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Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2015

Mobile Europe | @mobileeurope | mobileeurope.co.uk | 03

Will the forthcoming World Radio Conference meet mobile industry expectations?“The GSMA is pleased with progress to date

but there is more work to be done to secure

the future of the mobile internet. The ITU has

identifi ed the need for between 1340MHz and

1960MHz of additional spectrum for mobile

broadband by 2020, which aligns with studies

by industry groups including the GSMA.

“The mobile industry is working hard to

ensure suffi cient higher frequency ‘capacity’

spectrum is identifi ed to cope with demand in

urban areas, and lower frequency ‘coverage’

spectrum for rural areas. It is vital positive

decisions are made at WRC-15 in support of

allocating spectrum to meet growing consumer

demand for mobile services.”

What kind of spectrum policy decisions will be needed for the development of the vertical markets for IMT?“The mobile industry contributed 3.8 percent

of global GDP (equivalent to US$ 3 trillion) and

directly supported 13 million jobs in 2014; this

is expected to rise to 4.2 percent of GDP and 15

million jobs by 2020.

“We have seen substantial support at

regional meetings for identifying more

spectrum for mobile, but this must be

screen” mobile and tablet devices, as well as

home-based IPTV.”

Which roles will be played by the frequency bands below 6GHz and above 6GHz in 5G?“Sub-1GHz could provide a useful means

of extending a superior 5G user experience

into rural areas and inside buildings, both in

developed and developing markets.

“There are numerous existing mobile

bands between 1GHz-2.6GHz and when 5G

technology is ready to deploy, there may

be others between 2.6GHz-4GHz. However,

although these bands offer a mixture of

coverage and capacity characteristics, it is

unlikely they alone can support the highest

potential 5G data rates.

“Above 6GHz could support very wide

channel sizes and therefore extremely fast data

rates and massive additional mobile network

capacity in small areas, making it fertile territory

for 5G research. However, complementary lower

frequency spectrum would also be required to

extend 5G services beyond small urban areas

and within buildings.

“At WRC-15, we urge all regions to agree on

a new 5G agenda item for WRC-19 that covers

bands in all these ranges.”

Which role do you see for the C-Band (3300-4990 MHz) for IMT networks and their evolution?“The high-capacity C-band can support mobile

demand in urban areas where it is growing

fastest. Currently, it is largely used for fi xed

satellite services, playing an important role for

those services in tropical areas where rainfall has

hindered other bands.

“However, in the vast majority of countries,

higher frequency satellite bands (e.g. Ka and Ku)

are becoming the preferred means of delivery

because of lower costs and better performance

– which means spectrum in the C-band can be

made available for mobile services.

“Most regions support identifi cation of

C-band spectrum at 3.4-3.6GHz for IMT, with

increasing support for a larger portion of the

band to make use of a growing ecosystem of

mobile equipment.”

converted into votes at the one-country,

one-vote conference this November. The

ultimate goal for WRC-15 is to achieve global

harmonisation in spectrum allocations,

enabling huge economies of scale and universal

access to affordable mobile broadband.”

Can the longer term availability of the UHF band (470-694 MHz) trigger the convergence between mobile broadband and broadcaster?“Mobile broadband plays an increasingly

signifi cant role in providing consumers with

video when and where they want it. The likes of

YouTube, Netfl ix and BBC iPlayer have enjoyed

substantial growth, not only as alternative

platforms for delivering video content, but,

in some cases, the only platforms for certain

content packages.

“UHF spectrum is particularly well-suited to

deliver high-quality, wide area coverage for

mobile broadband services in rural areas and

inside buildings. While the band is mainly used

for terrestrial broadcasting, these services can

be maintained in a smaller amount of spectrum

without negatively impacting programme

choice or public service broadcasting

obligations. More spectrum, including in the

UHF band, is necessary to enable content

providers to reach wider audiences via “second

Spectrum in the spotlight ahead of crunch WRC: GSMA Q&AThe forthcoming World Radiocommunication Conference must make the right decisions to support booming mobile use, says Alex Sinclair, Acting Director General and Chief Technology Offi cer, GSMA

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Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2015

04 | Mobile Europe | @mobileeurope | mobileeurope.co.uk

How would you describe the Hong Kong telecoms market? How does it compare to other Asian markets?“I would say Hong Kong is a hyper

competitive market. With a population of

less than eight million, we have a mobile

penetration rate of over 220% served by four

mobile network operators and numerous

MVNOs. Last year the number of operators

was reduced from five to four with HKT’s

acquisition of CSL in May 2014.

