favor of the 3GSM community’s long term evolution (LTE).  Today, GSM networks (GSM/ EDGE/ W-CDMA/ HSPA) have 80% of the world mobile phone market with billions of subscribers and a billion or so handsets manufactured each year.  Right now the entire Sprint-Nextel customer base is ~54 million subscribers.  Perhaps emerging markets will also adopt mobile WiMAX, thus driving up volumes?  Unfortunately emerging markets are even more price sensitive with the high volume application being basic voice telephony plus SMS.  GSM is the lowest cost solution by a wide margin. 

I hope I'm wrong.  I hope mobile WiMAX's performance lead (over LTE) is enough to carry the day.  And, in particular, as I’ve written before, I would very much like to see Sprint succeed, with or without Clearwire, because their WiMAX network would represent yet another source of wireless Internet access.  With four of more networks capable of mobile broadband Internet access, competitive pressures alone should give us what the FCC is currently ignoring, i.e. mobile data plans that are both open and reasonably priced.

 

Zippy interviews me on Mobile TV

Zippy (actually Richard Grigonis) got my views on Mobile TV for a series on TMCnet. 

I'm negative on broadcasting :-) but very positive on mobile video on demand and on the profusion of other video-related things that people are finding to do with their mobile handsets.

Most cell sites have only one or two T1/E1 links, or less

One of the things that surprised me at eComm was the audience reaction to hearing that most cell sites have only one, or perhaps two, T1 or E1 links going to them.  eComm was a sophisticated audience but they weren't familiar with this kind of operational detail.

Of course, I've seen a lot of data on this particular subject as, until our recent sale of the AccessGate product line, NMS Communications was in the backhaul optimization business.

Net-net:  As spectral efficiency keeps improving with HSPA and so forth, backhaul is rapidly becoming the bottleneck. 

Cell sites are fixed locations.  The vast majority are in urban or suburban neighborhoods.  Their bandwidth requirements will continue to grow, indefinitely.  In any rational world, one would purchase dark fiber to most of these sites.  In the irrational real world that is the US today, dark fiber is available on long haul routes but is extremely hard to come by in populated areas where most cell sites are located.

The root problem is we have given Verizon and AT&T privileged access to the public right-of-way, without requiring them to sell dark fiber, or lease dark fiber, or offer any connectivity other than T1 service.

What would it cost to construct dark fiber to 95% of these sites, if it were done as part of a community-wide dark fiber build like that being planned in Singapore and already completed throughout greater Stockholm (and most of Sweden)?  Construction costs for point-to-point fiber are 20% or so above those of passive optical networks (PON), but the cost of the dark fiber alone (no electronics) is perhaps 80% of the total construction cost, so they're in the same ball park.  Verizon has directly and indirectly reported various costs for their FiOS construction (FiOS is a PON network), but all current estimates are below $1000 per home passed. Even at $5K per cellsite, the payback for a mobile operator would be measured in months.