Tech Untangled

Ericsson Chief Marketing Officer Johan Bergendahl is predicting that as Mobile Broadband takes off (and it is growing faster than mobile or fixed telephony ever did), Wi-Fi hotspots will become as obsolete as telephone booths. The reasoning is simple - As more and more cellular subscribers start using wireless broadband otherwise known as Wireless WAN (WWAN) technologies (e.g CDMA2000 EV-DO, HSPA/HSDPA/HSUPA, WiMAX, LTE) and it becomes available in many areas, WiFi hot spots will no longer be needed. In fact, Bergendahl says that “Hotspots at places like Starbucks are becoming the telephone boxes of the broadband era”.

This is driven by a couple of factors:
1) Availability of devices - More and more wireless broadband devices are becoming available. There are WWAN PCMCIA cards that fit in laptops, WWAN routers, and even WWAN embedded in laptops. Apparently, Ericsson recently signed a deal to put HSPA in some Lenovo notebooks, but HP and Dell already offer laptops with CDMA2000 (e.g. for Verizon Wireless service) and HSDPA (e.g. for AT&T service) built-in.
2) Declining prices and cost - the price and costs of wireless broadband is still high compared to WiFi, but is decreasing. Bergendahl says that in countries such as Austria, Denmark, and Sweden, the average price for a mobile broadband subscription is only €20 ($31) per month. Also, PCMCIA WWAN cards are pretty cheap now, and broadband built into computers will likely go the same route as they become more popular.
3) Coverage - coverage is becoming pretty good - in the U.S., both Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless already cover more than 300 million pops with their EV-DO broadband network and AT&T covers more than 160 cities. Indoor coverage issues can be resolved through femtocells.

There are still some issues to be resolved: “Industry will have to solve the international roaming issue,” Bergendahl said. Another problem is that competing cellular carriers use a different technologies. Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, Alltel and U.S. Cellular use cdma2000 EV-DO while AT&T uses W-CDMA (e.g. HSPA/HSDPA/HSUPA), and then there’s WiMAX as well. In contrast, WiFi is a unified standard.

What’s most interesting here is that this is not just a prediction. It is a subtle attempt to manipulate - See WiFi and mobile broadband compete against each other to a large extent in the sense that they both provide IP transport or Internet Access. Ericsson doesn’t have a strong position in WiFi, but has a very strong position in mobile broadband, especially in HSPA/HSDPA/HSUPA, so it tends to benefit immensely when WiFi is no more and cellular broadband covers the world. This is largely a self-serving, hope-filled prediction.

Like any technology, one day WiFi will fade away. Especially when we move from today’s 3G mobile broadband to 4G mobile broadband (e.g. LTE). Till then WiFi will continue to be just fine, thriving in its niche market. Take this prediction with a grain of salt.

AT&T Mobility says it will step up its 3G buildout, expanding its high-speed mobile service to more than 80 additional cities in 2008. The planned expansion will provide AT&T 3rd generation (3G) high-speed data services to nearly 350 leading U.S. markets by the end of 2008, including all of the top 100 U.S. cities. The initiative will entail rolling out 1,500+ additional cell sites in the U.S. The AT&T 3G network now delivers downlink (download) speeds between 600 and 1,400 Kilobits per second (Kbps) and uplink (upload) speeds between 500 and 800 Kbps.

AT&T also plans to complete the deployment of High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) by the middle of 2008. HSUPA provides higher uplink speeds and is the next step in the evolution of AT&T’s 3G network that will the transition to High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) standards. With this change, AT&T will catch up to Verizon and Sprint in terms of high speed wireless coverage. In fact, AT&T may even have faster uploads with HSUPA than Verizon or Sprint has with their EV-DO Rev A network.

Currently, there are multiple 3G technologies used by different wireless carriers in the U.S. AT&T uses HSPA that is based on W-CDMA technology, while Verizon, Sprint, Alltel, and U.S. Cellular, use CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technology. Sprint is also building another high-speed wireless network based on WiMAX, which was recently classified as a 3G technology. For 4th generation (4G) services, AT&T will use a technology named Long Term Evolution (LTE), a 4th generation technology that is still in the ‘development’ stage. Verizon too has announced that it will use LTE as its 4G technology, which will align it closely with its half-parent Vodafone, which mainly operates in Europe and Asia.

