An Ignoble Experiment

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Telrad, which bought Alvarion's WiMAX business about 14 months ago, is gearing up to sell production TD-LTE networks soon. But a company executive contends many of Telrad's customers are actually in no rush to deploy TD-LTE.

The company, which acquired Alvarion's WiMAX business in February 2013, is involved in "closely monitored" TD-LTE conversions and trials with operator customers and will have production LTE networks "in the next few months," said Chris Daniels, Telrad's general manager for North America.

I recently talked with Daniels, who told me Telrad is already running 3GPP Release 9 on the BreezeCompact base stations it inherited from Alvarion. Release 10, enabling LTE Advanced features, is pegged for availability next year. The equipment line works in the 2.x GHz and 3.x GHz bands.

Some leading WiMAX operators are quickly shifting to TD-LTE. A recent report from Signals Research observed that this transition will take several years for some operators while others are literally ripping out their mobile WiMAX networks and switching everything to TD-LTE.

However, Daniels contends that many of Telrad's WiMAX customers--both existing operators as well as Greenfield operators--have been content to wait for the arrival of production TD-LTE capability. "It frankly surprised me that our customers didn't push us to put LTE into our production networks more quickly," he said.

But Telrad's customers have instead been more concerned about "not investing in a technology that's dead," meaning they want to ensure they can upgrade from WiMAX to TD-LTE as needed, Daniels explained. "The overwhelming message from our customers is that they're more interested today in what's stable and what they can deploy and make money off of, as long as they're not buying dead technology," he added...Continued

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Today's Top News

1. Ericsson exec: VoLTE deployment delays not surprising due to network complications

By Phil Goldstein

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2. FCC's latest proposal for 3.5 GHz band includes auctioned licenses

Several U.S. wireless carriers have either pushed back their commercial launches of Voice over LTE or said they are not rushing to deploy VoLTE. According to a senior Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) executive, that's not exactly a surprise.

Johan Wibergh

"It's often underestimated what it takes to go from traditional circuit-switch voice to VoLTE," Johan Wibergh, Ericsson's executive vice president and head of its networks business unit, told FierceWirelessTech.

Wibergh noted that carriers and the wider wireless industry have spent 20 years perfecting their radio access networks and core networks for traditional voice communications. However, VoLTE requires new applications on devices, new ways for devices to interact with RAN gear and new functionality in the core network. "You don't just change that overnight," he said, adding, "When you do that, you want to make sure it's really ready."

AT&T Mobility (NYSE: T) had planned to launch VoLTE by the end of last year, but earlier this year the carrier acknowledged it had missed that deadline and has not set a new timeframe for a VoLTE launch. Similarly, Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) in 2010 said the carrier would launch VoLTE by late 2012 or early 2013, but now the carrier expects to launch VoLTE sometime this year.

Sprint (NYSE:S) will rely on its CDMA network and HD Voice technology for voice calling services for the foreseeable future, said Sprint Chief Network Officer John Saw recently. He added that while Sprint is investing in VoLTE it doesn't have a timeline for deploying the service. T-Mobile US (NYSE:TMUS) and U.S. Cellular (NYSE:USM) also have not committed to when they will launch VoLTE.

Wibergh said Ericsson is heavily involved in VoLTE deployments and testing worldwide, both on the RAN and core network sides. However, he said he would need to defer to operator partners regarding when they will deploy VoLTE.

Turning to two other hot-button network topics, Wibergh said software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) are two critical developments in the evolution of networks but noted it will take time for each to be deployed commercially. "We (in the industry) have a little bit of a tendency to overestimate how quickly things will happen in the short term and underestimate the big impact it will have long term," he said.

Both SDN and NFV are designed to bring massive efficiencies into networks by decoupling networks from underlying hardware and shifting network intelligence to software-based controllers. SDN does this by addressing gateways that route data over networks, and NFV is more focused on getting customized network software off of proprietary hardware and onto generic hardware.

In the U.S., AT&T has taken a lead on building a virtualized network via its Domain 2.0 supplier program but has not yet announced when it will begin widespread commercial deployments of the new kinds of architectures. Infonetics Research recently predicted that SDN and NFV won't be commercially deployed until 2015.

