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Self-Organizing Network solution tested in live LTE network

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TeliaSonera and Ericsson have recently provided Self-Organizing Network (SON) functionality in a live Long Term Evolution (LTE) network.

According to Ericsson, managing neighbor cell relations to ensure optimal traffic handling to each device is one of the most labor-intensive areas for a mobile operator. The introduction of LTE multiplies the effort needed in this area for operators. The standardized Automatic Neighbor Relations (ANR) feature is now being introduced as the first feature in the overall SON solution.

ANR automatically sets up necessary neighbor relationships based on actual network conditions, thereby preventing failed handovers due to missing neighbors. In this way, ANR continuously secures and improves network performance. It also reduces the operators’ need for manual planning and the creation of neighbor relations.

Last week, TeliaSonera and Ericsson are said to have successfully tested the ANR feature in a live 4G network in Sweden. The ANR feature has now been proved in a live network for the first time with full user-equipment support.

Ulf Ewaldsson, Vice President and Head of Product Area Radio at Ericsson, says: “Our cooperation with TeliaSonera paves the way for a technology breakthrough. Thanks to this, operators will be able to handle handovers much more efficiently between neighboring cells in the LTE network. The network will automatically ensure that each user gets the best possible coverage and service performance.”

The tests in the 4G/LTE network were based on Ericsson LTE radio access and Ericsson Evolved Packet Core (EPC) packet core. The ANR feature primarily provides a function in the radio access network with policy planning and visualization in OSS and some functional interaction with the core network.

Gloves for the tech-savvy burglar

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Gloves for the tech-savvy burglar

Perhaps it’s coming towards the time of year when you want a twist on the traditional rubbish Christmas present. If so, I give you…conductive gloves for the chilled and chilly touchscreen user in your life.

 

First off these little beauties: Fivepoint Gloves.

They’ve got conductive fingertips, see, whereas normal gloves have not. For some reason I find this picture mildly disturbing. As if someone intent on a little light breaking and entering had decided to check his messages at the same time.

They’re not the only ones on the market. Here’s some more from Isotoner.

These look like the sort of gloves your father-in-law might go motoring in. Cosy, warm, and ideal for stabbing angrily at the satnav as he attempts to avoid the traffic on his journey home on Boxing Day.

Then there’s these Touchscreengloves available on Firebox. These are a chunky knit, sensible option for those suffering from frozen digital extremities, but still in need of a fix of the small screeen.

Finally, and definitely the most high tech of solutions…these little humdingers, also from Etre (the company behind the Fivepoint Glove), which would just look a bit, well, odd if you were doing anything other than browsing your iPad inside of a fridge.

 

Huawei wins ‘world’s first’ commercial frame contract covering LTE TDD technology in Poland

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Huawei has announced that it has been awarded a frame contract to deploy the world’s first commercial LTE TDD network for Aero2, said to be Poland’s leading mobile broadband operator. With Huawei’s end-to-end LTE TDD/EPC (Long Term Evolution/Evolved Packet Core) solution, the network will allow ultra-speed data rates to Aero2’s subscribers. The network will become operational in early 2011.

“Aero2 is committed to providing high-quality mobile broadband services for our customers and introducing cutting-edge telecom technologies in Poland,” said Adam Kurianski, the President of Aero2. “We are confident that with Huawei’s advantages in LTE technology, we will be able to offer users a rich communications experience with the deployment of the LTE TDD network.”

“This milestone demonstrates that LTE TDD technology is already mature, stable and reliable for large-scale deployment,” said Ying Weimin, President of LTE Network, Huawei. “Based on Huawei’s LTE unified platform supporting both LTE FDD and LTE TDD, we are confident that the network will contribute to Areo2’s success in the mobile broadband era.”

With their long-term partnership, Aero2 and Huawei says they have achieved a series of breakthroughs in LTE, benefiting from Huawei’s LTE FDD and TDD unified platform. In September, 2010, the world’s first commercial LTE FDD network, on 1800MHz band, was launched in Poland. Recent LTE TDD lab testing with Aero2 in Poland is said to have shown that download throughput rate reached up to 100Mb/s.

