New Generation Networks: Management of Wireless-wireline Networks and Services

When is 4G not 4G? A quick lesson

Marie Murphy — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:09:21 GMT

This week at Mobile World Congress Adrian Scrase, vice president of international partnerships at 3GPP threw some official light on the topic of what is 4G. "R10 is ‘4G’ in my opinion,” said Scrase, although he noted that the “academic” approach to standards is of little interest to marketeers who have seized on 4G as a new moniker for LTE and WiMAX.” (read the full Total Telecom Article)

This may come as a surprise to quite a few people who have heard 4G announcements from various parts of the market but the question of "what is 4G" has yet to be answered. Since we are getting closer perhaps the time is ripe to examine how this question will be answered.

Here is my short, laypersons tutorial with lots of nice links to the detail.

The ITU-T has defined IMT-Advanced as the fourth generation mobile requirements which will replace IMT-2000 which set out the requirements for 3G. ITU-T announced in Geneva on October 21^st 2009 that it was evaluating six candidate technology submissions aligned around the 3GPP LTE Release 10 and beyond (LTE-Advanced) technology and the IEEE 802.16m technology. The formal evaluation process will take a year to complete and the announcement is expected in October 2010.

Well worth a read is a guide to the ITU-T IMT-Advanced SMaRT approach.

3GPP Release 10 broadly defined the LTE-Advanced standards and is due in March 2011. IEEE 802.16M which is the standard for wireless metropolitan area network technologies is due for industry release in July 2010.

Its worth a side note that 802.16M is not a part of WiMAX, but according to the IEEE, there will be cross-platform compatibility between the two standards and compatibility with LTE-advanced also. WIMAX which was developed by the WiMAX forum is based on 801.16.

So if 4G is not here yet what do we call the WIMAX and LTE networks that are rolling out in 2010? 3.5G was taken a few years ago by the HSPA technologies so thats already spoken for. My vote is for 3.999G.

Answers on a postcard please, winning suggestions will be framed and posted on my office wall for posterity! Anyone who predicts that it will never catch on will be awarded their very own mainframe computer, one of only 5 computing devices in the world today - but be warned you'll need to build a very large facility to house it.

A good week and a good beginning

Marie Murphy — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:40:29 GMT

This week I am writing my blog from the departures lounge of Bonn/Koln Airport – glad to be getting home on a Friday evening and with a feeling of accomplishment for a week’s work well done.

The early part of the week was spent in Lisbon at Team Action Week. The location is fantastic, we were lucky with the weather and perhaps a lifting of the spirits seeing blue skies and sunshine after a dark and hard winter helps to focus minds afresh on the work at hand.

We met with 3GPP SA5 leaders fresh, or perhaps tired, from their own meetings in Valencia the previous week for two days and thrashed out the beginnings of a common understanding and working relationship. I would personally like to thank Christian Toche SA5 Chair, his vice-Chair Istvan Aba and the other SA5 attendees from NSN and Ericsson for giving their time after their own busy week to join us in Lisbon.

The result of our two days with SA5 is an agreement on the approach to the two work items ( SA5 Meeting number 69 work items 6.12.3 and 6.12.4 ).

On Wednesday, the New Generation Wireless-Wireline team reviewed a proposed roadmap ( in early draft state) which we will take as the starting point to drive the TM Forum response to the Vodafone/Deutsche Telekom NGMN Operational Requirements Document. This was reviewed in two sessions – the first a team working session and the second session which was aimed at the Operators who were present at Team Action Week. Both the Operators document and the TM Forum response generated a high degree of interest at the sessions. Klaus Martiny from Deutsche Telekom took time out of his very busy schedule to support these meetings and provide the operator perspective firsthand to the attendees and again, Klaus – thank you for that!

I was sad to have to leave Lisbon on Thursday but at least I was leaving with a sense of purpose and optimism about our ability to address the challenges the Operators are setting for the industry.

Today I attended a joint meeting in the very impressive Deutsche Telekom headquarters in Bonn. The purpose of this meeting was to review progress on the initiative. Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom were very pleased to share that they have received agreement to support the document from Orange France and from KPN E-Plus and are already in further discussion with a number of other major operators.

