AT&T's Plan to Drive Economic Growth

On March 10^th, AT&T announced its plan to rescue the US economy… I mean “to drive economic growth” through increased investment in their network.

According to the press release, “AT&T plans to invest $17 billion to $18 billion in 2009, in line with its 2007 capital expenditures of $17.7 billion and expected to exceed the planned investment of any other U.S. telecom company.”

Wow.

So, what’s AT&T going to spend on? They list four items:

• Expanding 3G service
• Increasing HSPA data rates
• Customer trials leading toward general availability of 3G femtocells
• Continued expansion of AT&Ts leading Wi-Fi footprint

So the company is going to invest in two in-building wireless technologies? Wi-Fi and Femtocells.

Followers of this blog know that I often wonder why AT&T doesn’t just use their enormous presence in Wi-Fi (already in U-verse, ships with 2Wire DSL modems, AT&T DSL subscribers already get free access to +20,000 HotSpots from Wayport/ Starbucks / McDonalds and more) to do a simple UMA dual-mode phone service.

Not that femtocells are bad, but when probably 50% of AT&T’s 15 million DSL households already have Wi-Fi, and they are the biggest Wi-Fi hotspot provider in the US, and they have an exclusive on the most popular Wi-Fi enabled phone ever, it just makes sense.

UMA Today Q&A: RIM on its strategic vision for Wi-Fi and UMA

RIM has maintained a long-term commitment to UMA technology and today, and supports UMA and WiFi in a wide range of industry-leading products for both consumers and business users. Even when Wi-Fi was considered by some to be a threat to the mobile operator, RIM saw an opportunity to focus on offerings that benefit both end users and wireless carriers. Below is an excerpt of a recent interview in UMA Today Magazine with Mike McAndrews, RIM’s VP of product marketing, who shares his insights on how Wi-Fi and UMA fit into the company’s strategic vision for the future…

UMA Today: Have operators’ opinions towards Wi-Fi changed?

McAndrews: I’ve seen a definite trend in the last few years towards Wi-Fi adoption by many wireless carriers around the world. This trend is fueled by 3 things:
1) Wi-Fi popularity with end users
2) Increasing smartphone functionality, which leads to greater wireless data usage
3) Many carriers now see Wi-Fi as an enabler to their overall strategy. As a result, Wi-Fi is being increasingly requested by wireless carriers in new BlackBerry smartphones…

Some of our carriers have created compelling voice service plans built around UMA. Other carriers have focused on bundling convenient hotspot access as part of a BlackBerry service plan.

UMA Today: How does UMA technology fit into RIM’s strategy?

McAndrews: UMA is a natural extension of what we’ve been doing with Wi-Fi. While Wi-Fi support makes it possible for customers to access their BlackBerry data, the addition of UMA support gives customers access to voice calling over Wi-Fi as well.

UMA is a technology that benefits both mobile operators and end users alike, and we’re glad to support it. To date, we’ve seen enthusiastic support for UMA from some of our carrier partners, including Rogers Wireless, T-Mobile US and Orange.

UMA Today: What is RIM’s outlook for Wi-Fi and UMA in handsets in the future?

McAndrews: Wi-Fi is an important part of our product roadmap – its proven to be a technology that benefits both our carrier partners and end users. Wi-Fi is popular with both business users and consumers. While Wi-Fi cannot replace the wide area coverage provided by a mobile network, it is becoming more commonplace….

RIM’s Wi-Fi architecture is designed to allow the handset to connect to the best network available – either the mobile network or Wi-Fi – with no user intervention required…This seamless connectivity is an important element of making Wi-Fi truly easy to use.

RIM remains committed to UMA, and there are certainly more products on the horizon.


To read UMA Today’s full interview with RIM’s McAndrews, click here.

Guest Blogger: Peter Jarich, Current Analysis

Today, I'm pleased to introduce our guest blogger, one of our industry's leading analysts.
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Guest Blogger: Peter Jarich
Research Director, Telecom Infrastructure, Mobile Networks and Carrier Core with Current Analysis

Sizing up the VoLGA

Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” In my case, it’s just a way to get through my job. With new technologies and technology initiatives emerging on a weekly basis, analytical crutches are one of the few ways I can figure out what makes sense. Take a few of my favorite questions.

Does it Meet Real Operator Demands?
There’s no shortage of new (and old) technologies being sold as telecom “solutions.” Likewise, there’s no shortage of operators willing to explain their network and service pain points. It’s not too difficult to line these up against one another and figure out which technologies are solutions in search of a problem.

