Small cell backhaul and Wi-Fi offloading are points of contention that must be addressed if the FCC is to approve Verizon Wireless' (NYSE:VZ) proposed $3.9 billion AWS spectrum purchase and business agreements with four cable operators, according to an FCC filing submitted by Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S).

Sprint said it has not formally opposed the proposed sale of AWS spectrum by SpectrumCo--a joint venture of cable companies Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks--as well as Cox Communications to Verizon, but it is concerned about the impacts that the bilateral commercial agreements Verizon is drawing up with each firm may have on Sprint's business if regulatory restrictions are not mandated.

The operator's ex parte filing revealed the gist of conversations held June 15 among three Sprint representatives--Lawrence Krevor, vice president of government affairs; Trey Hanbury, director of government affairs; and outside counsel Antoinette Cook--and FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn with two other FCC staffers.

Backhaul is a crucial issue for Sprint given that its Network Vision initiative includes heterogenous network (HetNet) topology that includes microcells, which the operator said require additional backhaul connections from incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) and cable TV providers. Sprint contends the commercial agreements between Verizon and the cable companies will create a joint interest "against competitive backhaul pricing for competing wireless carriers" such as itself.

One intriguing revelation in Sprint's ex parte filing is that the company "has found that wired network operators are charging the same backhaul rates for microcells, covering small areas, as they charge for connections to macrocells with much wider coverage and generally much heavier use." This pricing scheme, Sprint noted, "makes network expansion through microcells much... continued

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Japanese chip company Renesas Mobile is reportedly being eyed for sale by its parent Renesas Electronics.

The possible sale of Renesas Mobile would be part of a previously reported reorganization of the beleaguered parent company, which is also reportedly planning to shutter at least half of its manufacturing plants in Japan over the next one to three years, said EE Times, citing a report from Asahi Shimbun. Renesas also is said to be selling its Yamagata system--chip fab--which manufactures chips for flat-panel TVs, cameras and digital products--to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.

Renesas has posted losses since being formed through the 2010 merger of the chipmaking interests of NEC and Renesas Technology, said EE Times.

According to the article, Renesas Mobile employs about 1,800 people.

Despite rumors that Renesas Mobile may be sold off, the company and its parent continue with business as usual. On June 12, Renesas and Renesas Mobile announced they have licensed the ARM Cortex-A7 MPCore and ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore processors. "Deployed in ARM's big.LITTLE configuration, the processors will enable Renesas Mobile to create a new generation of turbo-charged applications processors, communications processors and LTE/HSPA+ multi-mode smartphone platforms with ultra-high performance and extended battery life," said the companies.

"The market demands ever increasing performance in low power devices and Renesas Mobile is well placed to deliver world-beating application processors and communications processors. Our skills lie in systems design and the integration and optimization of highly complex, LTE multi-mode cellular system-on-chips," said Shinichi Yoshioka, senior executive vice president and COO at Renesas Mobile.

For more:
- see this EE Times article
- see this Renesas release

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Operators are increasingly engaging in value-based service plans, in which they assess charges based on the perceived value of a service rather than on time, volume or speed, according to mobile service optimization company Allot Communications. The company's most recent quarterly report on mobile charging reveals that some 46 percent of operators sampled offer value-based packages based upon elements such as multiple devices, applications, parental controls or time-shifting.

According to Allot's MobileTrends Charging Report for the second quarter of 2012, the percentage of operators offering a multiple-device plan is 29 percent. Such plans have generated mixed reactions. Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ) recently prompted a firestorm of comments, both positive and negative, with the announcement of its Share Everything data plans, which begins on June 28. Other operators, including AT&T Mobility (NYSE:T), have already indicated their interest in following suit with similar offers.

Allot's study covers more than 100 mobile operators worldwide with conclusions based on data collected from publicly available sources. More than a quarter of operators sampled for the report offer application-based tiers, in which customers are given a choice between different levels of access to applications, such as unlimited use of social media apps or VoIP minutes. In addition, the company said 24 percent of operators studied provide a parental control option, while 10 percent market a time shifting option, such as free data service during certain off-peak hours.

Source: Q2 2012 Allot MobileTrends Charging Report

Allot's study found that the percentage of operators marketing value-based plans was identical across 3G and LTE networks. According to Monica Paolini, president of Senza Fili Consulting, "We will see even more pricing choice offered to LTE subscribers over time, as subscribers increasingly expect their broadband plan to reflect their preferences with regards to content, usage and services that are valuable to them and give them the flexibility to make the choices that work best for them."

In addition, revenue-sharing collaboration between operators and over-the-top (OTT) providers is on the rise, said Allot. The company noted 33 percent of operators sampled market some type of cloud-based services in partnership with companies such as over-the-top music providers Rhapsody, Spotify and Deezer.

Operators are even starting to recoup losses on services that were previously not billable. Allot said 32 percent of operators sampled offer paid Wi-Fi access, turning Wi-Fi into a new revenue source rather than just a traffic offload mechanism. "The challenge for operators is to incorporate offloaded traffic into their existing policy control and charging architecture," said the company.

The number of sampled operators charging for tethering almost doubled over the past nine months from 15 percent to 29 percent, "marking a rise in operator efforts to closely monitor and monetize the interminable surge in data consumption," said Allot. Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) recently began tracking usage of its mobile hotspot and tethering services, allowing the operator to enforce an existing 5 GB cap on those services for the first time and frustrating some users who thought they had signed up for unlimited hotspot or tethering service.

