Egypt to introduce License - WordPress.com · Network Sharing Models 6 Situational Overview There are two angles to the resource sharing models: the infrastructure sharing which is

Egyptto introduce

LicenseEng. Atef HelmyMinister of Communicationsand Information TechnologyArab Republic of Egypt

CEO, Greg Young

December 2014

President & CEO, Karim Michel Sabbagh

42 www.teletimesinternational.com December 2014

Forward looking accessservice providers haveamassed considerable

complemented by WiFiservices. These operatorsare now considering thenext stage of revenuegeneration and growth.This paper discussedthe synergy with MobileNetwork Operators (MNOs)in light of ongoing businessmodel and technologydevelopments, with a focuson evolving network andspectrum sharing trends.It also addresses thedirect impact on serviceproviders business models,and concludes on the likelyemergence of large scaleInternet and cloud centricvirtual operators.

Network Sharing Models 6Situational Overview

There are two angles to theresource sharing models: the

infrastructure sharing whichis being pursued throughoutthe world in various forms(e.g. tower sharing) andactive infrastructure sharing,and through an extensionof it, of spectrum resources.It s the latter angle that isnow gaining direct attentionwhere various models underexperimentation.Over the last few years,various forward looking

taken the lead in building high

(FTTx: Fiber to the Premise/Home/Curve). With suchachievements, they have,without explicit planning, puttogether the initial building

blocks for global leadershipin optimized neutral hostand infrastructure sharingservice. In fact, as 3G and4G networks got deployed,requirements for high speedbackhaul grew, whichprovided some of theseoperators with a uniqueopportunity to leverage

for this purpose, mostlyas wholesale backhaulcapacity to mobile networkoperators. The rapid increasein 3G and 4G capacityrequirements driven by thebandwidth requirements ofover the top applications ledto a fast growing need ofcomplementary technologiesto accommodate the growthin demand for capacity. This inturn provided these operatorswith the opportunity to

with Wi Fi rollouts, andleverage Wi Fi assets ascomplementary buildingblocks for their neutral hostinfrastructure sharing plansthrough Wi Fi wholesale

Fi infrastructures wouldform the backbone ofthese operators wholesaleand infrastructure sharingstrategy.

Active Infrastructure Sharing 6Market and Technology Trends

Given this development,the question converges on

what additional technologydeployment strategieswould be required to reenforce and augment theinfrastructure sharingmodel? Few propositionscould be positioned, butthe most immediate andrelevant would be a directcomplement to the backhauland Wi Fi plays that wouldsimultaneously addressthe common customerbase of both Wi Fi andbackhaul services (i.e.MNOs and enterprise /business venues), providea direct competitiveadvantage against potentialcompetitors, and solves someimmediate problems faced by

In analyzing the variousarguments, the following isemphasized:(a) The most urgent concern

of MNOs is to optimize capexand opex while they augmenttheir coverage and capacityrequirements. DAS and small

areas where this concern isacute, and hence, MNOs arereceptive to business modelsthat would allow them tobuild such complementarynetworks while keeping theircosts in check.(b) The competitive MNO

telecom markets and thestringent requirements ofend users, be they businessvenues or the customersof such business venues, is

forcing MNOs to act promptlyon their network coverageand capacity upgradesthat adds a time constraintdimension to the capex/opexconsiderations.(c) The trend of mobileoperators in some marketshaving to increasinglycompete on services ratherthan coverage, is forcing themto put their energy into theservices layer, which providesthem an incentive to sharemore network resources tomeet coverage objectives.(d) In some select telecommarkets (example SoutheastAsia, Africa, Middle East),some lead operators are ina unique position where,as a non mobile operators(so far), they are perceivedto be neutral and not athreat by the MNOs whichis conducive for strategicpartnerships.(e) The architecture of thewireless base stations hasevolved to a split architecturethat separates the basebandprocessing from the radiomodule. Many operatorshave already or are in theprocess of migrating tothis new base stationarchitecture, which requires

the baseband module andthe remote radio head. The

seen as complementary infunction to backhaul thatconnects the base stationbaseband module to thecore network. This providesa unique opportunity forselect network accessoperators with substantial

fronthaul as a serviceexpanding on existing

By deployment of 3G and 4G, highspeedbackhaul grew providing an opportunity to

December 2014 www.teletimesinternational.com 43

backhaul business with theMNOs.