Do Vendors Support It Against Their Strategic Interests?
This is really a subset of the last question. Anytime a vendor endorses something that runs contrary to its core business objectives – think macro network RAN vendors selling femtocells or most any vendor supporting TD-SCDMA – you know there’s a clear operator requirement forcing them in that direction.

Does It Have a Cool Name?
We all know a cool name can carry a mediocre product. Who doesn’t think that Apple’s iPhone would have sold millions even it wasn’t so cool? At the other end of the spectrum, technologies that can overcome the curse of a bad name (DSL, HSPA, most Nokia phones) must be doing something right.

So, where does the new VoLGA initiative fit in?
Based on all the conversations at Mobile World Congress, voice over LTE is a clear operator hot button; given the money voice earns for them, that’s not too surprising. And, based on the fact that key VoLGA supporters have been trying to sell IMS for years, it’s fair to say that their support is likely being driven by more than a heartfelt love of GAN. And the name? An acronym with an embedded acronym recalling a Russian river? That fact that any operators can get past the name is a testament to its importance.

All joking aside, there can be no question that any operator planning an LTE rollout has the question of voice support on their mind; even if voice can be relegated to legacy 2G and 3G networks, an ideal world involves operators converging multiple services on one network. And while a single voice-over-LTE solution would best support scale, the fact remains the diversity of cellcos demands a diversity of LTE voice solutions – including solutions deliver consistent voice services based on a current, proven switching investments.

A Ringing Endorsement for UMA

I’m not sure there is a more respected endorsement to be had.

Technology evangelist and on-line news pioneer Om Malik is the founder and visionary behind the GigaOM Network of sites which (according to their site) provides one of the leading daily online news reads for the key influencers in the emerging technology market place.

On Monday, while I was busy with the VoLGA Forum announcement, Om wrote a personal piece about his RIM Blackberry 8900 on T-Mobile. He didn’t have to do it, even though I’m sure he’s asked millions of times what phone he uses. But it was interesting to read his assessment.

I agree with his position that the 8900 is “arguably the best BlackBerry on the market today.” But Om also takes time to point out that he appreciates the UMA support, and gives the 8900 an overall ranking of 8 out of 10 as a phone.

I believe there is a very strong UMA following in the market. I see it in the comments, even in the GigaOM post, of people talking passionately about UMA, Wi-Fi and T-Mobile.

UMA Jumps Into LTE

On Monday, the UMA/GAN standard moved into its next phase with the announcement that the ‘VoLGA Forum’ is basing its work on the spec . The forum states that it is “comprised of leaders in the wireless industry seeking to enable mobile operators to deliver mobile voice and messaging services over LTE access networks based on the existing 3GPP GAN standard.”

I say GAN has moved into its next phase because, as a technology, this is nothing new. GAN has been delivering ‘voice and messaging services’ (and more) over fixed-line IP access networks for some time. The forum’s announcement simply acknowledges that there is a viable mobile IP access network in the form of LTE requiring a similar service.

While the technology is similar, the actual application is quite different. Whereas traditional UMA services like dual-mode phones and femtocells address the FMC segment of the market, the concept of VoLGA is to have a VoLGA client on every LTE phone.

Basically VoLGA is the enabler for making phone calls over LTE.

Based on posts by Martin Sauter and my good buddy Dean Bubley, it’s clear there is a problem with the ‘status quo’ approach for voice over LTE. Martin Sauter’s comment:

Over the past two years I've written numerous posts about different proposed options on how to do voice calls over LTE and the lack of a simple and straight voice solution. This is, in my opinion, a serious threat to the success of LTE if not resolved soon.

I’m sure we have not heard the last of the VoLGA Forum.

UMA + RCS

In the early days of the UMA Today blog, there was much time and energy spent on articulating how IMS for applications other than telephony is actually complementary to UMA.

IMS, of course, means a lot of things to a lot of people, but for mobile operators today (UMA’s target audience), IMS is typically viewed as a means to deliver new revenue generating services above and beyond standard voice and SMS.

In response to this, leading operators and vendors intent on IMS tried to pare down the ‘Immense Menacing Squid’ as some used to refer to it, into pre-packaged set of applications that could be quickly and easily digested by a mobile operator.

The result is RCS, or the Rich Communications Suite. Announced about 6 months ago, RCS looks to wrap up IMS-based ‘rich call’ services, ‘rich’ instant messaging and enhanced address book services together into a single client that can be used on handsets today.

The implication of *today* is that it must be able to run over today’s 3G network, which in turn implies that it will use the existing circuit services network for voice, not a new IMS/SIP based telephony (a la MMTel). It stands to reason that if RCS works with standard 3G telephony, then it should work fine with UMA.

So what does all this pre-amble lead too?

