Supporters of rival WiMax and LTE technologies faced off at the Mobile World Congress 2009, which opened today in Barcelona. At the cellular-centric WMC 2009, much of the attention was on LTE announcements, but Mobile WiMAX and HSPA+ supporters had real world products and services.
According to research from Europe’s EITO, the global market for wireless communications will go up 6% year-on-year, in 2009, and mobile data services revenues will rise 16%, despite the downturn.
Ericsson expects 80% of mobile broadband services will be enabled by cellular by 2012, using HSPA and LTE technologies. Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg said the bulk of mobile broadband deployments in the coming five years will be based on HSPA. According to Unstrung, Svanberg forecast 3.5 billion high-speed access lines globally, about 80 percent of which would be via wireless, rather than fixed. Of the 3 billion mobile broadband lines, about 70 percent will be HSPA, predicts Ericsson.
Here’s a brief overview of HSPA, Mobile WiMAX and LTE announcements at MWC 09:
Mobile WiMAX:
- Alvarion and Intel showcased seamless handover between WiMAX and 3G networks. Using the 2.5 GHz frequency band, Alvarion will be showing video streaming, data downloads, and Skype calls via notebooks based on Intel Centrino 2 Processors with the Intel WiMAX/WiFi Link 5350, running over Alvarion’s WiMAX Forum Certified BreezeMAX base station, part of company’s end-to-end 4Motion solution.
- Alvarion has completed a turnkey deployment of its 4Motion end-to-end solution with Orange Botswana in its two largest cities, the capital, Gaberone, and Francistown. Alvarion has won several recent WiMAX contracts including VMAX in Taiwan, LinkeM in Italy, ICE in Costa Rica and Bharti Airtel in India. Alvarion is the largest WiMAX pure-player with the most extensive WiMAX customer base and over 250 commercial deployments around the globe.
- Alcatel-Lucent announced a WiMax certification WiMax 3.5GHz certification by the WiMax Forum was announced at the show. It follows the WiMAX Forum’s certification of Alcatel-Lucent’s 2.5GHz base station portfolio last summer. Alcatel-Lucent said out of 34 Alcatel-Lucent Rev-e commercial deployments worldwide, 21 are in the 3.5GHz band, and seven of these are already in commercial service.
- Sprint Nextel hopes to launch a smartphone next year that will embrace three wireless modes (WiMAX, CDMA and Wi-Fi), says Sprint 4G marketing executive Scott Lane, in Computerworld. It will work over partner Clearwire’s Clear WiMAX network and might be based on Google’s Android software.
- Intel and Huawei today announced that a WiMAX IOT (Interoperability Testing) Lab has commenced operation in Beijing. The lab replicates a real end-to-end test environment. Huawei provided its infrastructure equipment including WiMAX BS (Base Station) DBS3900 which has gained Wave2 certification from the WiMAX Forum, ASN-GW (Access Service Node Gateway) and some CSN equipment.
- Sequans has introduced its newest chip, the SQN1210. It puts both baseband and RF in a single 65nm die for low power and high performance. The new SQN1210 delivers dramatically reduced cost, power consumption, and size, does not require external DRAM memory, and delivers maximum throughput of greater than 40 Mbps with extremely low power consumption of less than 350 mW. It supports 2 Tx, as specified in Release 1.5 of the WiMAX system profile, enabling uplink MIMO, a feature unique to Sequans that can nearly double cell coverage. ZyXEL is using Sequans’ new Mobile WiMAX chip to build Mobile WiMAX end user devices.
- Fujitsu Microelectronics introduced a low-power, small- footprint device, the MB86K23 mobile WiMAX baseband IC for USB and Embedded Mini Cards. It supports a wide range of channel bandwidths including 3.5MHz, 5MHz, 7MHz, 10MHz, and 20MHz, along with 64QAM, 16QAM, and
- The WiMAX Forum announced that WiMAX now covers 430 million people (aka POPS) globally a figure they hope could nearly double to 800 million people by the end of 2010. Global WiMAX network deployments are approaching 460 in more than 135 countries for fixed, portable, and mobile networks, says The Forum.
HSPA+:
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Qualcomm has expanded its HSPA+ portfolio, targeting “immersive multimedia” applications for handsets and data cards. A new transceiver, the QTR8610, supports worldwide 3G bands and integrates Bluetooth, GPS, FM radio and necessary codecs in a single chip. The new HSPA+ chipsets include the Mobile Station Modem MSM8260, MSM8660 and MSM8270 solutions for handsets, as well as the Mobile Data Modem MDM8220 for data devices. They use the Scorpion 1.2GHz processor and 600MHz DSP with support for 24-bit WXGA (1280×800) displays, and 45nm process technology for low power consumption.
LTE:
- Alcatel-Lucent announced a software module for LTE upgrades. In addition, the company launched the ng Connect Program, designed to develop the 4G ecosystem. Alcatel-Lucent said the software module is a key component of the company’s enhanced NodeB (eNodeB) solution and represents a “major step” forward in the company’s strategy to support next-generation wireless services.
- Alcatel has formed a group to push LTE applications, says PC World. An initial focus of the program will be LTE. Trial deployments of LTE should come later this year, though broad rollouts aren’t expected until 2010 or 2011. The initiative’s scope goes far beyond LTE, to include subsequent generations of mobile networks as well as GPON (gigabit-capable passive optical network) and wired technologies. According to Alcatel-Lucent, the vision spans consumer media and entertainment, enterprise collaboration and health care, automotive connectivity, digital signage and cloud computing.
- AT&T appears to be moving faster with plans to deploy LTE, says Unstrung. Now it wants to have commercial services ready in the middle of 2011. AT&T’s senior vice president of architecture and planning, Kris Rinne, gave a brief update on AT&T’s plans at the show on Monday. The number one U.S. operator had previously said that it wanted to squeeze more out of its 3G HSPA networks before migrating to Long-Term Evolution (LTE) in 2012.
- Motorola has an LTE demonstration in Barcelona. Riders can watch high-definition video streaming over an LTE network. Motorola says its first commercial release of LTE solutions will happen later this year with products for the 700MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum bands.
- Ericsson introduced their Evolved Packet Core portfolio, built on Ericsson’s existing packet core products. This minimizes operators’ capital expenditure and ensures a smooth transition to the new LTE technology, says the company. Ericsson offers high-capacity radio access (LTE radio base stations), Evolved Packet Core networks, IP / Ethernet-based mobile backhaul and multimedia communication with IMS.
- Fujitsu announced its new BroadOne LS LTE eNodeB base station portfolio for fourth-generation mobile services. The new eNodeBs features simple maintenance, easy customization, and are among the smallest and most power-efficient in the industry, says the company.
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