Dish + Sprint is a Winner to Me
Been a while… I’ve been collaborating and innovating but I thought I would register my approval of a Dish + Sprint + Clear tie up. Firstly let me say I don’t think Softbank would be willing to let the opportunity slip away so low ($25.5B US) but I like the idea of an all wireless triple play. Yes, after a decade of talking about ‘Triple Play” it could finally happen.
Some reasons that I like the idea of this combination:
- Pricing for TV and mobile telephony in the US is high and not falling due to relative mon/du opolies of dominant incumbents
- Dish and Sprint have both looked to use spectrum in alternative ways- seems like they could finally put something new out when together.
- Sprint’s extreme risk averse culture sure could use a shake up, overall, it is really is slow to make decisions.
- A triple play offer that’s true- not a reseller play, could offer some interesting future technology through integration
- Both subscriber bases could grow marginally
- Synergistic (did I just say that?) spectrum for LTE Advanced!
- Saves a combined company CAPEX by not having Dish rush to build a nationwide LTE network (good for subs, but takes a very long time, so small likelihood of success)
They both also have ‘oddball’ spectrum, 2.6/2.3GHz [TDD]/800MHz [FDD] @ Sprint plus the 2200MHZ [FDD] @ Dish and could be merged into a very fast LTE-Advanced spectrum with some changes @ 3GPP…Heck even Verizon doesn’t have that much spectrum that close together to put up initially, although they have lower bands which have better RF propagation characteristics than the 2.2GHz.
Interestingly, Dish has set top boxes in homes and Sprint has femtocells deployed, so there is CPE in millions of homes. A combined devices makes a lot of sense but has been difficult to pull off between competitive issues etc…
Here is Dish’s site about the merger
Overall I think this could be a win for the US subscribers!
Reuters Story:
Dish tries to trump SoftBank with $25.5 billion Sprint offer
From the Dish site:
Offer Letter
On behalf of DISH Network Corporation (“DISH”), I am submitting this proposal for a merger between DISH and Sprint Nextel Corporation (“Sprint”). Our proposal provides Sprint shareholders with a superior alternative to the pending Sprint/SoftBank transaction. It provides a superior cash proposal and affords your shareholders the opportunity to participate in a combined DISH/Sprint, which will benefit from substantial synergies and a significantly-enhanced strategic position.
Bizarre Update: LTE Network Throughput Is Sometimes Tricky
Bizarre Update to the cable cut…. BBC has a follow up… I put the update at the very bottom…
I was working on something regarding using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for LTE network design, and got bit bleary eyed, so I decided to take a break and read a few stories on the ‘net.
The first one was about a massively scaled internet attack between two commercial parties. Huh? Seriously… From the BBC:
Global internet slows after ‘biggest attack in history’
A row between a spam-fighting group and hosting firm has sparked retaliation attacks affecting the wider internet…
Ok then I read this story on GigaOM:
Undersea cable cut near Egypt slows down Internet in Africa, Middle East, South Asia
The cause of the outage is a physical cable cut some kilometres north of the coast of Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea. This is not likely to be known until the cable is repaired in the coming week or two and the damaged section is recovered from the seabed and inspected…
That’s pretty wild. Simultaneously, there’s this gigantic internet attack (from within) as there is a fiber cable cut that have overlapping traffic areas. That’s a lot to think about. So I went back to work for a minute or two before my mind wandered, could these KPI’s detect such an event and could we do anything about it?
(Do you believe in coincidence?)
I don’t think the Network Operations Center in the network would normally catch this, as the cause for the seemingly random customer calls. There would be a few KPI’s that would show some shifts, but essentially the content would be delayed for destinations through those paths.
This queuing would occur outside the LTE network and would be harder to detect if there is any aggregation or compression etc… For the near term, users will continue to experience and shrug their shoulders and move on, or give operators an angry call. It’s not practical to monitor every route or destination.
There’s a better way in the long run that I am going to try and blog about later….
It’s no fun keeping your network operating when things break but this really is not fair!
Egypt arrests as undersea internet cable cut off Alexandria
Egyptian authorities say they have arrested three divers trying to cut through an undersea internet cable.
The men were caught on a fishing boat just off the port city of Alexandria, said military spokesman Col Ahmed Mohammed Ali.
