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Will the forthcoming World Radio Conference meet mobile industry expectations?“The GSMA is pleased with progress to date
but there is more work to be done to secure
the future of the mobile internet. The ITU has
identifi ed the need for between 1340MHz and
1960MHz of additional spectrum for mobile
broadband by 2020, which aligns with studies
by industry groups including the GSMA.
“The mobile industry is working hard to
ensure suffi cient higher frequency ‘capacity’
spectrum is identifi ed to cope with demand in
urban areas, and lower frequency ‘coverage’
spectrum for rural areas. It is vital positive
decisions are made at WRC-15 in support of
allocating spectrum to meet growing consumer
demand for mobile services.”
What kind of spectrum policy decisions will be needed for the development of the vertical markets for IMT?“The mobile industry contributed 3.8 percent
of global GDP (equivalent to US$ 3 trillion) and
directly supported 13 million jobs in 2014; this
is expected to rise to 4.2 percent of GDP and 15
million jobs by 2020.
“We have seen substantial support at
regional meetings for identifying more
spectrum for mobile, but this must be
screen” mobile and tablet devices, as well as
home-based IPTV.”
Which roles will be played by the frequency bands below 6GHz and above 6GHz in 5G?“Sub-1GHz could provide a useful means
of extending a superior 5G user experience
into rural areas and inside buildings, both in
developed and developing markets.
“There are numerous existing mobile
bands between 1GHz-2.6GHz and when 5G
technology is ready to deploy, there may
be others between 2.6GHz-4GHz. However,
although these bands offer a mixture of
coverage and capacity characteristics, it is
unlikely they alone can support the highest
potential 5G data rates.
“Above 6GHz could support very wide
channel sizes and therefore extremely fast data
rates and massive additional mobile network
capacity in small areas, making it fertile territory
for 5G research. However, complementary lower
frequency spectrum would also be required to
extend 5G services beyond small urban areas
and within buildings.
“At WRC-15, we urge all regions to agree on
a new 5G agenda item for WRC-19 that covers
bands in all these ranges.”
Which role do you see for the C-Band (3300-4990 MHz) for IMT networks and their evolution?“The high-capacity C-band can support mobile
demand in urban areas where it is growing
fastest. Currently, it is largely used for fi xed
satellite services, playing an important role for
those services in tropical areas where rainfall has
hindered other bands.
“However, in the vast majority of countries,
higher frequency satellite bands (e.g. Ka and Ku)
are becoming the preferred means of delivery
because of lower costs and better performance
– which means spectrum in the C-band can be
made available for mobile services.
“Most regions support identifi cation of
C-band spectrum at 3.4-3.6GHz for IMT, with
increasing support for a larger portion of the
band to make use of a growing ecosystem of
mobile equipment.”
converted into votes at the one-country,
one-vote conference this November. The
ultimate goal for WRC-15 is to achieve global
harmonisation in spectrum allocations,
enabling huge economies of scale and universal
access to affordable mobile broadband.”
Can the longer term availability of the UHF band (470-694 MHz) trigger the convergence between mobile broadband and broadcaster?“Mobile broadband plays an increasingly
signifi cant role in providing consumers with
video when and where they want it. The likes of
YouTube, Netfl ix and BBC iPlayer have enjoyed
substantial growth, not only as alternative
platforms for delivering video content, but,
in some cases, the only platforms for certain
content packages.
“UHF spectrum is particularly well-suited to
deliver high-quality, wide area coverage for
mobile broadband services in rural areas and
inside buildings. While the band is mainly used
for terrestrial broadcasting, these services can
be maintained in a smaller amount of spectrum
without negatively impacting programme
choice or public service broadcasting
obligations. More spectrum, including in the
UHF band, is necessary to enable content
providers to reach wider audiences via “second
Spectrum in the spotlight ahead of crunch WRC: GSMA Q&AThe forthcoming World Radiocommunication Conference must make the right decisions to support booming mobile use, says Alex Sinclair, Acting Director General and Chief Technology Offi cer, GSMA
Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2015
04 | Mobile Europe | @mobileeurope | mobileeurope.co.uk
How would you describe the Hong Kong telecoms market? How does it compare to other Asian markets?“I would say Hong Kong is a hyper
competitive market. With a population of
less than eight million, we have a mobile
penetration rate of over 220% served by four
mobile network operators and numerous
MVNOs. Last year the number of operators
was reduced from five to four with HKT’s
acquisition of CSL in May 2014.