“Being a premier commercial hub, the

mainstream Hong Kong mobile market is

predominately served by postpaid contracts

with a focus on mobile broadband. For

instance, at HKT in 2012 we stopped charging

for local voice minutes and offered data quota

plans instead.

“Asian markets vary a lot from country to

country in terms of different development

stages and market needs. But one thing

that is common to all is the direction in the

development of data mobile broadband service.

“However, I feel Hong Kong has several

advantages over other Asia markets. For one,

Hong Kong is just a single city and this makes

it relatively easy to have a territory-wide

rollout of new technology when compared to

big countries.

“Secondly, Hong Kong has a strong

fibre infrastructure to support mobile

backhaul requirement for continuous mobile

broadband developments. Finally, Hong

Kong customers are very receptive to new

technology and are willing to spend on new

devices and gadgets. This makes it easy for

the launch and penetration of new services /

technologies like VoLTE and LTE-A.”

What are the biggest challenges facing Asian operators?“I think the biggest challenge that most Asian

operators are facing is the continuous growth

in data capacity demand vs the decline in

mobile revenue. This makes it difficult to

justify investment for capacity expansion to

meet demand and upgrade infrastructure for

new technology.

“While this decline is caused by strong

local competition and the shift of value from

mobile operators to OTT players, I believe

our leadership position among competitors.

“Furthermore, as VoLTE adoption increases

with the greater penetration of compatible

devices, the load on legacy 2G and 3G

networks will decrease correspondingly as

VoLTE users are kept on 4G layer at all the

times. This enables HKT to focus on LTE

network developments and continue refarming

legacy spectrum into LTE in the future.”

HKT launched LTE-Advanced in December. Why is it important for operators to offer it?“HKT strives to provide the latest and best

available technologies to our customers.

LTE-A is a significant technology enhancement

that uplifts customer experience by as much

as a four times speed improvement over basic

LTE. With the acquisition of CSL in May 2014,

HKT now possesses a rich spectrum resource

which allowed us to introduce two carrier

LTE-A in December 2014, which offered

speeds of up to 300MBps and then launch of

three carrier 450mbps LTE-A in 2015.

“The uptake of LTE-A is solely dependent

on the availability of compatible devices. To

push the adoption of this technology, HKT

has aggressively brought a wide range of

smartphones to our range.

“At HKT, we are committed to providing

the best user experience to our customers by

leveraging the rich spectrum asset we have.

LTE-A not only gives us a material improvement

to customer experience by increasing the data

throughput, it will also improve experience of

non LTE-A users indirectly. This is because LTE-A

reduces the amount of time a user holds on to

the network resource which otherwise can be

used by non-LTE users.”

What work are you doing to prepare for 5G?5G is a visionary concept where governments,

standardisation bodies, research organisations,

technology companies, industry forums,

vendors and operators are all working to

define what exactly is it and how we are

to achieve it. Having said that, I think the

industry as a whole has basically agreed that

5G is definitely something beyond existing

mobile broadband, not just in terms of

capability, but also the services and use cases

it supports.

the presence of so-called “All You Can Eat” or

unlimited data plans in some markets is also a

factor that limits operators’ ability to invest.

“This is why HKT became a pioneer in

halting its unlimited data plan and shifted its

customers towards “Quota Plans”. With these

plans, a customer subscribes to a monthly

package for a certain data volume. Once this

is exhausted, the data service will be stopped

(and not throttled) until next billing cycle or

the customer buys data top-up.

“This helps HKT to contain the unlimited

growth demand / usage without supporting

incremental revenue. The launch of this plan

led to the whole of the Hong Kong market

changing and offering their own quota plans.

Now all operators across Hong Kong are

moving away from unlimited data plans, which

effectively will bring the whole Hong Kong

market back to a healthy state of development.”

