LTE

Samsung developing own baseband for LTE and WiMAX

Lynnette Luna — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 01:07:55 -0500

Samsung Electronics said it is developing its own baseband silicon for both LTE and WiMAX technology to help lower the cost of its handsets and reduce its exposure to IPR royalties.

Samsung said it is already sampling its mobile WiMax chipset to engineers. The company historically as relied on chips from Qualcomm but began diversifying its suppliers last year and brought Broadcom and Infineon in the fold. The Broadcom and Infineon chips supposedly use a software stack from Comneon, a joint venture between Infineon and InterDigital Communications that reportedly does not rely on Qualcomm's patents.

It's unclear how quickly Samsung will be able to incorporate its own chipsets in its devices and whether they will be used in its early LTE and WiMAX devices. It's highly likely Samsung will use Qualcomm LTE chipsets since Qualcomm has an aggressive schedule for LTE. Qualcomm is aiming to release engineering samples by the second quarter this year.

For more:
- read EE Times

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2008 Year in Review: LTE gains significant momentum

Lynnette Luna — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:47:37 -0500

LTE (Long Term Evolution) was supposed to significantly lag behind WiMAX, but the technology gained significant momentum in 2008. The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has completed the majority of specifications for standardization of LTE next-generation technology, meaning the full Release 8 standard is on track for completion by March. And a number of operators, including Verizon, T-Mobile and China Telecom, are champing at the bit to deploy LTE. Verizon Wireless has indicated it will have LTE up and running by the end of 2009. And what became extremely significant for the technology was the fact that a number of CDMA operators, including Verizon and Bell Canada, are moving to LTE, which is supposed to be the technology path for the GSM community.

Vendors continue to announce their momentum with trials. Motorola recently announced it conducted the first over-the-air data sessions for LTE technology in the 700 MHz spectrum in an outdoor field test that included mobile video streaming and other data-heavy applications.

Meanwhile, while we won't likely see a merger between WiMAX and LTE, Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff recently told reporters that while Clearwire is committed to WiMAX, it wound consider LTE in the future "if it makes sense for us to do so several years from now when LTE becomes commercially available."

The bottom line: LTE deployments will likely happen in the U.S. market on a significant basis first because of the amount of spectrum license holders have in the 700 MHz band. Elsewhere, large swaths of spectrum are hard to come by for significant deployments of LTE.

Skyworks introduces LTE TDD/FDD power amplifier

Lynnette Luna — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 01:05:56 -0500

Semiconductor company Skyworks Solutions announced what it calls industry's first multi-mode and multi-band TDD/FDD power amplifier module for LTE applications. Skyworks' PAM is also the first product available specifically targeting LTE-TDD bands 38 and 40. LTE TDD is expected to become the dominant 4G standard mobile operators utilize in China. Release

LTE standardization almost complete

Lynnette Luna — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:32:56 -0500

The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has completed the majority of specifications for standardization of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) next-generation technology, meaning the full Release 8 standard is on track for completion by March.

The 3GPP still has to work on the evolved packet core, otherwise known as System Architecture Evolution, because the specifications weren't complete enough. 3GPP has written up a list of "exceptions" that will need to be finalized by March in order to be included in Release 8, according to an Unstrung article.

"There are a number of pieces of work which we thought should be included but weren't quite ready," said Adrian Scrase, vice president of international partnership projects with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. "[There are] quite a number of parts for SAE, the work [on which] still lags behind LTE work. We have a high level of confidence that the items will be completed by March, otherwise we wouldn't have included them on the list."

The question now is, how fast will vendors be able to churn out standardized LTE equipment?

For more:
- read Unstrung

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Alcatel-Lucent steps up LTE investments, backs off WiMAX

Lynnette Luna — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 22:22:05 -0500

New Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen said his plan to return the company to profitability includes stepping up investments in LTE and pulling back on WiMAX investments. During a conference call with reporters, Verwaayen said the company, which has posted seven straight quarters of losses, will increase investments in LTE as the world's major operators plan to deploy the 4G technology as well as continue investing in WCDMA and CDMA2000 1x EV-DO. It will reduce spending on WiMAX, GSM and CDMA 1x. Nortel also announced earlier this year a shift in focus from WiMAX to LTE.

Alcatel-Lucent said it would eliminate 1,000 management positions and 5,000 contracting jobs on top of the 16,500 positions the company has already said it would lop off by the end of 2009. These latest reductions, Verwaayen said, will make the vendor "more agile" by eliminating in-house duplication.

