Qualcomm and Teleepoch
Enter Into a 3G CDMA Subscriber Unit License Agreement, October
6, 2007
MTN chooses Cambridge Broadband
Networks for multi-service wireless network in Rwanda, October 6,
2007
Brazilian government to
publish 3G bidding rules soon, October 6, 2007
KTF 3G service suffers
from technical problems, October 6, 2007
Argentina’s Personal
lunches 3G service in Rosario, October 6, 2007
Russia has it's first 3G
network, October 6, 2007
AT&T could drop Alcatel-Lucent
as 3G mobile network supplier, October 6, 2007
Enea Extends License Agreement
with ZTE for 3G Handsets, October 2, 2007
LG to unveil premium handsets
in Brazil, October 2, 2007
KTF 3G subscribers doubled
in less than 3 months, October 2, 2007
3G policy in India will
be non-uniform, October 2, 2007
- previous news
|
|
3G's little dark secrets
September 15, 2003 - source: ARCchart
Hutchison’s March launch of 3G services across several European countries
may have suggested that the technical challenges of deploying a W-CDMA
network in the real world have been surmounted. This is far from the truth,
and many GSM carriers continue to delay the start of their 3G offering
while they iron out operability issues associated with W-CDMA. To compound
this, operators are testing their networks to different versions of the
UMTS standard, making interoperability and handset production difficult,
and our experience with Hutchison’s UK network suggest that the infamous
3G-2G network handover problem has not gone away. Along with CAPEX purse
tightening, these technical hurdles are the main reasons behind the continued
delays plaguing the industry. We are unlikely to see widespread commercial
availability of W-CDMA networks in Europe before 2005 – five years after
3G licenses were first auctioned.
The world’s two most popular 2G cellular standards, CDMA and GSM, have
very different migration paths towards 3G. The third generation endgame
for CMDA is CDMA 1xEV-DO and 1xEV-DV while most GSM operators are evolving
towards the UMTS version of W-CDMA. Unlike the advanced versions of CDMA,
which an operator can add through an equipment upgrade, W-CDMA requires
an entirely new network to be overlaid. While a number of cellular carriers
have already brought CDMA 1xEV-DO services around the world, Hutchison’s
launch in March of this year marked the appearance of the first commercial
UMTS network (Japan’s NTT DoCoMo launched 3G a year earlier but it is
using a home grown flavour of W-CDMA known as FOMA). This suggests the
technical problems that have plagued the W-CDMA standard have finally
been resolved; but this is far from the truth. CAPEX budget restrictions
still remain a significant delaying factor, as do the operator’s continued
uncertainty of their customers' enthusiasm for high-speed cellular data
services. However, operators intending to launch W-CDMA services are still
battling some serious operational issues as these networks are constructed.
Compatibility issues remain across the W-CDMA hardware being pushed by
the various equipment vendors, and the ways in which the operators themselves
are implementing this equipment are further compounding the problem. In
a recent report, Deutsche Bank highlighted the practical implications
of these problems. Currently, most mobile networks operators (MNOs) and
vendors are testing their equipment against the March 2002 version of
the UTMS standard. However, according to Orange, the changes incorporated
into the December 2002 version are essential to be able to swap a handset
between a W-CDMA and GSM network – a handover. Furthermore, most of the
UMTS community has decided to launch commercial networks against the March
2003 version which includes even more changes. Deutsche Bank points out
that, while each version is supposed to be backward compatible, there
is no guarantee this will actually occur in practice. Handsets built to
a previous version may not work properly when the new version is deployed
in the network infrastructure.
This perhaps explains why handset manufactures have been so reluctant
to bring UMTS handsets to market, fearing that their devices will become
obsolete as newer networks come online. Nokia and Sony Ericsson both have
launched 3G devices but Motorola and NEC are the only two vendors with
volume UMTS handsets on the market at the moment.
The disjointed testing of networks against a moving standard version
is hampering the solution to one of the most difficult aspects of W-CDMA
network deployment – the famous 3G to 2G handover. When someone travels
along a motorway or walks along a street, their handset will move from
one cell coverage area to another. When this occurs, there needs to be
a handover, where responsibility for communicating with the phone switches
from the base station in one cell to the base station in another cell.
The handover is essentially what makes a mobile network mobile.
Even in a pure 2G network the handover is a very complex process. Signal
strength and base station availability must be determined before the call
can be switched over. The W-CDMA-GSM handover involves an additional layer
of complexity since the two technologies must be able to cross communicate.
Also, the nature of the 3G services being used (voice, video or data)
on the 3G terminal prior to the handover needs to be determined and satisfactorily
implemented on the 2G network.
It is no secret that operators have been struggling to implement this
feature on their nascent W-CDMA networks before they go commercial. However,
our experience with Hutchison’s network in the UK suggests that the operator
has not been able to solve this problem before going live with its network.
Using the NEC e606 handset and moving outside of a 3G coverage area, we
have been unable to observe a seamless handover – calls have been dropped
every time.
According to Deutsche Bank, none of the handsets currently offered by
Hutchison support “compression mode” – a necessary feature for the W-CDMA-GSM
handover. This explains our handover results but the fact that Hutchison
has gone commercial without this functionality will raise a few eyebrows.
To the company’s credit, it did launch with almost 60 percent population
coverage in the UK and covered the main transportation corridors, minimising
the need for 3G/2G handovers. However, it is unlikely that the established
operators will be prepared to take such quality of service risks. For
example, Vodafone is demanding a 95 percent call completion rate before
it will bring its W-CDMA network to market.
These technical hurdles, combined with operators’ increasing desire to
squeeze revenue from their existing 2G and 2.5G assets, mean that we are
unlikely to see any more commercial W-CDMA operations launch this year.
Networks will go live next year in the major cellular markets like the
UK, Italy and Germany, but it will not be until 2005 when we see widespread
commercial availability of W-CDMA networks in Europe – five years after
3G licenses were first auctioned.
|
3G Motorola A920