Get bullish on pricing, squeeze the vendors

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Get bullish on pricing, squeeze the vendors

E-Plus analysis shows way forward for challenger operators

“Challenger” operators in mature markets could boost revenues and revenue market share by installing low cost networking equipment and pursuing speed and device-tiered pricing, rather than volume based tariffs, according to an analysis of E-Plus’ business by Nordic analyst Rewheel.

Rewheel’s Pal Zarandy said that E-Plus’ favourable spectrum mix in the 1800 MHz and 2.1 GHz bands, combined with new low cost ZTE SDR-based radio network equipment, could give E-Plus a competitive advantage over the “major” German operators (O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile) if it gets its marketing and pricing correct.

 

 

Rewheel said that E-Plus had been holding back investments into advanced technologies like HSPA, but late last year KPN’s management declared a strategy U-turn and in December 2009 teamed up with ZTE to accelerate the national rollout of a very cost efficient, high capacity HSPA+ network. Later on, during the spring E-Plus secured valuable spectrum resources among others in the 1800 MHz and 2.1 GHz band, well suited for the low infrastructure cost, low terminal subsidisation strategy, Zarandy said.

The strategy mirrored that of Telenor Group in Hungary, Zaranady said, where the operator switched out Ericsson equipment for ZTE, giving it a much lower cost base.

“Some people are still hesitant over the quality and performance of the cheaper equipment,” Zaranady said, “but we are not concerned about that at all.”

“What we are trying to say is that for challenger operators it’s  worth considering radical steps on the supply chain side – as the network in becoming part of the competitive differentiation. If you can implement bullish pricing and optimise your network to swap to lower cost vendors then you can really get competitive advantage,” Zarandy said.

E-Plus has a distinct advantage in that it has plenty of spectrum, with four UMTS carriers, which means that it can deliver a very good user experience based on HSPA and HSPA+. That means that not only can it delay LTE investments for many years, but also that it needs to operate with much lower device subsidies.

But it is in pricing strategies that Zarandy thinks E-Plus is missing a trick. So far, E-Plus has pursued volume based pricing, but Rewheel thinks that by instead offering speed or device-tiered tariffs, E-Plus could accelerate its annual revenue growth rate to more that 6%, propelling the company to 25% revenue market share.

Zarandy said that device-based pricing is technically difficult, as it means limiting SIM use to defined devices. But speed based tariffing is already operating in many markets, he added.

The motivation behind Rewheel’s analysis was to put E-Plus’s new strategy to the test and find out how far E-Plus could reach, if they leveraged their spectrum and supply chain based competitive advantages by taking a more aggressive data retail approach. The research report is a result of a bottom-up market demand forecast and dynamic network dimensioning projecting key financial indicators such as Capex to sales, EBITDA margin and EBIT for different market size scenarios, different E-Plus market shares and different data tariff pricing strategies including volume-tiers, speed-tiers and device category based tiers.

Rewheel said it carried out the research into E-Plus on its own initiative, and does not hold E-Plus as a client. It carried out the research to  “put E-Plus’s new strategy to the test and find out how far E-Plus could reach, if they leveraged their spectrum and supply chain based competitive advantages by taking a more aggressive data retail approach”.