I was on the GSMA site checking out the RCS section, when I happened across the release 1 specifications. I downloaded the “Technical Realisation v1.0” document and was quite surprised to see this:

Along with this text in section 2:

Note about Generic Access Network (GAN)

Generic Access to A/Gb interface provides a secure mechanism, using the SIM credentials, to access the mobile operator core network (both packet and circuit switched) using any unlicensed spectrum technology via a generic IP network. In fact, access to mobile operator core network via GAN is fully transparent from RCS perspective, and as such it does not lead to any particular limitation or impact from service point of view.

As a consequence, from access network perspective, this [GAN] technology is fully part of the scope of RCS, whatever Release is addressed, irrespective of the release.

Hey! Someone has seen the light. There is now proof from the GSMA that UMA and IMS are complementary, not competitive, technologies, at least when it comes to new service delivery.

Skype on N97: No Thanks.

When I first saw the announcement that Nokia was going to bundle Skype into the N97, I was a bit surprised.

If you recall, it was barely 6 months ago Nokia said they were pulling the VoIP hooks out of the S60 OS.

And now they are going to actually put a full Skype client bundled into the device? Wow.

I think mobile operators have barely tolerated the fact that users may be able to download a VoIP client onto an open platform phone. But when a major vendor comes out and says they are going to wrap a competing voice service...I think the FierceVoIP headline says it best: “Skype on Nokia N97 invokes wrath of carriers.”

What is going on in Finland? These seem like the moves of a desperate company that can’t decide on a strategy. Typically, Nokia charts a course and executes it. But when it comes to VoIP, it seems like they can’t decide in what direction to go.

I know I’m a bit biased, but this seems easy to me:

Nokia, your bread gets its butter from mobile service providers. In turn, the primary revenue for mobile service providers is voice and SMS. Bundling a service onto your product that directly competes with your customers' primary revenue generating service (or even providing the hooks for it) seems like a bad idea.

If only there was a VoIP service that was designed BY mobile operators FOR mobile operators. Hummm… what was the name of it again???? It’s starts with a U…

Rather than fighting against the wishes of the mobile operators, why don’t you give them what they want? Put UMA on all those cool N and E phones that already have Wi-Fi.

SIDE NOTE:

In a discussion I had at MWC on this very topic, an analyst told me they thought Nokia’s long-term secret plan is to use its service portal Ovi as a VoIP hub, basically competing directly with its customers.

UMA @ MWC

First, I’d like to apologize for my utter lack of blogging over the past couple of weeks (months…?). It has been a bit hectic getting ready for Mobile World Congress, as well as for some other cool things we have in the works (yes... that's a teaser).

At MWC, UMA was certainly not as hot a topic as femtocells, but it continues to be a successful service offer for the providers offering it. There are so many companies with UMA products that the community's become a 'who's who' of the mobile industry.

Orange was a major supporter of UMA and its own Unik service at MWC. Executive Vice President Yves Tyrode spoke during the "Mobile and the Converging World" session on Tuesday and reinforced important messages about Unik:

• Unik generates higher household ARPUs
• Unik subscribers churn less than average

But he also took the time to talk about why UMA is key for the company's mobile TV service. The service was launched with two new 3G UMA phones, the Sony Ericsson G705u and LG Secret KF-757.

• UMA provides a seamless experience, switching the streaming TV signal from 3G to Wi-Fi.
• UMA and Wi-Fi complement the 3G macro network with high bandwidth and a strong signal indoors.
• UMA, with it’s SIM-based authentication, satisfies DRM requirements for delivery over Wi-Fi.
• There are an increasing number of high-end multimedia phones with UMA.

In addition to the presentation, Orange hosted the 2^nd Annual UMA Innovation Awards with an elegant affair on their stand. The awards recognized innovation and excellence in UMA-enabled handsets.

A highlight of the awards program was the Innovator's Award, presented to the company which has demonstrated unique innovation in UMA over the past year. This year’s winner was T-Mobile US for its highly successful fixed-line VoIP service based on UMA.

In wandering the Orange stand, the handsets on display were primarily Unik/UMA devices, again reinforcing the company's commitment to UMA.

One announcement the UMA community was hoping for was an unveiling of the HTC Jade, a phone rumored to have UMA support. Unfortunately, no such announcement was forthcoming. But CTIA is just around the corner…

Of course the Kineto stand had its regular display of all UMA-enabled products. With 24 handsets, three terminal adaptors and five handset platforms on display, it’s clear UMA devices are abundant.

There were plenty of rumors about Telia’s re-launch of their UMA service, as well as Orange’s push into the UK, Spain and Poland. There were even rumors about new UMA-enabled devices from Nokia, perhaps even N series phones.

