Dual Mode is “In”

Dual mode is one of the cool kids; part of the ‘in’ crowd. So says In-Stat in its research report, “Wi-Fi in Mobile Phones: Dual Mode Becomes the In Thing.”

Being driven in large part by the Apple iPhone (as we all know), Wi-Fi handset shipments increased by more than 50% from 2007-2008, and keeps climbing.

In-Stat’s research found the following:
• Wi-Fi/cellular handsets are driving hotspot usage. For example, AT&T recently announced that sixty percent of all AT&T Wi-Fi connections in the third quarter of 2009 were made from smart phones and other integrated devices, up from 49 percent in the second quarter.
• The potential for voice over Wi-Fi is gaining popularity, as cellular/Wi-Fi phones become more pervasive and consumer familiarity with VoIP increases.
• The percent of handsets with embedded Wi-Fi will more than double during the next two years.
• There were 121 models of cellular/Wi-Fi handsets introduced in the first half of 2009, almost as many as were introduced in all of 2008.

Victoria Fodale, In-Stat analyst, explained:

“Wi-Fi’s popularity as a compatible cellular technology is tied to its ability to improve the user experience and also help maintain the quality of the cellular network. A Wi-Fi-enabled cell phone allows for free access to data, and it improves performance.”

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so here, here and here. Read back through this blog; I’m sure you’ll find plenty more.

Uncovering the Motorola Morrison

You’ve just got to love the mobile handset diehards who dig through FCC filings to see what the next big thing is going to be. The team over at Cell Phone Signal uncovered the scoop on the Motorola Morrisson, the first Android phone from Motorola. It has both 3G and WiFi, and is expected to be UMA ready for T-Mobile US' @Home service.
Per Cell Phone Signal, here are some specs:
* Tri band WCDMA/ HSDPA/ HSUPA 900/1700/2100
* Quad band GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
* Wi-Fi
* HandsFree Speaker
* Photo and Video Camera
* Video Player
* Stereo Bluetooth
* Music Player
* HTML Browser
* Android OS

Sony Ericsson Dominates User Survey

In an informal survey on UMAToday.com, 48% of web site visitors who voted selected the Sony Ericsson G705u as the best UMA handset, as compared to the LG KF-757 with 26.27% and Samsung’s P270 with 25.33%.

Sony Ericsson launched its G705u in September 2008. Us UMA enthusiasts rejoiced because, not only was this Sony Ericsson's first UMA devices, it was one of the first 3G/UMA devices ever. Orange was the first to grab the phone for its Unik customers.

The G705u features include a 2.4-inch display with automatic screen rotation courtesy of an accelerometer, aGPS with Google Maps for Mobile, 1GB included M2 memory, built-in FM radio, RSS reader, and full HTML browser. It also features a 3.2 megapixel cam that can capture video and then upload directly to YouTube under a new partnership with Google.

There’s a new survey at UMAToday.com now. Let us know what you think about femtocells.

In my Mobile World Congress wrap-up post, I lamented the fact that HTC did not launch its ‘Jade’ at the show, as many had predicted they would. Never fear, the HTC Touch 3G (aka Jade) is finally here.

Today, Orange is offering it to subscribers, and I’m sure other operators are waiting in the wings.

Engadget was right on track when it reported on the phone way back in September 2008. It’s a quad-band, UMA-enabled, 3G smartphone that features the next-generation TouchFLO™, HTC’s touch-responsive interface. It has integrated GPS and a 3 megapixel camera. It measures 102x53x14mm and weighs 96 grams. It supports video, has a USB connection, 6.5 hours of battery talk time and comes in a variety of fun colors.

These UMA-enabled devices….they just keep coming.

A Home Zone is a Home Zone

This week ABI Research released the results of a survey conducted on behalf of Motorola. The article states that while “…the majority of consumers have never heard of femtocells…”, “…more than 40% of European mobile and internet users plan to purchase femtocells in the next 12 months.”

It’s easy to conclude then, that the questions focused not on the wireless technology to be used in the home (e.g. a ‘femtocell’), but on the benefits of having a “Home Zone” service, where the key factors were better in-home mobile coverage and lower costs.

Demand was highest in Poland, Spain and Italy, with moderate demand in France and the UK. Germany had the lowest demand of the six countries surveyed.

We at UMA Today thought this sounded a bit familiar. Through the magic of the web, we were able to recall a similar announcement from Motorola in August, 2005. Three years ago, Motorola announced the results of a survey of 1,000 consumers in six countries on the demand for a dual-mode handset service. This time the countries were France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Italy and the UK.

