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No Big Deal Alert: First Cut At Organizing Lists of LTE/SON Standards Bodies

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don_t_cry_Stunning_photographs_of_animals_in_the_womb-s390x320-80891-475 Have been hopping around the various LTE and SON related standards bodies and thought I would take a shot at organizing all of the links into a central location so that I don’t have to save them in my browser anymore.  The bookmarks are so out of control I’m embarrassed so I’m outsourcing. Anyway, I don’t recall a similar list anywhere so that was another justification.

I will continue to refine. Got some ideas about how to make more usable but that will have to wait for a rainy day…

See the menu above labeled Standards Bodies to see what I mean.

 

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Blogoshphere + Tidbit of Weird News = HypASER…Pew Pew Pew… LTE Jamming

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 So when I saw the article in the MIT Technology Review yesterday, I knew there would be some hype around it. Fast forward about 24 hours and the hysteria machine has really started up, see for yourself in Engadget and Fierce Wireless posts.

Their hysteria is that LTE networks are easy to jam, using easily procured equipment, the number thrown out was $650. See this quote: 

According to the research group’s director, Jeff Reed, a single malicious operative with a hot briefcase and a bit of know-how could take down “miles of LTE signals.” If the attacker splashed out on an amplifier, they could cut off reception for thousands of people across a whole city or region.

Addendum: This paper was created as a submission to NTIA regarding Public Safety LTE. It is here.

Well that’s easy to take out of context. Any electromagnetic transmission is easy to block/jam when you think about it. So this type of hype brings out a huge irritation with me, and that’s the blogosphere’s copy/paste system to fill their site and help generate page views. If a LASER is Light Amplified by Stimulated Emissons of Radiation, then HypASER blasts are due to Hype Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Ridiculousness. 

Let’s all get wound up about LTE jamming because hundreds of bloggers will copy and paste the MIT article in various ways to generate some hype for you.

OK, I’ll stop nagging…but the blogosphere is not helpful here.

I’ll explain my logic.

 

 

Applicability

It’s not far fetched to imagine hackers or terrorists or criminals whatever actually doing this. The parts required are mostly off the shelf and the knowledge is easily obtainable. This same approach as described for LTE works the same way with GSM, although CDMA/WCDMA is a bit more resistant but not immune. Creating noise in the RF domain, particularly in the channel of interest happens all the time. For example, an anti N order passive modulation (PIM) war, caused by shoddy work, bad cables, antennae or RF equipment, rusty bolts etc… is being fought now because operators realize the generated noise reduces throughput and thus reducing data capacity and therefore limiting revenue. 

For LTE networks though, the laws of Physics still prevail (in our universe) and a bad person with a jammer will be likely using low power, or having low effective gain (hard to carry around a 9′ antenna all the time), if they are low to the ground (where maximum effect could be achieved.) Again not impossible at low power/gain so you could say the sphere of influence is going to be very narrow if they target the eNB TX band. If they target the eNB RX band they may have more success but it’s effectiveness is wholly dependent on the location of the UE’s trying to communicate to the eNB. THIS IS NOT THOUSANDS UNLESS IN A WELL DEFINED/CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT/VENUE LIKE STADIUM POSSIBLY AND IS VERY LIMITED IN SCOPE.

Worst Case

Let’s go further and say that the perpetrators have now worked out how to maximize their gain to compete with the nearly 1KW ERP from the base stations. Got to find a favorable (high) location and have lots of gain, so huge antenna or high power or both. What spectrum are they broadcasting in? 

700MHz rogue transmitters may affect larger areas due to propagation characteristics than say 2100MHz. Either way, there is redundancy in most of the mobile world as networks are generally overlaid on a technology basis, so a failed 4G connection moves back to 3G. 

Countermeasures

So I thought it would be fun to review the many existing countermeasures that could be useful in defeating the perps. Firstly there is physical redundancy. Multiple networks, multiple LTE carriers, multiple sites more MIMO (antennae.) More spectrum to cover increases the perp’s setup complexity. They would need to deny 3G networks too. In most cases mobiles could search and find another network to serve them. More sites include wifi and small cells. Small cells alone could be a very very effective countermeasure. They don’t have to be at the same channel bandwidths, MIMO ranks (ex 4×2, 4×4, 8×8 etc…) or could/should operate in different channels or even utilize TDD modes instead of FDD modes or vice versa. This in an of itself would be very difficult to overcome.