The damaged cable caused a drop in the speed of online services in Egypt and some other countries, said Egyptian news agency Mena.
It was unclear whether the incident was linked to cables damaged last Friday.
At the time, cable operator Seacom said several lines connecting Europe with Africa, the Middle East and Asia were hit, also slowing down internet services, reported Reuters news agency.
The cable hit in Wednesday’s apparent sabotage was the South East Asia Middle East Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) – one of the main cables snaking under the Mediterranean, Mena said.
The attack took place some 750m (820 yards) north of Alexandria, it said.
In the statement on his official Facebook page, Col Ali said the divers were arrested while “cutting the undersea cable” of the main telecommunications company, Telecom Egypt.
He did not give any explanation for the divers’ alleged motive.
The men were due to be interrogated.
Mediterranean telecoms cables have suffered disruptions several times in recent years, but they have usually been attributed to accidents involving ship propellers.
Seriously?
LTE Network Throughput Is Sometimes Tricky
I was working on something regarding using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for LTE network design, and got bit bleary eyed, so I decided to take a break and read a few stories on the ‘net.
The first one was about a massively scaled internet attack between two commercial parties. Huh? Seriously… From the BBC:
Global internet slows after ‘biggest attack in history’
A row between a spam-fighting group and hosting firm has sparked retaliation attacks affecting the wider internet…
Ok then I read this story on GigaOM:
Undersea cable cut near Egypt slows down Internet in Africa, Middle East, South Asia
The cause of the outage is a physical cable cut some kilometres north of the coast of Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea. This is not likely to be known until the cable is repaired in the coming week or two and the damaged section is recovered from the seabed and inspected…
That’s pretty wild. Simultaneously, there’s this gigantic internet attack (from within) as there is a fiber cable cut that have overlapping traffic areas. That’s a lot to think about. So I went back to work for a minute or two before my mind wandered, could these KPI’s detect such an event and could we do anything about it?
(Do you believe in coincidence?)
I don’t think the Network Operations Center in the network would normally catch this, as the cause for the seemingly random customer calls. There would be a few KPI’s that would show some shifts, but essentially the content would be delayed for destinations through those paths.
This queuing would occur outside the LTE network and would be harder to detect if there is any aggregation or compression etc… For the near term, users will continue to experience and shrug their shoulders and move on, or give operators an angry call. It’s not practical to monitor every route or destination.
There’s a better way in the long run that I am going to try and blog about later….
LTE Optimization Thoughts
Working on many things at the same time, the tunnel vision sets in, so every once in a while, I try to take a I step back and reflect on where we are in LTE land.
What I see is a early market that has yet to find it’s purpose in life. Yeah yeah, consumers are buying devices like Samsung Galaxy III/IV and Apple iPhones that are LTE enabled at a rapid clip in the US, but at this point the device is driving the sale not the LTE itself.
There have been a couple of interesting developments, such as Audi and GM deciding to leverage LTE for in car data links and even going as far as choosing to use VoLTE for voice. That’s a major step towards finding the killer app for LTE.
However, those developments are in progress and have not actually resulted in any traffic yet, both are expected in 2014.
Consumers are driving traffic today. Looking through some public data, like Root Metrics reports on average data speeds, I am reminded by how inefficient the networks are.
- 8.52 Mbps download, 13.87 Mbps upload, 39 ms ping
- 7.47 Mbps download, 13.70 Mbps upload, 38 ms ping
- 10.21 Mbps download, 13.81 Mbps upload, 38 ms ping
iPhone 5 on AT&T 4G LTE Speed Test Results
- 9.32 Mbps download, 13.69 Mbps upload, 47 ms ping
- 9.11 Mbps download, 13.88 Mbps upload, 47 ms ping
- 9.69 Mbps download, 16.20 Mbps upload, 48 ms ping
- 8.96 Mbps download, 15.83 Mbps upload, 40 ms ping
- 8.52 Mbps download, 13.87 Mbps upload, 39 ms ping
So it’s hard for me not to notice a couple of elements to this story. Firstly, the mad rush to provide LTE coverage (schedule driven) has been, understandably, at the expense of quality. Here’s the difference:
The peak throughout of a 10MHz 2×2 MIMO with 3 PDCCH symbols, 5% extra overhead and 10% retransmissions channel is 58Mbps, with SIMO at 35MBps. So practical rates in the field are 26.4% of the peak rates with retransmissions.