Allot said there is an ongoing shift away from penalizing policies such as speed throttling toward customer-centric policies that give users more choice and control over their data usage. Only 33 percent of operators in the company's most recent study throttle data overages. In its November 2011 report, Allot found that 48 percent of operators throttled data in unlimited plans.

For more:
- see this Allot release

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Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) has adopted a two-vendor strategy for its Sprint Connections Optimizer on Android phones, adding Birdstep Technology's EastSmart client as a complement to the NetWise Director product it already uses from Smith Micro Software.

Sprint Connections Optimizer enables Sprint to adjust network selection on subscribers' devices as they move between coverage areas, dynamically connecting them to Sprint's 3G, WiMAX and LTE networks or to Wi-Fi as appropriate. The middleware can provide intelligent data traffic management by encouraging automatic offloading from the cellular network to suitable Wi-Fi networks.

Smith Micro announced in January that Sprint had tapped its Mobile Network Director--now called Netwise Director--to power the Sprint Connections Optimizer, which now also employs Birdstep's technology. "We have two vendors providing the same functionality for the Sprint Connections Optimizer on different phones," a Sprint spokeswoman told FierceBroadbandWireless.

As with Smith Micro's client, Birdstep's client can be pre-installed on new devices or rolled out over the air to existing ones, said the Sprint spokeswoman.

Birdstep has validated results on 1 million devices based on Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android operating system for Sprint, with additional rollouts planned for later this year, said a Birdstep spokeswoman. "Birdstep offers an iOS client, but the current engagement with Sprint is limited to Android devices," she noted.

Sprint is also using Smith Micro's Netwise Director only for Android devices.

However, Smith Micro this week expanded its Netwise traffic management portfolio by announcing NetWise SmartSpot for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS-based devices. Dave Sperling, Smith Micro CTO, explained that the SmartSpot iOS traffic management solution differs from the NetWise Director product because Apple does not provide low-level interfaces to get device radio status, control radios or collect data parameters.

Therefore, he said, "NetWise SmartSpot cannot direct traffic automatically, but it can supplement traffic management policies by recommending lower-cost, higher-performing Wi-Fi connections to subscribers."

Several SmartSpot features will be available on Android and Windows 8 devices in the future, Sperling added.

For more:
- see this Birdstep release
- see this Smith Micro release

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Sprint selects Smith Micro solution to manage network traffic

D2 Technologies and Sequans communications announced a voice-over-LTE reference solution that combines D2's mCue software client with Sequans' sQN3110 LTE baseband chip, which is the foundation for Sequans' second-generation Andromeda LTE platform for mobile devices.

The joint system-on-a-chip (SoC) solution is designed to deliver a turnkey design for OEMs and ODMs that want to add VoLTE and rich communications suite (RCS) capabilities to handsets, tablets and other mobile devices, said the companies.

D2 and Sequans said they will demonstrate live VoLTE calls using the solution via a Quanta reference tablet computer running through the Rohde & Schwarz CMW500 LTE and IMS communication tester during Mobile Asia Expo 2012 this week in Shanghai. A similar demo was conducted earlier this month at Computex Taipei.

"We are pleased with the results of our work with D2 that shows our VoLTE-ready technology running beautifully on D2's mCUE VoLTE platform," said Georges Karam, Sequans CEO. "Voice over LTE is key for the future of LTE, and collaborations like ours with D2 will soon make it a commercial reality."

VoLTE service revenues are expected to reach $2 billion by 2016, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 390 percent between 2012 and 2016, according to a recent report from ARCchart.

The number of devices supporting VoLTE will ramp up quickly, due in part to rabid competition from over-the-top VoIP providers such as Skype, FaceTime and Viber. "By 2016, we expect a total installed base of over 74 million VoLTE-enabled handsets will be present in the market. However, the OTT mobile VoIP market will also continue to maintain healthy growth," said ARCchart.

CDMA carriers--such as MetroPCS (NASDAQ:PCS), which hopes to launch VoLTE in the second half of this year--will drive VoLTE momentum because the CDMA standard, unlike WCDMA/GSM, does not support Circuit Switched Fallback (CSFB) technology, meaning LTE subscribers will have to use their LTE and CDMA radio interfaces concurrently, draining device battery life, said ARCchart.

For more:
- see this D2 release
- see this ARCchart release
- see this cellular-news article

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Lester Garcia

Mobility and mobile phones will continue to be the growth drivers for the telecom industry. Additionally, with the expansion of smartphone and other mobile devices, operators will face continuously rising demand for mobile broadband services, both in terms of coverage and bandwidth. With spectrum being a scarce resource and a shortage potentially affecting the development of the industry, refarming spectrum and the efficient usage of the Digital Dividend (DD)--that is, the spectrum rescued from TV digitalization and reallocated for mobile broadband services--will become key to the mobile industry.

However, this dividend will not come without some costs. First, TV digitalization processes still need to be completed in many countries around the world. Independently of the decisions regulators take regarding the auctioning or reallocation of this spectrum, there are implications that operators and policy makers should take into account in order to maximize the benefits from this process. That means the digital dividend and refarming processes will pose both opportunities and threats to regulators and industry players alike. A thorough understanding of these implications and an assessment of their effects is crucial for the industry as a whole.  

Maradevis has identified the main opportunities and challenges in the digital dividend and refarming processes. Additional spectrum can signify more services, more competition and better prices and quality of service for users. However, ill-designed refarming or spectrum allocation processes can increase spectrum prices and reduce availability, impacting investments and further service deployment and development. According to Maravedis, poor or delayed allocation of the new DD spectrum for mobile broadband service could reduce investments in 4G networks by 10.7 percent over the next few years... continued

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