Monday, April 18, 2011

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Optus femto pilot divides opinion down under Top
Optus femto pilot divides opinion down under It's déjà vu all over again! Optus' 3G Home Zone femtocell pilot launch in Australia is attracting the same debate in the media as when AT&T launched its 3G MicroCell in the US. Some press and analysts are outraged at the idea that consumers should be required to pay for a femtocell, and accuse Optus of asking customers to subsidise fixes for its network blackspots . However, IT Wire is equally outraged by the media criticism, mounting a robust defence of the femtocell concept . The Optus femtocell costs $60-$240 (Australian) depending on which mobile service plan the subscriber is on, and is currently available in 13 retail stores across Australia. The design is the same as the original Vodafone Sure Signal access point. Vodafone Australia is also piloting a femtocell offering called Vodafone Expand , targeting both consumer and business customers. But competitor Telstra remains out in the cold (see also these comments from CTO Hugh Bradlow at MWC). Recent femtocell developments elsewhere in Asia Chunghwa Telecom in Taiwan announced last month that it has finished its initial procurement of femtocells and will provide the devices to businesses and heavy data users for free as a way of offloading data traffic from its network. However, at this month's Femtocells Asia conference the company said it is still facing regulatory and technical issues , including problems with handovers and interference. Chunghwa also wants the industry to target a $50 price point . Vodafone New Zealand commented at Femtocells Asia that a lack of seamless two-way handover with its Sure Signal femtocell has disappointed its business customers, highlighting the fact that enterprise femtocells / picocells have different requirements from their residential counterparts. (You can read more about this in ip.access' white paper, ' Creating Flexibility for Small Cells '.) U Mobile has announced a partnership with Alcatel-Lucent to pilot femtocells in Malaysia. The operator is also planning to introduce a variety of femto-enabled services, including 'single family number' and 'family alerts'. Here's a round-up of other femtocell deployments market in Asia. Operator news from the rest of the world Sprint has deployed 250,000 femtocells , according to the company's VP of Network Development and Engineering, Iyad Tarazi, speaking at the CTIA conference last month. Sprint was the first operator in the world to launch femtocells back in 2007. On the back of Sprint's volumes, a new Infonetics Research report lists Samsung as the leading femtocell vendor. However, the report does not include the world's largest femtocell deployment, AT&T's 3G MicroCell (supplied by Cisco and ip.access). Speaking of America's soon-to-be largest operator, there is no truth in Gadget Geek's April fool story that AT&T is forcing all smartphone subscribers to use a 3G MicroCell – although the operator continues to give its femtocell away in significant volumes. Vodafone UK says that it delayed the launch of One Net Express (a Fixed Mobile Substitution proposition for business customers) until its 3G cordless desk phone was able to work with its Sure Signal femtocell. Sure Signal recently won a Mobile News Innovative Product award , and BT is reported to be reselling its own branded version of Sure Signal under its MVNO agreement with Vodafone. Network Norway's business femtocell offering has appeared on the operator's website , under the brand "Full Dekning" (full coverage). Femto Forum publishes femto services API The Femto Forum's Services SIG has published a set of standardised APIs to enable software developers to build femto-enabled apps and services. The API allows third party applications on the Internet to trigger alerts and other events based on the presence of a handset within a femtozone. The API extends the GSMA's existing OneAPI framework, which currently provides access to SMS, MMS, location and payment information to third parties. Other femto news… Juniper Research forecasts 63% of smartphone traffic will be carried by femtocells and Wi-Fi by 2015. FCC keeps the door open for private repeaters. Air New Zealand to start in-flight GSM service with OnAir. Femtocells aid disaster recovery . Femto Forum makes a splash at CTIA – here's a report from the press conference. CableLabs consortium issues RFI for strand-mounted picocells. StarHub CEO confirms interest in femtocells. AT&T looking to small-cell architecture to cope with data influx. Opinion … Maggie thinks T-Mobile will stop UMA service after AT&T merger. Todd Mersch's review of the Femtocells Asia conference. Manish Singh provides his thoughts on LTE (TDD for femto, FDD for macro). Maravedis says there's big money in femtocells. David Chambers tells us all about Moldtelecom. Interview with Cisco's Lisa Garza at CTIA. Here's where to deploy metro femto. Femtocells on the London underground? (Not sure it's quite as easy as that.) Small cells are getting bigger. Femtocells – the next wave. Ovum tracks SoftBank femto. Kevin Taylor's thoughts from MWC. Nice review of the AT&T 3G MicroCell. And another. One more . And this one is from Everything Sysadmin. Out of the box, activated, and working within 15 minutes! Vendor announcements… Several articles about Simon Brown's arrival as the new CEO at ip.access NASH and Picochip collaborate on femto testing. Netgear announces its second generation femtocell. HSL signs distribution partner in Africa. Any customers yet? Ubiquisys April fool. Juni selects CCPU. Huawei touts small cells. Picochip PC333 chip hits volume production and launches PC3008 chip. Powerwave LTE pico wins 2 nd prize. BridgeWave offers Gigabit picocell wireless backhaul system. BelAir announces integrated LTE metro femto / W-Fi product. NSN announces Liquid Radio 'small cell' solution. Tagged: AT&T 3G Microcell , Chunghwa , Femto Forum , Femtocell , femtocells , Network Norway
 