How has Voice over LTE changed HKT’s proposition to customers?“The biggest change is that VoLTE users are

always on LTE so that they can enjoy high

quality voice, video and other data services

simultaneously. This greatly improves LTE

user experience. Since users are migrating

to VoLTE, the load on legacy 2G and 3G

networks has been greatly decreased.

HKT is able to focus more on LTE network

development and is even considering further

reuse of legacy spectrum in the coming years.

“We were the first operator to launch VoLTE

in HK, launching in May 2014 and later on the

CSL network in Aug 2014, just three months

after we acquired CSL. At the same time we

enabled the first VoLTE to VoLTE interconnect

over two networks – a first for Hong Kong.

“HKT positions VoLTE as a voice service

improvement featuring Fast Call Setup,

HD Voice and HD video calls, where all our

customers can enjoy the service automatically

with the use of VoLTE handset.

“Apart from voice service improvement,

VoLTE also improves data experience of users

indirectly by retaining user’s data connection

on 4G layer during calls instead of falling back

on 3G as if in CSFB. As such, VoLTE gives a

comprehensive improvement of customer

experience apart from the reinforcement of

Here to serve: HKT Q&AAlex Arena, the operator’s Group Managing Director on its network transformation and how Huawei helped it to launch new technology

Page 5: Read full Magazine

Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2015

Mobile Europe | @mobileeurope | mobileeurope.co.uk | 05

“Among the services it offers are improved

mobile broadband, a user data rate of

greater than 500MBps, with a peak rate of

between five and 10GBps, massive capacity,

high mobility, machine to machine type

communications, the support of a massive

number of devices, extended range and

future technology. We joined the NGMN Alliance

to contribute from the operators’ perspective

exactly what the technology should be and what

it can offer. This not just helps to shape 5G to

our needs, but also allows HKT to capture the

latest developments and get prepared in advance

ahead of its launch in 2020.”

coverage and a low power consumption.

“For an integrated fixed and mobile carrier

5G offers the opportunity to expand our service

offerings for the Internet of Things. Despite

5G being in its infancy, as one of the leading

operators in the world HKT is obliged to

contribute to the shaping and definition of the

Page 6: Read full Magazine

NB-IoT is at the stage of getting greater adoption by operators

Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2015

06 | Mobile Europe | @mobileeurope | mobileeurope.co.uk

The Cellular Internet of Things (CIoT) is

the term used by first used by Vodafone to

describe its chosen technology solution for

Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) services over

mobile networks. Since standards work has

commenced in 3GPP, the term Narrow Band

Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is now used.

NB-IoT describes the new radio interface

designed for Low Power Wide Area

communications, connecting devices and

services that require small amounts of data

transfer and power. According to Machina

Research, objects and devices requiring very

low power consumption and a wide area

connection are estimated to increase to 3.3

billion connections by 2023. Luke Ibbetson,

director of R&D for Vodafone Group says

that NB-IoT will reuse Vodafone’s existing

radio access network and transmission:

“At the same time we will deploy a

separate dedicated and optimised core

network (using the latest virtual network

technology).”

NB-IoT, says Ibbetson, enables

manufacturers to connect devices which could

not communicate previously due to issues like

power requirements, enabling them to take

advantage of the benefits that connectivity

as Vodafone, which already has a global

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) network, which

will connect with the NB-IoT access layer,

rather than putting in their own proprietary

solutions. By operating in Vodafone’s

licensed spectrum, NB-IoT devices will ensure

performance and reliability over the life time

of these devices.

Vodafone has been a IoT pioneer – it

established a Special Interest Group (SIG) in

2013, in conjunction with the major mobile

network vendors, to encourage them to

deliver a solution which would address the

requirements of extended coverage, long

battery life and extremely low cost devices.

The result of this work was taken to the

3GPP standards body and has now developed

into the NB-IoT standards work item currently

being undertaken in 3GPP. It is expected to

deliver a global standard in June 2016. At this

point all network vendors and mobile network

operators will be able to deploy the NB-IoT

solution around the world.

