There's been a few posts over the last few days about the continuing rapid adoption and diffusion of mobile media. A new report by Strategy Analytics showed that China has overtaken the U.S. as the world's largest manufactuter of smartphones, while the consumer market for those devices grew worldwide by 12.8%. That growth was despite continued slowing in market demand in the U.S. and Europe, but increased demand in China, Japan, and Asia generally.
According to ABI Research projections, that demand contributes to the expectati0on that mobile subscriptions will reach 6 billion by the end of this year. For comparison, the estimated world population is 7 billion. Nearly 1 billion mobile connections have been added in Asia over the last two years.
Another study by Informa Telecoms & Media indicates that mobile penetration in the Middle East will exceed 250 million in 2012, giving the region a higher penetration rate that seen in North America. At that point, there will be more mobile phone subscriptions in the Middle East than there are people.
Still, the broader social and economic impact of mobile is tied to the growth of mobile broadband and data services. Here, Asia (outside of Japan and Korea, anyway) has lagged somewhat. Less than 18% of Asia mobile connections are at 3G or 4G speeds. In China, about 10% of mobile subscriptions are 3G-enabled (that's still 100 million). India is pushing deployment of 3G and 4G networks, and that country's largest mobile company attracted 3 million 3g subscriptions in its first 6 months. Matthew Reed, head of mobile research for Informa, said, “The impact of competition, the availability of new data-based services, increasing affordability and population growth will all contribute to the continued rise in mobile subscription numbers in the Middle East in the coming few years,” On the other hand, implementation of 3G and 4G in the region remains sporadic and slow.
In Africa, where less than ten percent of the population has access to a bank account, mobile penetration rates topping 60% have prompted development of mobile money services such as Orange Money. First introduced in 2008, Orange Money operates in partnership with banks to offer a range of financial services, including money transfers, bill payment, and other financial services. They've recently partnered with Western Union to add global funds transferring.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., the IBM Smarter Commerce benchmarking study indicated that almost 15% of all online shopping traffic on last week's "Black Friday" shopping frenzy came from mobile devices, almost tripling last year's level. In terms of actual digital retail transactions, almost 10% came through mobile, more than triple last year's level. And those were just the shifts in sources among the overall 24.3% increase in online shopping traffic from last year's levels.
So globally, mobile and mobile broadband is doing well, and is likely to continue to expand as higher speed (3G, 4G, LTE) networks are built out.and new data and information services are added.
Source - Mobile Explodes: Connections to Reach 6 Billion This Year, Online Media Daily
Middle East mobile penetration exceeds that of USA, telecoms.com
Mobile Money Services a Big Hit in Africa, telecoms.com
editted - added info from new source
Source - Mobile Drives 14.3% of Black Friday Online Traffic, 9.8% of Sales, Online Media Daily
Showing posts with label 4G. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 4G. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Lightsquared - The Technologies, Issues, and Problems
You may have heard of the growing political scandal linked to the promotion of LightSquared, a start-up hoping to use a combination of terrestrial towers interconnected by satellites to create a new high-speed (4G) wireless network.
While the system may be conceptually interesting and viable, the history of LightSquared, the specifics of the proposed terrestrial-satellite system, and the process by which it gained initial approval and license are more problematic. Most recently, claims of attempted White House interference and influence of government and military figures testifying before Congress on the results of early testing of the LightSquared system, which showed a strong potential to interfere with military, government, and private GPS systems.
Lightsquared, or at least its precursor, was one of three companies given initial approval to test the viability of delivering broadband internet connectivity through a satellite-based system. Apparently, it soon found that the costs of a satellite-only system did not generate the level of demand it felt it needed to be successful. It asked the FCC to expand the satellite frequency grant to cover terrestrial uses as well. Apparently, instead of going through the normal petition process, it approached the Chairman of the FCC's office for expedited approval. The office opened a shortened petition process on the evening before Thanksgiving, and closed it before there was any formally published announcement of the petition (and allegedly, without even informing other FCC Commissioners of the action). The petition was granted to Lightsquared (again, apparently without the knowledge or approval of other FCC Commissioners or the Office responsible for that aspect of broadcast usages. Further, it's claimed that the other two satellite service firms petitioned for similar treatment, they were told no, that they had missed the petition window. The extension of the bandwidth grant to terrestrial use boosted the asset value of LightSquared's satellite bandwidth by about $10 billion, which sent its stock price rising. It's reported that a number of friends and political supporters of the FCC Chairman, including President Obama, bought stock in Lightsquared around that time. The President has since sold his holdings, but a number of friends and supporters remain stockholders and investors, and LightSquared ownership and management continue to give heavily to various Democratic and Presidential campaigns.