The key outcomes of Rewheel’s mobile data impact analysis are the following:

  • Contrary to the common industry belief, missing out from the popular 800 MHz spectrum will not cause E-Plus a significant competitive handicap because their unique position in the 1800 MHz and 2.1 GHz bands will allow for rolling out a continuous high capacity mobile data network across their target footprint
  • E-Plus’s data traffic, driven by video, will grow by a CAGR of 61% and the average monthly usage of smartphones, tablets and notebooks will exceed 4, 11, and 13 GB respectively
  • E-Plus could comfortably accommodate the astronomic traffic increase on its HSPA 2.1 GHz network while providing a good user experience and without any significant LTE investments till 2017
  • E-Plus’s network modernization program will prevent a Capex to sales hike during the rollout heavy period of 2010-2012. The new low cost, high capacity ZTE network can accommodate the traffic growth with a long term Capex to sales of 10%-12%, despite rolling out new 3G coverage sites near the edges of their footprint
  • In the baseline scenario E-Plus’s mobile revenues will grow by a CAGR of 3.5% outperforming the market (CAGR 2%). Its revenue share will grow from 15% to 21% (connection share will grow from 17% to 24%)
  • E-Plus’s mobile data revenue share out of total E-Plus revenues will grow from 4% to 52%
  • By moving away from restrictive volume tiered tariffs and instead offering speed or device-tiered tariffs, E-Plus could fully unlock its data growth potential and accelerate its annual revenue growth rate to more that 6%, propelling the company to 25% revenue market share

Dowload the Rewheel report summary here.

Sybase 365 adds PathFinder service

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Sybase 365, a global specialist in mobile messaging and mobile commerce services, has announced the addition of the PathFinder Service — a GSMA-managed service operated by Neustar — to its IPX (IP eXchange) service, enabling operators to support route identification and deliver interoperability for all voice and data services in converged IP environments. 

GSMA PathFinder is a Number Translation Service that facilitates IP interoperability by translating telephone numbers to IP-based addresses. Based on carrier Electronic Numbering (ENUM), PathFinder is the source for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) resolution on the IPX.

“PathFinder extends our leadership in IP services, by addressing the pressing issue of Mobile Number Portability and next generation voice and data services interoperability,” said Gregory Dunn, vice president, product management, Sybase.  “Today, by offering PathFinder as part of our IPX service, our voice operator customers don’t have to worry about inefficient routing of traffic, rejected calls or having to put their own number look-up service in place.”

“The transition from the voice-centric circuit switched world to an all-Internet Protocol (IP) environment brings both opportunities and challenges for operators.” said Adrian Dodd, senior director, Managed Services at the GSMA.  “We worked with Neustar to provide a simple, globally scalable, standards-based solution to interconnect interoperability, which will help reduce costs within the industry. This solution is PathFinder.”
           
“PathFinder unleashes the power of IP-services enabling people, networks and devices to connect more efficiently,” said Steve Edwards, senior vice president, Carrier Services at Neustar. “By selecting PathFinder, Sybase brings together three industry-leading organisations with complementary global expertise, extensive telecommunications experience, and a comprehensive set of IP capabilities. Sybase will now be able to offer their customers the ability to consume borderless communication services, while spurring innovation and increasing collaboration.”

In partnership with Telecom New Zealand International (TNZI), Sybase 365 runs the world’s first fully operational IPX Voice hub, a key offering on the Sybase  IPX 365 platform —a full suite of IPX services designed to serve both the fixed and mobile network operator communities with premium quality of service and security required in the conversion to IP networks. Sybase IPX 365 full suite of services includes global data roaming, messaging hubs, IPX Voice, and roaming signalling.

CPNI announces mobile payment messaging hub in Serbia

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CPNI, a provider of mobile commerce solutions, has announced that its Phone Authorized Transfer (PAT) mobile payment messaging hub platform is now available in Serbia. The local partner is now committed to provide mobile payment messaging hub for and between institutions providing mobile payments.

CPNI’s Serbian partner is engaged with various large organizations in Serbia to offer mobile phone based payment services. These services include mobile P2P payments, mobile banking, pre-paid payments for utilities such as electricity and water and also covers high transaction volume operations such as payments for taxi services.

As a Trusted Service Provider, the partner will host the PAT component responsible for orchestrating mobile transactions and route communications between the system components, including Financial Institutions in other European countries and around the world. This approach provides a single point of contact for each Financial Institution, ensuring the use of effective security, while providing the benefits of an open network.

