But will they be fit for purpose?

Handheld LTE devices may hit the market earlier than many expect, according to a leading test and certification vendor.

Nigel Wright, Vice President of Product Marketing at Spirent, told Mobile Europe that he expects handheld LTE devices to be available in the first half of 2011 – earlier than many have predicted.

But early availability of LTE phones will not come without problems, he warned. The first is that certification testing for LTE devices will not be in place until the first quarter of 2011. That means there is the risk of devices coming on the market that have not been certificated against agreed standards,and with US regulators watching issues like RF interference very closely the pressures on the device manufacturers is going to be intense.

“With the US LTE band sitting right next to the public safety band, and the harmonic of the band sitting right next to GPS, the radio is going to have to be squeaky clean,” Wright warned.

The second issue with a push for early LTE devices is that voice over LTE becomes an immediate priority – and standards for voice over LTE are far from complete. The GSMA put its shoulders to the One Voice initiative this week – forming the VoLTE initiative, and Wright said that he expected Verizon to follow the One Voice path. AT&T, he said, seemed to be more likely to follow a Circuit Switch Fallback path.

The third issue with early device release is that, in theory, you cannot currently enable MIMO at 700MHz in a device with a handset form factor, because there is not enough room in the device for the antennas. So producing a device would necessarily mean some compromise on performance – or not enabling MIMO, thereby negating much of the

Wright, whose company is currently providing performance testing of LTE devices for Verizon and AT&T, said that there are also unresolved issues with LTE roaming. If operators are deploying at 700MHz in the USA, and at 2.1GHz and 2.6Ghz in other markets, then the phones will need to be multi-band to roam, Wright claimed. And there could be up to 15 bands supported in three years, Wright said, to add to the complexity.

A further complicating factor is that there may be more chipset diversity in the LTE market. Many of the OEMs are developing their own LTE chipset programmes, Wright said, in a bid to protect themselves from over-relying on the likes of ST-Ericsson and Qualcomm. This of course introduces further variations in implementation and interpretations of standards – increasing the need for solid test cases.

Wright said that although AT&T and Verizon are being extremely rigorous in their approach to LTE device testing, he expected European operators to follow the existing conformance test approval model for LTE devices.

“We’ll see how that works out,” he said.

“Get ready” for data explosion says Syniverse

Roaming and messaging interoperability provider Syniverse saw 9% organic growth in roaming-based income during the fourth quarter of 2009, according to CEO Tony Holcombe.

Holcombe said that roaming revenues currently account for 50% of the company’s earnings, and added that that level of growth is the highest the company has experienced since “before the recession”. He added that he thought that increase would be matched by roaming revenue uplifts within operators themselves.

Syniverse, which provides voice, messaging and IP interoperability and connectivity services to operators, is one of those companies that can be thought of as a bellwether. When activity is up and more people are travelling and using mobile services, then that will be reflected by Syniverse, which operates on a per-transaction business model.

Holcombe said that he expects to see Central and Latin American markets grow, as well as Asia Pacific. Europe remains the laggard at the moment, and is “still the weakest” area, according to Holcombe.

Of course, Syniverse is keen not to be seen as merely a passive connectivity provider, and has two products in Beta that build on its core signaling and interoperability capability. RoamWise, a business intelligence product that delivers analysis to operators of their roaming traffic, is being taken up by a number of European operators, Holcombe said. Operators are using the tool to simulate scenarios, such as moving traffic from one provider to another, and viewing how that would impact revenues, and areas such as quality of service.

Another added service enables operators to reach out to customers in real time, communicating with them to prevent bill shock, for example, or to fix a service issue.

As for the biggest challenge facing Holcombe’s operator customers? He says it is the forthcoming explosion of data usage.

“If 10% of users are really generating 90% of the data traffic, and AT&T is getting a hammering in the press for its QoS already,” he said, “what will happen when 50% of users have similar devices? Operators better get ready,” he cautioned.

“Scale and interoperability will be key. Our IPX (IP Packet exchange) network, which is built on our own MPLS backbone network, is designed to handle that scale of traffic, cutting the cost pressure for operators dramatically.”

One example Holcombe gave is that Syniverse is able to take and deliver VoIP traffic on behalf of a mobile operator, effectively off-loading that traffic from the operators’ own network.

Synivese launched the first phase of its IPX service a year ago, and Holcombe said it is now gaining “a lot of traction” as operators face up to growing IP roaming demands.

HTC will launch a low cost smartphone across Europe in 2010 – starting in April with an exclusive deal with O2 in Germany, UK and Ireland. The device, called the HTC Smart, will be offered on an exclusive basis for an undisclosed period.

The HTC Smart has been built on Qualcomm’s BREW OS, and also carries HTC’s Sense user experience software layer. It will be pre-integrated with a small number of applications, including HTC’s Friend Stream.

O2 Telefonica’s Steve Alder said that the phone would be available for “half the price” of a normal smartphone. A source suggested to Mobile Europe that the price would be around €120.

Aside from the exclusive deals with O2, HTC will market the device through KPN (the Netherlands), NetCom (Norway), and Telecom Italia.

So is O2 now committing to a BREW apps environment? Alder said that the intention is to foster usage of the core pre-integrated applications, building awareness for wider application usage “later in the day”.

“The typical Smart customer is likely to be young, probably doesn’t have a credit card. So this phone really is about breaking down the barrier of affordability. It also takes away the barrier of complexity, by providing a simple customer experience.”

Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, said that HTC Smart’s BREW platform had enabled the manufacturer to develop an “advanced phone with a more affordable price.”

Assurance and management gets more complicated

Although intended to reduce complexity and cost by offering operators an all-IP network architecture, LTE and Evolved Packet Core (EPC) networks will bring with them increased challenges in monitoring and managing network and service performance, according to one expert in monitoring and management.

The number of system elements required is much reduced in an LTE-EPC architecture, but the elements themselves are more complex – combining as they do elements that were previously separate. For example, the E-Node B combines both the MSC and BTS functionality from the 3G network.

LTE-EPC introduces a range of new interfaces between the elements themselves, and also between the new elements and legacy networks, as well as out to other networks. Mobile operators, of course, have no experience of these new interfaces and protocols.

Operators are faced with the need to continue their monitoring of existing networks, as well as be able to provide assurance across LTE networks. Ideally, they would do this within one environment.

But these challenges are not simple to resolve. Tektronix has used Mobile World Congress to launch an LTE and Evolved Packet Core (EPC) monitoring and intelligent management system based upon its Iris suite of products, which includes the GeoProbe G10, a10GE probe, three analyser applications and a common platform that provides a single, integrated framework for current and future applications.

Keith Cobler, Marketing Manager, Network Intelligence Solutions, Tektronix, told Mobile Europe that he thinks that Tektronix has taken a lead on the market with this solution set. “I think there are some players who may address one element of what we can provide, but I’m pretty sure we are the only one with the complete package.”

Eric Schmidt tells MWC delegates he doesn’t want to turn mobile operators into ‘dumb’ data pipes

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, used a Q&A in his Tuesday keynote presentation to try and reassure mobile operators that he was not out to turn their networks into commodity pipes, where Google and other third parties grab all the non-traffic revenue.  “We need advanced networks,” he said, “that deal with security, dynamic signaling, and load balancing.”

Schmidt argued that the mobile industry had reached an important milestone where the computing power of mobile phones, attractive services and capable networks had converged. He also added that Google was driving network traffic, which actually benefits operators.

Mobile operators generally view Google with suspicion, invariably arguing that the online search and advertising giant takes advantage of their network assets (on which they have invested heavily) with so-called ‘over-the-top’ services: operators bear the network costs but still don’t see any of Google’s revenue. The launch of Google Voice and Google Apps (Google’s online office software) is further evidence, they say, of Google taking advantage. In the case of Google Voice, a VoIP application, a case is often made that Google is “stealing” mobile operator voice revenue.

Schmidt naturally believes, however, that the cloud (of which Google is an arch exponent) is where the next big opportunity is for mobile. “If you don’t use the power of the cloud you will fail,” he said.

Again, the business models are still fuzzy surrounding mobile operators role in the cloud, and it remains to be seen how successful they could be in monetizing the advanced network features that Schmidt speaks of.

The Google Chief also updated the MWC audience on Android, its mobile OS platform. Schmidt says Android now runs on 26 different devices, and handset manufacturers are selling more than 60,000 each day.

Plugs benefits of WiChorus acquisition

Dr Vikram Saksena, Tellabs CTO, believes mobile cloud computing will be a significant revenue opportunity for operators.

Speaking to Mobile Europe at the MWC event in Barcelona, Dr Saksena outlined not only some of the cloud benefits for mobile application developers – no need to design apps for particular handsets – but also for mobile network operators who can deliver a ‘service aware’ platform  that can manage application performance and provide security: all services that can be monetized.

“Following the acquisition of WiChorus, we’re not just a network vendor,” says Dr Saksena. “We operate at Layer 7 [applications] and we want to leverage that capability.”

Tellabs formally completed the acquisition WiChoruis, a core packet provider, in December 2009. Dr Saksena says that work is underway to provide a ‘smart backhaul’ solution where the RAN (stretching from the cell site to the edge of the core network) is fully integrated with the core packet network. “The backhaul and the packet core are usually supplied by different suppliers, but we will provide a complete solution that talks to each other,” adds Dr Saksena, although he didn’t reveal when he expected to have the integrated kit commercially available.

ABI Research predicts the number of mobile cloud computing subscribers worldwide will grow rapidly from 42.8 million subscribers in 2008 to about one billion in 2014.

Twenty LTE cell sites up and running in Hong Kong, says operator

CSL, the largest GSM operator in Hong Kong in terms of subscribers and revenue, announced at MWC 2010 that it has 20 active and fully operational LTE cell sites rolled out in Hong Kong using SDR (software-defined radio) base stations supplied by ZTE.

CSL’s CTO, Christian Daigneault, said the trials were showing peak download speeds upwards of 100Mbps on the streets of Hong Kong using USB modems. “Maybe we have to revisit the time in which LTE will be commercially available and rolled out in networks across the world,” he said in statement.

CSL, along with Telstra, its parent company, have been assessing for more than a year the performance of SDR base stations, which can accommodate different access bearers through software upgrades rather than changes in hardware. Since March 2009, CSL has been offering HSDPA+, with peak downlink speeds of 21Mbps, using ZTE’s SDR base stations.

Tarek Robbiati, group managing director of Telstra International and CSL CEO, says that data traffic has increased by 20 times using HSPAS+ over that of the legacy 3G network .

In September 2009, CSL also announced the rollout of UMTS HSPA+ in the 900MHz band, the first case of spectrum re-farming seen in Hong Kong.