It should also be noted a good defense would be detection. Sudden noise rises are reported in the link prior to all out failure. Beyond that it is wise for operators to have monitoring equipment placed in the link to guard against interference anyway. These external monitors help reduce site visits and so on for common unintentional interference could be the canary in the coal mine for intentional interferers. SON could also help. SON controllers would detect changes in noise and traffic levels, if a suitable outage threshold can be defined, then once the threshold is met, SON could automagically change tilts/increase gains/power in neighboring sectors or sites to help mitigate for the subscribers. 

Not out of the question but a little more resource intensive would be doing things like manual intervention. Examples include turning the cells in affected area off, alternative bandwidths/growing multiple channels or switching modes to TDD mode so as to be able to manually locate the noise sources. A more passive but effective countermeasure would be to implement LTE Roaming such that mobiles always have an alternative.

Let’s not forget that Release 10+ specifications (LTE Advanced) include a feature called Carrier Aggregation that allows operators to operate a virtual large channel over multiple smaller ones. This by very definition is more robust to interference than less bandwidth. Your milage will vary of course but it’s helpful.

Interference cancellation techniques are going to become widespread on UE and eNB to dramatically improve performance and this approach could help a lot.

If the perps are capable of ultra wide band, ultra high gain interference then they are probably more like nation-states and you have a much bigger problem on your hands than just the wireless communication interruption…although those small cells are probably still carrying traffic close by…

Thinking through this for Public Safety, heck this story could be created by a large operator trying to prevent Public Safety from operating their own LTE networks but I digress…the standards could be improved to allow for improved control channel redundancy/resiliency beyond a doubt. 

I guess I refute the numbers but not the principles of the original article. It’s going to take a lot more than $650 to effectively take out thousands of LTE users. LTE networks are probably more susceptible to IP hacks than RF hacks. However the blogospheric focus is on the (hot) air portion. Hopefully the hysteria will die down soon. Ugh…

reverb_Network Diagram

Patent by Reverb Networks: Interference Detection with SON

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Reverb  Networks just issued a press release (see below) that they were awarded US patent 8,229,363 for detecting interference via SON. The way I read it was the UE submits everything seen during scanning and the sites already in the neighbor list are removed and therefore the reminder are interferers. The overview in the patent text is:

An embodiment of the invention is directed to method for detecting interference in cell sites of a wireless communications network, … receiving signal code power measurements from the mobile devices in the cell site; and determining sources of signals being transmitted to the mobile devices in the cell site based on the signal code power measurements. In addition, the method includes generating a list of sources providing signals to the mobile devices in the cell site and then removing sources included in an active set for each mobile device thereby creating a list of interfering sources. The interfering sources are, for example, sources not assigned to provide wireless communication services to a mobile device in the cell site, but whose source signal is still being received by the mobile device.

Let’s ignore Automatic Neighbor Relations (ANR) or even Neighbor List Tuning (NLT) seen in CDMA networks for the moment. Patent 8,229,363 is going to be helpful to Reverb if they can keep it. This technique seems like it would be beneficial for all, hope they license it FRAND [Fair and Non Discriminatory] style. 

This won’t win me friends but…these guys deserve a gold star for getting this patent. I have looked at probably over a hundred LTE patents for curiosity’s sake and the industry is very lucky I am not consulted by the USPTO before granting patents. On the other hand, I haven’t looked at other similar patents, maybe they did this defensively?

Patent is here.

Reverb PR:

Reverb Networks Awarded Patent for SON-based Interference Detection

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Advanced Techniques Used in Automated SON Solutions

Sterling, Virginia – Reverb Networks, a leading developer of intelligent Self-Optimizing Network solutions designed to provide mobile network operators with improved operational and spectral efficiencies, announced today that it has received a patent award from the US Patent and Trademark Office for automated interference detection techniques using measurements from mobile devices, a key component of SON-based network optimization for UMTS and LTE wireless networks.

Reverb’s interference detection patent, USPTO number 8,229,363, follows the Minimization of Drive Test (MDT) principle identified in emerging 3GPP technical specifications.  Interference sources are typically identified in mobile networks by using test mobiles and receivers in an orchestrated drive test setting, a process that is both time consuming and labor intensive.  Motivated by the MDT principles of automating data collection from OSS and standard device-based measurements, Reverb’s intellectual property outlines a method of identifying and ranking interference sources.  These techniques are incorporated in the Interference Reduction feature of Reverb’s InteliSON®, a fully automated, closed-loop SON solution.