The partner will also provide other support services required for the implementation of mobile payments. These services could range from outsourced operation of the required server based applications to any integration in the applicable financial institution.

CPNI says it distinguishes itself from other mobile commerce providers by offering unique, secure, global solutions, with a specific emphasis on remote mobile payments. CPNI solutions have the ability to use multiple identifiers and multiple channels such as a mobile phone, the web or an ATM, which supplies the flexibility required to provide financial institutions with a comprehensive P2P solution. In providing for payments to recipients regardless of whether or not they have a bank account or whether or not their financial institution participates with the P2P service, CPNI claims its solutions dramatically increase the number of potential customers.

A choice approach to personalisation

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Mobile Operators Can Drive Revenues by Adding that ‘Personal Touch’

By Stuart Cochran, Chief Technology Officer, Evolving Systems

Operators are desperately looking for new ways of generating incremental revenues from their existing subscriber base. One potentially lucrative route is through the delivery of personalised services and in particular the offer of number choice to subscribers. A recent survey from Evolving Systems revealed that more than 30% of prepaid mobile phone subscribers across the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain would be prepared to pay a premium for the ability to select their own number – depending on cost.

These figures should certainly give wireless operators food for thought. If operators could convert these kinds of proportions of their prepaid mobile subscriber base to number personalisation, they would gain themselves a significant incremental revenue source.

There clearly is a potential market in these key European countries for personalised number selection and it is equally clear that that market remains largely unexploited so far. The survey finds that only a small proportion of prepaid users have ever been offered the opportunity to select their own mobile number. Just 13% of prepaid French users (and only 21% of those in Italy), for example, had been given this option when buying a prepaid SIM.

Available Options
At the moment, when prepaid users are offered number choice, it is typically provided through a retail store. In the survey, this was the most popular route in every country surveyed apart from Germany. Very few subscribers have ever been offered a choice of numbers via their mobile phone screen. In Italy, just 3% of those prepaid users, who had ever been given the chance to select their own mobile number, had been offered it in this way.

Again, this presents an excellent opportunity for Europe’s operators to develop new revenue streams by changing the mode of engagement for number selection. Operators should consider that users are most susceptible to these offers and would most like to receive them when they first get a new phone, and they want to be able to make these choices on-device – not by having to go into a retailer and engage with a salesperson.

Our survey showed that in the UK, selecting a number via the phone’s screen was clearly preferred to going into a retail store and in every other country surveyed, it was at least competitive with that option.

The problem from the operator’s perspective is that it is difficult for them from both a technical and logistical point of view to tap into the potential of this approach especially if they are pre-provisioning their SIM cards as a means of activation.

With this SIM card distribution model, the telephone number is associated with the card early in the process – typically weeks before going on sale. This means that the number has to be paired with a specific SIM card in various systems on the operator’s network. Typically, it is even printed on the packaging containing the card. From the perspective of operator and user alike, this is unsatisfactory as it mitigates against flexibility in number selection.

A New Way Forward
Fortunately, a new approach has now emerged, which allows numbers to be allocated dynamically, providing an opportunity to offer number choice to prepaid subscribers at the time of first use via the handset. Not only is this more convenient for the subscriber, the user experience is further enhanced as the choice of number is much wider.

A menu containing a series of questions can be presented to the user on the handset when the SIM is first switched on. This provides a list of available numbers and can also include a search for vanity or golden numbers, which correspond to letters on the keypad and spell particular words.

Also, because the system is in the operator’s network and connected to its IT infrastructure, users have access through their handset to a greater range of numbers than the retailer has available on-site.

The time of first use also presents an ideal opportunity to offer additional, value-added services to new subscribers. The same handset-based dialogue that supports number choice can also be used to offer other services, from cheaper home-based calls to bundled voice tariffs for families, further increasing the incremental revenue opportunity.

Today, with the emergence and ongoing success of mobile broadband fuelled by the availability of new kinds of connected device that connect with the wireless broadband network, the market dynamic is changing yet again. All of these devices contain SIM cards and offer operators an opportunity for engagement similar to that offered by traditional mobile handsets. The main point of distinction is that this engagement needs to be offered to devices with a wide range of different form factors.