“Being a premier commercial hub, the
mainstream Hong Kong mobile market is
predominately served by postpaid contracts
with a focus on mobile broadband. For
instance, at HKT in 2012 we stopped charging
for local voice minutes and offered data quota
plans instead.
“Asian markets vary a lot from country to
country in terms of different development
stages and market needs. But one thing
that is common to all is the direction in the
development of data mobile broadband service.
“However, I feel Hong Kong has several
advantages over other Asia markets. For one,
Hong Kong is just a single city and this makes
it relatively easy to have a territory-wide
rollout of new technology when compared to
big countries.
“Secondly, Hong Kong has a strong
fibre infrastructure to support mobile
backhaul requirement for continuous mobile
broadband developments. Finally, Hong
Kong customers are very receptive to new
technology and are willing to spend on new
devices and gadgets. This makes it easy for
the launch and penetration of new services /
technologies like VoLTE and LTE-A.”
What are the biggest challenges facing Asian operators?“I think the biggest challenge that most Asian
operators are facing is the continuous growth
in data capacity demand vs the decline in
mobile revenue. This makes it difficult to
justify investment for capacity expansion to
meet demand and upgrade infrastructure for
new technology.
“While this decline is caused by strong
local competition and the shift of value from
mobile operators to OTT players, I believe
our leadership position among competitors.
“Furthermore, as VoLTE adoption increases
with the greater penetration of compatible
devices, the load on legacy 2G and 3G
networks will decrease correspondingly as
VoLTE users are kept on 4G layer at all the
times. This enables HKT to focus on LTE
network developments and continue refarming
legacy spectrum into LTE in the future.”
HKT launched LTE-Advanced in December. Why is it important for operators to offer it?“HKT strives to provide the latest and best
available technologies to our customers.
LTE-A is a significant technology enhancement
that uplifts customer experience by as much
as a four times speed improvement over basic
LTE. With the acquisition of CSL in May 2014,
HKT now possesses a rich spectrum resource
which allowed us to introduce two carrier
LTE-A in December 2014, which offered
speeds of up to 300MBps and then launch of
three carrier 450mbps LTE-A in 2015.
“The uptake of LTE-A is solely dependent
on the availability of compatible devices. To
push the adoption of this technology, HKT
has aggressively brought a wide range of
smartphones to our range.
“At HKT, we are committed to providing
the best user experience to our customers by
leveraging the rich spectrum asset we have.
LTE-A not only gives us a material improvement
to customer experience by increasing the data
throughput, it will also improve experience of
non LTE-A users indirectly. This is because LTE-A
reduces the amount of time a user holds on to
the network resource which otherwise can be
used by non-LTE users.”
What work are you doing to prepare for 5G?5G is a visionary concept where governments,
standardisation bodies, research organisations,
technology companies, industry forums,
vendors and operators are all working to
define what exactly is it and how we are
to achieve it. Having said that, I think the
industry as a whole has basically agreed that
5G is definitely something beyond existing
mobile broadband, not just in terms of
capability, but also the services and use cases
it supports.
the presence of so-called “All You Can Eat” or
unlimited data plans in some markets is also a
factor that limits operators’ ability to invest.
“This is why HKT became a pioneer in
halting its unlimited data plan and shifted its
customers towards “Quota Plans”. With these
plans, a customer subscribes to a monthly
package for a certain data volume. Once this
is exhausted, the data service will be stopped
(and not throttled) until next billing cycle or
the customer buys data top-up.
“This helps HKT to contain the unlimited
growth demand / usage without supporting
incremental revenue. The launch of this plan
led to the whole of the Hong Kong market
changing and offering their own quota plans.
Now all operators across Hong Kong are
moving away from unlimited data plans, which
effectively will bring the whole Hong Kong
market back to a healthy state of development.”
