Riding the LTE Juggernaut

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Voice&Data Bureau
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It's April 2012, and we are keeping our heads above the mobile data deluge, even if barely, thanks to a gathering avalanche of LTE networks. Even the wildest prognoses proved conservative as the GSM Association was betting on a more 'managed' progression through intermediate incremental increases, reasoning that the use of existing investments should be maximized while price declines and threats to existing roaming and SMS revenues had to be 'managed'.


Going Live

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Back in June 2009 there were no LTE networks operational. The Europeans were first off the mark with TeliaSonera in Norway and Sweden mid-December 2009. In North America, MetroPCS took the lead in September 2010 followed by Verizon Wireless in December.

Here in Asia, Hong Kong was first out of the starting gates with CSL going commercial on November 25, 2010 followed by Japan with NTT DOCOMO on December 24, 2010. In 2011, we saw Smart Communications in the Philippines in April followed by South Korea's SK Telecom and LG U+ in July. Then we saw Australia's Telstra and Singapore's SingTel go live. The most recent network in the region to go live with LTE was South Korea's KT on January 3, 2012.

The latest GSM Association figures show us that as of January 5, 2012, we have 49 operational LTE networks in 29 countries and 229 deployment commitments in a total of 79 countries. And obviously LTE networks have to be able to talk to each other. This, in turn, is generating furious activity to deploy IPX exchanges to provide data and voice roaming in an all-IP environment, a topic by itself, and keeping a number of us quite busy over the last six months.


Expectations

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Kudos to South Korea where SK Telekom moved up their deployment plans by 8 months, gained 500,000+ LTE subscribers, and plans a nationwide rollout by April this year. Both KT and LG+ are also accelerating their schedules. South Korea can clearly claim the LTE lead in Asia at this juncture.

Japan will be interesting to watch this year, as NTT has launched smartphones on their LTE network with usage based voice billing plans. Softbank is targeting a service launch late in the first quarter; with their history of being rather disruptive towards the more traditional carriers, this could make for a highly competitive environment and faster market penetration for LTE and its cohort of very smart devices. KDDI will also join the fray and Japan could regain the technology lead in 2013.

Based on the information they provided to the GSA, we are likely to see Maxis and Asiaspace in Malaysia, Ncell in Nepal, Globe in the Philippines, as well as StarHub in Singapore go live this year. Surprisingly, Taiwan continues to be absent from the LTE race as spectrum allocation is taking a long time.

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Obviously, still missing from the LTE honors' list today are China and India. In China, the standards' battle took time as they were pushing through the TD-LTE protocol version. We saw China Mobile run a showcase trial during Shanghai Expo 2010 and they are now planning a demo network in Beijing for 2012. While China Unicom has not divulged its plans, it seems likely that China Telecom will be the first one to launch a commercial LTE service later in 2012. It is safe to bet that once they get moving, the absolute numbers of Chinese LTE subscribers will surpass all others probably by 2016.

Meanwhile, in India after often delayed spectrum auctions, the result was a number of winners who had won licenses in a patchwork of service regions (circles). Only one, Infotel, won licenses in all 22 circles. They were subsequently bought by Reliance Industries (RIL). Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) and Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) were allocated spectrum before the auction.

As it stands today, 3 operators could be first out of the gates claiming the national 'First LTE deployment' title. Augere announced that they would start services in 14 cities in the telecom circles of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in the first quarter, starting with Bhopal. Reliance also has plans of rolling out LTE soon.

Continue...


Heralding IPv6

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And what about IPv6 in all of this? It is or soon will be under the hood. It still holds that faced with a deluge of data and a flood of handsets and applications, a drought of IP addresses might be perceived as a rather minor issue in the big scheme of things that would be resolved in due time. As address depletion became a reality, the excitement went largely unnoticed by the vast majority. Things will change when broadband networks like LTE networks fail to deliver enough bandwidth to provide a satisfactory user experience.

LTE recommendations specify that IPv6 support is required in the end devices. Some mobile network operators, including the most prominent IPv6 supporters here in Asia, have been rather discreet but are most certainly quietly working on IPv6 deployment in the context of LTE. They probably consider upcoming IPv6 support as implicit, considering that IP addresses are IP addresses, and their format irrelevant to the general public.

Mobile operators often cite the lack of LTE-ready end devices as a reason why they have delayed with IPv6 deployment. That argument is now passé. At the end of October, the GSA listed 197 LTE-enabled devices from 48 manufacturers, up three-fold since February 2011.

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Now that both voice and data are becoming more widely available over LTE and concerns about voice revenues are starting to move backstage, competitive pressure should be allowed to start working its magic. The choice and the versatility of LTE-enabled devices, associated with quality of service and adequate pricing, is what will turn on a mobile broadband-hungry public, especially the always-connected younger generation. It can only be an upward slope for IPv6 as it rides on LTE's coat tails.

Yves Poppe
The author is director, business development and IP strategy,
Tata Communications
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in