It is critical here that the chosen SIM provisioning solution allows operators to be both device- and location-aware. There is a major difference between the kind of marketing message suitable for delivery to a feature phone connected to a GPRS network and that appropriate for a mobile broadband network connected iPad with a large colour screen.

The best solutions will fit the engagement point to the device type. For example, users of connected devices should automatically be taken to an easy-to-use web landing page that they can personalise according to their specific requirements, allowing them to choose suitable price plans and data limits. This browser-based approach also enables the operator to promote its brand and deliver high-impact and highly persuasive marketing campaigns.

Moving Ahead
Today, European mobile operators, locked in ever-more intense competition, need to find ways to differentiate themselves and drive business advantage. The delivery of personalised services and solutions supported by flexible SIM card provisioning is increasingly helping operators to achieve this key strategic objective.

Is the mobile industry about to enter a period of pricing power?

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Do you feel as though operators are about to enter a period of pricing power?

That’s the view of Stephen Howard, Head of Global Telecoms, Media and Technology Research at HSBC. Howard said that for the first time “ever” the mobile industry could be in a position of pricing power – ie the ability to increase prices and not affect demand for the product – mainly due to the fact that scarcity of spectrum and bandwidth is now becoming an issue.

Howard said that in his view operator capex will have to rise over the near term, as operators have to address the capacity demands they are facing. That would normally be bad news for investors, he said, as it would be assumed to have a negative impact on free cash flow. But in this case the increase in capex would only be a return to the mean.

But also, Howard is encouraged by the sense that scarity will become a factor, meaning that operators could enter a period of pricing power.

It’s a different story from the one we’re used to hearing about mobile operators – the one that says that prices are doomed to fall as operators’ attempts to differentiate in any other manner are made irrelevant by over the top service providers.

It’s also a view that relies on the view of exponentially rising data demand, as Howard himself called it, and a limit on the ability of alternative models (WiFi, femto, etc) to meet it.

Are there any examples of operators out there that have raised prices or are raising prices, confident in the value of their product? I suppose you could cite the hefty tariffs operators attach to the iPhone – but that is surely as much about the perceived value of the device as any one operator’s own value.

So, pricing power… what do you think?

Ericsson IPX to become NFC Trusted Services Manager

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Ericsson IPX, the Ericsson business that acts as a payments, messaging and services broker between operators and service providers, has said that it wants to become a Trusted Service Manager (TSM) for mobile NFC payments.

Mattias Johansson, Product Manager, Ericsson IPX, said, “We will launch a TSM brokering service in Europe in 2011. We have some pilots that we are workng with in different markets, and service providers are building proof of concept, but technically we are ready to go.”

A Trusted Service Manager (TSM) in NFC payments is an entity in the ecosystem that sits independent of the mobile operators, and of the banks and financial institutions. Its role is to distribute, provision and activate the applications and services of service providers (such as a credit card application on a device) over mobile networks, but without taking part in the actual transactions themselves.

The idea of the TSM is that it will free up the service providers and the operators from individual contracts, but also conflicts of interest over control over services.

Johansson said that Ericsson IPX, which already acts as a pSMS, MMS and Online Payments provider, is in an ideal position to become a TSM in the NFC payments market – when it goes commercial.

So far, most of the players who are providing, or have said they intend to provide, TSM services have come from the smartcard community, such as Gemalto, or from the payment processing market. Johansson said that he thinks that Ericsson IPX is the first IPX provider to state that it will enter the NFC TSM market.

“We are looking at expanding our family of brokering services, and we see 2011 being the year for NFC launches in Europe,” he said. “There have been a couple of false starts on NFC, but from a standards point of view most of the missing pieces have been defined.”