DT, France Telecom combine equipment purchasing activities across Europe Top
 
DT & FT Deepen Ties Top
 
Euronews: April 18 Top
 
Is mobile data roaming structurally flawed? Top
Fascinating article by David Meyer at ZDnet, as part of his ongoing coverage of mobile data roaming. He points out the possibility of the European Commission forcing a structural split between domestic and roaming service provision. Basically, there seems to be frustration that voice (and especially data) prices and consumer choices have not changed quickly enough, despite recent regulation on tariff caps and anti-billshock thresholds. In particular, there is concern that customers don't know in advance how/when/where they will travel, so they cannot make an educated decision about which tariff is "best" at the start of a contract. Most people have a feel for the number of minutes / texts they send per month - but no idea how much data they might use on visits Spain, the US or in Kyrgyzstan over the next 24 months. Ironically, even when people *do* look at roaming prices as part of making a decision among competitive domestic offers, the operators feel that it's such a minor part of the plan that they are free to make unilateral changes to those roaming prices, while the contract is still in force. This is exactly what happened to me , last year. Certainly, few price plans in Europe are marketed upfront as 'roamer-friendly'. Although it's too early to judge exactly how any future regulation might manifest, a possible option is that customers choose their "domestic" tariff and plan as normal, but then get to choose again about which network(s) and price-plans to use when actually roaming, or before departure. That said, there's clearly a whole host of issues, concerns and possible "gotchas" here: Is this choice made on a per-trip basis, or at the original time of signing a contract?  How does billing work when roaming? Would (say) Vodafone act as a retailer / billing agent for Orange if I pick them when travelling in France?  What's the user experience like? Do I need a separate SIM card for my roaming provider?  What happens if my phone is SIM-locked - and how would you avoid worsening the grey market in subsisided phones?  Would I use the same roaming provider for both voice and data?  Whose ultimate responsibility would look after emergency calls; lawful intercept etc?  Will this lead to weird distortions - eg people "roaming" permanently in Europe on a Luxembourg mobile contract, because it's cheaper? I'm expecting the current mobile operators to scream blue murder about this - it's technically complex, and impacts an area of significant profitability, and potentially means that a licencee in one European country can offer services on an almost-equal basis throughout the continent. They will no doubt point out that there are already assorted opt-ins, or discount programmes (Vodafone Passport etc) that enable customers to tweak their roaming cost profiles. Also, from my perspective, the problem is less about in-Europe roaming - for which we're seeing OK packages such as Vodafone's £2 / day for 25MB, and more for travelling outside Europe. The current typical charges of £3-6 per MB when I travel to the US, along with £1+ per minute for voice, are completely unjustifiable and make a mockery of smartphone ownership. I now routinely switch data roaming off completely, and just rely on WiFi. I recently spent a whole week in San Francisco recently without using 3G at all, although it does seem silly that I have to resort to using paper printouts of Google Maps, or buying Starbucks coffee to check my email, when I'm quite prepared to pay a sensible amount for cellular data. The problem is that there is no jurisdiction that can enforce price caps at both ends of (say) Vodafone/AT&T or Orange/SKT bilateral roaming arrangements. The