Ericsson's Wibergh said he thinks the change that is coming from both SDN and NFV will be enormous but "it will not happen tomorrow." He said the vendor was doing trials with SDN controllers last year and is continuing that this year, as well as engaging in NFV proof of concepts.

"We are completely convinced that this is where the industry will go," Wibergh said, but added that it "will take some time before you see it happening on a large scale."

Read more about: Ericsson
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By Tammy Parker

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3. ATIS releases eMBMS-based standard for LTE Multicast

As expected, the FCC issued updated proposals regarding a three-tiered access and spectrum-sharing model for the 3.5 GHz band, with a flexible approach now being proposed for the priority access tier that could include auctioned licenses under certain conditions.

The Citizens Broadband Radio Service, first proposed in December 2012, would rely upon spectrum-sharing techniques to open up a total of 150 megahertz in the 3.5 GHz band for general consumer use, carrier-grade small cell deployments, backhaul, fixed wireless broadband services and more.

A Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM) issued by the FCC at an open meeting this week targets the 3550 MHz and 3650 MHz band and also seeks comment on extending the proposed service to the 3650-3700 MHz band, which is currently used by wireless Internet service providers (WISPs) to provide broadband in rural and underserved areas.

Interoperability would be required across all three tiers throughout the 150 MHz, which would help drive economies of scale for compatible equipment.

The proposed access and sharing model comprises federal and non-federal incumbents, priority access licensees (PALs) and general authorized access users. Supporters of spectrum sharing between federal users and others in the 3.5 GHz band say it is perfectly suited for flexible licensing because federal use in this band occurs primarily around the coasts, meaning the band is less encumbered elsewhere. However, due to the high population densities along the coasts, some 60 percent of the U.S. population would be in an exclusion zone.

Under the FCC's updated plan, targeted priority access licenses would be made available for multiple uses, including mobile broadband. In addition, general authorized access use would be allowed in a reserved amount of spectrum and on an "opportunistic basis" for consumer- or business-oriented purposes, such as home wireless networking.

The FCC's approach to the priority access tier now includes PALs that could end up being auctioned. The licenses would not be restricted to certain entities but would be open to all. A 10 MHz PAL, for one census tract, would be good for one year but could be aggregated for up to five years.

"If more than one entity wants the same license for the same year, there will be an auction," Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said.

Clyburn said the goal is to establish a license with lower administrative costs that would allow for micro-targeted network deployments as well as easy aggregation "to serve a larger footprint for a longer period of time." She noted those features should attract larger carriers and encourage them to invest in equipment for the band.

Commissioner Michael O'Reilly voted for the FNPRM, but cited problems with the PALs' design. He noted that a licensee building a network during the short-term PALs licensing period would not be assured of maintaining its priority access after that time.

Also, licensing by census tracts means there would be some 74,000 licenses. "As a result, applicants could face the difficulty of bidding on thousands of licenses in order to cover any one metropolitan area," O'Reilly said.

The commissioner noted he still prefers clearing federal government users and reallocating over sharing. "The 3.5 GHz band will be one big experiment in terms of the proposed sharing design and licensing scheme," which could be altered in the future if problems crop up, he said.

Because the 3.5 GHz spectrum would be shared, a dynamic database or multiple databases must be created to manage access and operations across the three tiers. This is how shared access is managed in the TV white space (TVWS) spectrum that sits between vacant TV broadcast channels.

Advocates of spectrum liberalization supported the FCC's FNPRM, which also seeks comment on technical, auction, and allocation rules for the 3.5 GHz band.

"Opening the 3.5 GHz band would not only promote shared small cell use and rural broadband deployment, but it will benefit countless stakeholders including public safety, small businesses, educators, and consumers through improved wireless broadband access," said the Wireless Innovation Alliance, which is made up of members including Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Spectrum Bridge and Dell.

"We need to reorient the nation's spectrum policy toward more flexible and efficient approaches to harness the full potential of our spectrum resources," added WiFiForward, which is made up of members including the Arris Group, Best Buy, Comcast, the Consumer Electronics Association, Google, Microsoft, Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) and others.