In retrospect, 2008 was an excellent year for UMA. And all indications show that 2009 will, once again, exceed expectations.

RIM's 8900 coming to T-Mobile soon

The latest UMA-enabled RIM, the 8900, has been getting rave reviews in the press:

• Engadget
• CNET
• Electronista
• Crackberry…

The rumor is that the phone will be available at T-Mobile shortly, perhaps as early as next week. So all of you text/email refuges from iPhone, get ready for a very cool new Blackberry.

[Ed. Note: The phone went on sale at T-Mobile Feb 12 and promptly sold out]

Desk phones the way of the Dodo?

A recent post by Ben Patterson, the self-proclaimed “Gadget Hound” writing for Yahoo Tech, posited that the desk phone may be going the way of the dodo bird. To reinforce is point, Ben refers to an article from industry analyst firm Gartner suggesting that enterprises will be supporting more mobile phones than desk phones in 2011.

Interestingly, one of the concerns Ben had about this transition, the ability to get coverage in the office, is addressed with UMA. And the phones Ben referred to for such a service? RIM Blackberries.

At UMA Today, we don’t believe the desk phone will go the way of the dodo (ie, completely disappear off the face of the earth).

We believe the desk phone will be relegated to a position in the office hierarchy similar to a fax machine. It’s still there, it’s still plugged in and ready for use, but employees just don’t use it much at all anymore.

It's a "Wireless Network Extender"

Rumors abound about Verizon Wireless’ launch of a Wireless Network Extender, more commonly known as a femtocell. Engadget reports that Verizon could begin selling the unit as early as next week.

The deeper question is: will consumers pay for coverage? $250 for the unit seems a bit steep.

Or will Verizon resort to providing the unit for free as a customer retention tactic like Sprint? We’ll have to wait and see.

Westell gets (UMA) religion

Earlier this week, Westell announced their first UMA product, the “UltraVoice” UMA terminal adaptor. Westell joins Linksys in providing UMA-based terminal adaptors designed to let mobile operators cost-effectively capture fixed-line home phone service.

T-Mobile’s home phone service “@Home”, has been a resounding success. UMA has let T-Mobile offer home phone service for just $10/month to it’s existing subscriber base. Rather than installing a dedicated VoIP switch, UMA let’s T-Mobile use their existing R4 MSCs as well as billing and customer care facilities.

Considering the business case, I’m surprised more mobile operators aren’t jumping on this:

• UMA Network Controller Port: ~$15
• UMA-enabled terminal adaptor: ~$50
• Changes to billing system: Minor, this is just a second line on an existing mobile plan
• 
  
• Revenue per month: $10 (excludes any international calling)
• ROI: About 6 months

I think it was T-Mobile’s enthusiasm for the application that helped Westell get UMA religion.

UMA Device Takes Top Ranking (sort of)

RCR Wireless regularly publishes a list of the most “popular” handsets in the US.

Top handset for the month of November…

The Blackberry Curve

Wow, a UMA-enabled device is the most popular device in the US. Well, only the T-Mobile version of the Curve is UMA-enabled, but still, I’m sure T-Mobile sells a LOT of them.

Actually, congratulations to RIM for holding 3 of the top five spots in the ranking.

Two new UMA phones

This week saw the introduction of two new UMA enabled devices.

Today Nokia released the new 7510 device at CES. A quad-band phone with a solid 2 mp camera and SMTP/POP3 mail, this is more than an ‘entry level’ device. Targeted for T-Mobile US, it looks like it could become popular worldwide.

This week Orange started selling “Chicago” a private label device rumored to be developed by Taiwan OEM powerhouse Foxconn. The device is fairly basic, filling in the entry level segment of Orange’s Unik service offer.

Not a bad week for UMA handsets.

ST-NXP sees "strong demand" for 3G/UMA

In an article released today at EE Times Europe, Dan Rabinovitsj, senior vice president and general manager of cellular systems for ST-NXP said the company sees strong demand from device manufacturers and operators for 3G/UMA devices.

ST-NXP, the new combined entity of ST Microelectronics and NXP which merged in April, 2008, brings a lot of strength in UMA technology with NXP, an early innovator and supporter of UMA.

Mr. Rabinovitsj continues:

"With the Cellular System Solution 7210 UMA, we are able to deliver high-quality streaming video and fast download speeds. In a Wi-Fi hotspot, consumers will notice the difference in speed when accessing popular social networking sites, and the smooth video quality when watching their favorite clips online. This brings to consumers the broadband speed they typically enjoy on the PC, through a UMTS feature phone."