At the same time - back in 2014 - Vodafone

outlined its results from the SIG to the GSMA

Connected Living Programme and this

has resulted in the Mobile IoT Programme

which the GSMA is undertaking to promote

industry-wide alignment on these systems

and to engage customers to be ready for

its emergence. GSMA Mobile IoT covers

complementary standard systems other than

NB-IoT, hence the more generic title.

Vodafone has worked extremely closely

with Huawei to help develop Huawei’s

proposal for an LPWA solution. The two

companies jointly presented the world’s first

ever live demonstration of the then-called

CIoT technology at Mobile World Congress

(MWC) in March 2015 in Barcelona, showing

a connected smart water meter.

So is mass adoption just around the corner?

Says Ibbetson: “NB-IoT is at the stage of getting

greater adoption by operators, including

Vodafone, as an enhanced solution for providing

connectivity to devices and services that

require small amounts of data transfer and low

power. As the pioneer of the technology, and

the world’s leading provider of M2M services,

I’d expect Vodafone to be at the forefront of

delivering these benefits to customers.”

creates. He says: “The high penetration of the

radio signal also makes the technology a key

enabler for devices that need communication

but are located in hard to reach places such

as basements, underground pipes and deeply

shadowed areas.”

“This might include connecting water and

gas meters, which do not have access to

mains power, to a utility company’s enterprise

systems (for customer billing). By installing

connected flow meters around the water

distribution network, water utility companies

could also use NB-IoT for remote monitoring

of their water delivery systems for automatic

leak detection. The locations of leaks could

be found more accurately leading to less time

and cost digging up roads for repair work.”

An attractive aspect for industries using

NB-IoT is that they can leave the connectivity

provision for devices to companies such

Broadening operators’ reachNB-IOT gives operators the power to connect low power, wide area networks. Vodafone’s Luke Ibbetson speaks to Eira Hayward

Page 7: Read full Magazine

Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2015

Mobile Europe | @mobileeurope | mobileeurope.co.uk | 07

What do you see as the major achievements to date of the Joint Innovation Centre (JIC) with Huawei?“While we’ve worked on a broad range of

projects, including software, hardware, services

and OSS, a few accomplishments stand out. The

fi rst is a collaboration to develop redundancy

for the Radio Network Controller (RNC) in

the inaugural JIC project, RNC 1+1/RNC Pool.

The resulting enhancements eliminated a

vulnerability of the access network, improved

reliability and increased deployment fl exibility.

“Secondly, Bell’s RF engineers were heavily

engaged in every stage of the RAN 14

development process, leading to a signifi cant

increase in the signaling capacity and

performance enhancements of the UMTS

network. The resulting increase in capacity

mitigated the risk of a network outage caused

by a “signaling storm” we were experiencing

with the higher percentage of smartphones on

our network. Unique to Bell at the time, other

operators experienced their own “signalling

storms” as smartphone penetration grew, so

the RAN 14 project ultimately benefi ted all

Huawei customers.

“Bell’s Operations team also collaborated

with Huawei designers to signifi cantly improve

the stability and reliability of the Operating

Support System (OSS). Its key function is to

monitor network performance and trigger

alarms when network malfunction occurs. Minor

abnormalities can lead to major network outage

if left unattended, so a robust OSS is crucial

to providing world class wireless services. We

designed an architecture to prevent the loss of

alarms and logs during OSS downtime, ensuring

critical Operational Measurements (OM), which

can be used for root cause analysis, aren’t lost.

“Finally, the increase in M2M traffi c on

wireless networks creates a new challenge for

operators. M2M traffi c has very different and

advantages and the benefi ts of a operator-led

LWPA network.”

What are Bell’s plans for 4.5G? How is Huawei supporting this initiative?“Bell is committed to lead the development of

Canadian broadband communications, offering

the best – biggest, fastest and most reliable –

network to our customers. As we look to extend

our capabilities in advance of 5G, we’re seeing

some very interesting opportunities coming out

of Huawei. In the short term, we’re focused on

enhancing the customer experience through

latency reduction, as well as building on the

potential of Carrier Aggregation by introducing

a broader range of supported bands with

enhanced throughput.”

diverse usage profi les and traditional network

OMs don’t provide enough information to

network planners to understand the Radio

Access Network (RAN) impact of M2M traffi c.