I presented the TM Forum material, which I am glad to say was well received.

In Ireland we have a saying – “Tus maith leath na hoibre”. It translates as “a good beginning is half the work”. I have no doubt we have a long hard task in front of us if we are to meet the challenge set out by the operators and in all cases backed wholeheartedly by their CTOs. But today I feel we have made the good beginning at least.

Self Organizing Networks

Kenneth Dilbeck — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:00:34 GMT

This is as much a question as blog entry. Does anyone know if much research or analysis as been done on the human operator impact of implementing SON? When I first ran across this topic several years ago it seemed to me the SON concept was going to turn the whole way we think about how the day to day management of network procedurally occurs.

Taking control from the operators and allowing the nodes to organize and optimize themselves seems to require quite a bit trust from the operators as well as major cultural shift in the way they view their role in network management.

Several years ago when I was working at a Service Provider we developed a major new work force administration system that had very sophisticated expert system and AI capabilities to optimize dispatching and work assignments. What the system failed to consider was optimizing these factors at certain times resources i.e. technicians, were left on the bench for periods of time. Long story short the unions forced the company to turn the optimization off and allow the manual dispatching to take place so everyone stayed busy. (not sure in today's environment they could have forced the issue, but that is a different question)

Seems to SON might create the same phenomena within the operational personal and I wondered if anyone has looked into this or published any findings.

Regards,

Ken Dilbeck

New Year Opportunities

Marie Murphy — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:01:26 GMT

Happy New Year Everyone!

I must say I love new beginnings - like the new year, the new decade, even the sense of renewal you get when the new school year starts up and people appear back energised after the summer hiatus. I think these times can never be underestimated for the opportunity they give us to reflect on our priorities, our achievements, our goals. I see them as times of readjustment - sometimes I find I just tweak some small bits here and there, sometimes I take the opportunity to make major life-changing decisions.

So it goes also at work. There are times in the work year where its good to take a period of reflection and redirection and refocus our efforts where they are really going to matter.

Right now, I am taking a look at material and work efforts already underway from 2009 that I expect to be at the core of my working days in 2010.

In particular, I want to point you in the direction of a document that I expect to become the critical input to the work we are doing this year. This document was contributed to the TM Forum in December by Vodafone and T-Mobile in Germany and represents their joint view of their TOP 10 Operational Requirements for 4G networks. I dont need to crystal ball gaze when I say I expect this document to be widely used in 2010, not just within the TM Forum but by other standards organisations like 3GPP. Vodafone and T-Mobile are also planning to get more Service Providers involved with their efforts.

We have kicked off our effort to review these requirements and publish our view of the areas we intend to tackle in 2010. We will be focusing on this during Team Action Week and beyond.

Watch our progress on our community and viaour web page. And tune in here of course for regular updates.

A Final Note: You can check out our plans for Team Action Week in Lisbon January 25-29. Our team has a full agenda including a proposed meeting with 3GPP on the 25th and 26th, a review of the Operator Requirements document and an Operator Session on the morning of the 27th and a number of cross-team meetings with the Interface Program, Resource Management Team, IPSphere and SLAm teams on Thursday.

Wireless-wireline is the answer to a cold sales call!

Marie Murphy — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:46:24 GMT

Last week I had a telephone sales call from my mobile operator. Now I dont get sales calls very often because I have ticked every possible box on every possible form to say no you can't call me, ever. I am also a mean and nasty person and I can't stop myself from having a bit of fun with the poor guy on the other end of the phone. Especially when its someone in the telecoms industry and I often know more about what they are trying to sell me than they do.

So when he asked me "was I happy with my service", I said yes I am really because I pretty much am. But before he got to say "I am glad to hear that, Happy Christmas" and tick another satisfied customer box on his list I said the dreaded BUT....

But, I have this vague feeling I could get more value out of my service, I know I would have to pay more and I would be happy to do so if only I could work out exactly how I could get that extra value. I know the more I could get is vaguely tied with data usage, I havent really figured out whether or what data package would suit me best. I work from home so I have high demands on my home service for speed and reliability but I also travel a lot so I want mobility in that service, and working from home can be isolating so sometimes I'd like to bring my work to a quiet corner of my local coffee shop and feel connected to the world.