We have already seen a number of 3G/UMA phones on the market, and it appears that there are many more on the horizon.

UMA, and Wi-Fi technology, is an ideal complementary technology to 3G. Both deliver high-speed broadband access for mobile services, while UMA/Wi-Fi can augment 3G coverage in the places where consumers spend the most of their time, at home and in the office.

A true story

I was out the other night with some buddies for drinks. One friend has an iPhone and LOVES it. Frankly, everyone I know with an iPhone loves it, but that’s another story.

We got into a disagreement about the directions to our next establishment. I suggested to my friend he pull up Google Maps to chart our course. It takes him a little while and I ask what’s taking so long:

“I just attached to a Wi-Fi access point,” he says.

“Why,” I ask, “that’s a 3G iPhone, right?”

“3G is too slow, it’s much faster to use Wi-Fi.”

iMS

The other day I was involved in an interesting discussion regarding IMS. Certainly the original vision of IMS as a platform for delivering new IP based services has been slow to materialize. Per it’s Wikipedia page, IMS is intended “to aid the access of multimedia and voice applications from wireless… terminals”.

This got us thinking… The concept sounds quite familiar. Isn’t there already a tool to aid the access of multimedia and voice applications from wireless terminals? It sounds a lot like Apple’s wildly successful AppStore.

Could AppStore actually be the new iMS?

Consider the idea for a minute. The vision of IMS was to develop a platform where new applications could be made available to users on their phones. Rather than monolithic systems which pushed out one or two new services a year, IMS was to unleash the power of millions of developers to create thousands of applications to address the ‘long tail’ of user interests.

Apple’s AppStore has thousands of applications and literally millions of downloads. Certainly very few of the applications relate directly to mobile phones, but that’s the point, right? Give users access to a world of new applications which make the mobile phone (or iPhone) indispensible.

There are actual telephony applications like Fring, and Truphone as well, along with dozens of social networking applications with presence and instant messaging.

Of course AppStore by itself isn't enough. The industry needed a handset that consumers wanted and provided a platform for developers to work from. In that iPhone has certainly succeeded.

Apple isn’t the only one. Nokia has Ovi which offers a similar experience to the AppStore.

Could it be that the future of IMS is actually iMS?

The “Secret” is out – LG first 3G UMA phone

The new LG KF-757 is nearly identical to the already popular KF750, but added Wi-Fi and UMA support to be LG’s first 3G UMA handset.

The phone was announced by Orange in conjunction with their HDTV service in November. It scores high on the ‘cool’ factor with a sleek, glossy shell, a large quality display, 5 megapixel camera and the very cool ‘accelerometer’.

EU Issues Power Consumption Guidelines

The EU continues to lead in environmental and ecologically friendly regulations. This month, an EU commission published a report titled “Code of Conduct on Energy Consumption of Broadband Equipment”.

The report sets out guidelines for power consumption for a range of broadband equipment in the home. The report suggests there is a ‘low power’ state along with an ‘on’ state for devices to save power, and recommends a decrease in power usage over time.

The report recommends that femtocells use less than 9.0/9.0 watts (standby/on) in the first phase through 2010, dropping to 7.0/8.0 watts in 2011.

Ironically, the report suggests 802.11 b/g interfaces draw 1.0/2.0 watts initially, dropping to 0.7/2.0 in 2011. Talk about a green technology…

UMA expands to HDTV

Building on their 3G announcement from September, Orange has added a new HDTV service to their Unik lineup.

The service is designed to take advantage of the high-speed, low latency access available with Wi-Fi via Unik.

According to Roaul Roverato, executive vice president in charge of the new growth businesses division of Orange:

“Our proximity to the customer and our understanding of their expectations means we are able to react more quickly to their changing needs. For example in France, 40% of mobile TV usage is enjoyed at home* and this trend is growing, with over 58% of customers accessing video on demand (VoD) services and 32% watching live TV when at home** . By providing better handsets with bigger screens, seamless network access and exciting, high-quality content, Orange is shaping the future of mobile TV.”

I think it’s amazing they find 40% of mobile TV usage is at home, where people already have Wi-Fi coverage. Highlighting once again that Wi-Fi is a perfect offload opportunity.

China Mobile: Voice over LTE... via UMA/GAN?

As covered by Michelle Donegan at Unstrung, China Mobile is prepping their network for LTE, and voice will be an important element.

Bill Huang, general manager of China Mobile Research Institute, said that the company is well prepared to move to LTE, and stressed the importance of supporting voice. Mr. Haung went on to say that one option for Voice over LTE was the UMA/GAN protocol.