How has Voice over LTE changed HKT’s proposition to customers?“The biggest change is that VoLTE users are
always on LTE so that they can enjoy high
quality voice, video and other data services
simultaneously. This greatly improves LTE
user experience. Since users are migrating
to VoLTE, the load on legacy 2G and 3G
networks has been greatly decreased.
HKT is able to focus more on LTE network
development and is even considering further
reuse of legacy spectrum in the coming years.
“We were the first operator to launch VoLTE
in HK, launching in May 2014 and later on the
CSL network in Aug 2014, just three months
after we acquired CSL. At the same time we
enabled the first VoLTE to VoLTE interconnect
over two networks – a first for Hong Kong.
“HKT positions VoLTE as a voice service
improvement featuring Fast Call Setup,
HD Voice and HD video calls, where all our
customers can enjoy the service automatically
with the use of VoLTE handset.
“Apart from voice service improvement,
VoLTE also improves data experience of users
indirectly by retaining user’s data connection
on 4G layer during calls instead of falling back
on 3G as if in CSFB. As such, VoLTE gives a
comprehensive improvement of customer
experience apart from the reinforcement of
Here to serve: HKT Q&AAlex Arena, the operator’s Group Managing Director on its network transformation and how Huawei helped it to launch new technology
Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2015
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“Among the services it offers are improved
mobile broadband, a user data rate of
greater than 500MBps, with a peak rate of
between five and 10GBps, massive capacity,
high mobility, machine to machine type
communications, the support of a massive
number of devices, extended range and
future technology. We joined the NGMN Alliance
to contribute from the operators’ perspective
exactly what the technology should be and what
it can offer. This not just helps to shape 5G to
our needs, but also allows HKT to capture the
latest developments and get prepared in advance
ahead of its launch in 2020.”
coverage and a low power consumption.
“For an integrated fixed and mobile carrier
5G offers the opportunity to expand our service
offerings for the Internet of Things. Despite
5G being in its infancy, as one of the leading
operators in the world HKT is obliged to
contribute to the shaping and definition of the
NB-IoT is at the stage of getting greater adoption by operators
Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2015
06 | Mobile Europe | @mobileeurope | mobileeurope.co.uk
The Cellular Internet of Things (CIoT) is
the term used by first used by Vodafone to
describe its chosen technology solution for
Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) services over
mobile networks. Since standards work has
commenced in 3GPP, the term Narrow Band
Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is now used.
NB-IoT describes the new radio interface
designed for Low Power Wide Area
communications, connecting devices and
services that require small amounts of data
transfer and power. According to Machina
Research, objects and devices requiring very
low power consumption and a wide area
connection are estimated to increase to 3.3
billion connections by 2023. Luke Ibbetson,
director of R&D for Vodafone Group says
that NB-IoT will reuse Vodafone’s existing
radio access network and transmission:
“At the same time we will deploy a
separate dedicated and optimised core
network (using the latest virtual network
technology).”
NB-IoT, says Ibbetson, enables
manufacturers to connect devices which could
not communicate previously due to issues like
power requirements, enabling them to take
advantage of the benefits that connectivity
as Vodafone, which already has a global
Machine-to-Machine (M2M) network, which
will connect with the NB-IoT access layer,
rather than putting in their own proprietary
solutions. By operating in Vodafone’s
licensed spectrum, NB-IoT devices will ensure
performance and reliability over the life time
of these devices.
Vodafone has been a IoT pioneer – it
established a Special Interest Group (SIG) in
2013, in conjunction with the major mobile
network vendors, to encourage them to
deliver a solution which would address the
requirements of extended coverage, long
battery life and extremely low cost devices.
The result of this work was taken to the
3GPP standards body and has now developed
into the NB-IoT standards work item currently
being undertaken in 3GPP. It is expected to
deliver a global standard in June 2016. At this
point all network vendors and mobile network
operators will be able to deploy the NB-IoT
solution around the world.
At the same time - back in 2014 - Vodafone
outlined its results from the SIG to the GSMA
Connected Living Programme and this
has resulted in the Mobile IoT Programme
which the GSMA is undertaking to promote
industry-wide alignment on these systems
and to engage customers to be ready for
its emergence. GSMA Mobile IoT covers
complementary standard systems other than
NB-IoT, hence the more generic title.
