An Ignoble Experiment

1. Report: AT&T, Sprint driving spike in femtocell shipments

The past few months have seen a number of announcements from mobile operators and neutral-host providers that have deployed DAS and Wi-Fi networks in a variety of sports venues worldwide. Of course, the need for improved connectivity in such locations is no secret to any fan who has tried unsuccessfully to text or call someone or surf the Web from their mobile device while attending a live sporting event.

But one thing I hadn't considered is how the concentration of tens of thousands of mobile users into a restricted area such as a stadium reflects the conditions mobile operators increasingly face as wireless becomes an even more pervasive communications medium, not just for communications between people but also for the Internet of Things.

I recently interviewed Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and CMO of Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), who explained that in many ways ballparks and sports arenas are a "microcosm," providing a look into the challenges that will be faced by wireless operators over the next five to 10 years.

Network engineers from Qualcomm Technologies Inc. (QTI) have been working directly with Major League Baseball's MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) unit to address connectivity challenges in U.S. ballparks, an effort that should provide a lot of lessons not just for the MLB but the wireless industry at large. You can learn more about Qualcomm's work with MLBAM in FierceBroadbandWireless' latest On the Hot Seat Q&A feature. --Tammy

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By Tammy Parker

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2. AT&T's $1.2B bid for Leap is mostly about spectrum

Shipments of femtocells, also referred to as indoor small cells, are picking up more than previously expected due to planned deployments by AT&T (NYSE:T), Sprint (NYSE:S), Softbank, Telefonica and Vodafone, according to ABI Research.

One year ago, ABI reported that operators were sitting on stacks of femtocell inventory that was slow to budge, but it predicted the market would pick up from 2013 onwards once large operators began refreshing their inventories. ABI now expects shipments of enterprise and consumer femtocells will reach 3.8 million units this year, growing to 5.7 million units in 2014.

Helping drive this uptick is AT&T's Project Velocity (or VIP), announced last November. As part of the effort, AT&T intends to deploy more than 40,000 small cells, both indoors and outdoors, through 2014. The company has updated much of its network to accommodate deployment of HSPA+ metrocells around the country but has said the rollout of more advanced multi-standard metrocells will have to wait till 2014.

"While 3G indoor small cells will continue to represent the vast majority of shipments, it is LTE indoor small cells which are expected to ramp up significantly starting in 2013," said ABI.

Earlier this year, Infonetics Research also predicted strong femtocell shipments this year, driven by strong 3G femto sales and fast-ramping 4G femtocells. The firm predicted 4G femtocell revenue will expand at a 165 percent 5-year compound annual growth rate from 2012 to 2017.

Regarding outdoor small cells, ABI is forecasting shipments will exhibit year-on-year unit growth of 125 percent during 2014, reaching a value of almost $3.6 billion. The firm noted shipments of LTE outdoor small cells will be driven by operators such as AT&T, Sprint, Verizon (NYSE:VZ) and China Mobile.

Further, ABI predicts that the number of carrier Wi-Fi access points shipped during 2014 will be three times the number shipped during 2012.

For more:
- see this ABI release

Read more about: Sprint, Wi-Fi access point, femtocell
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By Tammy Parker

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3. CloudNFV developing NFV prototype for cloud-based virtualization

AT&T's (NYSE:T) plan to take over prepaid wireless operator Leap Wireless (NASDAQ:LEAP) is primarily about gaining much-needed spectrum for mobile broadband services.

AT&T announced last week that it will buy Leap, operator of the Cricket brand of no-contract wireless service, in a cash deal worth $1.2 billion, or $15 per share. Leap shareholders will also receive contingent rights to net proceeds from the sale of Leap's 700 MHz A block spectrum in Chicago, which Leap purchased for $204 million in August 2012.

AT&T intends to retain the Cricket brand and expand Cricket's presence to additional U.S. cities, much as T-Mobile (NYSE:TMUS) is doing with the recently acquired MetroPCS, which had been Leap's chief rival in the no-contract space. AT&T has some 107 million wireless customers, but only 7 million are prepaid, so Leap's 5 million prepaid users will boost AT&T's play in no-contract services.

Leap operates a legacy CDMA network and has deployed LTE to a coverage area of 21 million POPs. But average speeds on its LTE network are only around 4 Mbps due to the operator's spectrum constraints. AT&T will likely shutter Leap's existing CDMA and LTE networks, refarming the spectrum for use with its own HSPA and LTE services much as T-Mobile is doing with the CDMA and LTE networks it gained when it acquired MetroPCS.