“The interference detection patent award bolsters Reverb’s IPR portfolio in SON technology,” said Magnus Friberg, CEO. “This award, combined with our other issued and pending patents, demonstrates Reverb’s unique technology for automating network optimization with our InteliSON platform.  We will continue to drive innovation in SON technology as we further deploy our leading edge solutions in 3G and 4G networks worldwide.”

 

700MHz spectrum chart

My Response to DSL Reports Comment, ” AT&T LTE Network Slower in Markets Like Chicago “

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 This is not a huge deal but I was looking at DSLReports blog post/story titled “AT&T LTE Network Slower in Markets Like Chicago” and I saw a couple of incorrect facts that although I don’t normally feel the need to correct all inconsistencies, felt like I’d pick on this one a little. I have thrown up the 700MHz spectrum chart for your viewing pleasure.

Firstly our buddies at ATT are deploying initially on Band 17, so they will always be limited to 10MHz channels. If they were to own all 3 bands in a single market, which would be rare, they still would only have 18MHz at their fingertips so that would only be good for an almost never used 15MHz channel or 10MHz channel + 5MHz channel.  

Therefore, most of the time, VZ and ATT are pitting 10MHz of LTE spectrum against each other so other factors are determining the throughput.

As I mentioned before, check the following first:

  • Interference environment
  • Backhaul quality and bandwidth
  • Antenna configuration (antenna quality too)
  • UE performance
  • Loading
Remember this chart from before? According to testing from RootMetrics, I don’t believe ATT is leading in spectral efficiency significantly so all things being equal, likely Chicago needs more down tilt to improve throughput….Oh yeah, and although they are rolling out Intucell’s great SON products, they haven’t deployed RET (Ok neither has VZ) on their towers so they will need to optimize the expensive way.
MY $0.02. Have a great day.
LTESNR_chart

Ponder This: US Operators Operating LTE at ~20% OTA Efficiency

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I am working with a regional operator’s LTE network design, and I was comparing our design to some of the publicly released information available about the competitors and, well I was a little surprised at the early results. I think I’ve boiled it down to 2 charts.

Firstly, as a matter of review, ATT and Verizon have very similar resources currently dedicated to the deployments. ATT is deploying 2×2 MIMO using FDD on lower 700MHz, Band 17 (which is only Channel B + C of Band 12) which facilitates 10MHz channels with their existing sites without RET antennae widely deployed yet. VZW has deployed/is deploying essentially the same thing in Band 13 (upper 700MHz.) So knowing what we know about 2×2 MIMO we can baseline where they are.

The first chart is a standard SNR vs throughput chart. As you will see most of the results reported are achievable with only 5dB SNRs.

Here is the throughput comparison.

 

The biggest takeaway for me on the forward link, neither is really achieving an expected baseline level yet. Not even close. They are about 26-28% off the median so there’s some red flags to note in their approach. Is it all due to the early rollout phased spotty coverage? No, many of the measurements were made at airports and core areas for VZW (maybe why it’s slightly higher) and for ATT the have limited markets rolled out so the tests are only in the preferred areas anyway.

After looking at the throughput, it’s only fair to derive their efficiency in terms of bps/Hz. Ready?

It’s directly related to the throughput, but it’s still eye popping to see as efficiency. Now granted, I didn’t throw in the targeted because that only a reference number that’s synthesized with McDonald’s patties in a lab and therefore not that relevant.

There’s a small caveat to throw out and that’s the device performance. Surely the device performance will improve over time.

My takeaway here is all those body shops importing engineers from the Middle East, Asia and so on need to speed dial their Verizon and ATT lunch buddies and work hard to get some of the ATT and Verizon optimization project dough. OK seriously, ATT and Verizon seem to have lots of bottlenecks in their LTE networks that are needing optimization. Question is, is network equipment maturity and device maturity all there is to improve here or are there are things to address?

Oh, and just by looking at this data it’s easy to see that these networks are clearly not under near realtime SON control either. And what will these numbers look like at higher frequencies, like for Sprint and Clear? Hmmm…

Nexius is doing a good job marketing their body shop chops with a new LTE info graphic …but they forgot to mention the things above though, oh well….