And the results??? About the same.

Demand was highest in Sweden, Spain and Italy, moderate demand in France, lower demand in the UK and Germany.

I think there are some very interesting data-points from both surveys:

• Clearly there is continued demand for home zone services, regardless of the technology.
• I find it ironic that Italy continues to show strong demand, showing me that Telecom Italia Mobile’s Unica service was a victim of regulatory roadblocks rather than consumer interest.
• Orange’s plans for its Unik/Unique service are in UK, Spain, and Poland, three countries with strong demand for Home Zone services.

UMA Today continues to be a strong supporter of Home Zone services, and this is simply confirms that there is market demand from consumers for a thoughtful, value-oriented service offer.

The Mobile Operator's Triple Play

Mobile operators have had a unique influence on personal communications. The rise of mobile services has put a phone into nearly everyone’s hand. Yet as a network-based service, the mobile has been largely disconnected from our most personal location: the home.

Over the past few years, mobile service providers have started to reach into the home by acquiring broadband service providers. The attraction is easy to see. Consumers buy mobile, consumers buy broadband, why not get broadband service from your mobile provider?

In addition, Universal Mobile Access technologies enable mobile providers to deliver mobile services over the broadband network through Wi-Fi and femtocell radios in the home. This ‘double-play’ service opportunity is building, with operators trialing and deploying ‘Home Zone’ services in the market today.

But yesterday’s announcement of T-Mobile’s fixed line home service, a VoIP offer from a mobile provider, suddenly opens up the mobile operator’s triple play: mobile, broadband and fixed.

In all fairness, mobile operators have tried to offer fixed line VoIP services in the past. But rather than using the existing mobile voice switches (MSCs), mobile operators were forced to buy new VoIP switches. Because these switches were separate from the MSCs providing the mobile voice service, there was a ‘disconnect’ to the offer.

There was a significant amount of work to integrate the bill from the VoIP switch into the bill for the mobile switch (in some cases, consumers received two bills…). With a new switch, a different provisioning system needed to be established to enable the VoIP service. Because mobile calls are anchored on the MSC and calls on the fixed network are anchored on the VoIP switch, there is no easy way to provide combinational services like dual ring and single voice mail.

With the advent of the UMA terminal adaptor, now mobile operators can seamlessly integrate fixed line home phone service directly into their existing mobile switching infrastructure, billing and provisioning systems. Calls on the fixed line appear simply as a second line within a subscriber’s existing service.

The market is already on the trajectory of a “Home Zone Triple Play”. Clearly the Linksys product, which supports a UMA terminal adaptor and Wi-Fi, is ideal for an operator to bring together dual-mode service, home phone service and broadband.

Within the femtocell community, there is a tremendous push to move into integrated femtocell products. Many companies have announced ‘integrated’ femtocell platforms to support DSL, Wi-Fi, and fixed line VoIP.

Looks like mobile operators are starting to attack the home.

Vodafone Station: Screaming for UMA

As you may have seen, Vodafone announced a new product called “Station”. The original announcement was a bit confusing, but now that the dust has settled, I think it’s becoming clear.

The Station, made by Huawei, is a broadband router/modem. It can use either the integrated ADSL2+ modem or HSPA (via an additional dongle/UBS) for backhaul on the WAN. On the LAN, the Station provides Wi-Fi.

The target is to provide Vodafone subscribers with a broadband WAN connection. The target audience is likely someone using the Voda HSPA network for laptop data access. When at home, the HSPA network may have in-building propagation issues and the throughput/data rate may be low. Enter the Station. Install the Station with your HSPA dongle/USB key near a window to get a strong HSPA signal from the macro network. Then the Station uses Wi-Fi to transmit that signal to the laptop when at home.

So what is the ADSL2+ modem for? Well presumably it is faster to use the fixed network. And while I’m just speculating, I’ll bet they don’t want people sitting in their homes streaming lots of data over the HSPA network. Therefore, to offload the macro network, it’s better to have users running over a fixed line DSL connection. So users can start with HSPA while their DSL line is being installed.

The last wacky part? The Station comes with an analog voice port (ATA). Apparently when using the HSPA dongle, the station provides voice services over via the circuit voice capabilities of HSPA. And given the dongle has a SIM, this is another phone number/service available.

What I don’t understand is when the user transfers to the fixed line DSL connection, what happens to the analog voice service? With no dongle, there’s no way to associate the Station with the Vodafone mobile core. Hummm…

So why is this screaming for UMA?

First, it’s providing Wi-Fi indoors, clearly idea for a dual-mode handset service, and when the service transitions to the ADSL network, even better. With UMA, Vodafone could have a real ‘home zone’ service.