Vodafone has worked extremely closely
with Huawei to help develop Huawei’s
proposal for an LPWA solution. The two
companies jointly presented the world’s first
ever live demonstration of the then-called
CIoT technology at Mobile World Congress
(MWC) in March 2015 in Barcelona, showing
a connected smart water meter.
So is mass adoption just around the corner?
Says Ibbetson: “NB-IoT is at the stage of getting
greater adoption by operators, including
Vodafone, as an enhanced solution for providing
connectivity to devices and services that
require small amounts of data transfer and low
power. As the pioneer of the technology, and
the world’s leading provider of M2M services,
I’d expect Vodafone to be at the forefront of
delivering these benefits to customers.”
creates. He says: “The high penetration of the
radio signal also makes the technology a key
enabler for devices that need communication
but are located in hard to reach places such
as basements, underground pipes and deeply
shadowed areas.”
“This might include connecting water and
gas meters, which do not have access to
mains power, to a utility company’s enterprise
systems (for customer billing). By installing
connected flow meters around the water
distribution network, water utility companies
could also use NB-IoT for remote monitoring
of their water delivery systems for automatic
leak detection. The locations of leaks could
be found more accurately leading to less time
and cost digging up roads for repair work.”
An attractive aspect for industries using
NB-IoT is that they can leave the connectivity
provision for devices to companies such
Broadening operators’ reachNB-IOT gives operators the power to connect low power, wide area networks. Vodafone’s Luke Ibbetson speaks to Eira Hayward
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What do you see as the major achievements to date of the Joint Innovation Centre (JIC) with Huawei?“While we’ve worked on a broad range of
projects, including software, hardware, services
and OSS, a few accomplishments stand out. The
fi rst is a collaboration to develop redundancy
for the Radio Network Controller (RNC) in
the inaugural JIC project, RNC 1+1/RNC Pool.
The resulting enhancements eliminated a
vulnerability of the access network, improved
reliability and increased deployment fl exibility.
“Secondly, Bell’s RF engineers were heavily
engaged in every stage of the RAN 14
development process, leading to a signifi cant
increase in the signaling capacity and
performance enhancements of the UMTS
network. The resulting increase in capacity
mitigated the risk of a network outage caused
by a “signaling storm” we were experiencing
with the higher percentage of smartphones on
our network. Unique to Bell at the time, other
operators experienced their own “signalling
storms” as smartphone penetration grew, so
the RAN 14 project ultimately benefi ted all
Huawei customers.
“Bell’s Operations team also collaborated
with Huawei designers to signifi cantly improve
the stability and reliability of the Operating
Support System (OSS). Its key function is to
monitor network performance and trigger
alarms when network malfunction occurs. Minor
abnormalities can lead to major network outage
if left unattended, so a robust OSS is crucial
to providing world class wireless services. We
designed an architecture to prevent the loss of
alarms and logs during OSS downtime, ensuring
critical Operational Measurements (OM), which
can be used for root cause analysis, aren’t lost.
“Finally, the increase in M2M traffi c on
wireless networks creates a new challenge for
operators. M2M traffi c has very different and
advantages and the benefi ts of a operator-led
LWPA network.”
What are Bell’s plans for 4.5G? How is Huawei supporting this initiative?“Bell is committed to lead the development of
Canadian broadband communications, offering
the best – biggest, fastest and most reliable –
network to our customers. As we look to extend
our capabilities in advance of 5G, we’re seeing
some very interesting opportunities coming out
of Huawei. In the short term, we’re focused on
enhancing the customer experience through
latency reduction, as well as building on the
potential of Carrier Aggregation by introducing
a broader range of supported bands with
enhanced throughput.”
diverse usage profi les and traditional network
OMs don’t provide enough information to
network planners to understand the Radio
Access Network (RAN) impact of M2M traffi c.