“Bell and Huawei worked together to create

a platform and develop tools that enable

network planners to capture and model

M2M traffi c. The models are used to measure

network performance and conduct RAN impact

analysis. With M2M traffi c forecast to increase

exponentially in the coming years, the platform

and the modeling tools will enable network

planners to stay ahead of the curve.”

What collaborations has the centre enabled which might not otherwise have been possible?“One of the biggest advantages we’ve seen

has been the implementation of Feature Life

Cycle Management. With this process we were

able to work with the Huawei development

team to help defi ne feature requirements,

critique design, develop test plans and validate

functionality. This gave us the assurance

a feature worked as intended and that

performance metrics were met or exceeded,

helping us to deliver a better network for

our customers and Huawei to deliver higher

capability and better performance for its global

customer base.”

What is its present focus and what current projects are underway?“Our teams are currently very active in exploiting

the full potential of Carrier Aggregation (CA). Bell

deployed 2-carrier Category 6 CA in early 2015,

and in August was the fi rst North American

operator to launch 3-carrier Category 9 CA.

With the launch of Category 9 CA, Bell offers the

fastest mobile technology available anywhere in

North America.

“Another current area of focus is the

Narrow Band-Internet of Things (NB-

IoT). NB-IoT will enable operators to be

signifi cant players in the deployment of

Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks,

accelerating the growth of the Internet of

Things. Bell is actively monitoring 3GPP

NB-IoT standard development and is

working with GSMA to help develop the

LPWA ecosystem. Bell is helping Huawei

set up a smart parking demo using the

NB-IoT technology to promote the

Perfect pitch: Bell Canada Q&ACTO Stephen Howe on collaboration with Huawei on the Joint Innovation Centre

critique design, develop test plans and validate

performance metrics were met or exceeded,

our customers and Huawei to deliver higher

capability and better performance for its global

What is its present focus and what current

“Our teams are currently very active in exploiting

the full potential of Carrier Aggregation (CA). Bell

deployed 2-carrier Category 6 CA in early 2015,

and in August was the fi rst North American

operator to launch 3-carrier Category 9 CA.

With the launch of Category 9 CA, Bell offers the

fastest mobile technology available anywhere in

accelerating the growth of the Internet of

With the launch of Category 9 CA, Bell offers the fastest mobile technology available anywhere in North America

Page 8: Read full Magazine

Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2015

08 | Mobile Europe | @mobileeurope | mobileeurope.co.uk

Video is the best thing that has ever happened to

mobile networks. What other service can be used

by any smartphone and justifi es subscriptions

with very large data allowances? There are very

few, if any, services that can claim this.

The industry is focused on several esoteric

issues including the management of mobile

video, how OTTs are generating revenue while

using cellular networks as dumb pipes, and how

to optimise video through their networks.

But what operators sometimes fail to see is

that while they worry about the impact of video

on their 4G networks, they fail to notice that LTE

networks would be severely underutilised if it

weren’t for video streaming.

So in no small way video is fueling the LTE

value chain, by pushing operator investments in

more capacity and other QoE elements, while

also bringing those operators new mobile data

subscribers and propelling vendors to improve

device performance. In fact, Ovum’s traffi c

forecast illustrates that video in LTE networks

was 55 percent of total video traffi c across all

cellular networks during 2014, which increases

to a staggering 96 percent by 2020.

That’s not to say that video isn’t a challenge

in mobile. The two main technical challenges

operators face is the sheer amount of video

that’s going through their networks and the fact

that this is now beginning to be encrypted.

Operators have traditionally managed video

through optimisation, transcoding, caching and

making sure that bandwidth was not wasted

in their networks. Encryption limits their ability

to manage video, as traffi c passes through

their networks in tunnels, which they have no

visibility on.

There are a few initiatives to manage

encrypted traffi c that are either old or new,

and both apply to video. The fi rst is TCP

optimization. By tuning TCP parameters to

avoid congestion and optimise performance,

operators can improve the performance of any

traffi c, including encrypted video.

The second is mobile edge computing. This

is positioned as one of the next steps in the

evolution of radio access networks, where a

computing platform is placed at the edge of the

network. This means that the encrypted stream

may be opened, inspected and optimised at

the cell site or aggregation point. There are also

experience compared to a user in the centre

of the cell who connects at a higher speed.