Second, the ATA ports could simply run UMA for the terminal adaptor function. Now the ports would be live/available to the consumer when connected via HSPA and/or DSL. It wouldn’t matter.

As I was writing this, I found a comment on Om Malik’s blog from someone suggesting there was a big opportunity in Wireless WAN and Wireless LAN. But can they build a femtocell (3G LAN) that uses HSPA for the WAN connection? That seems like a lot of 3G in one box, but maybe it’s on the drawing board somewhere.

Sorry Sprint

A very interesting opinion was posted to the GLG site the other day. Samual Greenholtz with Telecom Pragmatics opines that Sprint’s first choice for its home zone service was a dual-mode CDMA/Wi-Fi product. But lacking a DMH standard for CDMA networks, they were forced to settle for their second choice technology: femtocells.

With that, I say “Sorry Sprint”. It’s well known that there is no UMA/GAN for CDMA networks. With a 3GPP2 version of GAN, Sprint would have been free to choose dual-mode handsets, femtocells, terminal adaptors or even softmobile clients to run off their mobile network.

Is there an opportunity here?

Home (Zone 2.0) for the holidays

The home is the most competitive location for providing telecommunications services today. Fixed, cable, mobile and VoIP providers all work aggressively to provide a full range of personal communication services (voice, instant messaging, email, social networking) to consumers, with a primary goal of winning additional mind (and wallet)-share from consumers when at home. Many within the industry have termed this fierce competition as the “battle for the building.”

For mobile operators, one of the most successful weapons in the battle for the building is the deployment of Home Zone services. A Home Zone service is based on a mobile operator defining a service area around a subscriber’s home where the operator can aggressively price service.

For example, when a subscriber is within his or her Home Zone (i.e., the subscriber is being served by the cell tower nearest to home), mobile calls are charged at land-line rates. Introduced in a number of Western European countries, these first-generation Home Zone services have proved popular with consumers.

Unfortunately, as these services are based on using the macro radio access network (RAN), they also present a number of significant challenges for mobile operators.

Revenue Leakage: As a subscriber’s “Home Zone” is based on the cell tower(s) that services their home, in many situations a subscriber could be served by the same tower throughout their day, whether at home, work or in transit.

Shrinking Margins: As the Home Zone service uses the macro RAN, an operator’s cost of service delivery remains the same. As a result, operators are directly sacrificing service margins.

Poor Performance: Unfortunately, the home is often ill-served from the macro RAN, as it is plagued by poor indoor coverage, particularly with high-speed 3G technologies.

To address these cost and performance challenges, mobile operators are beginning to launch the next generation of Home Zone services, known as “Home Zone 2.0” (HZ2.0). HZ2.0 services are defined by two primary characteristics.

First, they use a low-power femtocell or Wi-Fi access point deployed within a subscriber’s home to address revenue leakage and poor performance. The low-power access points overcome wireless service coverage issues. Moreover, micro radios improve the performance of the handset in the home because the radio resource is closer to the device. The signal is stronger and as a result, data rates are typically higher. Finally, offloading voice and data traffic to the micro radio access point frees up valuable macro network spectrum for outdoor mobile service delivery.

With a relatively small coverage radius (typically within the home), low-power access points constrain the home ‘zone’ and address the revenue leakage issue of alternative approaches. This improved Home Zone resolution helps operators keep the benefits of the HZ2.0 service confined to the home, where competition is most intense.

Second, HZ2.0 services use a subscriber’s existing home broadband access connection for backhauling mobile services. Broadband penetration in developed markets ranges from 35-60% of households. For mobile operators, broadband represents an ultra-low cost transport network that improves the margins for voice and data service delivery.

Also, a wired broadband network provides fast, reliable IP transport for new revenue-generating mobile data services. When delivered through high-speed 3G femtocells or Wi-Fi connections, subscribers get a true broadband mobile data experience.

Home Zone 2.0 is not just a concept; operators have begun to deploy services today. ABI Research recently published a report projecting the number of HZ2.0 (femtocell and dual-mode handset (DMH)-based) subscribers to reach more than 250 million worldwide by 2012.

Orange’s multi-national Unik/Unique HZ2.0 service offer, based on DMH and Wi-Fi, is among the most successful worldwide. Deployed for more than a year in France Orange’s Unik service has delivered a 10% increase in ARPU, and 15% of subscribers who take the service are new to Orange mobile.