It doesn’t take a math genius to realize that 26.4% efficiency is an ROI buster.
So with 50,000 eNBs they currently carry maximally 750GBs over their RAN instead of the 2.9TBs they have already paid for. Simply extrapolating from Cisco’s 2013 VNI report, I get a projected data explosion like this:
Uhhh, isn’t the datapcolypse supposed to need about 800GBps per operator in 2017? They’re blowing 2x that amount with poor efficiency!
Making matters worse, ATT and VZW are starting to throw some additional spectrum into the markets. VZW recently announced they are adding 5000 eNBs with AWS spectrum, most likely ‘hotspots’ costing them $3.9B in a one time AWS spectrum buy plus ~$15K/eNB = $75M annually for the additional carrier. ATT has done a series of multibillion dollar deals to add in more 700MHz spectrum.
ATT has been spending something on the order of $22B to build out and maintain an extensive WiFi network they claim offloads their LTE networks.
Here’s the rub, improving the efficiency to move their average is not as expensive as the offloading or spectrum additions they are doing. One more thing, SON should be doing some of the work for them in a very OPEX friendly manner.
By cleaning up the network, making it more efficient, there is going to be an induced demand, yes, however having users use your product is not necessarily a bad thing. (I’ve already complained about pricing.)
Let me just say this is crazy. Reducing the network efficiency effectively increases your cost to provide service thus degrading margins. There are tons of levers to pull in the protocol as it is written, with improvements on the horizon. Wake up!
Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has illuminated the fasten seatbelts sign as some turbulence and or distruption is expected in this market..
PS: Verizon and ATT, I will make myself available to send you an invoice for, say, $1-2B and will turnkey a project to give you another 800GBps. You can sell your recent investments and return the money to working capital or the investors, or hold them for getting to 1GBps over the air with carrier aggregation in the future… (ok time for me to get back to work…)
Updated! LTE Device Chipset Analysis: Qualcomm Has Competition but…
OK, this is the third update thanks to the upcoming Mobile World Congress (MWC.) Altair made their PR about their updated part last night after this list went public so I have added Altair’s latest processor to the matrix.
**Updated with GCT Semi, Renesys**
OK, I’ve been industrious lately.I needed some information to improve a model that used LTE devices. I was able to use the left overs and put them into a table here and did my part for recycling. Here’s the data, hopefully you can find some use for it.
Anyway, I remember reading lately in various blogs and news outlets that Qualcomm is about to get pressed as far as competition and they had better look out.
You can see from this chart that (A) the competition is already here and (B) they are still ahead. It looks like Qualcomm took the CDMA 1X dilemma and made lemonade.
Probably the best 4G per specifications seems to be Altair and Sequans seem to be slightly ahead of everyone else, attributable to their SDR architecture. They both have interference cancellation techniques which will become required for all future vendors to keep up. Broadcom, Marvell and Renesys are fairly close in published standards and seem to be only 1 generation behind Qualcomm.
Another curious thing popped out at me, Apple is nearly alone at the top with a multi-chip solution. The SoCs are winning lots of marketshare. The partial exception is the Samsung Galaxy S3, which requires a 2nd chip for CDMA 1x, but that is rumored to be fixed in the next version.
One other anomaly, Cavium purchased Wavesat with Odyssey and so far looks to be doing nothing with their $10M USD investment.
Column guide:
- 3GPP Release = Supported features from the latest LTE 3GPP Release (Ex; Carrier aggregation support is in Release 10)
- 3G = 3G on board or off board. 3GPP = HSPA/WCDMA and 3GPP2 = 1XCDMA/EVDO
- UE Category (See table at left.) A category 4 UE is capable of 150Mbps.
Full table after the Next…
Verizon Selling Lower 700MHz Block B to Enable AWS Spectrum Purchase
Couldn’t help but notice that Verizon completed the transaction of selling off it’s Lower 700MHz spectrum today. Key point is, as long as it doesn’t go to AT&T consumers are better off. OK that had to be said.
