Global TD-LTE initiative sets targets

BARCELONA, SPAIN: Monday afternoon the GTI (Global TD-LTE Initiative) held its 2012 summit at Mobile World Congress. The summit marks the approximate one year anniversary of its formation. Daryl Schoolar, principal analyst has the following comments:

“The purpose of the GTI is twofold. One goal is to ensure interoperability with the more common frequency duplex (FDD) version of LTE. The second goal, which is closely related to the first, is to ensure that TD-LTE isn’t merely a Chinese technology, which would doom to the same fate as TD-SCDMA. The 2012 Summit served as an update on those goals.

“And, from what was presented it appears the group is making good progress. Membership now includes 40 communications providers and 30 vendors (equipment and devices). Carrier representatives at the event came from not only China, but India, Japan, and the US.

“Progress on integration of the two flavours of LTE was highlighted by Qualcomm’s latest chip that supports both standards. This chipset will help not only in roaming between operators with TD and FDD LTE networks, but also encourages operators to consider deploying a network that supports both flavors of LTE, such as Hi3g in Sweden.

“The GTI also provided targets it hopes to reach by 2014. Those goals included the deployment of 500,000 commercial base stations covering two-billion people. China Mobile will play a major role in reaching those goals. The company announced at the event that it will deploy 20,000 base stations in 2012, and plans to have 200,000 in service by end of 2013.

“While the growth of TD-LTE requires success outside of China, it also requires success inside of China. Large scale deployments in that country will play an important role in part ramping up the overall ecosystem for the technology, and encourage other mobile operators to deploy TD-LTE as well.”

Everybody has won and all must have prizes, says Orange top brass
At a dinner last night, Orange CEO Stephane Richard proclaimed that it was now time for operators to invest in their networks. The demand for high speed (fixed and mobile) broadband and the potential opportunities for new services (payments were singled out for particular mention) were given as the key drivers. Steven Hartley, practice leader of Ovum’s Telco Strategy Practice, thought it was “an upbeat and go-getting speech that matched the first day of the event.”

“Richard highlighted that he was not there to complain but talk about a digital, connected future. This suggests a growing maturity in the operator's response to the challenges they face. Gone is the rhetoric of 'them and us' regarding content providers and technology choices that tainted last year's event. In its place is a more measured response.

“A clear example of this came when CTO Thierry Bonhomme stated later in the evening that deploying Wi-Fi was as important as rolling out LTE. Orange has made no secret of its fondness for Wi-Fi over the years, but combining this statement with the prevalence of Wi-Fi announcements at MWC 2012 is testimony to the fact that it is no longer Wi-Fi 'or' cellular, but Wi-Fi 'and' cellular that is key to operators handling future traffic demands.”

Telstra to sell prepaid LTE dongles and new Android tablets
Following the announcement from Telstra – Australia’s only LTE operator – that it has launched two new LTE enabled devices, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 8.9 4G and a prepaid dongle, Nicole McCormick, senior analyst at Ovum has the following comment:

“Telstra continues to push LTE forward aggressively. It only turned on its LTE1800 network in late September 2011, offering postpaid dongles only. It then launched LTE smartphone HTC Velocity 4G in late January.

“The addition of an LTE tablet and prepaid dongle to Telstra’s device range demonstrates that Telstra is keeping its IT systems and its LTE device ecosystem ahead of the curve as it works alongside the international vendor community on developing LTE devices at 1800MHz.

“The latest devices will help to expand the appeal of Telstra’s LTE service to a wider audience. Samsung’s smartphone range has already struck a chord with Australians – the Samsung S II is the country’s second highest selling smartphone.

“Overall, we believe the latest device additions add weight to Telstra’s LTE first-to-market proposition for blue-chip customers. In contrast, rival Optus will only switch on a limited LTE service in April 2012, while value-seeker operator Vodafone is focused on upgrading its network to 42Mbps+ and has put LTE on the back burner.”