“Bell and Huawei worked together to create
a platform and develop tools that enable
network planners to capture and model
M2M traffi c. The models are used to measure
network performance and conduct RAN impact
analysis. With M2M traffi c forecast to increase
exponentially in the coming years, the platform
and the modeling tools will enable network
planners to stay ahead of the curve.”
What collaborations has the centre enabled which might not otherwise have been possible?“One of the biggest advantages we’ve seen
has been the implementation of Feature Life
Cycle Management. With this process we were
able to work with the Huawei development
team to help defi ne feature requirements,
critique design, develop test plans and validate
functionality. This gave us the assurance
a feature worked as intended and that
performance metrics were met or exceeded,
helping us to deliver a better network for
our customers and Huawei to deliver higher
capability and better performance for its global
customer base.”
What is its present focus and what current projects are underway?“Our teams are currently very active in exploiting
the full potential of Carrier Aggregation (CA). Bell
deployed 2-carrier Category 6 CA in early 2015,
and in August was the fi rst North American
operator to launch 3-carrier Category 9 CA.
With the launch of Category 9 CA, Bell offers the
fastest mobile technology available anywhere in
North America.
“Another current area of focus is the
Narrow Band-Internet of Things (NB-
IoT). NB-IoT will enable operators to be
signifi cant players in the deployment of
Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks,
accelerating the growth of the Internet of
Things. Bell is actively monitoring 3GPP
NB-IoT standard development and is
working with GSMA to help develop the
LPWA ecosystem. Bell is helping Huawei
set up a smart parking demo using the
NB-IoT technology to promote the
Perfect pitch: Bell Canada Q&ACTO Stephen Howe on collaboration with Huawei on the Joint Innovation Centre
critique design, develop test plans and validate
performance metrics were met or exceeded,
our customers and Huawei to deliver higher
capability and better performance for its global
What is its present focus and what current
“Our teams are currently very active in exploiting
the full potential of Carrier Aggregation (CA). Bell
deployed 2-carrier Category 6 CA in early 2015,
and in August was the fi rst North American
operator to launch 3-carrier Category 9 CA.
With the launch of Category 9 CA, Bell offers the
fastest mobile technology available anywhere in
accelerating the growth of the Internet of
With the launch of Category 9 CA, Bell offers the fastest mobile technology available anywhere in North America
Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2015
08 | Mobile Europe | @mobileeurope | mobileeurope.co.uk
Video is the best thing that has ever happened to
mobile networks. What other service can be used
by any smartphone and justifi es subscriptions
with very large data allowances? There are very
few, if any, services that can claim this.
The industry is focused on several esoteric
issues including the management of mobile
video, how OTTs are generating revenue while
using cellular networks as dumb pipes, and how
to optimise video through their networks.
But what operators sometimes fail to see is
that while they worry about the impact of video
on their 4G networks, they fail to notice that LTE
networks would be severely underutilised if it
weren’t for video streaming.
So in no small way video is fueling the LTE
value chain, by pushing operator investments in
more capacity and other QoE elements, while
also bringing those operators new mobile data
subscribers and propelling vendors to improve
device performance. In fact, Ovum’s traffi c
forecast illustrates that video in LTE networks
was 55 percent of total video traffi c across all
cellular networks during 2014, which increases
to a staggering 96 percent by 2020.
That’s not to say that video isn’t a challenge
in mobile. The two main technical challenges
operators face is the sheer amount of video
that’s going through their networks and the fact
that this is now beginning to be encrypted.
Operators have traditionally managed video
through optimisation, transcoding, caching and
making sure that bandwidth was not wasted
in their networks. Encryption limits their ability
to manage video, as traffi c passes through
their networks in tunnels, which they have no
visibility on.
There are a few initiatives to manage
encrypted traffi c that are either old or new,
and both apply to video. The fi rst is TCP
optimization. By tuning TCP parameters to
avoid congestion and optimise performance,
operators can improve the performance of any
traffi c, including encrypted video.
The second is mobile edge computing. This
is positioned as one of the next steps in the
evolution of radio access networks, where a
computing platform is placed at the edge of the
network. This means that the encrypted stream
may be opened, inspected and optimised at
the cell site or aggregation point. There are also
experience compared to a user in the centre
of the cell who connects at a higher speed.