A Nexius Infographic - Seven 4G LTE facts that might surprise you

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Updated! Quick Outburst On Frustration with OEM Features

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 Don’t believe the marketing!! Some large OEM’s don’t have basic SON and LTE features! It’s crazy how they are moving forward, in many cases growing marketshare and not covering the basics. The reason the OEMs with smaller shares are marketing features is suddenly in focus for me. There are networks being deployed really without true SON support. There is another level of network maturity to get through to see meaningful market performance. In the US, RootMetrics reports are showing ~13Mbps on the best carriers for D/L. My prediction is that 2 years from now, average speeds will be in the mid 20′sMbps although the channel loading will be much greater. The primary reason will be better SON utilization (more fully optimized minute by minute) and secondarily better schedulers etc… this is before more spectrum or Release 10 enters the picture. OK, I’ll stop ranting…

The irony is the smaller vendors (based on LTE marketshare) have these features and more now, while the larger ones already are 6-24 months away!!! It’s amazing!!

Updated: I had some lunch and time to reflect. It’s not purely the OEMs fault. There are major operators here in the US that are not deploying RET on their sites! There are operators that are willing to gobble up spectrum and throw it on the pile instead of optimizing and operating the LTE networks lean and mean. One of them has had the presence of mind to deploy TD-LTE which is more efficient than FDD for low/sporadic use but that’s it so far. These guys aren’t demanding more from their OEMs. After trailing, most are comfortable placing orders with their existing 3G vendors instead of shaking it up a bit.

Ideally, the major OEMs should change their approach, instead of trying to be everything by making everything, try new business models. How about offering the normally encompassing services portfolio supplemented with multiple radio OEM products so they can offer best of breed, more like a Master Services Integrator (MSI). I would definitely like to see that diversity.

Grrr!!

SON

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Yikes!! With Mobile World Congress Around the Corner, Small Cells Rapidly Dividing!

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Come on Robin, to the Bat Cave, there is not a moment to lose….Just as you thought Het-Nets and small cells were just going to be infinitely marketed and never deployed, the Small Cells marketplace is pretty much exploding 

leading up to Mobile World Congress (MWC) this year. Here is a taste of the activity that you will see in slide ware, on busses, billboards, booths etc…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHOM

WHAT

WHY
Airspan and Aihop Communications are collaborating on HetNet/small cell solutions. Airspan makes 4G Radio Access Networking (RAN) gear and Airhop makes Self Optimizing Network (SON) software.

Airspan has really an intermediate sized base station strategy with fairly compact Remote Radio Head (RRH) type of base stations. Airhop has an awesome SON solution and is looking for places to put it, so focusing on HetNets, er the useful integration of macro (big) cells and small cells is the test case to prove that today’s networks can actually evolve to something else.
  Airvana showing off LTE small cells with demonstration in Barcelona

Airvana has been focused on Sprint CDMA technology. It will be good addition to the ecosystem to have LTE+CDMA small cells. Enterprise + Residential
Ericsson Acquires BelAir Networks.

Ericsson gains carrier WiFi and a HetNet product line. This is easily integrated into existing customers, thus I expect to see HetNets popping up at ATT, VZW, MetroPCS etc…
ip.Access launching E-100 hybrid WiFi and small cell.

ip.Access getting onto the carrier LTE/3G+WiFi offload RADAR with this launch. There are 3 announcements listed here representing this strategy. Market pricing should be better with this announcement.
  Mindspeed purchased Picochip, and now has dozens of small cells in addition to T22XX and T33XX SoC

Picochip had some lofty ideas about where the market was headed while Mindspeed was grinding away in the low end. If balanced, this combination may actually increase small cell penetration. Enterprise + Residential products.
  NEC launches 2 small cells with a Gateway

I suspect this is the result of a Japanese industry/governmental mandate but it’s interesting when a consumer focused company jumps into small cells. At Samsung I could never get management to get the long term vision. Enterprise + Residental
Ruckus wireless is launching a hybrid WiFi/carrier small cell.

Ruckus traditionally stayed away from the carrier radio space but is now incorporating a carrier radio component to their (small cell) SmartCell 8800. Very similar to what we did at Samsung and what Belair did. Lots of flexibility and low cost. Outdoor focus.
  The Small Cell Forum has teamed up with the Open Mobile Alliance to establish a single API set.

API development has been a sore spot with small cells in general. This may create enough momentum to be useful.