For more:
- read FierceWireless
- check out RCR News

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Verizon says LTE will be here next year

Lynnette Luna — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:47:04 -0500

Verizon Wireless CTO Dick Lynch said the operator expects to have Long Term Evolution technology in service somewhere in the U.S. by December 2009. Lynch, speaking at Cisco Systems' C-Scape conference in San Jose, also said Verizon will offer femtocells, which will likely include WiFi as an added feature, shortly after introducing LTE.

"A femtocell of LTE or an access point of WiFi is a really critical component of the way customers want their broadband delivered," Lynch said.

Verizon's move represents an aggressive timeframe for LTE, which has largely been understood to hit the market in 2010. However, speakers at this week's LTE America's conference indicated they were skeptical that a 2010 LTE launch was attainable, according to an article in RCR News. LTE was supposed to be standardized by the end of this year, but the date has now been pushed to March.

Qualcomm has also recently issued an aggressive timeline for releasing engineering samples of its LTE/HSPA+ device modem. It is trying for the second quarter of 2009. The company, however, cautioned commercial availability of of the MDM9000 "still depends on a number of very uncertain factors, many of which are dependent on mobile network operators' plans and investment priorities about how and when to roll out this next stage of wireless technology," said Enrico Salvatori, senior vice president and general manager for Qualcomm Europe, speaking at the company's inaugural European Innovation Summit last week.

Why the rush for Verizon? Ken Hyers, analyst with Technology Business Research, said in a recent interview that Verizon desires to push aggressively with LTE because it's running out of data capacity on its CDMA EVDO network and must compete with higher speed HSPA+ AT&T Wireless is rolling out before its own LTE launch.

"The operator's entire reputation is built around network quality and coverage and having the best network," Hyers said. Verizon "will have to continue increasing data capacity."

For more:
- read Computerworld
- check out RCR News

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Qualcomm announces aggressive plans for LTE

Lynnette Luna — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 19:55:46 -0500

Qualcomm has issued an aggressive timeline for releasing engineering samples of its LTE/HSPA+ device modem. It is trying for the second quarter of 2009. The company, however, cautioned commercial availability of of the MDM9000 "still depends on a number of very uncertain factors, many of which are dependent on mobile network operators' plans and investment priorities about how and when to roll out this next stage of wireless technology," said Enrico Salvatori, senior vice president and general manager for Qualcomm Europe, speaking at the company's inaugural European Innovation Summit last week.

Salvatori noted many uncertainties exist concerning the timelines for HSPA+, "almost all of which are pretty much out of our control." While the LTE standard is close to finalization, there still is uncertainty about in which spectrum ranges LTE would be deployed. Salvatori said decisions still have to be made on network topology.

For more:
- read EE Times

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Alcatel-Lucent CEO: We'll be ready with LTE

Lynnette Luna — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 18:21:21 -0500

Newly installed Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen will unveil a plan to turn the company around, and wireless will be a part of that plan, the CEO said last week. Alcatel-Lucent, which has posted seven straight quarters of losses, has been pressured by investors to cut its wireless business loose. But Verwaayen said the vendor will keep its research and development and will be ready with LTE products.

And perhaps just in time to placate investors, Alcatel-Lucent announced a $230 million contract to upgrade China Telecom's CDMA network. Alcatel-Lucent said it is supplying base stations, which can be upgraded to 3G, to deploy the network across 56 cities in nine Chinese provinces by the end of the year.

Verwaayen will unveil the company's strategic plans for moving forward Friday.

For more:
- check out RCR News
- read the WSJ (sub. req.)

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Clearwire says it's not wedded to WiMAX

Lynnette Luna — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:45:53 -0500

Having solidified its merger with Sprint's Xohm WiMAX business and secured the $3.2 billion investment from Comcast, Time Warner, Bright House Networks, Intel and Google, Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff announced his company will go to market with WiMAX service branded "Clear" and noted that the company would also consider deploying LTE down the road.

"Mobile WiMAX and LTE have a lot in common--far more in common than either of these technologies have with today's 2G or 3G technologies," Wolff said during a conference call. "Consumers really don't care about the technology."

According to Wolff, "if it makes sense for us to do so several years from now when LTE becomes commercially available" the carrier will go in two 4G technology directions.

Clearwire also announced that Sprint's Xohm market in Baltimore will be rebranded as Clear, but the 46 pre-WiMAX networks already operating under the Clearwire brand will continue to carry that name. The assumption is they will be rebranded Clear once mobile WiMAX is ready in those markets. Clearwire also announced it will roll out commercial mobile WiMAX in Portland, Ore. early next year.