While this may be somewhat sleazy, the real problem is what Lightsquared proposed to do with the terrestrial-use extension. The bandwidth that Lightsquared and the other firms were assigned are near the frequencies used for GPS (global positioning systems). As a satellite system, because the satellites would be in different positions, and the signals of relatively low power, there was little potential for interference between GPS and the proposed satellite-based broadband services. What LightSquared now planned to do with its permission to use their frequencies for terrestrial services, however, was to build a nationwide system of 40,000 towers to serve as the primary wireless access point, and use the satellite system to connect the towers with Internet backbone access points. The terrestrial system would need to operate at a much higher power level than the power levels of satellite-based systems (including GPS) at ground level. Between the higher power and the closer proximity to ground or even air-based GPS receivers, there was, with the proposed terrestrial tower system, a significant potential for interference - that the LightSquared signals would drown out GPS signals. Results from early tests of prototype systems showed that LightSquared signals did create interference with GPS signals, leaving "dead spots" miles in diameter near their terrestrial towers.
That's where politics arguably intrudes again. When Congress asked the military and civilian officials charged with oversight of the GPS system to testify as to the impact of the proposed LightSquared, the officials were apparently approached by people in the White House to change their testimony, minimizing any concern about interference, and to specifically include a paragraph indicating that they felt any potential problem would likely be resolved within 90 days. It's been charged that this was to expedite FCC action on final approval for the LightSquared system. However, both officials not only declined to change their testimony and include the paragraph, but testified about the attempt to influence, that the concern about potential interference was real and significant, and could significantly disrupt both civilian and military GPS use. They also characterized the idea that problems could be resolved so quickly, or without significant cost to GPS users, was, frankly, ridiculous. Congress has now advised the FCC Chairman not to proceed with any further action on LightSquared until a number of issues (including potential securities fraud and influence-peddling charges) have been resolved.
Lightsquared has responded with a claim that it has a "simple filter" that will limit interference on "99.5%" of GPS receivers. aGoing on the offensive, it argued that it "can't believe that such a terrific national benefit as a new national wireless network" could be held up by a problem with a few hundred thousand unfixable GPS devices. Their announcement also blames the GPS industry for using the frequencies they were assigned by the FCC, claiming the industry failed to install filters to correct for problems it didn't know about and weren't available, and suggesting that the commercial GPS industry unfairly benefits from the government's $18 billion GPS network. Apparently, it's ok for LightSquared to benefit from a $10 billion subsidy it got from the FCC's extension of terrestrial rights (which kept it from having to bid for, and pay the government for, the terrestrial usage rights for the bandwidth it wants to use), but it's not reasonable that hundreds of millions of individuals can benefit from using a federally-provided service. They also hope that no one correctly makes the connection that Lightsquared's solution would require replacing that "99.5%" of GPS devices with ones using their filter, and that the replacement costs, or the costs of finding ways to add the filter externally, would be borne by GPS users.
But the response that's likely to be most problematic is from the FCC technical working groups that studied the proposed system and "fix" found conclusive evidence that "LightSquared's proposed operations defy the law of physics, and therefore simply will not work," that going ahead with the various shifting variations of LightSquared plans "would cause such widespread harmful interference that it would severely cripple GPS," and that the only viable solution was to move the wireless broadband use "out of the MSS band altogether" (The MSS band includes both GPS and LightSquared's current frequency assignments).
Physics and reason should, at a minimum, put a hold on approval for the proposed system. You have the technical experts in the FCC, the military, and in the executive branch office responsible for maintaining the GPS system all testifying under oath that there are problems with the proposed LightSquared system - problems that are likely to create significant service disruptions in a widely-used public system, and that the disruptions could have serious consequences that could threaten public safety and military uses.