“We could carry voice over UMA” said Mr. Huang. “We will have an LTE network that supports voice…”. To clarify, what Mr. Huang is referring to is not the traditional ‘home zone’ UMA deployment involving Wi-Fi or femtocells.

The 3GPP UMA/GAN (Generic Access Network) standard provides a generic method for extending 2G and 3G circuit (and packet) services over any broadband access network. Until now, the standard had been used to enable mobile operators to extend their services over fixed broadband networks (DSL, cable,…). However, now with a high-speed, low latency *mobile* broadband network, GAN can be used to extend existing mobile services (like telephony) over LTE.

Clearly for the mobile operator, this is a very low-risk, low-cost method of bringing their voice services (and revenues) to their LTE network deployments.

UMA spotted on an iPhone

Well, here it is. Apparently this is an undoctored photo of blogger Pat Phelan’s O2 iPhone used in the US. [Ed Note: my mistake, thought it was being used in the UK].

Check out the upper left corner where the network display reads UMA.

If I were to guess, I’d say that T-Mobile’s HotSpot network has a “UMA” SSID. The phone has attached to that Wi-Fi access point and is displaying the SSID.

But clearly the phone is ready, the Wi-Fi network is ready, now we just need to get the UMA protocol stack into the phone. Then people can get better coverage and lower cost calling when attached to Wi-Fi with their iPhone.

FMC market remains hot

In a recent report, Infonetics Research projects that FMC network equipment will grow 82% in 2008, and that the FMC phone market reached $7.6 billion in 2008.

“UMA continues to dominate the worldwide seamless FMC market,” said Infonetics principal analyst Stéphane Téral. “We expect all the phone and equipment segments in the niche FMC market to grow rapidly, with the economic downturn actually making T-Mobile USA’s offer more attractive to stretched consumer.”

At UMA Today, we completely agree.

Verizon preps femtocell service

According to reports from Engadget and Gadget.com, Verizon Wireless plans a launch of its own femtocell service based on Samsung’s Ubicell. We all know this is the same product used in Sprint’s Airave service.

For those following the Home Zone/FMC market, this amounts to an ‘I told you so’ moment. T-Mobile kicked things off. Next was Sprint, now Verizon. It looks like the FMC market in the US is really heating up. We told you home zones were hot.

This all stems from T-Mobile’s “Unlimited HotSpot Calling” (formerly known as ‘HotSpot@Home’), the Wi-Fi based Home Zone service T-Mobile launched about a year ago.

At the time, the UHC service provided something totally different than any of the other mobile operators in the US could deliver: a location specific ‘service zone’. T-Mobile could identify that subscribers were in their homes, and offer an unlimited, flat rate calling plan only when on Wi-Fi.

T-Mobile also got the added benefit of improving coverage in the home or office by using the Wi-Fi that already exists in those locations.

In response, Sprint launched Airave in September, 2008. It has been pointed out in this blog that while GSM operators have a choice of Wi-Fi or femto technology, CDMA-based operators are unfortunately limited to femtocells.

Without the ability to segment subscribers into specific locations, ATT and Verizon, launched unlimited MOBILE calling for $100. While all the majors eventually followed suit, this move immediately devalued the outdoor macro network, setting a ceiling on services at $100. Why not create a home zone offer, and limit unlimited calling to specific locations?

Yet Sprint and T-Mobile still had the upper hand, with unlimited calling when attached to Wi-Fi or the femtocell for just $10/month.

So now today we see Verizon realizing that a home zone service is different. In the US, it appears that a home zone service is now a competitive requirement.

AT&T, as a GSM operator, has a choice. They can do a femtocell service, or do Wi-Fi/UMA, or, I suppose, do nothing. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

College students choose Wi-Fi over beer

The Wi-Fi Alliance, always looking to show how much consumers rely on un-tethered high-speed internet access, commissioned another survey on the subject.

In this latest addition, apparently 90% of college students surveyed said that Wi-Fi was as essential as classrooms and computers. If forced to choose, almost half would give up beer before Wi-Fi.

At UMA Today, we prefer the ‘and’ option versus an ‘or’ option.

UMA is Secure

Well, UMA is secure at least according to the recommendations of this consultancy. In an article on Unstrung, Global Secure Systems, a value-added IT security firm, reports that the WPA and WPA2 Wi-Fi security codes are no longer enough to protect wireless data.

By using a special purpose NVidia graphics cards, a Russian-based firm was able to accelerate cracking the WPA/WPA2 encryption by 10,000 percent. Wow.

In response, GSS now recommends its clients use a VPN on top of WPA/WPA2.

Hey… That’s how UMA already works.

