TELECOMS NEWS

Archive for the ‘LTE Phone’ Category

What has Digital TV got to do with 4G Mobile?

Well, it is in fact very closely linked and it’s critical that the Digital TV Switchover we are all hearing so much about these last years goes ahead completely in 2012. The Government and broadcasters have been working hard for the last 10 years on making sure we are all moved off the old analogue delivery method and onto Digital. Most people have a DigiBox or it built into our TV sets and the final furlong is in sight now.

But have you asked why? Sure, it seems obvious that the signal quality will be better with HD channels being broadcast and new transmission techniques and more channels on Freeview but there is much more to it than that.

The radio waves in the UK are very busy and have been for some time. We all watch TV, listen to the radio, use our Mobiles and use a host of other wireless devices from WiFi to remote keys for cars and doors. All of this needs to operate within a known frequency band whether it is a licensed or unlicensed frequency band. Be very afraid if you start to interfere with some other electrical function or critical service – you may have the RA (Radio Agency) to deal with! To do a serious explanation of UK frequency spectrum would take a PhD thesis but the critical factor in all of this movement from Analogue TV to Digital TV is to free up the airwaves to launch 4Generation Mobile Broadband services.

It now transpires that this will not be all smooth running and that there will be some interference at the cross over points in the frequencies, particularly around 800MHz. Practically this is going to mean that whoever wins the licenses to operate 4G services is going to have to find some solution to delivering the broadcast services free from interference. This might involve using filters; it might involve paying for a satellite or cable service to those homes affected.

But why would you do that when you are building a super fast mobile network capable of delivering rich media content particularly video? Surely the technology will allow for a facility to deliver to individual homes; after all it is designed to run up to 1GBit/s to a static location. What remains to be seen is will it be economical to do so if a large number of homes have to be guaranteed a broadcast service above and beyond the other mobile connections that will be demanding rich media services.

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From then to now?

Many many years ago when the yuppie hoard roamed the western world there came a really useful form of communications in the form of a portable phone. Portable was the description but it was more akin to ‘luggable’ and came in the form of a small suitcase or brief case connected to a car battery or similar. At the time they were the rich business man’s toy and remained so for some time with the key advantage being that you could tell your wife that you were on the way home and to put the dinner on! How things have changed over the last 25 years!

Analogue technology was very quickly replaced by Digital at the beginning of the 90’s and GSM was born. This was a natural evolution from a specification that was developed in the Nordic countries called NMT (Nordic Mobile Telecommunications). It was such a good fit that it became the major template for the new standard although the operating frequencies necessarily had to change. Operating frequencies and their availability remains a major theme of all development discussion in this space to this day and is likely to always remain so. Incidentally, this left two major telecoms vendors in a remarkably good position to supply the world with mobile terminals and Nokia and Ericsson started to clean up with one company becoming almost preeminent for the whole of the 90’s and even into the 00’s. But, as Nokia now know, nothing can ever be taken for granted.

What grew up behind this development was a battle between Europe /Asia and the USA and Japan. The major market developed in Europe and Asia and the USA lagged behind. Japan managed to maintain a considerable growth and innovation with their standards approach but it had little to do with the rest of the world and just made it a difficult market to enter for western suppliers. This is a whole historical piece on its own but is really just an interesting subject conversation and considered opinions as to how this period became so complicated.

Things are much clearer now however, or are they? Now we are heading through the 3G period, with 2G almost forgotten, (although used by us all on a daily basis) and with many improvements being layered on top of the old standard. Now we see HSPA in its two main varieties HSDPA and HSUPA, the D and the U in both cases standing for Download and Upload. These services provide High Speed access to mobile at and around fixed broadband speeds where network is available.

We are now moving slowly towards 4G and LTE services and these are expected in the UK in 2013 if all goes to plan. Briefly, LTE stands for Long Term Evolution and is a subset of the overall 4G standard. As usual, there are standards, and there are standards; which leaves some confusion. The major hardware vendors are all rushing to get their interpretation of the ‘standard’ out there and working to prove a point and accelerate growth. Certain parts of Scandinavia, USA and Arabia are already starting to offer trial services although the terminals are not in the mass market yet.  The consideration of these standards and services requires considerable explanation but for now, let’s have a look at the quantum jump in speeds we can expect in the future if all works out perfectly – which it won’t!

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What is the situation with 4G services in the UK and what are we really waiting for?

UK users are going to have to wait a bit longer for 4G as the auctions for providing services is scheduled for late 2012 with first launch only possible in 2013 although this would appear impractical.

But what are we really waiting for?

3G services have rolled into 3.5G services and even 3.9G services, which are not standards as such but variations on the theme of the 3GPP (3^rd Generation Partnership Project) release schedule. These mid services primarily support HSDPA and HSUPA High Speed Download Packet Access and High Speed Upload Packet Access , The download offering promises speeds towards the terminal of 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.0Megabit/s. This is not a symmetrical offering and the upload speed is offering a new bearer of 384 kbit/s. The previous maximum bearer was 128 kbit/s. HSUPA or the HSPA offers up-link speeds of up to 5.76 Mbit/s. The name HSUPA was created incidentally by Nokia.

However, this is an ideal view of the world and in practice the speeds achieved are woefully short of this but let’s keep the view ‘blue sky’ for the moment.