This may be because content owners optimise

content very aggressively according to the

device the video is viewed on, meaning that

understanding video user experience is much

more complicated that simple data services.

Video in mobile is a prime example where

operators need to start with a fi rm understanding

of user experience and work backwards to

improve their networks. This doesn’t necessarily

imply the addition of more bandwidth, but

it may perhaps be simple optimisation in the

mobile network that can provide improvements

in user experience for video.

Huawei’s vMOS score is a step in the right

direction: trying to understand end user

experience that is tied with KPIs that users

directly perceive: video quality, video stalling

and buffering delay. Ovum will be working with

Huawei to prepare a comprehensive report on

video experience, which will include end user

surveys and live network measurements and will

be published end-2015.

interesting business opportunities associated

with edge computing, where the operator may

cooperate with the content owner to make sure

video delivery is high quality.

But what operators need to do fi rst is to

try to understand the actual user experience

associated with video over cellular. With voice,

metrics such as dropped calls and blocked

calls contributed to understanding the user

experience. With data, it’s speed and delay.

With video, there is no industry-wide standard

to measure user experience. Moreover, current

operator OSS/BSS tools are ill-equipped to map

actual user experience with network metrics

such as latency, throughput and cell load.

Obviously the faster the network is the better

the user experience will be, especially in early

phases of LTE/LTE-A deployment during which

the network is largely underutilised. But when

the network starts to get congested, operators

don’t actually know user satisfaction with their

streaming video experience. A user at the cell

edge, who is subject to a lower throughput

connection, will not necessarily get a worse user

Fallacy of video in mobileVideo offers a tremendous opportunity for operators, so long as they can understand and track customer experience, writes Dimitris Mavrakis, Principal Analyst at Ovum.

Figure 1: Total cellular and LTE video traffi c

Source: Ovum

140

120

100

80

60

40

20

02013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Cel

lula

r tr

affi

c (E

B p

er y

ear)

4G video traffi c

Total video traffi c

Page 9: Read full Magazine

Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2015

Mobile Europe | @mobileeurope | mobileeurope.co.uk | 09

If there are any universally acknowledged truths

about mobile networks, it’s that more people

will continue to use more devices and more

data-heavy applications will continue to drive

more mobile traffic. According to Cisco’s Visual

Networking Index, video accounted for 60

percent of all mobile data traffic in 2014, and will

grow almost nine times in the next five years and

account for 75 percent of all mobile data traffic in

2019. And this, says Martin Wren-Hilton, TalkTalk’s

Head of Mobile Innovation, is why small cells are

so important for mobile operators.

Wren-Hilton says that operators will find that

their service suffers if they rely solely on macro

cells, and this of course means potentially

dissatisfied customers. “The operator who can

give the consistently best experience is the

operator who wins out. And the consistently

best experience comes from the operator who

the mobile signal is coming from the broadband

router and is provided end to end by TalkTalk,

we can manage the experience.

“And because it is seamless, customers won’t

know when they’re being served by an indoor

or outdoor cell. They will notice an increase in

throughput and will also get four or five bars of

signal in every room in the house – and customers

love having five bars on their phone anywhere

in the house. But, in addition, if in the long

term mobile phones replace fixed lines then the

experience on a mobile phone has to be every bit

as good as that of a landline today.”

The development of this router builds on work

that started in 2006 when TalkTalk acquired

a small piece of 1800MHz spectrum, “the

technology wasn’t ready at the time - 4G hadn’t

been standardised” comments Wren-Hilton.

“Two years ago we built a prototype router which

contained a small cell and this formed the basis of

our approach to Huawei - which is already a long-

term partner - to develop the new router. Huawei

is undertaking engineering development in China

and we are working with the company to make

sure the router is successful when deployed in the

way that we’re planning – which is of course a

very dense deployment.”

One aspect that will make this deployment

different from traditional mobile radio is the way

the routers will self-organise, says Wren-Hilton.

