Adlane Fellah, Maravedis Founder, asks where will cellular’s Long Term Evolution standard find the spectrum:
The LTE standard reached the functional freeze milestone in December 2008; official ratification is expected in March 2009. The standard has been complete enough that hardware designers have been designing chipsets, test equipment and base stations for some time.
But not much has been said about the premium frequency bands for LTE. What bands are the most promising for LTE vendors?
700 MHz and digital dividend
So far, ten different FDD frequency bands and four different TDD frequency bands have been defined in 3GPP that can be used for LTE. More bands have been added to this list, such as 700MHz in the US.
The FCC auctioned 62 megahertz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band. The band is highly valued because the low frequency allows signals to travel farther and provide better in-building coverage than higher frequencies like 2.5GHz. As a result, operators need fewer base stations to cover an area, which translates into lower overhead costs.
Verizon Wireless, which is jointly owned by Verizon Communications in the United States and Europe’s Vodafone, was the biggest winner in the 700 MHz auction. The CDMA operator spent US $9.63 billion to win a nationwide spectrum footprint with a population coverage of 298 million, plus 102 licenses for individual markets covering 171 million of the population for an LTE deployment
Europe will release a significant amount of spectrum in the UHF band as broadcasters in various regions vacate analog TV airwaves, but the spectrum is at least a few years away from being released because broadcasters in most European countries remain in the spectrum. The UK or Sweden have already decided to make the band available for mobile applications. Other regions will surely follow suit in the longer run.
2600 MHz
Spectrum in the 2.5-2.69 GHz band will also be considered a premium band for LTE in Europe (and for WiMAX!) As much as 140 megahertz of the spectrum (2×70MHz) will be allocated for FDD services like LTE (until WiMAX releases an FDD mobile WiMAX profile), and another 50 megahertz for the unpaired TDD band that will most likely be used for WiMAX services.
To date, Norway and Sweden have auctioned spectrum while Netherlands, Germany, Austria and the UK have auctions planned. Asian regulators are also considering the band.
Other Bands
LTE may also play a role in the GSM 900 and 1800 or 2100 MHz bands, which have the advantage of being widely used bands and enjoy nice propagation characteristics. The 2.1 GHz band also has LTE supporters, especially in Asia.
Recent research by In-Stat found the following:
- HSPA may turn into 802.16e WiMAX’s true competitor, with HSPA Evolved allowing WCDMA operators to delay deploying LTE.
- Verizon is at the forefront with LTE, most operators will not deploy until 2011 or 2012.
- In-Stat expects LTE will have 23.1 million subscriptions in 2013, growing from about 176 thousand in 2010.
- Nearly 82 million mobile PCs with WiMax will ship in 2013.
At the end of 2008, only 11% of worldwide wireless subscriptions were 3G. By the end of 2013, 30% will be 3G and 4G subscriptions, reports In-Stat. They expect most of those deployments to be WiMAX and HSPA.
Clear argues that spectrum size matters. Clear’s Chief Strategic Officer, Scott Richardson told Dailywireless he’s skeptical of urban 700 MHz broadband. That’s because 700 MHz actually travels too far — it can interfere with adjoining towers.
One common benefit of 700 Mhz is more cost/effective coverage (by using fewer towers). But, says Richardson, that formula doesn’t work as well in urban environments. One 700 MHz tower — covering perhaps 5 times the area — doesn’t have the capacity to support dense populations with broadband.
The war between LTE and WiMAX may be wasted energy. Both are likely to succeed.
