Last week I had the opportunity to speak at 4G World in Chicago (October 18th-22nd, 2010). During the show there was much discussion about the 3G evolution to 4G, LTE launches and TD-LTE’s role in augmenting data capacity for global unpaired spectrum. Among the most prominent speakers, NTT DoCoMo’s (Japan) Dr. Sadayuki Abeta shared the company’s plan to roll out LTE this year in the 2.1 GHz band, in channels of 5MHz and 10MHz, and to support voice over LTE when it is available. Dr. Sadayuki indicated that the NTT DoCoMo staff is busy with the build-up of the LTE network in Japan, and he joked that as soon as he finished the executive roundtable he had to run to continue the job! 

On the other hand KDDI (Japan), which has plans to launch LTE by the end of 2012, is targeting the Smartphone market, however the operator is waiting for chipset availability. Dr. Hideo Okinaka from KDDI explained that his company sees an opportunity to work with both technologies, WiMAX and LTE, however WiMAX will only be in a position for Internet access, while LTE will deliver voice and rich multimedia applications. 

Mike Wright from Telstra (Australia) shared his company’s multi-phased technology upgrade plan from GSM3GHSPAHSPA+ to LTE. The company is today offering 42Mbps with HSPA+, and has already conducted three LTE trials in Australia this year, with rollout plans for later on. However, Wright emphasized Telstra’s need for additional 4G spectrum in order for LTE to become a commercial reality in Australia. 

There was much talk around Clearwire’s (USA) decision to auction 40MHz of 4G spectrum. Spectrum is Clearwire’s most valuable asset at present. The decision to lease or sell parts of the spectrum was a hard one, but made inevitable by the need for additional funding that will not be provided by its existing partners who are not willing to further dilute their existing stake in the venture.

MetroPCS (USA) has become the first mobile operator to launch a commercial LTE network in the United States. So far, the company has covered markets in Dallas/Fort Worth, Las Vegas, and more recently in Detroit. It is deploying LTE in its AWS and PCS spectrum. Ed Chao, SVP of network operations at MetroPCS, told us that their spectrum depths varies from city to city: in some they have 5–10MHz, and in others from 15MHz up to 30MHz. 

When asked whether 10MHz is insufficient for launching LTE, Chao replied that it is good enough; their strategy is not to compete with the bigger companies but to continue doing what they have done, and to keep improving. The new LTE service plans include enabling video and web browsing and the ability to download full tracks. The operator is supporting voice over its current CDMA network, and eventually will offer Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE). VoLTE trias will be starting next year. MetroPCS will cover 14 cities with LTE by the end of 2011, reaching a total of 94 million POPs.

For the first time, we saw at 4G World the participation and presence of Chinatel (China). Although it is a relatively new operator, it is creating a lot of buzz with its recent WiMAX deployment in the 3.5GHz band in China. ChinaTel, which purchased 49% of ChinaComm, is deploying WiMAX in 29 cities, with a government mandate to build out the first 12 by June 2011. CEO George Alvarez commented that there is a huge opportunity for WiMAX in China to address the lack of broadband access. They are offering a data-only plan for US$12/monthly, and project to reach 7.5 million subscribers by the end of 2011, and up to 40 million by the end of 2014. ChinaTel is currently building its WiMAX network and has approximately half million subscribers access its Wi-Fi network that covers Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Only the future will tell how much potential WiMAX has in the homeland of TD-LTE.

And of course, we cannot forget about Yota in Russia! But wait a minute… where is Yota? That’s the question most people were asking during the event. Yota simply did not show up this year – maybe they were too busy figuring out their spectrum issues.

Another important topic was the capacity crunch and the traffic growth over mobile networks. While both Clearwire and MetroPCS said that customers are consuming in average 7GB per month, Korea Telecom claimed average consumption on their network was 1GB per month, so they can still control the traffic demand. Video is consuming 40% of the mobile traffic today, and this application is growing among customers, followed by mobile web/data. By 2014 mobile video will consume 65% of total traffic, followed by 20% mobile web data, and 7% mobile P2P. Online gaming and mobile VoIP will account for approximately another 8% combined. According to Clearwire, in United States the device that is consuming most traffic remains the iPhone with 47%, followed by the Android with 22%, the iPad with 12%, the Blackberry with 10%, and the Nokia handset with only 5%.

I believe that the main challenge for all 4G operators in the future is to offer high-speed broadband connectivity anywhere, anytime, meeting the increased demand of data traffic, and keeping the cost per byte at a minimum. 2011 promises to be a rocky year with the early 4G deployments entering the fray.  

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Author: Cintia Garza, Team Leader 4GCounts & Market Analyst CALA, and the 4GCounts Team