“We want this to be so simple and straightforward

for customers - so that we can post them the

router, they can just unplug their old one and

the new one router will self-configure. That’s

easy to do with Wi-Fi, but more complex with

LTE small cells. The goal is to have a very high

degree of automation in the router so the small

cell understands where it is, where its neighbours

are, and it will choose its behaviour. It has to self-

organise and cooperate with the others around it,

including the macro network.”

While there are other operators both looking

at and investing in small cells in routers, TalkTalk

believes that together with Huawei it’s leading

the field in terms of planning for a large scale

deployment. Says Wren-Hilton: “We’re excited

about the possibilities enabled by building an

Inside Out network using Huawei small cell-

enabled routers and based on the testing we’ve

done so far, we’re sure our customers will love the

improved user experience.”

provides a great service at peak times.” Small cells

are important, he says, for two reasons: firstly

because they focus capacity where it’s needed,

operators can put small cells in at locations like rail

stations and shopping centres where consumers

use lots of data; and secondly because this relieves

the capacity burden on the macro network for

other users, everyone benefits.

But we all recognise that it will be difficult

for a traditional macro-only network to support

projected data rates and for this reason TalkTalk

is taking the small cell into the home. The

initiative is called the Inside Out network and

together with Huawei, TalkTalk is developing a

new generation of router which incorporates

an LTE small cell to put into the homes of

its residential customers and small business

customers. “It’s going to be a much improved

user experience,” says Wren-Hilton. “Because

Small cells bringing big results for TalkTalkUK operator TalkTalk is working with Huawei to improve indoor coverage. Eira Hayward reports

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Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2015

10 | Mobile Europe | @mobileeurope | mobileeurope.co.uk

Peter Zhou, Huawei: “First I’d like to update

you on Huawei’s business. We have a very good

market share, as everybody knows. It keeps

growing but we have some worries about

the future. The growth of Huawei’s wireless

business is reliant on new LTE deployments but

everybody knows that with 2G and 3G, the

investment from operators is going down or, at

best, not increasing.

“We worry about the LTE business doing the

same after two to three years. Maybe there will

be new LTE contracts that we can build or that

the LTE business may differ from 3G. 5G will

come but there is still the question about what

it actually is. How can this industry get more

revenue to support companies like Huawei?

“We needed to think about some new

revenue sources. A lot of people suggested

small cells were the next development piece of

the industry. That’s why from the beginning of

last year, we set up a new business unit within

Huawei for small cells. Before that, small cells

were part of the product development team

alongside other product lines like single RAN.

“We made the decision to have an

independent product line to deal with small

cells. We wanted to make sure the wireless

business unit had independent thinking, not

that point into 2014, there was a lot of debate

[internally] - that was what helped lead us to

set up this separate organisation to deal with

new strategies.”

Indoor focusZhou: “From last year, we found what we

had been doing may not really have been

appropriate [for the industry]. We then

decided to focus on indoor. The outdoor

business should be mainly belonging to macro

base-stations. Huawei was putting big efforts

into doing that so we really needed to look at

indoor. We also found the data traffic going

indoors was very quickly increasing. Legacy

solutions like DAS were not offering enough

capacity. There were many problems so we

knew we needed some kind of new solutions

for indoors. This was LampSite.

“If you look at this solution, it’s a macro base

station with a small transmission power radio

access unit. Even last year, some people were

questioning me saying ‘is LampSite a small cell

or a macro site?’. I’d say it’s a cloud baseband-

based small cell. Right now, luckily, this kind of

solution that uses cloud BB is one operators are

familiar with and one that they have a great

level of confidence in. That is the reason why

it could be very successful this year. We also

expect to ship 500,000 pRRUs [small radio

access units] by the end of this year and nearly

200 operators are using this product.

“I have been asked where the market is for

LampSites indoors. My answer is that the big

market is in China and also in the Asia-Pacific

area, for example in Thailand and Indonesia.

Recently also the Middle East, South Africa

and Latin America have started to receive big

shipments. What we found was the operators

in these areas have found LampSite is the

mainstream solution. When they are looking for

indoor coverage solutions, they are not thinking

about DAS any more. They think LampSite.

“For outdoor, we keep investing in outdoor

products, but last year we put more efforts

into indoor. Outdoor has also seen very good

results. More than 80 operators are using our

products and there will be more than 50,000

shipments this year.

