Xelerated Xpress

The Implications of Mobile Data Surpassing Voice

A very interesting milestone was recently reached.  As Ericsson reports, mobile data surpassed voice on a global basis in December 2009, Ericsson. This finding is based on Ericsson’s measurements on live networks covering all regions of the world.

So what implications will this have on 3G and 4G?  The most obvious is the demand for more bandwidth in the radio access network. It will have to be optimized for carrying data traffic. Voice services must be preserved, but data will dominate. And keep in mind that we are just in the early stages of the mobile data explosion.

Carriers have been trying to patch their networks in different ways to support more aggressive mobile data traffic volumes for some years now. Ethernet and circuit emulation in different variants have been introduced. Ethernet is a more high performance transport technology compared to ATM (AAL2 for voice and AAL5 for data). But carriers need rigorous synchronization schemes over Ethernet to make it work.  And there are other challenges like where to terminate legacy services and where to introduce the Ethernet ports? How can the new transport network comply to existing service provisioning schemes?

If the trends observed by Ericsson are correct, we are heading toward a data optimized radio access infrastructure faster than anyone expected. The Ethernet-based transport in the radio access network is needed to cope with the mobile data explosion. There are different attempts to solve this. We can learn from China Mobile’s PTN requirements which utilizes an Ethernet-based transport with synchronization support based on point-to-point (PTP) Ethernet. These networks are designed for data growth, but continue to support voice. And these requirements are here and now. They are designed for 2G, 3G and beyond.

by Thomas Eklund on Apr. 8th, 2010

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Dare to Share?

Investing in a new Radio Access Network (RAN) infrastructure is a multi-billion dollar undertaking. When Telia lost the beauty competition for the 3G licences in Sweden for the period of 2001-2015, they decided to cooperate with Tele2 and formed a joint venture, Svenska UMTS-nät, for the 3G RAN network. The model has been copied in a few markets, like Norway, Austria and Australia. For the next generation 4G/LTE network, Tele2 is now cooperating with Telenor in a similar way to the joint venture Net4Mobility.

While there are technical constraints associated with not having full control of network resources, there is an obvious gain in cutting the investment costs in half. Most of the technical limitations are addressed as the technology matures. But the commercial aspect is harder to tackle. Sharing the complete radio network makes differentiation very hard.

This is a multi-billion dollar question, and the jury doesn’t seem to have reached their verdict. Yet.

by Per Lembre on Jan. 19th, 2010

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4G Or Not 4G, That Is The Question

Ericsson’s and TeliaSonera’s announcement of the first commercial LTE deployment provoked an intensive debate on LinkedIn’s LTE group. Is LTE really 4G, or is it 3.9 or even 3.8?

Few things triggers more discussion than terms and definition. On one hand, you have a group of professionals that believe that the usage of a term has to be defined strictly in technical terms, and if a technology doesn’t meet the definition to 100%, it is non-compliant. Don’t say it is 4G, if it is not compliant to ITU’s definition, they claim.

The other camp, and I belong to this group, simply say that the new generation of technology is defined by both technical and commercial means. The 4th generation of mobile infrastructure is underway. LTE has a completely new air interface and a completely new core. In practice, the backhaul segment is also re-engineered. This is a huge new investment by mobile operators and the consumers have to buy new handheld devices. A new page in the history book of mobile infrastructure is being turned. I call that 4G.

The debate continues though. You can make your opinion heard here.  Or you can consider contributing to the wikipedia definition of 4G.

by Per Lembre on Jan. 8th, 2010

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