"Several additional markets are in various stages of design, development and construction," Wolff said. These include existing Sprint markets that have been under way in the planning and development stages.

"At this point one of our most important tasks is to integrate these assets with ours," Wolff said. "We intend to share more details about our network expansion plans early next year after we've had an opportunity to meet with our new board to discuss our new products."

In the meantime, he said, Clearwire will "dedicate most of our focus" to building a common back office system and deploying new markets based on common infrastructure.

For more:
- check out FierceWireless

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LTE can't come soon enough for China Mobile

Lynnette Luna — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:31:12 -0500

China Mobile Communications says it is the "most-ready operator" for LTE technology. The Chinese operator said it is preparing for LTE now and building out its government-mandated 3G TD-SCDMA network so cell sites and other network pieces can be reused for LTE. China Mobile plans to roll out a TDD version of LTE by 2010.

"In our new TD-SCDMA network, we put all the measurement and configuration in place to have a simple migration to LTE," Bill Huang, general manager at China Mobile Research Institute, was quoted as saying in Unstrung. "More than 60 percent of the investment will be able to migrate to LTE in the future. That makes us the most ready operator for LTE."

The operator is planning to begin a proof-of-concept trial by the end of this year with lab and field trials scheduled for early next year.

The TD-LTE specs are scheduled to be done by the end of 2008 when the primary LTE system architecture for the frequency division duplex (FDD) is complete. And China Mobile appears to be a driving force in pushing vendors to get equipment out quickly. It's no wonder since it appears the Chinese government will mandate that China Mobile deploy TD-SCDMA as a 3G standard. Recently, the head of China Mobile admitted TD-SCDMA technology was "a few years behind" WCDMA and CDMA2000 because of problems with handsets. China Mobile has already spent some $2 billion on trials using TD-SCDMA in 10 Chinese cities since April. As of early July, three months into its commercial TD-SCDMA trials, China Mobile only had 52,000 users, of which 8,000 were paying for the service.

Many telecom experts believe China's operators will essentially leapfrog 3G as the government continually delays tenders and opts for a 4G deployment like LTE.

For more:
- check out Unstrung

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Qualcomm drops UMB development effort

Lynnette Luna — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:14:34 -0500

Not surprisingly, Qualcomm said it was dropping development efforts around Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB) technology, the proposed 4G path for CDMA networks, in favor of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology. The move comes after the world's largest CDMA operators such as Verizon Wireless and Canada's CDMA operator have announced plans to move to LTE. CEO Paul Jacobs said in January that he was still hopeful UMB had a chance, despite the fact that Verizon announced its intention to support LTE. Since then, a host of other operators have followed Verizon's lead.

Based on an announcement earlier this year, Qualcomm expects to begin sampling multi-mode chips that include LTE during the second quarter of 2009.

For more:
- take a look at Cellular-News

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ZTE to build R&D for LTE

Lynnette Luna — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:10:23 -0500

Chinese telecom equipment provider ZTE plans to build a research and development team for LTE and 4G projects with more than 2,000 employees, reports Sohu. The company has partnered with 4G research entities including those housed at Tsinghua University, Southeast University and Beijing Jiaotong University, said Hu Jian, chief of ZTE's Communications Standard Department. Article

T-Mobile International wants LTE fast

Lynnette Luna — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:23:42 -0500

T-Mobile International says it will skip HSPA+ and go straight to LTE, a move no doubt welcomed by vendors such as Motorola that are anxious to sell LTE as quickly as possible.

"If I need to invest into more hardware, I think it's better to start early [with LTE]. LTE is a more future-oriented technology," CTO Joachim Horn told Unstrung. He added that the operator will only deploy HSPA as long as there isn't a need to replace hardware. "We'll do every other efficiency increase that's software-based," he said. That means T-Mobile can boost its current 7.2 Mbps HSDPA network up to 14.4 Mbps on the downlink but going further to HSPA+ will require MIMO antennas.

Other operators plan to continue milking their HSPA networks by adding HSPA+. AT&T Mobility last month reiterated its position at the 4G Executive Summit in Chicago that its HSPA and HSPA+ 3G network technology still had a lot of life left in it, and that LTE would not be rolled out for at least another three years--and probably not on a large commercial scale for another five years.

T-Mobile's revelation is good news to vendors such as Motorola, which doesn't really have an HSPA story and has been heavily developing OFDMA-based WiMAX and LTE. Ericsson, on the other hand, has been pushing for upgrades to HSPA.