“We also started to develop new products,

only on product strategy, but also on business

models. For example, there can sometimes be

a conflict of ideas. Like if we looked to deploy

small cells outdoors, some people would argue

‘no, we need to put more big base stations

on big towers’, even though small cells are

cheaper for our customers. By doing this, we

hope we can build a network across 2G, 3G and

4G which is indoor, for example, and that the

whole industry will be stimulated by.

“Huawei’s small cells have been recognised by

the industry, from the innovation point of view

and the shipment point of view, and we have

put a lot of work into them. For example, we

have 1,000 R&D staff working together with me

on those products. We have been developing

products since 2008, when we were one of the

first developers to produce femto. In 2010, we

started to develop outdoor small cells, and in

2011, we made a proposal of AtomCell. This is a

small outdoor small cell.

“In 2012, we also had added the Wi-

Fi solution into this team, because at that

moment, China Mobile started to deploy a

lot of Wi-Fi. So they drove us to move into

this area. In 2013, suddenly we found all of

the efforts we had been doing saw no return.

Outdoor or indoor, there was nothing. From

Small cells in 2015 and beyondPeter Zhou, Huawei President of Small Cells and Wi-Fi, recently sat down with a select group of analysts in London to discuss how the small cells market is changing.

Huawei’s Peter Zhou

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Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2015

Mobile Europe | @mobileeurope | mobileeurope.co.uk | 11

for example pico. A new pico is coming to

market right now, for enterprise and residential

deployments. This is different from LampSite.

With the LampSite, all of the baseband

processing is essentially allocated in one BBU.

For the pico, it’s a standalone basestation. The

BBU processing is there, as is the RRU. In one

box, it has wi-fi, which supports 11ac dual-

band, UMTS, LTE and carrier aggregation.

“The reason you can have this kind of product

is that LampSite can look after more than five

thousand square metres, but you sometimes need

a product that can cover a much smaller area like

meeting rooms. With LampSite, you can put one

pRRU and one big BBU in place but that is not

cost effective in some circumstances. Pico can

provide coverage for smaller areas including wi-fi,

which is necessary for enterprises in particular.”

Think digitalZhou: “For Huawei’s small cell strategy, we need

one box to support multi-mode, multi-band.

That’s our dream and one we are doing. Our

next generation pico and LampSite will be one

box to support of all the bands across Europe.

We want customers to be using three bands

simultaneously. We will bring this to the market

by the end of this year.

“We want unlicensed and licensed spectrum

to work together in one box. This will provide

a stronger pipe to produce a better user

experience for people. That’s why we support

licence assisted access from now on.

“We also believe cloud-RAN is one evolution

of the small cell technology. That’s where

LampSite comes from. For the highly skilled

network, we need a cloud baseband solution.

One example is in Beijing Airport, we can

deploy more than 2,000 pRRUs, along with

BBUs. Some have also asked whether we could

deploy 2,000 picos in the same airport and the

answer is technically yes. However, the reality

is that’s 2,000 base stations that you need to

maintain. LampSite is the one base station that

provides coverage.

“As we have said previously, we will keep

saying no to traffic offload. I personally don’t

like it as traffic means revenue, traffic means the

business model for the mobile operators. What

you can see is traffic is on the licensed spectrum,

of the traffic that runs over its network.

“We will also support the licence assisted

access technology strongly because we stand

by mobile operators. Last year and this year

we keep doing demonstrations and products

for customers. By the end of this year, all of

Huawei’s small cells, both outdoor and indoor,

will support LAA.

“We believe we need indoor coverage

to provide digital solutions for not only

improving user experience but also improving

the revenues for our customers, the mobile

operators. Thank you.”

which has a high value. All of an operator’s

business model relies on this part. Also, mobile

operators build wi-fi to carry traffic as well, but

that brings less value to them.

“Our view is that we need to improve

the value of the traffic, by combining

the licensed and unlicensed pipe. This is

what China Mobile is doing right now. It

is building wi-fi, along with a 4G system.

Recently it also asked Huawei to deploy its

nanocell, which is a picocell for residential

along with wi-fi. It replaces the current wi-fi

hotspots. By doing that it increases the value

Huawei’s offices in Hong Kong

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