Syros seminar, 12 July 2008 Bent Dalum, Department of Business Studies,

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IT-infrastructure:Is the present wireless broadband

Panacea (’hype’) a potential threat to the basic needs of a modern

society?

Syros seminar, 12 July 2008

Bent Dalum, Department of Business Studies, DRUID/IKE & Center f. TeleInFrastructure

Aalborg University, [email protected] - www.business.aau.dk/~bd

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Cellular News 28/3-08

• “As consumer demand for mobile broadband services reaches critical mass - telecom operators can expect that 50 percent of the European population will access the internet through broadband on their mobile phones by 2012, according to the seventh annual research report from Exane BNP Paribas and Arthur D. Little.”

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Let me play the Advocate of the Devil for a few moments

• Why bother about the wired infrastructure, let alone fibers to the home (FTTH)?

• Why not leave the IT-infrastructure issue to the mobile phone operators?

• Can’t they fix all the problems by 3.5G (‘Turbo 3G’) or WiMAX (‘wireless ADSL’)?

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Technological life cycles

NMT (1G)

GSM (2G)

UMTS (3G)

Performance

Time

Industry??

The technological life cycles of the mobile communications industry (Dalum et al. 2002)

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4G Communication Systems

Cellular phone systems, such as 2G, 2.5 G, 3G, and 3.5G

WPANs, WLAN/WiFi IEEE 802.11x, WiMAX IEEE 802.16x,

Convergence: what 4G originally was about (Ramjee Prasad, CTIF, 2003)

Broadcasting/Satellite Communication

Fixed phone systems/wired networks Internet

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What 4G apparently will be about?

• A ‘linear’ extension of the present 3G concept?• AT&T, Verizon have agreed in November 08 on

the W-CDMA based LTE (FDD) as their 4G platform. Vodafone has joined this ‘club’.

• China Mobile is involved in LTE as the 4G platform as well, but with the TDD variant. At least in a public declaration at the annual Barcelona conference early 2008

• If LTE-FDD and LTE-TDD will be able to communicate, there will be potentially be one world platform?

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Technological life cycles – Mobile Technology. The “Nordic-EU track”

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The present ‘Turbo 3G’ hype

• 3.5G (‘Turbo 3G’) is being rolled-out – in DK massively during 2008

• In DK: 3.6 Mbps moving towards 7.2Mbps in the not too distant future

• Turbo 3G = “The wireless Internet” or “wireless broadband”, i.e. after some 7-8 years 3G can finally deliver the hype-dreams from 1999/2000

• Potential reaction in the general public: why do ‘ordinary’ consumers need cables/FTTH?

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WCDMA-HSPA Key Facts 1 (GSA March 08)• - 211 commercial WCDMA operators in 91

countries• - WCDMA technology in use by over 72% of

293 commercial 3G operators• - Over 179 million WCDMA subscribers (Q4

07); 6.9 million monthly growth in 2H 07• - 80 million WCDMA subscriptions added in

2007 i.e. over 81% growth• - 185 of 211 commercial WCDMA operators

launched HSDPA (87.6% = 7 out of 8)• - 80 HSDPA operators commercially launched

during 2007; annual growth of 80%

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WCDMA-HSPA Key Facts 2 (GSA March 08)• - Over 62% of commercial HSDPA operators

support 3.6 Mbps peak or higher• - Over 20% of commercial HSDPA operators

support 7.2 Mbps peak or higher• - 34 HSUPA operators commercially

launched in 26 countries• - Over 1.1 billion GSM & WCDMA-HSDPA

subscribers in HSDPA-enabled networks

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Developing countries

• Will ‘Turbo 3G’ (in the near future in faster variants) and WiMAX move the focus away from FTTH in these countries, because of enormous problems with laying out cables?

• WiMAX is spreading faster in developing countries right now.

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Victim of a kind of ‘optical illusion’?

• Compare with digital cameras and cell phones

• Whenever the cellphones increase their Megapixel capacity, digital cameras do as well, i.e. parallel shifts upwards.

• An analogy to the wireless-wirelined relation?

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If the IT-infrastructure is left unregulated to the telecom operators

– i.e the ‘market’?

• The geographical periphery will probably be the looser without an adequate infrastructure for a modern society

• The geographical centers may loose, at least partly, as well

• The emerging ‘turbo 3G’ hype will not solve the fundamental infrastructural problems

• …but may get the role of a ‘miracle drug’.