In more recent months, the US has seen the industry’s first femtocell-based HZ2.0 offer. Sprint’s Airave service is currently in limited production, available in just two cities, but offers a promising glimpse at a femtocell service offer. The femtocell is available for a one-time fee of $49.95. For an additional $15/month, subscribers receive unlimited calling when in their Home Zone. This offer compares very favorably with competitive unlimited calling packages. Vonage, for example, offers unlimited in-home calling for $25/month.

Mobile operators have begun to realize the strategic imperative of HZ2.0. The home is an extremely competitive telecom location and represents an enormous growth opportunity. However, the existing macro radio network does not meet the cost or performance requirements to win the ‘battle for the building’.

Micro radio networks (femtocells and Wi-Fi) offer advantages for mobile operators to address indoor mobile radio performance. By leveraging broadband and IP as a backhaul network technology, operators can dramatically lower the cost of delivering services.

HZ2.0 services relying on broadband access and low power access points (femtocells and Wi-Fi) are being deployed by operators today. UMA is the technology that powers HZ2.0.

Dual-mode phones: Influencing the Euro mobile market

Industry research firm Instat announced yesterday the availability of a new report which highlights 10 key trends in the European handset market. Among the trends is the growing demand for dual-mode handsets. Given Orange’s continued success, it’s really no surprise.

Check out the report here.

All dual-mode phones are NOT alike

A common misconception is that all dual-mode phones are the same. Many people consider Wi-Fi enabled phones to be expensive and have poor battery life.

I’d like to dispel this myth by making a distinction between UMA and non-UMA enabled devices. I concur that non-UMA dual-mode handsets are often higher end (and therefore more expensive) and have poor battery performance (when in Wi-Fi). However, UMA-enabled devices are often mid-tier feature phones with respectable if not ‘stellar’ battery performance.

Fundamentally, UMA is a technology for mobile operators. It is designed to make Wi-Fi (and IP and broadband) ‘friendly’ to the mobile operator. So, what is UMA’s secret?

When a UMA-enabled dual-mode phone enters a known Wi-Fi coverage area (home, office), the phone automatically and seamlessly switches from the GSM network to the Wi-Fi network. Now the connection between the phone and the mobile network is over the public internet rather than the GSM radio access network. Because it’s not used when the phone is in Wi-Fi coverage, the GSM radio is put into a sleep/hibernate mode.

If/when a call arrives for the handset, the call is routed through the UMA tunnel over the internet to the handset, and the GSM radio is not used.

This is one key element of improving battery performance in UMA-enabled handsets. By putting the GSM radio in a sleep mode, the phone continues to run a single radio. Anyone who has run their Bluetooth radio all day knows that having two radios on in a phone significantly impacts the battery performance.

Contrast this with the operation of a non-UMA dual-mode phone. As the phone enters a known Wi-Fi location, generally the user needs to turn on or enable the Wi-Fi radio. Primarily this is because the battery impact is so great that ‘automatic’ Wi-Fi usage would have the un-intended consequence of sucking the battery dry.

Now with the Wi-Fi radio is operating and associated with an access point. But to make or receive GSM calls, the GSM radio must remain on as well. In a non-UMA device, the only connection between the mobile core network and the handset is over the existing GSM link. In this case, Wi-Fi is simply a bolt-on to the phone’s primary function as a GSM communications device.

There are many implications of this ‘bolt on’ approach.

First, people with non-UMA devices don’t use the Wi-Fi connection much if at all. The performance hit to the handset is too great for regular usage. Certainly with iPhone, the largest selling dual-mode device on the market, most people tend to use the EDGE data connection rather than Wi-Fi.

Second, there is no session mobility for non-UMA devices. Start surfing on the Wi-Fi connection, and if you walk out the door to GSM, that connection is lost. Wi-Fi and GSM are typically completely different subsystems on a non-UMA device. Of course with UMA, there is full session mobility for voice, data and IMS applications between Wi-Fi and the GSM network.

Third, because Wi-Fi is typically bolted onto a non-UMA device for basic data services, the Wi-Fi sub-system is not optimized for a mobile device. This was a common problem for the first UMA-enabled handsets. The Wi-Fi subsystems were simply ported from laptops and behaved like they were running on (relatively) power in-sensitive devices like PCs rather than on handsets.

Companies like NXP have invested tremendous resources in optimizing Wi-Fi (radio, stacks) to be voice-centric rather than laptop/PC centric. This optimization has paid off well, as the performance of their t409 product achieves 8 hours of talk time in Wi-Fi, according to one analyst.

Many see dual-mode devices as the next growth opportunity for Wi-Fi. This is certainly true. But there is a big difference between non-UMA and UMA-enabled devices.