“The last missing piece is if you are a service provider and you want to launch a service to reach a market, to put an app on the SIM card you need to integrate with all the operators in a single market, and that’s the problem that Ericsson IPX is solving in other industries, currently. So we see ourselves expanding on the IPX role to build on our existing relationships and offer them a single integration and single contract to reach all the operators on the market. It’s a way to make it easier for service providers and for operators to launch NFC services.”

Ericsson IPX currently has connections with 100 mobile operators in 26 countries, and a thousand customers.

The European Payments Council (EPC) and the GSMA recently published a joint paper titled ‘Mobile Contactless Payments Service Management Roles – Requirements and Specifications’. The paper included an outline of the role of the Trusted Service Manager, which is to support banks and mobile operators aiming to promote mobile contactless payments. It also defined a minimum set of requirements for a TSM to interface with banks and mobile operators.

Tekelec launches enhanced Performance Management Solution for 3G and LTE mobile data

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Tekelec, a broadband data management company, today launched its enhanced network performance management system, Performance Intelligence Center Release 7.0.  The solution is said to give service providers new abilities to cost-effectively improve surveillance, troubleshooting and reporting across networks, services and subscribers in 3G and Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks.

Release 7.0 incorporates Tekelec’s Intelligent Data Management (IDM) approach to cost efficiently monitor the explosion of mobile data traffic in a ‘flexible and dynamic way’.  Yankee Group forecasts that by 2013, mobile data traffic will swell to nearly 18 times 2009 levels – while mobile data revenues remain essentially flat – requiring new solutions to manage both subscribers’ quality of experience (QoE) and the data explosion, says Tekelec. 

IDM provides visibility to all mobile data activities through traffic characterization and mobile data analysis.  With IDM, service providers can also tune the system to provide deep traffic analysis for subsets of traffic deemed most important – such as all traffic for certain users, traffic related to a particular service, troubleshooting a particular error, or general sampling across the subscriber base, says Tekelec.

“Intelligent Data Management increases network efficiency, lowers operational costs and proactively combats subscriber churn by identifying issues before they reach the customer service desk,” said Ted Julian, principal analyst in Yankee Group’s Anywhere Network research group.  “Tekelec is introducing new intelligence to measure service, device and network performance so service providers can better enable the high quality of service that subscribers require.”

Performance Intelligence Center, previously called the Integrated Applications Solution (IAS), acts as a central vantage point for service providers to view, manage and optimize their networks, services and the customer experience.  The Performance Intelligence solution collects data and provides analytics reports across a variety of network technologies including SIGTRAN/SS7, GSM, GPRS, UMTS, VoIP, IMS and LTE networks to identify potential trouble spots, understand usage patterns and provide actionable intelligence. 

The solution integrates with Tekelec’s EAGLE 5 session management platform and its Diameter Signaling Router (DSR) to provide efficient and scalable probeless monitoring. When deployed in tandem with Tekelec’s Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF), the Performance Intelligence Center creates a feedback loop to continually optimize the network performance based on dynamic business and policy rules, says the company.

 
Other enhancements to Release 7.0 include:

Detailed on-demand analysis of subscriber usage for customer troubleshooting resolution, configured to a set time period.  This allows operators to temporarily dedicate additional resources on individual subscriber to identify problems and confirm when they are resolved.

Continuous detailed monitoring of VIP subscribers or high-value services, as defined by service providers.

Improved data visualization and usability with the addition of critical reporting analytics features, including the:

Global Roaming Quality (GRQ)-certified roaming intelligence portfolio, which provides visibility into the performance and volume of voice, data and SMS roaming activities.  The solution also supports the identification of roaming steering activities to monitor if subscribers are registered to preferred carriers when roaming out of their home networks.

Interconnect intelligence portfolio, which manages high-value, revenue-generating inter-carrier traffic.

Improved SIGTRAN visibility through efficient integrated monitoring with Tekelec’s session management products.  This gives service providers new abilities to measure available SIGTRAN capacity, bandwidth and network reliability to more efficiently manage next generation core network infrastructure.

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