Links: Airhop, Airspan, Airvana, BelAir Networks, Ericsson, ip.Access, Mindspeed, NEC, Ruckus Wireless, Small Cell Forum

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Femto Forum Decides to be Small Cell Forum

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Today the Femto Forum announced that they are forevermore The Small Cell Forum. Makes sense as femtocells are sort of boring right now with very little customer traction and everybody and their dog has made a launch announcement and yet on the other hand there have been different initiatives at places like Sprint to launch enterprise versions and some carriers have even dabbled in CDMA/LTE pico cells. I am curious as to how much work there is to do over time in this area? I suppose writing the relevant additions to SON etc to support small cells more fully are on the roadmap but then what?  Here are some stats in their PR:

According to ABI Research, 4.3 million small cells (including femtocells, picocells and microcells) will be shipped in 2012, rising to 36.8 million shipments in 2016, valued at $20.4 billion. They find that residential and enterprise models currently dominate small cell shipments with 62% and 30% respectively. ABI Research’s data suggests that by 2016, while indoor small cells will be 94% of total shipments, outdoor small cells will make up 64% of the revenue.

Links: Small Cell Forum

Femto Forum Becomes Small Cell Forum as Femtocell Technology Extends Beyond the Home

15th February 2012

Name change reflects the Forum’s support for enterprise, metro and rural small cells, building on the earlier success of residential femtocells

London, UK – The Femto Forum today announced it is to be renamed the Small Cell Forum in order to better reflect its work which embraces residential, enterprise, metro and rural small cells, as well as to prevent the perception that the small cell arena is fragmented. The Small Cell Forum will serve to develop consensus on common approaches, standards and agreed best practice for all small cells.

The Forum will address all small cells that operate in licensed spectrum, are operator-managed and feature edge-based intelligence – including what have been dubbed femtocells, picocells, microcells and metrocells. It will also support the crossover between small cells and other relevant technologies including: Wi-Fi, cloud RAN (which connects cellular radio to cloud-based intelligence over fibre), Distributed Antenna Systems, as well as macrocells as part of the new heterogeneous network (hetnet) environment.

The role of the Small Cell Forum will be to tackle the practical challenges facing deployment. This includes finding appropriate small cell sites; delivering power and backhaul; managing interactions between small cells, macrocells and other wireless technologies; and effective interoperability and network management. This continues the work of the Femto Forum which has been actively working on small cells outside the home for some time, as well as their interactions with other technologies. Examples of this work include integrated Femto/Wi-Fi devices and networks; enterprise multi-femto architectures; public access small cell interference management; standards and management processes which are generic across all small cell types; and LTE small cell standards for all environments.

“Femtocell technology was originally designed for the home but has since extended into enterprise picocells, urban metrocells and modern microcells for all manner of locations. The core technologies developed by members of the Femto Forum – including Systems on a Chip, provisioning systems, standardised gateways, and other related innovations – lower the cost of licensed band solutions and facilitate easy deployments for all small cell products.   As such it is the ‘small cell’ banner that now best represents these technologies and it is one that mobile operators are strongly endorsing. In fact, surveys show operators regard small cells as playing a more important role than macrocells in future mobile networks*,” said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Small Cell Forum.

According to ABI Research, 4.3 million small cells (including femtocells, picocells and microcells) will be shipped in 2012, rising to 36.8 million shipments in 2016, valued at $20.4 billion. They find that residential and enterprise models currently dominate small cell shipments with 62% and 30% respectively. ABI Research’s data suggests that by 2016, while indoor small cells will be 94% of total shipments, outdoor small cells will make up 64% of the revenue.

The success of the small cell market to date has focused on femtocells which have been deployed by 38 operators worldwide, including eight of the top ten (by revenue), with a 112% increase in deployments in 2011. These deployments have started to achieve scale with Sprint surpassing 500K units and Vodafone UK, Japan’s Softbank and France’s SFR, exceeding 100K – not to mention AT&T which is the world’s largest deployment.

The Small Cell Forum has also today published a free introductory whitepaper on small cells that is available here http://bit.ly/A6eRwl.