The markets and spectrum from their PR is:
Nortex Communications, based in Muenster, Texas, acquired the Texas RSA 6-Jack 700 MHz lower B-block license, which covers a four-county area northwest of Dallas. Panhandle Telecommunication Systems, Inc., based in Guymon, Okla., acquired the Texas RSA 2-Hansford 700 MHz lower B-block license, which covers 12 counties in the northwest part of Texas. Colorado Valley Communications purchased a partitioned A-Block license covering a five-county area in the Houston market.
The next bottleneck, once the spectrum gets diffused into the market, is the availability of chipsets that support this spectrum, Band 12. See the diagram below for a quick refresher.
I am planning to do an overview of this situation next so stay tuned. Yea for us. We got a little more market freedom today. Hopefully this will encourage some of the smaller operators to deploy LTE and compete with the big guys.
BTW, When’s the last time we saw Munster, TX or Guymon, OK in a tech industry press release? Shout out to you peeps.
Below is excerpted from their site.
Verizon Wireless Completes Spectrum Sales to Three Rural Companies
Verizon Wireless has completed three spectrum license sale transactions following agreements reached late last year as part of the open sale process for its 700 MHz A and B Block licenses. Nortex Communications and Panhandle Telecommunication Systems, Inc. closed on their respective purchases this week. Colorado Valley Communications completed its purchase on January 16, 2013.
Nortex Communications, based in Muenster, Texas, acquired the Texas RSA 6-Jack 700 MHz lower B-block license, which covers a four-county area northwest of Dallas. Panhandle Telecommunication Systems, Inc., based in Guymon, Okla., acquired the Texas RSA 2-Hansford 700 MHz lower B-block license, which covers 12 counties in the northwest part of Texas. purchased a partitioned A-Block license covering a five-county area in the Houston market.
Verizon Wireless offered its lower 700 MHz spectrum licenses for sale to rationalize its spectrum holdings and enable more spectrum to reach the marketplace where it can be used for the benefit of customers. As a result of the sale process, Verizon Wireless signed agreements with seven companies, including one national carrier, five rural or regional carriers and one minority-owned firm. To date, three purchases have been completed and four remain pending. Verizon Wireless is also getting 700 MHz C block spectrum into the hands of 20 rural operators through its LTE in Rural America leasing program.
Jump Ahead: 4G LTE Mobile Market Forecast Shifts…With a Surprise Ending
Was looking through Cisco’s Visual Networking Index (see below) and was thinking about a few pieces of it and the impacts to LTE and SON networking. I appreciate the time Cisco takes to put this together, I would not manage to find the time to give away a good report. Yes, it ties to their core business strongly but it’s a great service for people like me to make sure we’re not drinking from the Kool-Aid.
Now as far as the report is concerned I will point out there are 2 revisions by Cisco that are noteworthy, firstly their model had Mobile laptops as a big driver to data and there is now a slowdown in mobile laptop and data forecast during this period. Secondly the Machine 2 Machine (M2M) estimates are revised to show fewer connections based on analyst forecasts. I’m not sure I believe the 2nd one as much as I accept the first one fully. Note these are relative to last year’s report…
I have a takeaway for LTE mobile operators out there you will want to pay attention to. READ THE REPORT FIRST!
Data points from their report:
The Mobile Network Through 2017
Mobile data traffic will reach the following milestones within the next five years.
● Monthly global mobile data traffic will surpass 10 exabytes in 2017.
● The number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the world’s population in 2013.
● The average mobile connection speed will surpass 1 Mbps in 2014.
● Due to increased usage on smartphones, handsets will exceed 50 percent of mobile data traffic in 2013.
● Monthly mobile tablet traffic will surpass 1 exabyte per month in 2017.
● Tablets will exceed 10 percent of global mobile data traffic in 2015.
Global mobile data traffic will increase 13-fold between 2012 and 2017. Mobile data traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 66 percent from 2012 to 2017, reaching 11.2 exabytes per month by 2017.
By the end of 2013, the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the number of people on earth, and by 2017 there will be nearly 1.4 mobile devices per capita. There will be over 10 billion mobile-connected devices in 2017, including machine-to-machine (M2M) modules—exceeding the world’s population at that time (7.6 billion).
