LTE challenges & opportunities

NetEvents, February 8-10th 2011, Barcelona

dean.bubley@disruptive-analysis.com

About Disruptive Analysis

Analyst house & strategic consulting firm Founded by Dean Bubley, @disruptivedean Blog at disruptivewireless.blogspot.com Covering 3G since 2000, mVoIP since 2004, pico/femtocells since 2001 Regular focus on the links between innovative mobile network technologies & the impact on devices and applications Research reports on Broadband Traffic Management, Mobile VoIP, Broadband Business Models, Femtocells, IMS Probably coined the term Mobile data offload in 2008 Coined the term Under the floor player in 2009 Coined the term Happy pipe in 2010 Coined the term Telcowash in 2011

Feb 2011

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LTE is being deployed..

Feb 2011

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 and its fast

Feb 2011

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LTE challenges
Unclear business model Policy management & charging challenges Unclear when full LTE coverage might be achieved Too many spectrum bands 2600, 2300, 2100, 1900, 1800, 1700, 900, 800, 700, TDD/FDD Increases component size, cost & power needs Some auctions delayed anyway Indoor coverage poor at >2GHz Roaming nightmare (but does it matter?) Voice and SMS uncertainties Massmarket handsets a long way off

Feb 2011

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Is LTE for dumb pipes, or happy pipers?

Should telcos be more scared of under-the-floor players than over-the-top?

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Mobile broadband traffic management options

Tuning TCP/IP & contention mgmt Macro radio network upgrades & optimisation Policy-based traffic-shaping

Compression, optimisation & transcoding

Core

Internet

X. Y. Z

Device-based solutions

Local offload (WiFi / Femto)

Caches / CDNs

Transport / core offload

Congestion APIs & monitoring

Feb 2011

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LTE era vs 50bn devices: How many with voice?

Possibly 50 billion+ (maybe 1 trillion+) Billion devices
35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 2010
Feb 2011

Other LTE phones 3G phones 2G phones Most devices not for primary voice. Scope for secondary IP comms services Full mobile VoIP not #1 priority
2020

Most devices for primary voice

Still a lot of CS mobile voice

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Voice Telephony
Now: 2G & 3G
Voice

Future: Smartphones & LTE

Voice

Telephony Telephony Gaming, CEBP, surveillance, social voice, TV voice etc Video
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Voicemail Conferencing
Feb 2011

Video, context, sense

IMS: dead, but now nailed to the perch of LTE?

(With apologies to Monty Python)

3GPP

LTE

Mobile IMS
http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com/2009/08/mobile-ims-and-lte-networks-dead-parrot.html Feb 2011 Copyright Disruptive Analysis Ltd 2011

Fjords, aka RCS

Most likely outcome for LTE Voice

Solution
VoLTE

2011-2012
Some trials. Many problems found Few rollouts. Likely not good user experience Unlikely to be used, maybe OTT Used on laptops & tablets. Some smartphone use A few renegade operators Use for SVLTE in CDMA 1x + LTE

2013-2014
Patchy rollout, more in 700-900MHz networks May be fixed, but not likely May come back if other solutions as bad as feared Common on LTE wholesale networks Depends on Skype, Google etc Replacement for CSFB in 3GPP?

2015 onwards
Slow growth but not universal. Used for roaming Fades out as mainstream option Good option for those with long CS legacy ahead May be 2nd voice service along with operators own Important in specific pockets but not universal Probably superseded

Notes
If it works, OK for basic telephony, not for Voice 2.0 Political choice by GSMA / 3GPP Could be revisited by 3GPP under another name Some operators will take fixed bband approach Could be provided from other telco as wholesale Battery impact but better overall QoE

CSFB

VoLGA

No operator voice. User picks 3rd pty Optimised 3rd-party VoIP Dual-radio Velcro

Feb 2011

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www.disruptive-analysis.com disruptivewireless.blogspot.com dean.bubley@disruptive-analysis.com +44 (0) 7941 100016

Feb 2011

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