Pushing Ahead with DAS andSmall Cells

Focusing on DAS and smallcells technologies withthe above in mind, twofundamental questions needto be considered:(1) What strategy toconsider in successfullyimplementing a DAS andsmall cell infrastructuresharing business model?Our detailed analysis of the

in this space, technologyreadiness, MNO readiness,acceptance and leverage inselect markets (SoutheastAsia and Middle East)concludes that a sharedactive DAS deployment

step to consider mostly

for passive DAS, and to alarge extent for active DAS)is already a common practicebetween MNOs. Upgradesfrom passive to active DASsystems are becomingrequired with the roll out of

high data rates at modulationlevels that require good signalquality which passive systemswill be challenged to providenot to mention the openingof new frequency bands in2300 and 2600 MHz thatstresses the capability andperformance of passive DASsystems. Such developments

and ultimately providenetwork access operatorswith leverage in commercialvenues and businessrelationships.In parallel, a small cell sharingstrategy (including the smallcell / Wi Fi combo solutions)would be built initially on thebasis of optimized sharedbackhaul to small cell sites,and over time evolve toshared small cells whenthe technology is ready

(multi frequency/channels,virtualized management,

mature to be deployed ina multi macro/small cellsvendor environment whereMNOs allow third partymanagement of the smallcells network. As such, priorityis currently on active DAS

the building blocks of a smallcells sharing model to be putin place over time (backhaul/fronthaul then small cells).This strategy is enforced by

between DAS and small cellswhere the business case for

small cells in large venueswhile small cells are more

(2) Given the strategicinvestment by some of theoperators we have analyzedin Wi Fi, how would suchshared active DAS deploymentcomplement the overall plan,and what else could be doneto re enforce it?Today s Wi Fi and DAS/smallcell networks are distinct, andcould play complementaryor competitive rolesbased on how they arepositioned. Most MNOs seeWi Fi and DAS/small cells ascomplementary, addressing

usage behaviors, geographical

they are likely to co existfor the foreseeable futureto address complementaryneeds. Synergies do howeverexist between thesetechnologies where thepossibilities include: leverageof a common management/authentication backend in

MNOs networks, leverageof common user billingplatforms, and leverage of

to the network core).At the same time, thesetechnologies re enforce eachother when it comes tonew customer acquisitionand/or customer retention.With such MNOs having leadon the Wi Fi angle, a lot ofwhat is already done withWi Fi can be leveragedas per the above, from

infrastructure already builtby these forward looking

operators for their Wi Fi, tocommon backend/billing/management, to interactionwith common customers/

from the complementaritiesof Wi Fi and the DAS/smallcell infrastructure. As such,having Wi Fi and theunderlying infrastructure inplace highly increases thevalue proposition of theseoperators in positioninga sharing model with WiFi and DAS continuously reenforcing each others interms of value to the MNOsas the shared infrastructureis built.

New Opportunities Beckoning– Towards Cloud RAN

We have already mentionedthat the evolution of thebase station to a splitarchitecture introduced theconcept of fronthaul, whichis the connectivity betweenthe baseband and radiomodules. While this can beconsidered a complementary

concept to backhaul,

which are driven by thetechnical requirements.Fronthaul requires an order ofmagnitude greater capacitythan backhaul and is subjectto stringent requirements forother technical parameterslike delay and jitter.MNOs looking to maximizeperformance have an optionto deploy Cloud RANarchitecture in the futurewhere centralized basebandprocessing drives a numberof remote radio heads. Theremote radio heads canbe deployed in macro cell

superior performance canbe achieved over traditionaldistributed architecture(average 20% on uplink and 515% on downlink). To realizethese gains, the business case

attractive. This is another areawhere forward looking accessoperators can aim at. In ourstudies of the market, wedeveloped regional business

important parameters for thesuccess of this idea.Cloud RAN architectureaims to decouple the basestation software from thehardware platform which isreduced to COTS serversaugmented by processingengines for computationallyintensive physical layeroperations. In this, CloudRAN may well open newschemes of infrastructuresharing and/or neutralhosting models especially

operator is neutral or is aMNO that does not considercompeting on networkquality and performancemore advantageous thancompeting on price orservice. This case

MNO’s can maximize performance havingan option to deploy Cloud RAN architecture,where centralized baseband processing drivesa number of remote radio heads

44 www.teletimesinternational.com December 2014