Clearly the main attraction in this deal is Leap's spectrum holdings, which include 1.9 GHz PCS licenses and 1.7/2.1 GHz AWS licenses covering 137 million POPs. The spectrum is said to be largely complementary to AT&T's existing spectrum licenses.

AT&T said it intends to put Leap's unutilized spectrum--which covers 41 million people--to use in furthering its own LTE deployment "and providing additional capacity and enhanced network performance for customers' growing mobile Internet usage."

AT&T currently controls less spectrum in aggregate than either Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ) or Sprint (NYSE:S) and even holds less spectrum per subscriber than T-Mobile, according to Jonathan Chaplin, analyst with New Street Research. Chaplin, who was quoted by the Wall Street Journal, said AT&T "is much worse off than anyone on spectrum per subscriber."

AT&T's offer for Leap involved a huge price premium, some 88 percent above Leap's closing price of $7.98 per share prior to the deal's announcement. This was probably necessary to forestall competing bids from likely rivals such as T-Mobile US and Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH).

"The only real question for Leap is whether AT&T is the best and final offer," said telecommunications analyst Craig Moffett, who was quoted by the New York Times.

The deal is subject to review by the FCC as well as the Department of Justice, which in 2011 scuttled AT&T's $39 billion bid to acquire T-Mobile. If the Leap transaction closes within the next six to nine months, as AT&T predicts, it is unclear what effect that may have on the planned auction of 600 MHz TV broadcast spectrum next year.

The DoJ has suggested ways for the FCC to restrict auction participation by market leaders AT&T and Verizon Wireless in order to ensure Sprint and T-Mobile have ample opportunities to bid. With auction rules up in the air, Leap appears to offer AT&T the best opportunity to access vast amounts of additional spectrum, even if it is not the attractive low-band spectrum that is particularly useful for transmitting broadband data inside buildings and over long distances.

"There's not much that AT&T can do anymore in the United States. The rest of the wireless business is probably off limits for regulatory reasons," said Moffett.

For more:
- see this AT&T release
- see this New York Times article
- see this Wall Street Journal article
- see this USA Today article

Read more about: Spectrum, PCS
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By Tammy Parker

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4. Oceus demos balloons for public-safety LTE use

A small consortium of companies backing CloudNFV--which is dedicated to showing how standard cloud computing tools and principles can be used to implement Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)--expects to start carrier demonstrations of basic functionality in early September.

CloudNFV emerged from stealth mode last week, and its six founding members remain publicly unnamed. They are IT vendors rather than large telecom equipment vendors, CloudNFV founder, Tom Nolle, told SDNCentral.

Metaswitch Networks, which was not a founding member, has joined the project as well, said Nolle, a software analyst and president of Cimi, which is facilitating the group's activities.

NFV is being developed by an Industry Specification Group that was initiated in January 2013 within the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). The group aims to develop requirements and architecture specifications for hardware and software infrastructure to support virtualized functions as well as guidelines for developing network functions.

Though all CloudNFV's participating companies are members of the NFV ISG, CloudNFV is neither sanctioned nor associated with NFV ISG or ETSI and emphasizes that it does not want to create standards. Rather, CloudNFV claims its goal is "to build a prototype or demonstration model of NFV based on the work of the body."

The CloudNFV implementation is expected to contain both commercial and open-source elements but will be based on standard interfaces described by NFV as the specification evolves. The group noted that its architecture is based on OpenStack, but the majority of deployment and operationalization software is not open source.

The group's first project will be a cloud-based implementation of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) infrastructure, something Metaswitch has already tackled via its open-source Project Clearwater effort, which launched earlier this year.

Participation in CloudNFV is currently by invitation only. The group said that after it starts beta demos in September, it will expand its capabilities and broaden its scope of participation in early October.

"The goal is to provide a working prototype before making any further public comment, and to then offer insights from and demonstrations of that prototype in connection with the NFV ISG activity," said CloudNFV.

For more:
- see this CloudNFV webpage
- see this Nolle blog entry
- see this SDNCentral article
- see this Light Reading article

Special Report: SDN: Ericsson, Huawei and others consider virtualizing the mobile network

Read more about: ETSI, CloudNFV
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By Tammy Parker

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5. Time Warner offers free Wi-Fi during baseball's All-Star Week

A high-altitude balloon platform designed for public-safety communications got a tryout earlier this month as Oceus Networks aimed to show how an LTE-enabled balloon platform could be used to quickly deliver broadband services to first responders following an emergency or natural disaster.

Oceus Networks President Randy Fuerst on-site filling one of the four balloons used in the trial. Credit: Oceus Networks

Oceus partnered with high-altitude balloon specialist Space Data on the trial platform. Space Data's SkySite communications system housed an Oceus Networks Xiphos LTE network in a box to provide broadband connectivity.