For more:
- read Unstrung

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Hesse: WiMAX will reach 140M potential customers by 2010

Lynnette Luna — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:35:50 -0400

Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse said he anticipates the company's WiMAX network, which is expected to be combined with Clearwire shortly, to reach 140 million potential customers by 2010. Hesse, speaking at a National Press Club luncheon last week in Washington, D.C., said he expects a combined company to obtain regulatory approval and officially combine by the end of the year. The FCC is expected to vote on the deal on Nov. 4.

He said Sprint chose WiMAX as a 4G standard because it is "available now and our customers want 4G now." He was confidentWiMAX would minimize the market penetration of LTE simply because WiMAX is coming to market first. The company has deployed WiMAX in Baltimore and plans to deploy it in Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., pending the close of the deal.

After another tough week in the financial markets, Hesse also addressed concerns about how the downturn in the economy would affect the wireless industry. He noted that the industry will likely see a decrease in enterprise subscribers as businesses lay off workers, but said that Sprint was in a good position because it was cash-flow positive.

For more:
- check out FierceWireless

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IMS Research: Mobile WiMAX will be a niche technology

Lynnette Luna — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:13:21 -0400

Despite the fact that mobile WiMAX has a time-to-market advantage over LTE by at least two years, analysts at IMS Research believe the technology at best will remain a niche mobile technology. That's because network operators are just now beginning to see a return on their 3G networks and won't be ready to upgrade to an OFDM-based technology until about the time LTE is ready.

The fact that LTE won't be ready for another two to three years may actually turn out to be a boon for LTE as the time frame will allow mobile operators to get as much life as possible out of their existing 3G networks, says a new report from IMS Research. Incremental upgrades to enhanced 3G technologies such as HSPA+ and EV-DO Rev B will allow for almost the same data rates as the initial LTE deployments, which will effectively set the stage for large-scale LTE commercial rollouts in three to four years.

LTE has a further advantage because the majority of cellular operators around the world will choose LTE as their migration path given the fact that 3GPP has tabbed LTE as the next-generation standard for the GSM community.

"The truth is that WiMAX is a very robust technology that has been quite successful in many parts of the world as a fixed broadband solution and will continue to do so, especially in under-served markets," said IMS Research analyst Bob Perez. "Although mobile WiMAX networks are already going live thanks to Sprint/Clearwire and Korea Telecom, the prospect of additional mobile WiMAX networks from Tier 1 operators are looking pretty grim."

For more:
- read this release

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Canada's CDMA operators defect to HSPA/LTE

Lynnette Luna — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 15:18:18 -0400

Canada's Bell Canada and Telus Mobility announced plans to overlay their CDMA networks with HSPA technology by 2010 with an eventual move to LTE technology. The announcement builds on the CDMA network-sharing deal the two CDMA operators have had in place since 2001.

The move follows Verizon Wireless' decision to deploy LTE in the 700 MHz spectrum it won earlier this year. However, Verizon is skipping an HSPA deployment, choosing to continue investing in its EV-DO network that will likely complement the new LTE network for some time. Telus said the HSPA deployment would enable "a smoother transition to long term evolution (LTE) technology."

"Bell's transition to the global 4G LTE standard with a combined EV-DO and HSPA network path aligns us with more than 30 major carriers worldwide planning a similar move to LTE," said Stephen Howe, CTO with the operator. "This broad global technology ecosystem will mean a fast, efficient and cost-effective network transition to 4G LTE, and access to the broadest possible range of next-generation phones and data services."

Telus Mobility and Bell Canada both won spectrum in Canada's AWS-1 auction.

For more:
- read RCR News

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Mobile WiMAX versus LTE: Can they co-exist?

Jim Barthold — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:43:20 -0400

Mobile WiMAX is the first out of the gate, but LTE is often considered the more evolutionary technology. The question probably isn't whether they can co-exist--they have enough common elements that it's feasible--it's whether there are enough reasons for them too. "They're not going to merge," Jarich said flatly. "Just from a political standpoint of getting all the parties together...it's just not going to happen. You're going to have these guys fight it out." That might be bad for the carriers but it's good for the vendors who supply weapons to both sides and it's always good for consumers who get more choice.

"When was it ever a good thing for innovation when there is less competition?" asked Orr. "The presence of a rapidly maturing WiMAX ecosystem certainly has had the effect of accelerating LTE well before all the revenue potential was drawn out of HSPA and EVDO." LTE will tap into a base of more than 3.3 billion worldwide subscribers for the "GSM family of technologies," said Pearson. "LTE has momentum in standards development, carrier decisions and an LTE wireless ecosystem being created. There is no reason to slow it down by merging it with WiMAX."