Verizon Wireless has confirmed plans to use Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology as its 4th Generation (4G) technology. Today, Verizon Wireless uses CDMA2000 technology and most of the rest of the world (including Verizon Wireless’ European half-parent Vodafone Group Plc.) uses W-CDMA (also called UMTS) for 3G services. These two technologies are similar but are not compatible.

With this move, Verizon Wireless will have a cellular technology compatibility with Vodafone, thus facilitating better operational synergies for the two companies as well as making it much easier and cheaper for subscribers that travel Internationally between the US, where Verizon Wireless operates, and Vodafones coverage areas in Europe and Asia.

Also, this move could be a blow to Qualcomm, the developer of the CDMA2000 technology, because Qualcomm has a very strong position in CDMA2000 as the primary (only?) chip vendor and holder of the majority of Intellectual Property but has a much less Intellectual Property and marketshare as a potential chip vendor in LTE.

Qualcomm has been working on a rival next generation technology known as Ultra Mobile Broadband, but 3GPP, one of the main standards bodies developing 3rd and 4th Generation technologies, recently selected LTE as its 4G migration path. According to the CDG, there are 400 million CDMA2000 and 21 million CDMAOne (IS-95) subscribers worldwide. Verizon Wireless currently has 64 million subs (mostly CDMA2000) or about 15% of the worldwide base. Losing 15% of the market in the future is significant but even more significant because it may compel other wireless operators to ditch the CDMA2000 4G migration path in favor of LTE. This move also could be a blow to WiMax, a rival 3G technology supported by Sprint Nextel that was recently designated as a 3G technology.

The Verizon Wireless and Vodafone will begin testing LTE technology in 2008 with equipment suppliers Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Motorola Inc., Nokia- Siemens, and Nortel Networks.

It is estimated that LTE would be commercially available in 2010 or 2011 and Verizon Wireless and Vodafone may have a common platform by around 2015 (Note: Telecom doesn’t move that fast!)

Airvana, a wireless equipment vendor, has successfully completed a multi-carrier CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Revision B (Rev B) call in its lab, which a major step towards commercialization.Rev B is a multi-carrier system that combines multiple 1.25 MHz channels into one super channel, allowing users to share the compounded capacity of the combined spectrum. Several months ago, Qualcomm has shown a live demonstration of Rev. B that achieved a 9.3 Mbps downlink data rate in 5 MHz. Rev B can provide speeds of 5.4 Mbps on the reverse link (uplink) using three carriers (3x). The Rev B standard supports peak data rates of rates of 14.9 Mbps on the 3 carriers and 73.5 Mbps by aggregating 15 carriers within 20 MHz of bandwidth.

Rev B is a software upgrade to Rev A, so wireless providers can offer 4G-like services at a fraction of the capital investment required to build 4G networks. Rev B is fully backward compatible with Rev 0 and Rev A and provides seamless handoff between Rev. B and Rev. A/Rel. 0. Also, by upgrading to Rev B, operators will be able to boost data speeds for Rev A and Rev 0 users by reducing the overall load on the radio network.

Multi-carrier EV-DO is also expected to allow operators to increase the number of Rev A VoIP and push-to-talk users they could serve without affecting the experience of data users. In fact, in March Qualcomm demonstrated 114 simultaneous Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) calls over a single 1.25 MHz channel in a single Rev. A Sector. In commercial deployment scenarios, EV-DO Rev. A’s capacity is expected to be up to 68 users in a 1.25 MHz single embedded sector, or about 475 simultaneous users in 10 MHz (a single embedded sector with seven 1.25 MHz carriers).

This VoIP field test employed a number of advanced Rev. A techniques including mobile receive diversity, equalization, interference cancellation, IP header reduction, End-to-end quality of service, and enhanced speech-processing algorithms to achieve voice quality and capacity comparable to traditional circuit-switched voice.

With WiMax on the horizon, it should be no surprise that wireless carriers who have no WiMax assets, will ramp up their efforts to increase the bandwidth offered to customers. Airvana expects to begin operator trials of Rev B multi-carrier EV-DO in Q3 2007.