This may be because content owners optimise
content very aggressively according to the
device the video is viewed on, meaning that
understanding video user experience is much
more complicated that simple data services.
Video in mobile is a prime example where
operators need to start with a fi rm understanding
of user experience and work backwards to
improve their networks. This doesn’t necessarily
imply the addition of more bandwidth, but
it may perhaps be simple optimisation in the
mobile network that can provide improvements
in user experience for video.
Huawei’s vMOS score is a step in the right
direction: trying to understand end user
experience that is tied with KPIs that users
directly perceive: video quality, video stalling
and buffering delay. Ovum will be working with
Huawei to prepare a comprehensive report on
video experience, which will include end user
surveys and live network measurements and will
be published end-2015.
interesting business opportunities associated
with edge computing, where the operator may
cooperate with the content owner to make sure
video delivery is high quality.
But what operators need to do fi rst is to
try to understand the actual user experience
associated with video over cellular. With voice,
metrics such as dropped calls and blocked
calls contributed to understanding the user
experience. With data, it’s speed and delay.
With video, there is no industry-wide standard
to measure user experience. Moreover, current
operator OSS/BSS tools are ill-equipped to map
actual user experience with network metrics
such as latency, throughput and cell load.
Obviously the faster the network is the better
the user experience will be, especially in early
phases of LTE/LTE-A deployment during which
the network is largely underutilised. But when
the network starts to get congested, operators
don’t actually know user satisfaction with their
streaming video experience. A user at the cell
edge, who is subject to a lower throughput
connection, will not necessarily get a worse user
Fallacy of video in mobileVideo offers a tremendous opportunity for operators, so long as they can understand and track customer experience, writes Dimitris Mavrakis, Principal Analyst at Ovum.
Figure 1: Total cellular and LTE video traffi c
Source: Ovum
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
02013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Cel
lula
r tr
affi
c (E
B p
er y
ear)
4G video traffi c
Total video traffi c
Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2015
Mobile Europe | @mobileeurope | mobileeurope.co.uk | 09
If there are any universally acknowledged truths
about mobile networks, it’s that more people
will continue to use more devices and more
data-heavy applications will continue to drive
more mobile traffic. According to Cisco’s Visual
Networking Index, video accounted for 60
percent of all mobile data traffic in 2014, and will
grow almost nine times in the next five years and
account for 75 percent of all mobile data traffic in
2019. And this, says Martin Wren-Hilton, TalkTalk’s
Head of Mobile Innovation, is why small cells are
so important for mobile operators.
Wren-Hilton says that operators will find that
their service suffers if they rely solely on macro
cells, and this of course means potentially
dissatisfied customers. “The operator who can
give the consistently best experience is the
operator who wins out. And the consistently
best experience comes from the operator who
the mobile signal is coming from the broadband
router and is provided end to end by TalkTalk,
we can manage the experience.
“And because it is seamless, customers won’t
know when they’re being served by an indoor
or outdoor cell. They will notice an increase in
throughput and will also get four or five bars of
signal in every room in the house – and customers
love having five bars on their phone anywhere
in the house. But, in addition, if in the long
term mobile phones replace fixed lines then the
experience on a mobile phone has to be every bit
as good as that of a landline today.”
The development of this router builds on work
that started in 2006 when TalkTalk acquired
a small piece of 1800MHz spectrum, “the
technology wasn’t ready at the time - 4G hadn’t
been standardised” comments Wren-Hilton.
“Two years ago we built a prototype router which
contained a small cell and this formed the basis of
our approach to Huawei - which is already a long-
term partner - to develop the new router. Huawei
is undertaking engineering development in China
and we are working with the company to make
sure the router is successful when deployed in the
way that we’re planning – which is of course a
very dense deployment.”
One aspect that will make this deployment
different from traditional mobile radio is the way
the routers will self-organise, says Wren-Hilton.
“We want this to be so simple and straightforward
for customers - so that we can post them the
router, they can just unplug their old one and
the new one router will self-configure. That’s
easy to do with Wi-Fi, but more complex with
LTE small cells. The goal is to have a very high
degree of automation in the router so the small
cell understands where it is, where its neighbours
are, and it will choose its behaviour. It has to self-
organise and cooperate with the others around it,
including the macro network.”