structure of roaming involves both the wholesale (visited) fee, and the retail (outbound) mark-up price. Maybe the ITU, GSMA or even WTO needs to get involved ultimately, although none of them wants to kill the golden goose, even though they realise how unpopular the rates have become. Another interim approach might be to make it a requirement for operators to disclose the wholesale rates they are paying, in an attempt to shame the visited network into sensible pricing. (imagine getting this SMS when you arrive at the airport: " Data costs £3/MB because the greedy network you're roaming onto charges a wholesale fee of £2.50/MB. Here's the CEO's email address if you'd like to complain "). Perhaps the best option will be an MVNO, or soft-SIM or dynamic-IMSI approach, with Apple or GroupOn or another third party acting as a tariff aggregator for customers. They could use negotiating power to force down wholesale rates for visited networks (eg Europeans roaming onto AT&T in the US, especially), or emulate the style of Truphone's "Local Anywhere" proposition in having multiple accounts on a single SIM card. Fundamentally, the model for data roaming is completely flawed - unless you're using your home operator's in-house data services such as mobile TV, there is no need to have your data routed back home anyway. If you just want to connect to the Internet in a foreign country, there's no justification for your domestic service provider to have any role, except acting as a source of convenience. I don't phone up Vodafone for permission every time I want to use WiFi in Lithuania, or an Internet cafe in Mozambique. Now, I *am* prepared to pay for convenience - which is why I'll use ATMs and credit cards everywhere, despite some incremental fees. But I'm certainly not paying a potential £500 for a typical week's worth (100-200MB) of non-EU data usage. The whole ridiculous process is about to be replicated in LTE - at least when the question of supporting the right frequency bands in a decent % of phones means that LTE roaming becomes vaguely practical. Just as VoLTE is "yesterday's telephony reinvented for LTE", we can expect to see "yesterday's data roaming reinvented for LTE" as well. The effect of this is likely to further drive the use of free WiFi in traveller-centric hotspots. We're already seeing an increasing prevalance of hotels, airports and tourist cafes offering free data. I've stayed in remote parts of the world and been able to use Skype and Facebook for my communications needs, for free. In other words, the current structure for mobile data roaming is driving users to a polarised situation. Many now expect *free* WiFi data when travelling, rather than be willing to pay a smaller, reasonable charge for cellular. In the short term, operators are benefiting from the grudging use of roaming by travellers on expenses - or by occasional roamers who are going to suffer from bill shock because of inadvertant use. That is not a sustainable business - the industry needs to wake up & reinvent how data roaming is organised, because the current system (especially outside the EU or other roaming regions) is broken. EDIT: as an afterthought, ponder the notion that data roaming is, from your home operator's point of view, "best efforts" especially where it's provided through a telco that is not an affiliate. You would have thought that the lowest level of ownership & control (and therefore QoS) would mean you got charged a *lower* price than at home, not higher, would you not? Or perhaps best-efforts data is really good enough, after all?
 
Ethernet Europe: Tinet Keeps It Simple Top
 
Ciena Rides the Subsea Wave Top
 
Multimedia Telephony (MMTel) in 3GPP Rel-7 Top
 
RIM may bid on Nortel's patents Top
 
Verizon Wireless makes rural LTE deal with Carolina West Top
 

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