One the other hand, you have a company in a press release claiming it has a miraculous quick fix that was rebuked by technical experts, would place the cost of the fix fully upon the users of GPS devices, and that anyway, it was all the commercial GPS industry's fault for operating in their assigned frequencies and not anticipating, years ago, the need to install "fixes" for a new proposed system - one that would be solely responsible for creating the problem, and whose technical details have only recently been made public.
It's pretty clear that LightSquared thinks we're all rubes - at least if it thought any of there arguments were reasonable or rational. I guess the real question is whether whoever in the White House and the FCC Chairman's office is pushing this epitome of crony capitalism agrees, and continues to support this farce.
Sources: GPS industry rages: LightSquared 4G network would "defy" laws of physics, ars technica
myriad other sites
While the system may be conceptually interesting and viable, the history of LightSquared, the specifics of the proposed terrestrial-satellite system, and the process by which it gained initial approval and license are more problematic. Most recently, claims of attempted White House interference and influence of government and military figures testifying before Congress on the results of early testing of the LightSquared system, which showed a strong potential to interfere with military, government, and private GPS systems.
Lightsquared, or at least its precursor, was one of three companies given initial approval to test the viability of delivering broadband internet connectivity through a satellite-based system. Apparently, it soon found that the costs of a satellite-only system did not generate the level of demand it felt it needed to be successful. It asked the FCC to expand the satellite frequency grant to cover terrestrial uses as well. Apparently, instead of going through the normal petition process, it approached the Chairman of the FCC's office for expedited approval. The office opened a shortened petition process on the evening before Thanksgiving, and closed it before there was any formally published announcement of the petition (and allegedly, without even informing other FCC Commissioners of the action). The petition was granted to Lightsquared (again, apparently without the knowledge or approval of other FCC Commissioners or the Office responsible for that aspect of broadcast usages. Further, it's claimed that the other two satellite service firms petitioned for similar treatment, they were told no, that they had missed the petition window. The extension of the bandwidth grant to terrestrial use boosted the asset value of LightSquared's satellite bandwidth by about $10 billion, which sent its stock price rising. It's reported that a number of friends and political supporters of the FCC Chairman, including President Obama, bought stock in Lightsquared around that time. The President has since sold his holdings, but a number of friends and supporters remain stockholders and investors, and LightSquared ownership and management continue to give heavily to various Democratic and Presidential campaigns.
While this may be somewhat sleazy, the real problem is what Lightsquared proposed to do with the terrestrial-use extension. The bandwidth that Lightsquared and the other firms were assigned are near the frequencies used for GPS (global positioning systems). As a satellite system, because the satellites would be in different positions, and the signals of relatively low power, there was little potential for interference between GPS and the proposed satellite-based broadband services. What LightSquared now planned to do with its permission to use their frequencies for terrestrial services, however, was to build a nationwide system of 40,000 towers to serve as the primary wireless access point, and use the satellite system to connect the towers with Internet backbone access points. The terrestrial system would need to operate at a much higher power level than the power levels of satellite-based systems (including GPS) at ground level. Between the higher power and the closer proximity to ground or even air-based GPS receivers, there was, with the proposed terrestrial tower system, a significant potential for interference - that the LightSquared signals would drown out GPS signals. Results from early tests of prototype systems showed that LightSquared signals did create interference with GPS signals, leaving "dead spots" miles in diameter near their terrestrial towers.
That's where politics arguably intrudes again. When Congress asked the military and civilian officials charged with oversight of the GPS system to testify as to the impact of the proposed LightSquared, the officials were apparently approached by people in the White House to change their testimony, minimizing any concern about interference, and to specifically include a paragraph indicating that they felt any potential problem would likely be resolved within 90 days. It's been charged that this was to expedite FCC action on final approval for the LightSquared system. However, both officials not only declined to change their testimony and include the paragraph, but testified about the attempt to influence, that the concern about potential interference was real and significant, and could significantly disrupt both civilian and military GPS use. They also characterized the idea that problems could be resolved so quickly, or without significant cost to GPS users, was, frankly, ridiculous. Congress has now advised the FCC Chairman not to proceed with any further action on LightSquared until a number of issues (including potential securities fraud and influence-peddling charges) have been resolved.