I want to be able to bring my home service in some usable form around with me wherever I go, home and abroad.

So I explained all this to the poor suffering salesperson who had the misfortune to call me at the end of his working day to ask me if I was happy with my service.

I didnt find the perfect package, but I did find out that my mobile provider has recently bought out one of the landline providers. Great news, then they must be able to offer me a bundle for high-speed, reliable land voice and data and somethnig suitable for the out and about occasions? No. Not yet.

So now, If I ever had any difficulty explaining what the wireless-wireline group is trying to achieve the answer was served up to me on a platter by an unsuspecting phone salesperson on a wet Thursday evening.

The operators understand wireless-wireline convergence has a market. Otherwise mobile operators wouldnt be buying up landline operators(or visa-versa). T-Mobile and T-Home wouldn't have merged in Germany a few weeks ago for example. But the operators haven't really been able to tap into the true potential of that market yet and converge their billing, their services, their customer care teams, their support organisations, their planning teams - tapping into massive operational cost savings but also tapping into new revenue opportunities.

Its a problem waiting to be solved and a market waiting to be tapped!

Needless to say I would like you to come and join us and help us solve the problem.

Operators Talk about Standards

Marie Murphy — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:06:24 GMT

Ever wonder what goes on behind closed doors at Operator meetings?

Well last week I got to see for myself as I attended a meeting in Dusseldorf between two rivals in the German market – Vodafone and T-Mobile – who came together to work on a commonly agreed set of top 10 requirements for management of next generation mobile networks.

It was an interesting meeting. The technical content in itself is engaging but that is not the topic of my blog today. When the document is finalised and published I will write about it so if you want to know more of the detail, watch this space around the end of next week.

What was particularly interesting for me was the process that brings these two companies together. Vodafone and T-Mobile are both giants of the Telecoms industry, not just in Germany but right around the globe. They are in the same markets in many countries and are direct competitors on their home turf. So if they are willing to put competition aside for a while and put their heads together and share information about their management challenges and priorities then we should sit up and listen. They consider this work worthwhile enough to put rivalry aside in order to work on it.

The approach taken has been to separately prioritise the management issues using each company’s individual figures to assess potential cost savings and then come together without the figures to agree the common priorities. The actual figures aren’t shared between the companies and won’t be communicated along with this process but they do exist and are driving the decisions being made here.

The aim of the exercise is to document the requirements and not to proscribe the solutions so the document is short, readable and to-the-point. It is in final revision now and is expected to be ready sometime next week. The intent is to build on this document and get more of the big operators to sign-up. The final product in time will be an industry agreed top 10 list that will drive standardisation and will lead to significant operational cost savings for the operators. We can expect to see the content turn up in RFx documents and in operational doscussions with these operators very soon.

Watch this space for more on this topic next week when the document is available.

Liaison with 3GPP

Marie Murphy — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:38:53 GMT

Last week 3GPP SA5 met in Shanghai. Among their topics for discussion were two proposals from our group.

The first proposal, looks to co-operate with 3GPP to extend the Information Framework (SID) to model wireless networks and their resources. Incorporating the wireless resource model into the Information Framework (SID) will provide the industry’s first model which incorporates both wireless and wireline capability and is an important step for the industry.

The second proposal is to study how the 3GPP and the TM Forum approaches to Resource Fault Management can be harmonized.

3GPP have accepted our proposal. Now the hard work starts. Our two organisations have different logistics, different working methods and I am sure different drivers for coming together to do this work. I have no doubt we will want to do some things differently and we will meet some challenges along the way. But I also have no doubt that this work is of vital importance to the industry and this co-operation between the two organisations needs to be successful.

We welcome 3GPPs positive response to our proposals and we look forward to working with them.

My communications wishlist....