Wi-Fi to 1 billion

Analyst firm In-stat recently updated its market forecast for Wi-Fi chips, projecting nearly a billion Wi-Fi enabled consumer devices by 2012. Most interesting for us at UMA Today is the claim that by 2011, cellular/Wi-Fi handsets will become the largest category of Wi-Fi enabled products.

No surprise here. Wi-Fi is now friendly for mobile operators. The benefits of improved coverage, mobile network offload, and home zone services are clear.

But it was the comment in the CNET article by Marguerite Reardon that hit the mark.

“Over the past few years, prices on Wi-Fi hardware have come way down. And the battery life for devices using Wi-Fi has improved dramatically, making it possible to embed Wi-Fi in handheld devices like cell phones.”

Poor battery life is a myth that has perpetuated too long in the dual-mode market. As with most technologies, market demand also demands innovation. UMA and Wi-Fi in handsets requires innovation over Wi-Fi embedded in a laptop. Several vendors have stepped up to make dramatic improvements in Wi-Fi, optimizing it for a handset environment.

Hey GSMA: Got Voice?

Yesterday the GSMA announced a marketing program to promote and develop ‘always connected’ mobile broadband services in a wide range of consumer products.

While the momentum has been building for some time, the GSMA is looking to highlight the growing trend of HSPA devices (laptops, MIDs,…) which offer consumers a mobile broadband experience.

At UMA Today, our first thought was: Got Voice?

Giving consumers an ‘always connected’ mobile broadband experience is great… especially for VoIP providers like Skype and Vonage. These companies have traditionally been tethered to fixed broadband connections in the home or office.

Now mobile operators are providing them a high speed, low latency, always on mobile broadband network from which to deliver a mobile VoIP service.

While data services are certainly a booming growth area for mobile operators, this service amounts to a ‘dumb pipe’ approach. The fundamental revenue-generating application for the mobile operators, telephony, is conspicuously absent.

It’s clear why. Mobile operators don’t want to invest in a SIP/IMS core simply to provide their own VoIP service. The investment is too great, and the return is minimal.

What operators need is a way to leverage their existing voice service core (MSCs).

This is what UMA technology is all about: extending the mobile operator’s existing services over broadband.

There are several UMA-based softphone mobile clients available today. These products can easily be bundled with an HSPA service. Now when a user connects to the mobile broadband network, they can have the operators own a mobile VoIP application running on the laptop.

It could be that Orange is one of the first to recognize the opportunity.

Nanoradio Turns On UMA

Nanoradio is a Swedish-based fabless semiconductor supplier that has developed a unique WLAN chipset which features ultra-low power consumption, the smallest package (their claim) and ‘unique’ support for audio applications.

If you think this would be perfect for a UMA-enabled handset, apparently you’re not alone.

Today Nanoradio issued a press release stating its technology is in the world’s first 3G UMA handset. At first I thought they meant the Sony Ericsson G705u, but in fact they were talking about the Samsung P270, quietly announced in Orange’s press release about expanding Unik to support 3G devices.

In a follow-on article, the company refers to an as yet unannounced UMA device, the Samsung P250. Excellent.

The article also mentioned that the Nanoradio ‘…Wi-Fi solution doubles the standby and talktime...’ when in UMA. Not bad, considering UMA already outperforms cellular for some RIM devices.

From the company’s web site, Nanoradio suggests its WLAN chip uses just 6mW in a voice call, compared with 37mW for Bluetooth 1.2 and 50 mW for Bluetooth 2.0. Very impressive.

It’s clear that Nanoradio is dispelling the myths about Wi-Fi being power hungry. With ABI Research predicting more than 300 million dual-mode phones in the coming years, the future looks very bright.

Mobile Usage Skyrockets In the Home

While it’s no surprise to anyone, Informa has taken the important step of quantifying what we already know: the majority mobile data traffic will be generated in the home.

In research released by Informa a couple of months ago and re-introduced this week, Informa estimates that 40% of mobile data usage happens in the home today, growing to 58% of traffic in 2013. It’s much cheaper and easier to offload that traffic onto the user’s own broadband network via Wi-Fi or femtocell than carry it over the macro RAN.

The research also notes that mobile voice usage in the home should rise to 49% of a subscriber’s total minutes in 2013, up from 42% today. Add in the estimated 30% of calls which happen in the office, and a whooping 70% of mobile voice usage happens indoors.

With more than half of all voice and data traffic being generated indoors, Wi-Fi or femto-based Home Zone services should be mandatory from operators in the near future.

Home zones do it all:

• Offload the macro network
• Backhaul voice/data traffic over the internet
• Create ‘home zone’ specific voice/data services and applications

NEC Turns Up Femtocells

Two announcements today from NEC in the femto market.