 

About The Small Cell Forum
The Small Cell Forum (www.smallcellforum.org), formerly known as the Femto Forum, supports the wide-scale adoption of small cells. Small cells are low-power wireless access points that operate in licensed spectrum, are operator-managed and feature edge-based intelligence. They provide improved cellular coverage, capacity and applications for homes and enterprises as well as metropolitan and rural public spaces. They include technologies variously described as femtocells, picocells, microcells and metrocells. The Forum has 137 members including 63 operators representing more than 1.71 billion mobile subscribers – 33% of the global total – as well as telecoms hardware and software vendors, content providers and innovative start-ups.

Contact Details:

Oliver Chapman

Oliver [a t] smallcellforum.org

+44 (0) 7713 404 571

http://www.smallcellforum.org

*An Informa Telecoms & Media survey found 60% of operators believe small cells are more important than macrocells in LTE deployments. Small cells were also the comfortable winner in a Rethink Research survey of the most important features for LTE-Advanced.

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Huawei Announced THEY Launched ANR Commercially First in April 2011

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  Huawei claims to be the first to have deployed Automatic Neighbor Relations (ANR) commercially as they did it in April of 2011. This is NOT true. Two years ago another vendor or two introduced it at launch time so that’s that. 

Links: Huawei

Some of you may be wondering what ANR is and why anyone would claim to be the world first to launch it? Let me explain…

Read Full Article →

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New iGR Report Quantifies LTE’s SON Benefit$ from 2011-2016 While Infonetics Estimates SON Market Size

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 Research vendor iGR has published a report for sale as part of their “Small Cell Architecutures Research Advisory and Subscription Service” extolling the virtues of Self Optimized Networking (SON) in LTE. What’s interesting is the information drip used as the teaser, it’s pretty big. As you know LTE networks have a services architecture (SAE) that is pre-designed to support self optimization, self integration and self repair features (as SON features.) The starting point for these, like the standardized use cases are fairly simple automations, nothing more complicated than what you need for a femtocell network. Check out the elegant prose from iGR regarding SON:[pullquote_right]SON is an important set of concepts that will radically change the way 4G mobile networks are design, built and operated,” said Iain Gillott, president and founder of iGR. “As the industry moves toward small cell architectures, with vastly more cells deployed in a given area, the industry must adopt new network management techniques to control capital and operational expenses. If SON is not successfully utilized, increased operational costs could slow the deployment of small cells.[/pullquote_right]

Moving forward, these automations can get to be pretty helpful, compelling and downright useful in improving the network conditions without a lot of hands. How much so? iGR estimates:  LTE CapEx savings resulting from full SON implementation between 2011 and 2016 will be $2.34 billion and LTE OpEx will be $4.5 billion. Those numbers push past mere chump change on the aggregate. I think it will be more dramatic if you consider the 24×7 improved network performance and although I have numbers in my head, I have not read the report.

Now let’s also look at the Infonetics Research information that dribbled out this week. So in their report they estimate the SON market to be about a $3B US marketplace of robots and masters. They too had some good observations about SON such as: 

MARKET HIGHLIGHTS

  • The mobile network optimization market, including 2G/3G optimization and 4G SON software, is forecast to grow to almost US$3.0 billion by 2015
  • The market is being fueled by telecom operators seeking efficiencies in their networks as mobile subscribers continue migrating from 2G to 3G technology, … to 4G
  • 78% of the world’s mobile subscribers are on 2G networks, the rest are on 3G, with 4G networks just getting started
  • 2G/3G optimization software makes up the majority of the overall MNO market, while SON software is growing the fastest, driven by growing LTE network rollouts
  • Smaller specialist vendors in the mobile network optimization market are being increasingly squeezed by larger equipment suppliers happy to throw in software as a value-add to the infrastructure they sell to telecom operators
  • Since the restructuring of China’s telecommunications industry in 2008, Asia Pacific has become the largest market for mobile network optimization and SON

Now I can understand China and others being motivated to use SON (of course for different reasons) but what I can’t reconcile is the total LTE market size reported by Infonetics in context of this $3B of SON. Maybe I should do some more reading eh? :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Links: iGR, Infonetics Research

Read Full Article →

VoLTE

VoLTE

Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is the next big thing. In fact, in 24 months, virtually all LTE enabled smart phones will support it. Curious?
Small Cells

Small Cells

Small Cells, previously known as 'femto' or 'pico' cells are possibly a savior to network operators. They offer capacity and coverage to the end user and are inexpensive for the network operator. Why aren't they everywhere?
Public Safety

Public Safety

LTE is and ideal technology for Public Safety use. See Why.