Interview |
LTE deployments will be driven by different
factors in different parts of the world, but a
common thread will be the burgeoning demand
for mobile data and video services at the lowest
cost per bit.
from carriers. Many believe that European
players can afford to wait a little longer before
moving to LTE, given the performance that
is achievable from HSPA and HSPA+. “I think
that HSPA+ has very good performance, but
not every network will be easily upgradeable
to it because of older vintage HSPA hardware
that already exists in many networks,” commented
Wright.
“Older generations of hardware can’t be
upgraded to get the same level of performance
that the newer generations of
hardware can and, frankly, most of the networks
out there have older generations of
hardware,” he argues. “I’m not saying it’s not
do-able, I’m just saying it’s not as simple as
some might make it sound. So if you haven’t
yet deployed HSPA, or you’re looking at
having to make any hardware change-outs
to implement HSPA+, there’s an infl ection
point where you might say you’d be better
off to go with LTE instead.”
When carriers do turn their attention to
LTE rollout, he says, they will encounter
substantial improvements in the ease of
deployment. “In an LTE environment, a
base station is a radio head that can be
mounted outdoors in many cases. It uses a
fi bre connected cable back to a baseband
unit that’s a single rack unit in size, about
the same as a medium pizza box. That’s all
the equipment there is other than backhaul
gear,” he says.
“The most costly factor in building a
future broadband cell sites will be the
backhaul cost and technology to be used so
you can get enough bandwidth to match up
with the capacity of the broadband radio
gear.” Our company offers an OFDM-based
IP wireless backhaul technology solution
that can achieve 300Mbps of throughput
over fairly long distances. And you don’t
have to use microwave dishes like you used
to, you don’t have a load of electronics sitting
in an equipment shelter somewhere,
you don’t have to aim this stuff with the
same precision that you have to aim traditional
microwave. With this new technology
you can use a compass to set up the
link up; it’s awesome.”
As impressive as the technology improvements
may be, the mobile industry, like all
other sectors, is to a great extent beholden
to the wider fi nancial environment—and,
at the moment, that’s not too healthy. “You
can’t borrow money in the capital markets
today in most parts of the world because
banks have clamped down,” says Wright.
“That’s going to slow things down until we
see the global economy start to pop out of
the recession.”
There are exceptions; however, as some
vendors may be in a position to offer attractive
vendor fi nance deals to carriers in a bid
to win contracts. “They have to be willing
to fund the entire project, though,” Wright
warns. “It’s not just about the equipment,
they’re going to have to fund all of the
land, buildings and towers and everything
else that goes with it, because electronics
only accounts for 25 or 30 per cent of a big
project,” he says.
Even in happier fi nancial times, new
technologies have always been held back by
the lag in handset development. Highlighting
WiMAX as the most recent example,
Wright points out that infrastructure was
in place long before chipsets were mature
and a wide range of devices available commercially.
“With LTE it will be the same. If we look
at initial LTE roll outs, we expect operators
like Verizon to be selling simple single mode
laptop modems and dongles for the fi rst few
months of commercial service until multimode,
multi-band chipsets become available
that can be incorporated to more complex
mobile devices capable of supporting
handover to DO-Rev A and 1X, or UMTS and
GSM. The creation of the complex chipsets
and devices will take some time.”
That said, development cycles for new
technologies are improving all the time,
he says, and LTE’s journey from conception
to delivery will be signifi cantly less
than 2G and 3G technologies that preceded.
Plus, he says, LTE will be around for a long
time. “The standards were nicely written
to accommodate voice, data and multimedia.
It will take eight to 10 years just for
the technology to be deployed on a broad
basis around the world and, even by that
time; you’ll still have room for growth. With
improvements, it will be around for 15 – 20
years,” he says.
10 Mobile Communications International | LTE Supplement 2009
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