First, the company announced it received an order from Softbank in Japan for it’s IMS-based femtocell system. The system does require an IMS infrastructure, which can be troublesome for many existing mobile operators. Softbank’s goal is to be commercial in January 2009.

I believe this is the first commercial announcement/award for 3G femtocells.

Second, NEC made a strategic investment in Kineto Wireless, it’s supplier for RAN gateway-based femtocell solutions. The undisclosed investment was NEC’s first in the femtocell market.

With a win in the IMS approach and an investment in the RAN gateway approach, it appears that NEC is well positioned in the femtocell market moving forward.

Orange Wins... Again

Congratulations, Orange! Its Unik services was the winner of the “Fixed Mobile Convergence” award at this week’s Global Telecom Business Innovation Awards ceremony in London.

RIM Flips with New UMA-enabled Pearl

Yes, the new RIM Blackberry Pearl (8220) is the first flip phone for the company, and continues their tradition of UMA and Wi-Fi.

The US market is famously fickled for flip phones. RIM is addressing the need.

For those of us who weren’t there, RIM co-CEO and friend of UMA Today Jim Balsillie had a keynote presentation at yesterday’s CTIA event in San Francisco. The good people at Crackberry.com covered it with a ‘real time blog’.

The presentation shows RIM really stepping up the push into the consumer market. While RIM has 54% of the US smartphone market, consumers now account for 34% of RIM’s customer base. There was a slide on the ‘four screens’, which oddly enough includes a reference to the fixed line home phone.

The list of consumer/entertainment features on the device is staggering:

-Email (of course)
-IM (MSN, Yahoo, Google, AIM, Lotus,…)
-Social networking (Facebook, myspace, quickr,…)
-Photo Sharing (flickr,...)
-Content relationships (MLB.com, NFL.com, …)
-Streaming audio (Slacker,...)
-Home media synch with iTunes, Windows Media
-Tivo controls and media playback

and the list goes on.

Below is a video clip from Crackberry.com introducing the Pearl. Very cool.

The phone will be exclusive to T-Mobile starting this fall. We can’t wait.

3G UMA "...at the heart of our convergence strategy"

Today Orange announced the expansion of its UMA-based Unik service to include support for 3G devices and network services. In addition, the company announced two new UMA-enabled 3G handsets, industry firsts, from Sony Ericsson and Samsung.

Orange continues to innovate on its UMA service. By extending Unik to include 3G, Orange is able to complement its macro 3G network with Wi-Fi indoors. Wi-Fi can offload the macro network, deliver high speed mobile data rates, and overcome 3G coverage/performance issues when the subscriber is in the home or office.

With this announcement, Orange now effectively turns all the LiveBoxes in France into unlicensed femtocells. That’s an installed base of over 4 million units.

I think the quote from Mr. Penalvar, senior executive vice president of strategy, says it best: “…UMA is at the heart of our convergence strategy.”

Sony Ericsson's #1

Well, a slight grammatical play here, what I meant to say is that today Sony Ericsson announced its first UMA-enabled handset, and it looks like a winner.

Today Engadget covered the new ‘powerhouse’ G705u device. It supports a UMA, along with a full complement of traditional RAN radios including quad-band 2G, and UMTS/HSUPA 850/1900/2100. That’s right, it’s also one of the first UMA/3G devices on the market today. Sony Ericsson’s first, in two categories!

In addition, the phone comes with aGPS, an RSS reader, a full HTML browser and a 3.2 mega pixel camera with direct uploads to YouTube. Very cool.

The first roll-out is Orange in Europe, but a US version is in the works.

UMA Today can now say that the top handset vendors support UMA: Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, LG Electronics and RIM. Now about that HTC phone…

Wi-Fi Gets Roaming

A long awaited (at least from UMA Today’s perspective) Wi-Fi specification was finally ratified by the IEEE last week. The 802.11r specification lets Wi-Fi devices roam quickly between Wi-Fi access points within a network.

Officially known as ‘fast basic service set transition’, the concept behind 802.11r is to enable a device to establish access to and qualifications of a neighbor Wi-Fi access point before transitioning from the current AP.

For a dual-mode handset call, this capability is critical. Because UMA relies on an IPSec tunnel anchored on the handset, the phone must receive the same IP address from the new AP as it currently has from the current AP before it can roam. Without a constant IP address, the IPSec tunnel fails and the call transitions back to the macro RAN (not a tragedy, but a hassle).

The 802.11r spec has been in the works since 2005 and finally crossed the finish line. Look for it in devices and APs shortly.