Lightsquared has responded with a claim that it has a "simple filter" that will limit interference on "99.5%" of GPS receivers. aGoing on the offensive, it argued that it "can't believe that such a terrific national benefit as a new national wireless network" could be held up by a problem with a few hundred thousand unfixable GPS devices. Their announcement also blames the GPS industry for using the frequencies they were assigned by the FCC, claiming the industry failed to install filters to correct for problems it didn't know about and weren't available, and suggesting that the commercial GPS industry unfairly benefits from the government's $18 billion GPS network. Apparently, it's ok for LightSquared to benefit from a $10 billion subsidy it got from the FCC's extension of terrestrial rights (which kept it from having to bid for, and pay the government for, the terrestrial usage rights for the bandwidth it wants to use), but it's not reasonable that hundreds of millions of individuals can benefit from using a federally-provided service. They also hope that no one correctly makes the connection that Lightsquared's solution would require replacing that "99.5%" of GPS devices with ones using their filter, and that the replacement costs, or the costs of finding ways to add the filter externally, would be borne by GPS users.
But the response that's likely to be most problematic is from the FCC technical working groups that studied the proposed system and "fix" found conclusive evidence that "LightSquared's proposed operations defy the law of physics, and therefore simply will not work," that going ahead with the various shifting variations of LightSquared plans "would cause such widespread harmful interference that it would severely cripple GPS," and that the only viable solution was to move the wireless broadband use "out of the MSS band altogether" (The MSS band includes both GPS and LightSquared's current frequency assignments).
Physics and reason should, at a minimum, put a hold on approval for the proposed system. You have the technical experts in the FCC, the military, and in the executive branch office responsible for maintaining the GPS system all testifying under oath that there are problems with the proposed LightSquared system - problems that are likely to create significant service disruptions in a widely-used public system, and that the disruptions could have serious consequences that could threaten public safety and military uses.
One the other hand, you have a company in a press release claiming it has a miraculous quick fix that was rebuked by technical experts, would place the cost of the fix fully upon the users of GPS devices, and that anyway, it was all the commercial GPS industry's fault for operating in their assigned frequencies and not anticipating, years ago, the need to install "fixes" for a new proposed system - one that would be solely responsible for creating the problem, and whose technical details have only recently been made public.
It's pretty clear that LightSquared thinks we're all rubes - at least if it thought any of there arguments were reasonable or rational. I guess the real question is whether whoever in the White House and the FCC Chairman's office is pushing this epitome of crony capitalism agrees, and continues to support this farce.
Sources: GPS industry rages: LightSquared 4G network would "defy" laws of physics, ars technica
myriad other sites
Monday, May 23, 2011
LTE: On the path of wireless broadband
LTE is the latest mobile wireless standard being widely adopted in cellular network upgrades. LTE (formally, the 3GPP Long Term Evolution standard), while often marketed as "4G", is really more of a stepping stone towards LTE advanced, which will meet all of the 4G standards for high speed, high capacity, mobile telephone networks.
Last week, during LTE World Summit 2011, there were a number of reports on the roll out of the new standard. Sweden's Ericsson, an early adopter of LTE (in 2009), continued it's general support of the standard, although noting that assuring interoperability with other networks and having a IP infrastructure to handle the higher loads in place before opening markets were critical to success. Ericsson is also planning to build on its experience in the U.S. market, where adoption of LTE is being pushed by Verizon and AT&T.
Meanwhile, Verizon announced its expansion of LTE coverage to nine additional market, bringing its current coverage to a total of 55 markets in the U.S. Verizon's chief technical officer, David Small, says their goal is to bring 4G LTE to their current 3G coverage area by the end of 2013. He indicated that current implementation is providing download speeds between 5-12 Mbs, with 2-5 Mbs speeds on the uplink, comparable to most cable modem networks (but well below the 4G promise of up to 1 Gbs).
AT&T, which has lagged in the actual introduction of LTE, did provide a demo of their LTE network, which they say will be significantly faster than Verizon's, and seven times faster than its current high speed network (HSPA). During the demo, download speeds reached 28.7 Mbs, with upload speeds of 10.4 Mbs, although engineers acknowledged that actual consumer speeds are likely to be lower, particularly once cell towers reach capacity. While AT&T has not yet officially set a date for the introduction of its LTE network, a June launch is widely expected. Initial rumors suggested the introduction was to be tied to the introduction of Apple's iPhone 5, which would be LTE-compatible. However, delays in LTE chipset availability is said to likely delay the introduction of the iPhone 5, with Apple offering a tweaked iPhone 4S in June instead.