The team used Band 14 data modems and smartphones from Motorola Solutions to connect with the airborne LTE network. The payload, launched in northern Colorado, traveled nearly 200 miles and reached an altitude of 75,000 feet.

A blog entry from Oceus CEO Doug Smith noted that the test coincidentally occurred on World UFO Day and, not surprisingly, sparked calls and emails to local TV stations from residents who saw the platform in the sky.

The experiment was designed to measure the interference of high-altitude airborne 700 MHz Band 14 LTE systems on existing ground-based cellular networks and support future first responder broadband initiatives, said Oceus.

The company noted the demo supports the FCC's Deployable Aerial Communications Architecture (DACA) initiative, which is addressing the use of DACAs to provide communications when terrestrial communications infrastructure is severely damaged or unavailable. Oceus said it is compiling results from its recent test and expects to formally file a report with the FCC in its DACA docket.

The Colorado test was conducted in coordination with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) program. PSCR has been instrumental in performing interoperability research on behalf of the First Responders Network Authority (FirstNet), which is charged with building the National Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN).

The use of high-altitude balloons for broadband communications attracted considerable publicity last month when Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced its Project Loon, an effort to bring airborne broadband service to rural and remote areas. The company launched 30 balloons for an initial pilot in the Canterbury area of New Zealand. Google contends it is feasible to deploy a ring of radio-equipped balloons to fly around the globe on stratospheric winds 12 miles above the earth and deliver Internet access at 3G or better speeds.

For more:
- see this Oceus release and this blog entry
- see this KUSA-TV report

Slideshow: FirstNet's ace in the hole is the PSCR labs

Related articles:
Political issues, spying concerns could drag at Google's Project Loon
Google contends Project Loon, balloon-powered broadband, is crazy enough to work
PSCR labs ready to share test results with FirstNet

Read more about: FCC, Oceus Networks
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By Tammy Parker

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SPOTLIGHT ON... Wi-Fi hotspot operator Gowex buys marketing agency

Time Warner Cable lit up 1,000 Wi-Fi hotspots across Manhattan and said it is temporarily offering free access to all 2,700 of its hotspots in the New York City area in celebration of the MLB All-Star Game, which will be played July 16 in the borough of Queens. The free service is available during MLB All-Star Week.

In addition, through July 16 Time Warner-branded food trucks equipped with Wi-Fi hotspots will appear, with MLB All-Stars giving out complimentary baseball paraphernalia and regional cuisine. The trucks charge a suggested $5 donation, with proceeds going to the the Robin Hood Relief Fund to support those impacted by Hurricane Sandy.

Last month, Time Warner announced that it would deploy up to 10,000 Wi-Fi access points in New York by year's end, using gear from Cisco and Ruckus Wireless. It has already installed 2,700 Wi-Fi access points in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island.

Regular TWC WiFi Hotspot service is available at no additional cost to the cable company's customers who subscribe to Standard Internet plans and above. Time Warner customers also can access more than 75,000 TWC WiFi Hotspots across the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut at no cost.

For more:
- see this Time Warner release and blog post
- see this FierceCable article

Read more about: hotspot, Time Warner Cable
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Also Noted

This week's sponsor is Cisco.

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Madrid-based Wi-Fi hotspot operator Gowex acquired digital marketing agency Ideup. "With this acquisition, which will become an integral part of the Gowex Mobile subsidiary, Gowex has completed its value proposition for the digital user: following the integration of Ideup, multi-screen experiences, user environments, advertising channels and an entire digital universe will be available to Gowex Wi-Fi users," said Gowex. The company offers free Wi-Fi worldwide in more than 70 cities, including Manhattan and San Francisco, via a public-private partnership model. For more, see this Gowex release.

Quick news from around the Web.

> Survey: Rise of VoLTE will impact operator IMS strategies. Release

> European regulators increasingly back the idea of "fewer and stronger" operators. Article

> SK Telecom signs 150,000 LTE-A subs in two weeks, while LG+ plans its LTE-A upgrade. Article

> Dialogic says its BorderNet Virtualized Session Border Controller accelerates carrier migration strategy toward the cloud and NFV. Release

> O2 adds UK fiber backhaul capacity from Virgin Media Business ahead of its LTE launch. Article

> NTT DoCoMo has brought LTE to the peak of Mount Fuji. Article

And finally… Remains of a 15th century hospital once used to treat plague victims have been found in the basement of Apple's new store in Madrid. Article

Qualcomm's Chandrasekher talks baseball, hot dogs and small cells

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