In 2017, 4G will be 10 percent of connections, but 45 percent of total traffic. In 2017, a 4G connection will generate 8 times more traffic on average than a non-4G connection. (This seems outrageous to me and doesn’t work smoothly with the bullet above regarding M2M connections BTW…)
The average smartphone will generate 2.7 GB of traffic per month in 2017, an 8-fold increase over the 2012 average of 342 MB per month. Aggregate smartphone traffic in 2017 will be 19 times greater than it is today, with a CAGR of 81 percent. (This seems pessimistic in one sense but the average is the key, my oldest child, a first world inhabitant, already generates 4GB of monthly traffic without constant access to the device!!…in 2017 I would expect that to be like 55GB/mo.why? college kid and movies…)
By 2017, almost 21 exabytes of mobile data traffic will be offloaded to the fixed network by means of Wi-Fi devices and femtocells each month. Without Wi-Fi and femtocell offload, total mobile data traffic would grow at a CAGR of 74 percent between 2012 and 2017 (16-fold growth), instead of the projected CAGR of 66 percent (13-fold growth).
After you have made your way through this report, you are probably thinking of exceptions. OK, first grain of salt is that it’s an annual assessment of forecasts therefore will change from year to year. Lastly, there are no disruptions modeled here…(the next Netflix, iPhone etc…) hard to model that but our experience is that a disruptive company will vastly change something within the 2013-2017 timeframe. I would just add a special note to their forecasts and reflect it as a sudden blip on the charts.
The simple key take away from this report for those involved with LTE networks is… the faster the network, the more it enables growth. Ok wait, you and I knew that, as we have witnessed years of growth from EVDO/HSPA overlays and carrier growth. There is more to it.
As a mobile network manager/operator/designer do you want to grow your network in terms of connections and throughput?
If you don’t then you have probably got the business model wrong for this next phase.
The current punitive pricing schemes that we have from operators like Verizon, ATT, Sprint etc… are not the type of pricing schemes that benefit the user that wants to ramp up and is biding his time, nor are do they have the network operator benefit from increases of connections or traffic.
Since a faster network will be needed in the future to enable growth, more network efficiency to help the economics is a necessity and new network operator business models will be the piece that makes it work.
If not, a disruptive force is heading your way and will make it work.
LTE RF Engineers: Untie! …Landsat 8 is In Orbit
I like space and robots, so here is something that gets my geeky heart going:
The picture at left shows yesterday’s [Feb 11, 2012] launch of NASA’s Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg AFB, carrying Landsat 8 Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM).
What this means is for $855M USD, the Landsat 7 artifact issues are going to be behind us, therefore allowing mas rapido data acquisition, driving more accuracy in mapping process.
So the RF Engineers in the room are clear, this Landsat will have 8 bands usable at 30m and 2 thermal bands at 100m resolution that are not normally used in RF network design anyway. This is a net improvement, furthermore, the imaging has been changed to a push broom type of collection from a whisk broom type of collection, therefore the samples will have better SNR.
185 m swath
15 m resolution for panchromatic band
30 m resolution for multi-spectral bands
Pushbroom sensor arrays with 7,000 detectors per spectral band
8 bands in the visible, near infrared, and shortwave infrared
In layman’s terms, the resolution is the same but the images will be more error free (akin to contrast/brightness in pictureland) and have more spectrums collected. Another good improvement is the collection rate is about 400 samples a day vs 250 for Landsat 7, so overall this makes it easier to get recent views without those pesky clouds in the way. BTW, the polar orbit time is 99 minutes, thus taking 16 days to image the whole Earth. That seems really speedy to me.
Here is the brochure from NASA.
We’ve come a long way with 40 years of land use observations. You’ve got to see the video of the growth of Las Vegas, NV below. It’s sobering.
NASA LDCM Overview Video:
So it’s time to celebrate! Landsat 8 will help improve RF prediction accuracy and reduce your need for field testing. Only a couple of weeks to wait for first images. Life is good!
4G – Google News- 5000 city users to put 4G services to the test - Global Times
- Verizon's 4G LTE service now available in Durango - The Durango Herald
- '4G for feteing' - Trinidad & Tobago Express
- AT&T 4G LTE Coming To Midland And Odessa This Summer - PR Newswire (press release)
- Amtrak upgrades Wi-Fi giving business travelers another reason to choose rail - Skift