While there are other operators both looking
at and investing in small cells in routers, TalkTalk
believes that together with Huawei it’s leading
the field in terms of planning for a large scale
deployment. Says Wren-Hilton: “We’re excited
about the possibilities enabled by building an
Inside Out network using Huawei small cell-
enabled routers and based on the testing we’ve
done so far, we’re sure our customers will love the
improved user experience.”
provides a great service at peak times.” Small cells
are important, he says, for two reasons: firstly
because they focus capacity where it’s needed,
operators can put small cells in at locations like rail
stations and shopping centres where consumers
use lots of data; and secondly because this relieves
the capacity burden on the macro network for
other users, everyone benefits.
But we all recognise that it will be difficult
for a traditional macro-only network to support
projected data rates and for this reason TalkTalk
is taking the small cell into the home. The
initiative is called the Inside Out network and
together with Huawei, TalkTalk is developing a
new generation of router which incorporates
an LTE small cell to put into the homes of
its residential customers and small business
customers. “It’s going to be a much improved
user experience,” says Wren-Hilton. “Because
Small cells bringing big results for TalkTalkUK operator TalkTalk is working with Huawei to improve indoor coverage. Eira Hayward reports
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Peter Zhou, Huawei: “First I’d like to update
you on Huawei’s business. We have a very good
market share, as everybody knows. It keeps
growing but we have some worries about
the future. The growth of Huawei’s wireless
business is reliant on new LTE deployments but
everybody knows that with 2G and 3G, the
investment from operators is going down or, at
best, not increasing.
“We worry about the LTE business doing the
same after two to three years. Maybe there will
be new LTE contracts that we can build or that
the LTE business may differ from 3G. 5G will
come but there is still the question about what
it actually is. How can this industry get more
revenue to support companies like Huawei?
“We needed to think about some new
revenue sources. A lot of people suggested
small cells were the next development piece of
the industry. That’s why from the beginning of
last year, we set up a new business unit within
Huawei for small cells. Before that, small cells
were part of the product development team
alongside other product lines like single RAN.
“We made the decision to have an
independent product line to deal with small
cells. We wanted to make sure the wireless
business unit had independent thinking, not
that point into 2014, there was a lot of debate
[internally] - that was what helped lead us to
set up this separate organisation to deal with
new strategies.”
Indoor focusZhou: “From last year, we found what we
had been doing may not really have been
appropriate [for the industry]. We then
decided to focus on indoor. The outdoor
business should be mainly belonging to macro
base-stations. Huawei was putting big efforts
into doing that so we really needed to look at
indoor. We also found the data traffic going
indoors was very quickly increasing. Legacy
solutions like DAS were not offering enough
capacity. There were many problems so we
knew we needed some kind of new solutions
for indoors. This was LampSite.
“If you look at this solution, it’s a macro base
station with a small transmission power radio
access unit. Even last year, some people were
questioning me saying ‘is LampSite a small cell
or a macro site?’. I’d say it’s a cloud baseband-
based small cell. Right now, luckily, this kind of
solution that uses cloud BB is one operators are
familiar with and one that they have a great
level of confidence in. That is the reason why
it could be very successful this year. We also
expect to ship 500,000 pRRUs [small radio
access units] by the end of this year and nearly
200 operators are using this product.
“I have been asked where the market is for
LampSites indoors. My answer is that the big
market is in China and also in the Asia-Pacific
area, for example in Thailand and Indonesia.
Recently also the Middle East, South Africa
and Latin America have started to receive big
shipments. What we found was the operators
in these areas have found LampSite is the
mainstream solution. When they are looking for
indoor coverage solutions, they are not thinking
about DAS any more. They think LampSite.
“For outdoor, we keep investing in outdoor
products, but last year we put more efforts
into indoor. Outdoor has also seen very good
results. More than 80 operators are using our
products and there will be more than 50,000
shipments this year.