In summary, 4G or 4^TH Generation services offer a Peak data rates of up to 100 Mbit/s for high mobility and up to approximately 1 Gbit/s for low mobility such as local wireless access. Then it starts to get really very technical as to how this quantum leap in speeds is achieved with super efficient frequency modulation and various advanced radio techniques but maybe we will come back to this at a later date to try to unravel what it is and why it can promise so much. Further analysis is also required of the industry politics the other challenges in providing these super fast access speeds which 10 years ago would have been unthinkable. The bottle neck is going to move out of the access interface and into the core network and that is going to be a considerable challenge to the mobile operators as up until now they could blame everything else for slow response. There is a way to go yet for terminal and network, but as we always say, it can only get better in the future and the future is….well yes, yet to be discovered.

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Business and consumer demand for high speed mobile broadband has spiked a demand for 4G Routers and LTE Routers in the UK.  Popular products such as the Option Globesurfer 3+ and the Zalip CDG561WE 4G Routers thats provide higher download speeds than traditional HSPA Routers have seen a dramatic increase in sales.  The Option Globesurfer III+ is a HSPA+ Router with a maximum download speed of 14.4Mbps and the Zalip CDG561WE is a 4G Router with maximum download speeds of up to 21Mbps.

Many users of these high speed mobile broadband routers aare using them on the new 3 mobile HSPA+ Network and in our own tests we got 11Mbps download speed which is pretty impressive.

With the new wave of wireless network technologies around the corner with the auction of the old analogue television spectrum later this year there are exciting times ahead in the UK for high speed mobile broadband access for both 4G mobile phone users as well as home and office mobile broadband solutions using the next generation of 4G Router, LTE Router, WiMAX Router and HSPA+ Routers.

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New LTE Blog available as part of the new LTE Forum Site.

The LTE Blog will provide comment and updates on the LTE Long Term Evoolution mobile broadband services, networkd, phones, hardware and LTE Routers available in the UK and across the world.  The LTE Blog compliments the new LTE Forum.

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There is a new LTE Forum available for users to discuss all elements of LTE Long Term Evolution, including LTE Network, LTE Router, LTE Phone, LTE Hardware, LTE suppliers and LTE Applications.

The new LTE Forum is open for all users.

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We have tested the new Zalip CDG561WE embedded HSPA+ 3G router today using a standard 3 mobile broadband SIM card and using www.speedtest.net we got a download speed of 11.26Mbps and an upload speed of 1.54Mps – we were very impressed.

I tested our own ADSL broadband service and only got 5.12Mbps download speed and a measly 412kbps upload speed.  HSPA+ seems to be the way to go.

We just thought you might be interesed.

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The 3G Router Store announced today that it’s first shipment of the Zalip CDG561WE will arrive during August 2011.  The Zalip HSPA+ Router will compliment the growing range of LTE Router products being stocked by the UK’s leading supplier of 3G  and 4G routers.  Other HSPA+ routers currently in stock are the Vololink VA125 and the Vololink VA126.

LTE (Long Term Evolution) is the next generation of Mobile Broadband Internet services which will provide high speed mobile broadband with 3 Mobile already advising customers of a 40% increase in download speeds when uing LTE Modems with their 3G network.

Most of the UK is currently serviced by 3G HSPA networks with download speeds up to 7.2Mpbs which is suitable for most M2M and remote monitoring and management applications so there will still be a huge demand for 3G networks and 3G routers.  LTE Neworks offering very high speed internet services will initially be aimed at home and business users as a real alternative to traditional fixed line broadband services such as ADSL and SDSL.

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What is LTE ?

To help answer the question “What is LTE ?” we have compiled the following information.  LTE (Long Term Evolution) is the project name of a new high performance air interface for cellular mobile communication systems. It is the last step toward the 4th generation (4G) of radio technologies designed to increase the capacity and speed of mobile telephone networks.  LTE is commonly known as 4G so you may have started to hear about the latest 4G phones, 4G Mobiles, 4G modems and even 4G Routers.

LTE will support typical download speeds of 100Mbps and upload speeds of 50Mbps, however the initial LTE products including LTE mobile Phones, LTE Smartphones and LTE Routers will typically support either 21Mbps or 42Mbps, but these will be subject to the availability of LTE networks.

When will LTE be available in the UK?

O2 and Huawei have just finished trials of an 4G Mobile Network LTE service in Slough where they reached download speeds of 150Mbps.  However, the UK mobile phone operators will need to move quickly to roll out 4G LTE services becuase acording to a recent Financial Times article, Hong Kong based PCCW is looking to roll out an LTE network in the UK through its UK subsidiary UK Broadband.  PCCW recently aquired all the UK WiMax licenses and plans to operate its 4G network using the 3.5GHz and 3.6GHz frequencies for LTE.

LTE Hardware

There are a growing number of 4G phones available, but with no usable network they will not live up to their performance claims in the UK and there are also a growing number of other 4G business hardware solutions such as 4G Routers.  A good example is the Vololink VA126 LTE router which can provide download speeds up to 42Mbps and is available to buy now, which is great if you live in one of the LTE network trial areas but we imagine that as LTE services are rolled out during 2011 and 2012 in the UK then products such as the Vololink and Zalip HSPA+ routers that can take advantage of the high speed LTE mobile broadband networks will become more popular and start to replace the 3G router products currently being used for IP CCTV and M2M remote monitoring and management applications.

In summary, the answer to the question “What is LTE ?” is that LTE is high speed mobile broadband offering potentially faster sdownload speeds than traditional wired broadband services for use with LTE mobile phone handsets and other mobile broadband equipment such as LTE Routers and LTE Modems.

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