CTIA Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Scott Bergmann said that while 3.5 GHz band "holds promise for a variety of services, including small cell deployment and wireless backhaul," the association believes "it is critical for the FCC to establish the right incentives and certainty to promote investment and innovation in this band."

A version of the three-tiered sharing framework for the 3.5 GHz band was first proposed by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) in a July 2012 white paper.

For more:
- see this FCC release
- see this Wireless Innovation Alliance release
- see this WiFiForward release

By Tammy Parker

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4. Drexel University pursues smart networking via WiMAX

The Alliance for Telecommunications Solutions (ATIS) released a new standard for LTE Multicast content delivery to mobile devices based upon the Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast System (eMBMS).

"Multicast is a highly efficient delivery mechanism for advancing the cloud's capability to enable many users to access the same content simultaneously--critical for streaming live events," said ATIS President and CEO Susan Miller.

She said the new ATIS standard will enable significant savings in the network resources used for live streaming. "With the wireless component typically the 'last mile' of the network, depending on the type of data requested, the use of multicast methods also offers significant relief for the wired backbone," Miller added.

ATIS said the standard features three use cases describing potential situations where mobile devices can receive multicast-based broadcasts of specific live events/video content via eMBMS, which is the LTE version of the older MBMS interface spec. The new ATIS standard also provides delivery processes, assumptions, content delivery network interconnection implications and supporting requirements.

Major U.S. operators are eyeing LTE Multicast, also called LTE Broadcast, offerings. AT&T Mobility (NYSE: T) has said it is "exploring the possibility," while Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) earlier this year demonstrated eMBMS over its LTE network in conjunction with the Super Bowl. However, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo has indicated that a commercial offering will have to wait, saying it will take "a year or two before the chipsets are in the handsets and that gets proliferated throughout the marketplace."

ATIS' membership includes nearly 200 companies. The group is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and is 3GPP's North American Organizational Partner.

For more:
- see this ATIS release

Read more about: Verizon, LTE Broadcast
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By Tammy Parker

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5. Range Networks' OpenBTS enables helicopter-based GSM network

Drexel University in Philadelphia has joined a handful of other universities using WiMAX technology in an effort to meet the data transfer demands of U.S. research institutions.

WiMAX, which is being dismissed and discarded in many parts of the world in favor of TD-LTE technology, still plays a crucial role in a National Science Foundation program called the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI).

The program, started in the mid-1990s, provides a virtual laboratory for networking and distributed systems research and education. According to the GENI website, experimenters can obtain compute resources from locations around the United States; connect compute resources using Layer 2 networks in topologies best suited to their experiments; install custom software or custom operating systems on these compute resources; control how network switches in their experiment handle traffic flows; and run their own Layer 3 and above protocols by installing protocol software in their compute resources and by providing flow controllers for their switches.

In addition to Drexel, eight other research centers--including Columbia, UCLA, Rutgers and Temple--are expanding the wireless capabilities of GENI via WiMAX, said a Drexel news blog.

A 19.5-foot antenna mast designed by Drexel electrical engineers now adorns the university's 205-foot Millennium Hall dormitory. Researchers intend to use the WiMAX deployment as they verify coverage models and measure gaps between performance predictions and actual behavior, said Moshe Kam, a professor in Drexel's College of Engineering, who was quoted in the Drexel blog.

The WiMAX installation is also key to making Drexel a part of the national GENI research network.

"Researchers from Drexel and other institutions in the GENI program will be able to request time for their experiments on nodes installed in other institutions. In this manner they would be able to compare performance of the same system, with the same technical parameters, in different geographical environments and electromagnetic-signal propagation conditions," Kam said. He added the research should help refine existing propagation and performance models and improve future commercial designs.

As part of the GENI program, Drexel will also be working with nearby Temple and Rutgers universities to explore the capabilities of a "smart WiMAX" network that could adjust to accommodate broadband demand using equipment at all three sites.

Kam predicted that such smart networking will one day be crucial to making "near-optimal use of distributed resources" and will be used widely by cable and Internet providers.

For more:
- see this Drexel blog entry

By Tammy Parker

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