Net Neutrality – the US Internet is taking a wrong turning
The Net Neutrality debate has always been as passionate as it has been polarised. Yet there remains a problem to be solved. One set of enterprises, like Netflix and U-Tube, are driving up video traffic across the Internet and another set of enterprises, the ISP’s, are being expected to pick up the extra investment cost to carry their traffic.
Read more →Does a mobile network – cable TV network marriage make sense?
Vodafone has being buying cable TV assets in several European countries and in France the cable TV group Altice has bought the French mobile operator SFR. Delivering TV programmes to a TV set appears to have nothing in common with delivering a telephone call to a mobile. So what is the commercial or strategic logic of a mobile network operator getting together with a cable TV network operator?
Read more →What’s the market for 5G?…follow the money
People may have forgotten the film “All the President’s Men” starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redgrave but everyone knows the expression coined in that film…that if you want to find the answer “follow the money”. The answer we want to know today, as we set our research objectives for 5G, is what the market drivers are going to be for 5G. We need to finish with a globally harmonised technology that mobile network operators (who comprise “the market” for 5G networks) will want to buy.
Read more →LTE has too many frequency bands – endangering global connectivity
LTE is a triumph of standardisation at the silicon chip level. Never has the world been so converged on a common mobile technology future. But LTE has been much less successful at the Radio Frequency level. LTE has been specified in too many frequency bands. There are in 30 different frequency bands for the FDD version of LTE and 14 for the TDD version. Just what problems are we storing up in the future by this alarming proliferation of 4G frequency bands?
Read more →Will 5G be for a minority of high capacity hill dwellers or for the rest of us?
The “single frequency” networks we use today have changed the landscape of mobile coverage – literally! If one stands in any place and plots the total day-time mobile data capacity available as a height above the ground – the resulting national contour map looks like the hills of Yunnan Province in Southern China. A poorly conceived 5G network could make this disparity of capacity performance a whole lot worse and take “the mobility” out of mobile radio for much higher data speeds.
Read more →Will policy makers dare to take-up the IET DAN initiative to rescue mobile networks from running out of road?
Policy makers and industry leaders are waking-up to the growing stresses on the investment side of the mobile network operator balance sheets. There are now three policy options aimed at addressing this issue: the EU Commission proposal, Network Consolidation favoured by the mobile operators and the most challenging of all…the IET’s DAN (Demand Attentive Network) philosophy.
Read more →Spring is in the air for spectrum managers
Spectrum management is a thankless task. They spend most of the time trying to get the attention of those at the top on the huge long term issues. Within the past 3 months suddenly they are the centre of attention. The EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes wants to step-in with a greater coordination role for the EU. The Minister Ed Vaizey has breathed a new life into the industry hosted Spectrum Forum and the well respected Prof Jim Norton has stepped in to lead it. Ofcom have sprung into life with a burst of fresh ideas and have just appointed Philip Marnick as its a new Group Director for spectrum. Spring in the air for spectrum managers.
Read more →An enlightened DECC may well have enabled much more than just smart meters
In mid-August a low keyed press release told a largely indifferent world that O2 had won a £1.5 billion contract and BT/Acqiva a £625m contract to provide radio links to 10’s of millions of smart electricity meters across the country. We may to come to looks back on this date as when the UK gifted itself an enormous opportunity to take control of the world around us well beyond electricity usage. It could be the time when the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) unlocked the door to the commercial viability of the mobile “Internet of Things” on a mass scale.
Read more →US smiles down on Europe’s backward 4G networks
The US mobile operator AT&T has recently claimed a clear lead over European mobile operators for the new 4G technology and believe they can teach them how to make of success of 4G. How times have changed. It seemed like only yesterday that Europe was teaching the rest of the world how it is done with their stunningly successful 2G (GSM) technology. How did Europe manage to get everything so right with GSM, stumble when it came to 3G and completely lose the plot by the time 4G arrived? What was the secret of GSM’s success?
Read more →Decline and fall of UK Mobile Network Competition in 5 years?
Where things have reached today is that what was once a 5 player competitive network market is quickly consolidating down to just two base station site groupings (EE and H3G in one group and Vodafone and O2 in the other group) and providing the fibre backhaul over a large part of the country is a monopoly provider BT. This is a far cry from a vibrant competitive mobile infrastructure market that existed 10 years ago. The trend line is clear…
Read more →Brussels plan to end roaming charges – is this a plan to demolish Europe’s mobile industry?
EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes has told European lawmakers in a speech in Brussels on 30th May that they should end all mobile roaming costs to consumer. Is this just another incremental shaving of mobile operators profits or is it demolishing a critical brick in mobile industry structures that brings the entire European mobile industry crashing down?
Read more →After DAB? the sound of silence!
Most communications networks are passing through successive generations of better technology. Mobile networks are on their 4th change and heading towards the 5th. Sound radio networks are stubbornly stuck mid-way in the transition from analogue to digital technology and nobody is planning for a future beyond DAB.
Read more →