The expansion and introduction of LTE and subsequent true 4G networks won't do much in terms of enhancing telephony and voice services, but will support further expansion of data-heavy mobile systems and services, such as video and interactive gaming. The big question remaining, though, is how data-driven services are to be priced, as the expansion of tablets and smartphones have led some carriers to impose new pricing schemes based on levels of data usage, rather than the older "unlimited" plans. Too heavy a "per-bit" pricing level might drive users back to land-line based networks.
Sources: "Arun with a View," telecoms.com
"Verizon Wireless expands into nine additional markets," telecoms.com
"AT&T looks to outpace Verizon with 28.7 Mbs LTE network demo," telecoms.com
Last week, during LTE World Summit 2011, there were a number of reports on the roll out of the new standard. Sweden's Ericsson, an early adopter of LTE (in 2009), continued it's general support of the standard, although noting that assuring interoperability with other networks and having a IP infrastructure to handle the higher loads in place before opening markets were critical to success. Ericsson is also planning to build on its experience in the U.S. market, where adoption of LTE is being pushed by Verizon and AT&T.
Meanwhile, Verizon announced its expansion of LTE coverage to nine additional market, bringing its current coverage to a total of 55 markets in the U.S. Verizon's chief technical officer, David Small, says their goal is to bring 4G LTE to their current 3G coverage area by the end of 2013. He indicated that current implementation is providing download speeds between 5-12 Mbs, with 2-5 Mbs speeds on the uplink, comparable to most cable modem networks (but well below the 4G promise of up to 1 Gbs).
AT&T, which has lagged in the actual introduction of LTE, did provide a demo of their LTE network, which they say will be significantly faster than Verizon's, and seven times faster than its current high speed network (HSPA). During the demo, download speeds reached 28.7 Mbs, with upload speeds of 10.4 Mbs, although engineers acknowledged that actual consumer speeds are likely to be lower, particularly once cell towers reach capacity. While AT&T has not yet officially set a date for the introduction of its LTE network, a June launch is widely expected. Initial rumors suggested the introduction was to be tied to the introduction of Apple's iPhone 5, which would be LTE-compatible. However, delays in LTE chipset availability is said to likely delay the introduction of the iPhone 5, with Apple offering a tweaked iPhone 4S in June instead.
The expansion and introduction of LTE and subsequent true 4G networks won't do much in terms of enhancing telephony and voice services, but will support further expansion of data-heavy mobile systems and services, such as video and interactive gaming. The big question remaining, though, is how data-driven services are to be priced, as the expansion of tablets and smartphones have led some carriers to impose new pricing schemes based on levels of data usage, rather than the older "unlimited" plans. Too heavy a "per-bit" pricing level might drive users back to land-line based networks.
Sources: "Arun with a View," telecoms.com
"Verizon Wireless expands into nine additional markets," telecoms.com
"AT&T looks to outpace Verizon with 28.7 Mbs LTE network demo," telecoms.com
Monday, March 28, 2011
3-D on your phone?
Sprint and HTC unveiled the first "glasses-free 3-D smartphone" at a recent trade fair. The device will run on Sprint's 4G network to help with the potentially bandwidth heavy 3-D video. Why potentially? Among other things, there's very little 3-D content designed for a cellphone's small screen. Then, there's the issue of whether people want to watch (and pay for) such content.
But technology marches on.
Source: "CTIA: Can Sprint, HTC make 3D matter on the phone?" Connected Planet
But technology marches on.
Source: "CTIA: Can Sprint, HTC make 3D matter on the phone?" Connected Planet
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Top 11 Mobile Predictions for 2011
Information Week's Eric Zeman assembles his list of predictions for wireless (cell & WiFi) for the coming year.
Among them:
Full article
Among them:
- The diffusion and rise of 4G
- Smartphone dominance
- Shift to metered data, prepaid plans
- Video chat and tablets take off
Full article
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