There is, however, a reason for speeding it up to compete with WiMAX. "I can make a pretty strong argument that LTE would be at least four years later if WiMAX were not pulling it forward," Orr said. WiMAX also comes with its own strengths that could add some intrigue to the battle. It's an IP standard from its base up and "performs better in TDD and less mobile environments," Orr said. "LTE performs better in FDD and a high-user count model." That means the two could be complementary-albeit competing. "You're going to have these guys fight it out," concluded Jarich. "Would it be better if we had one technology and not two? Sure, but we have two and we're stuck with them."

Click here to read more about our panel on this discussion...

Nortel's LTE business is in limbo

Peggy Albright — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:06:40 -0400

Nortel Networks got the word out yesterday that it is preparing to exit the LTE infrastructure business, a move that will likely leave the veteran wireless infrastructure company without a 4G play. The company, struggling with lengthy and well-documented financial problems, said it is taking immediate and decisive actions to improve its business. One of its strategies is to "mitigate the risks associated with its 4th generation carrier wireless investments."

In a conference call with investors, Nortel's CEO, Mike Zafirovski, said the company had not settled on a plan for the LTE business, but he described its options as similar to the approaches Nortel used when it off-loaded its UMTS and WiMAX products. The company sold its UMTS infrastructure business to Alcatel in 2006. It shifted away from WiMAX this past summer when it teamed up with Alvarion to develop an end-to-end mobile WiMAX solution that the two companies now offer as partners. Nortel justified the WiMAX move, in part, with a decision to put increased emphasis on LTE, which it considered a better near-term opportunity. For a company that claimed substantial and meaningful intellectual property in both WiMAX and LTE, these strategic changes must be difficult indeed.

Zafirovski also said the company's CDMA business, which has been declining, has not improved and is under "additional pressure." He said the company is undergoing a comprehensive review to determine what types of restructuring and cost reduction initiatives can be used to improve the company's competitiveness. As recently as early August, the company articulated higher hopes for a stronger end to 2008, but Zafirovski said this week that new financial pressures, particularly the double-whammy of market competitiveness and the global downturn, will make the next few months weaker than expected. The company announced that it will be divesting itself of its Metro Ethernet Networks division. The company's future markets will now, apparently, center around enterprise technologies and carrier VoIP.

For more:
- see Unstrung

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Enterprises will drive wireless broadband growth

Peggy Albright — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:22:55 -0400

Senza Fili Consulting forecasts enterprise markets will have a welcome and significant impact on wireless broadband growth. The research firm said enterprises are finally ready to adopt vertical applications that require wireless data connectivity, such as machine-to-machine communications, in-vehicle telematics and mobile workforce products. A new report from the research firm says that by 2014, vertical market applications will use more than 154 million connections on 3G, WiMAX or LTE networks, generating more than $43 billion in service revenues, and that vertical services will reach 24 percent of WiMAX subscriptions and 14 percent of LTE subscriptions. While the enterprise market is a potentially lucrative one, however, it is challenging to serve, and operators will need to prepare well to give these customers the attention and performance they will demand, the firm cautions.

For more:
- see the release

China Mobile wants to test LTE ASAP

Lynnette Luna — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:10:56 -0400

The world's largest mobile operator in terms of subscribers, China Mobile, said it was eager to begin testing 4G TD-LTE soon, a time division duplex (TDD) version of LTE that will be backward compatible with the struggling Chinese 3G standard TD-SCDMA. However, the lack of chipsets are holding back its plans.

The TD-LTE specs are scheduled to be done by the end of 2008 when the primary LTE system architecture for the frequency division duplex (FDD) is complete. And China Mobile appears to be a driving force to pushing vendors to get equipment out quickly. It's no wonder since it appears the Chinese government will mandate that China Mobile deploy TD-SCDMA as a 3G standard. Recently, the head of China Mobile admitted TD-SCDMA technology was "a few years behind" WCDMA and CDMA2000 because of problems with handsets. China Mobile has already spent some $2 billion on trials using TD-SCDMA in 10 Chinese cities since April. As of early July this year, three months into its commercial TD-SCDMA trials, China Mobile only had 52,000 users, of which 8,000 were paying for the service.

Many telecom experts believe China's operators will essentially leapfrog 3G as the government continually delays tenders and opt for a 4G deployment like LTE.

For more:
- read Unstrung

Related stories:
How far will China go to make TD-SCDMA a success?
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