“We also started to develop new products,
only on product strategy, but also on business
models. For example, there can sometimes be
a conflict of ideas. Like if we looked to deploy
small cells outdoors, some people would argue
‘no, we need to put more big base stations
on big towers’, even though small cells are
cheaper for our customers. By doing this, we
hope we can build a network across 2G, 3G and
4G which is indoor, for example, and that the
whole industry will be stimulated by.
“Huawei’s small cells have been recognised by
the industry, from the innovation point of view
and the shipment point of view, and we have
put a lot of work into them. For example, we
have 1,000 R&D staff working together with me
on those products. We have been developing
products since 2008, when we were one of the
first developers to produce femto. In 2010, we
started to develop outdoor small cells, and in
2011, we made a proposal of AtomCell. This is a
small outdoor small cell.
“In 2012, we also had added the Wi-
Fi solution into this team, because at that
moment, China Mobile started to deploy a
lot of Wi-Fi. So they drove us to move into
this area. In 2013, suddenly we found all of
the efforts we had been doing saw no return.
Outdoor or indoor, there was nothing. From
Small cells in 2015 and beyondPeter Zhou, Huawei President of Small Cells and Wi-Fi, recently sat down with a select group of analysts in London to discuss how the small cells market is changing.
Huawei’s Peter Zhou
Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2015
Mobile Europe | @mobileeurope | mobileeurope.co.uk | 11
for example pico. A new pico is coming to
market right now, for enterprise and residential
deployments. This is different from LampSite.
With the LampSite, all of the baseband
processing is essentially allocated in one BBU.
For the pico, it’s a standalone basestation. The
BBU processing is there, as is the RRU. In one
box, it has wi-fi, which supports 11ac dual-
band, UMTS, LTE and carrier aggregation.
“The reason you can have this kind of product
is that LampSite can look after more than five
thousand square metres, but you sometimes need
a product that can cover a much smaller area like
meeting rooms. With LampSite, you can put one
pRRU and one big BBU in place but that is not
cost effective in some circumstances. Pico can
provide coverage for smaller areas including wi-fi,
which is necessary for enterprises in particular.”
Think digitalZhou: “For Huawei’s small cell strategy, we need
one box to support multi-mode, multi-band.
That’s our dream and one we are doing. Our
next generation pico and LampSite will be one
box to support of all the bands across Europe.
We want customers to be using three bands
simultaneously. We will bring this to the market
by the end of this year.
“We want unlicensed and licensed spectrum
to work together in one box. This will provide
a stronger pipe to produce a better user
experience for people. That’s why we support
licence assisted access from now on.
“We also believe cloud-RAN is one evolution
of the small cell technology. That’s where
LampSite comes from. For the highly skilled
network, we need a cloud baseband solution.
One example is in Beijing Airport, we can
deploy more than 2,000 pRRUs, along with
BBUs. Some have also asked whether we could
deploy 2,000 picos in the same airport and the
answer is technically yes. However, the reality
is that’s 2,000 base stations that you need to
maintain. LampSite is the one base station that
provides coverage.
“As we have said previously, we will keep
saying no to traffic offload. I personally don’t
like it as traffic means revenue, traffic means the
business model for the mobile operators. What
you can see is traffic is on the licensed spectrum,
of the traffic that runs over its network.
“We will also support the licence assisted
access technology strongly because we stand
by mobile operators. Last year and this year
we keep doing demonstrations and products
for customers. By the end of this year, all of
Huawei’s small cells, both outdoor and indoor,
will support LAA.
“We believe we need indoor coverage
to provide digital solutions for not only
improving user experience but also improving
the revenues for our customers, the mobile
operators. Thank you.”
which has a high value. All of an operator’s
business model relies on this part. Also, mobile
operators build wi-fi to carry traffic as well, but
that brings less value to them.
“Our view is that we need to improve
the value of the traffic, by combining
the licensed and unlicensed pipe. This is
what China Mobile is doing right now. It
is building wi-fi, along with a 4G system.
Recently it also asked Huawei to deploy its
nanocell, which is a picocell for residential
along with wi-fi. It replaces the current wi-fi
hotspots. By doing that it increases the value
Huawei’s offices in Hong Kong