I recently uncovered a very interesting whitepaper on the Qualcomm site. Published in December, 2007 and titled “Femtocells and WLAN Complement 3G and Beyond”, the whitepaper approached the current Wi-Fi/Femto furor with an outlook similar to my own: the imperative is for in-building radios to provide service zones, and is less about which radio technology is used. The paper goes on to outline four reasons why an operator needs to use a technology like Wi-Fi and/or femtocell to complement a 3G deployment:
These are all things that are common to the “Home Zone 2.0” strategy.
My only disagreement in the piece is the discussion about VCC. But this was written before the announcement that Qualcomm was adding UMA support to their dual-mode 3G platform.
Sagem Launches UMA-Based my429x Phone
Sagem quiety launched its second UMA-enabled dual-mode handset recently. The my429x is available to subscribers of Orange's unik service that is based on UMA. As Orange continues to drive the dual-mode handset market with its demand, Orange unik subscribers now have more than 12 dual-mode handsets from which to choose.
The Sagem my429x weighs 95 grams and measures 106X46X15 mm. It has the latest multimedia features and joins an ever-growing line-up of other UMA-enabled handsets.
This is Sagem's second UMA-enabled dual-mode handset. Its first, the my419x, recently won a UMA Innovation Award for best dual-mode handset, feature phone
T-Mobile, notoriously quiet about the HotSpot @Home service, is starting to talk about how successful the offer really is. In an article out today,
As a competitive provider, and the fourth largest provider in the
There's a good article in Forbes about John Cassidy, CEO of regional fixed/mobile/broadband provider Cincinnati Bell. The article calls Mr. Cassidy "the most honest man in telecom."
Within the world of femtocells, there are a chosen few committed to the existing 3GPP UMA/GAN standard. All of the other systems/solutions are proprietary. The “UMA-enabled Femtocell” world consists of many key players:
- Solution provider NEC
- Solution provider Motorola
- Femtocell provider Ubiquisys
- Femtocell provider Motorola
- Femtocell provider Netgear
1. During MWC, pan-European mobile operator O2 announced they were conducting a femtocell trial with NEC.
2. Also during MWC, Scandinavian provider Telia announced a femtocell trial based with Motorola.
3. Then just this week, an article from Fierce Wireless editor Brian Dolan suggests that T-Mobile International will be trialing Ubiquisys femtocells with NEC.
4. Softbank in Japan has announced trials with nearly every supplier on the market, including Ubiquisys, NEC and Motorola.
5. The only other announced trial I’m aware of is Vodafone Group’s announcement to trial Alcatel/Lucent and Huawei, clearly not a UMA-based trial.
Unless I’m mistaken (which I’m sure you’ll to tell me if I am):
Four out of five femtocell trials include a UMA-based system.
This reminds me of the old Trident gum ad where “four out of five dentists agree…”
I attribute this to a couple of reasons:
- It works. Novel but true. UMA has been commercially deployed for more than two years.
- Operators actually want a standard interface. As much as Alcatel/Lucent, Huawei, and even Nokia/Siemens are trying to push their own proprietary approaches, the operators have had enough. They want an open, public standard interface for femtocells.
- UMA does more than one thing. After deploying a femtocell service, a mobile operator may want to add a fixed line VoIP service (like T-Mobile US). The same UMA infrastructure supports that, or dual-mode phones, or softmobiles.
Next, let's see if we can get to 9 out of ten...
[UPDATE MARCH 20] Good posted on ThinkFemto about a similar topic. I have a bit more detail. For some reason, ThinkFemto decided to throw in a bunch of picocell wins that ip.Access got, but they aren't femtocells.
UMA’s standard position on applications is “If they work over GSM, they’ll work better/faster/cheaper over Wi-Fi and UMA!” It’s a good (and easy) position to be in.
Given UMA technology is basically agnostic to applications running above it (even SIP), why would UMA Today weigh in on an enterprise applications battle between the Blackberry and
Apple?
Frankly, it’s because UMA gives RIM an edge.
Let me explain.
These heavy duty devices are always struggling with power usage. One of the banes of ‘smart phones’ with big screens and lots of features is battery performance, and it’s here, deep inside these enterprise devices, that UMA gives RIM the edge.
Consider how UMA works:
When a UMA-enabled device moves within range of Wi-Fi, the handset establishes a direct IP tunnel to the mobile core network using the Wi-Fi radio. Once in place, all mobile services (voice, SMS, MMS, …) are tunneled to the phone over IP. Because the GSM/3G radio is no longer used, it is put into a hibernation mode. In effect, only one RAN radio is powered on concurrently with UMA. That’s pretty efficient.
Compare this with how an iPhone, or any non-UMA dual-mode phone (think Nokia E and N) works. When the iPhone moves into Wi-Fi coverage, the Wi-Fi radio powers on. But there is no connection from the Wi-Fi radio to the mobile core network. Therefore, for users to receive cellular services (ie 'a phone call'), the GSM radio must remain on, concurrently with the Wi-Fi radio.
That sucking sound you hear is the battery on the iPhone draining…
That’s not fair, it’s not specific to iPhones, it’s the same with any dual-mode E or N series from Nokia that doesn’t have UMA.
This is a fundament advantage over any non-UMA dual-mode handset. Any time you see or hear someone complaining about ‘Wi-Fi battery life’, you can be sure they are talking about a non-UMA device.
Spanish quad-play operator Ono is the latest to launch a dual-mode handset service based on UMA technology. Ono’s service, called “io”, offers consumers the same rate on calls to fixed and mobile lines 24 hours a day. From Wi-Fi, it is a rate of 0.0€/minute on calls to other Ono mobile or fixed lines, and just 0.11€/minute on calls to other Spanish operators.
Outside the home, it is still 0.0€/minute on calls to other Ono mobile or fixed lines, and a flat rate of 0.15€/minute on calls to fixed and mobile lines in
Currently Ono offers Samsung and Nokia products, with more phones in the works.
Ono is a quad-play competitive provider in
VCC, or voice call continuity, seems to still be hanging around in parts of the industry. I must say I continue to be shocked that anyone would even consider it. First, it must be getting close to done, but for some baffling reason is not completed yet. I think VCC started back in 2005, the same as UMA. If you recall, UMA was actually ratified by the 3GPP in April 2005 (2G) and has since added 3G support, all in the same timeframe that VCC is still languishing.
My position has been and continues to be that VCC is for fixed operators. They have SIP core switches (a VCC requirement) and no direct connection to the mobile service core. I think dual-mode service for fixed operators is a tough sell for many reasons far beyond technology.
Of course, UMA is a 3GPP technology, therefore CDMA networks don’t have an equivalent approach. Some have suggested that these operators may opt for a dual-mode handset/VCC offer, but I think mobile operators in general are too smart to fall for the vendor community’s push on VCC.
VCC offers a different set of services to subscribers when on Wi-Fi than what’s available on the macro network. This is because the handset connects to the SIP core when on Wi-Fi, and to the MSC when on cellular. Different core networks support different services. It’s inconceivable to me that any mobile operator would attempt to roll out a service which didn’t work the same across the entire network.
Frankly the CDMA operators are simply going to do femtocells for their ‘home zone’ service offers. Witness Sprint and Airave. They must have a response to Wi-Fi-based home zone offers like T-Mobile’s HotSpot @Home, and femtocells are a viable alternative.
UMA is the only viable technology for dual-mode services. Period.