Marie Murphy — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:11:47 GMT

Here are the 5 things I hope that the next wave of communications technology will make possible for me:

I want a data package that I can use at home or away without wondering if I have used my mobile allowance and I am paying per kilobyte from now on and should I wait until I go home before downloading that particular document?
I want the same “phone number” wherever I am. No more of this try my landline first, if you don’t get me look for me on skype and if I am not there well try my mobile then. Just here is my number – call me! If I don’t answer leave a message.
I want to use whatever device suits me best no matter where I am accessing the network(s). And no complicated switching from one to another.
I want one bill. One account, one direct debit, one and once only every month. With an understandable bill structure and no surprises.
I want one customer service line, not two who can lay blame on each other for the technical difficulties I am experiencing and conveniently avoid actually fixing my problem.

Above all I want to have choice – of how I contact others, of how others contact me and of how much I pay. New technology in itself won’t give me this but it does make my wish list a possibility. The technology is there – or coming soon to a wireless (or wireline) near you! The question is whether all the possibilities of the technology will be exploited to give the consumertheir wish list.

What would you like?

WiMAX vs LTE; An Irish announcement provides a perspective.

Marie Murphy — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:42:38 GMT

At the 4G world conference in September Bruce Brda SVP and GM, Wireless Networks Business, Motorola gave his take on the WiMAX/LTE race and concluded that LTE and WiMax will co-exist in competition. Brda saw the market dividing with traditional mobile carriers going with LTE while greenfields are choosing WiMAX.

This Wednesday there was an interesting announcement of a 4G rollout in Ireland from Imagine. Interesting on a number of levels. Firstly Imagine is a landline provider and not a mobile service provider. Secondly they made a joint announcement not with one of the big handset manufacturers but with a chipset manufacturer namely Intel. Incidentally Motorola is their WiMAX equipment provider.

Sean Bulger, CEO Imagine and Kevin Jones, Head of WiMax Internationally at Intel were interviewed on Irish Radio. Imagine are taking advantage of the perception of poor rollout of broadband nationally in Ireland combined with expensive line rental charges (not a perception, Mr. Bulger pointed out we are the highest in Europe and I believe him) and are targeting the rural broadband market as well as offering a landline alternative at a very competitive rate.

Its early days yet, they have 20 sites live at the time of the announcement and they haven’t any detailed rollout plans on their website. They are very obviously targeting the home broadband market, with mention of using your PC when you are out and about but they are very vague about the phone, which I presume is a VoIP handset. And they never mentioned mobility on the phone or the option of replacing both your current landline and mobile(s) with their new service. But I am interested and I am going to be checking them out.

Ovum this week predicted that WiMAX and LTE would be on a par by 2014 with LTE eventually winning out. I Imagine that WiMAX may have gained some significant market share before LTE is ready to overtake. I think Bruce Brda knows his business – interestingly Motorola are backing both LTE and WiMAX! – and I think his are words of wisdom.

Bruce Brda's assessment of LTE vs WiMAX can be viewed at Wireless Week show daily from 4G World. Choose the Day 2 edition.

Reflections on the path to 4G

Marie Murphy — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:09:38 GMT

Thanks to Leen Mak for pointing me in the direction of the UMTS Forum Report 42 "LTE Mobile Broadband Ecosystem -The Global Opportunity". It’s a weighty tome but a highly recommended read for anyone interested in the 4G space.

The report goes into a lot of detail about the technology and business drivers behind LTE and the activities of the key players in the LTE Ecosystem. The interesting piece for me was the timescales involved. With the first commercial deployments next year its predicting a groundswell of operators deploying their LTE networks in 2011-2012. The groundswell of users is expected from 2013 as coverage improves and the early adopters are joined by their more conservative cousins. LTE is predicted to be a mature technology by 2015 and the dominant technology by 2020.

I have been working in this industry since 1991 so I have worked on 1G - those old analog “brick” phones were still almost considered innovative back then and people making a mobile phone call in public were considered show-offs; 2G – I remember counting the number of international call charges racked up when a colleague travelling to Sweden made a call to another colleague in the same hotel also travelling to Sweden and marvelling at the total cost; 3G – that seemed to take forever to come to the boil; and now 4G.

I must say I am looking forward to 4G as I expect it will bring some surprises, it seems to me to be disruptive enough to be unpredictable. I suspect we will see some innovations particularly for new devices that we haven’t yet realised we need!