Editor’s Note: RCR Wireless News asked wireless industry analysts and executives to provide their predictions for what they expect to see in 2012 across their areas of expertise.
We expect to see some traction on the TD-LTE front in India in the second half of 2012. Maravedis forecasts that the TD-LTE subscriber base in India will reach 2.25 million by the end of 2012. RIL, a pan-India license holder, is expected to lead the market in terms of the number of TD-LTE subscribers with a 62% market share in 2012.
In North America, we anticipate that Clearwire could start rolling out commercial TD-LTE services in partnership with China Mobile in late 2012 in selected areas of United States. This will be a hybrid network running both mobile WiMAX and TD-LTE at the same time. However, we anticipate a gradual migration to a total TD-LTE network within a three-year timeframe for this operator. Sprint Nextel will also become a LTE player in mid-2012.
In Latin America, the first LTE commercial deployments are expected to occur in Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Uruguay in 2012. This region will close 2012 with approximately over 2 million LTE subscribers.
We anticipate a downsizing of mobile WiMAX networks and subscriber slowdown, as major WiMAX players are committing to launching LTE. Some of the most important transitions we will see include Clearwire (USA), Yota (Russia) and P1 (Malaysia).
By the end of 2012 there will be 160 commercial LTE deployments in service, up from 61 LTE deployments at the end of 2011.
RAN trends
HetNets, although still only on the horizon, drew a little nearer in 2011. The list of technologies making up the HetNet is long, but of the myriad available, two made clear technological progress in 2011: cloud RAN (promoted by CMRI – the China Mobile Research Institute), and small cells such as metrocells. In the case of cloud RAN, vendors such as Ericsson began to publicly announce their success in deploying centralized base-band processing, chipset vendors such as Texas Instruments joined the fray with specialized base station silicon-on-chip solutions to take on general purpose processors, and network infrastructure vendors (particularly Alcatel-Lucent) wowed trade show crowds with their ever-smaller remote radio heads.
Cloud RAN promises new efficiencies in terms of power consumption, hardware utilization and interference coordination, and operators seem comfortable and willing to incorporate the technology into their networks.
Maravedis’ research showed that all vendors report good uptake of their initial remote radio head technologies.
Metrocells, on the other hand, are still somewhat farther down the road. As femtocells continue to make steady progress, their technological underpinnings are being recycled and improved upon to make metrocells possible. A rash of small cell silicon announcements in the second half of 2011 (TI, Picochip, Qualcomm, and Mindspeed, among others) point to the future. Maravedis’ research points to improving silicon maturity as one of the driving forces behind a likely expansion of the metrocell market in 2012.
Video over mobile broadband
The importance of video in mobile broadband was shown by Cisco’s industry benchmark study “Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2010–2015,” which indicates that mobile video traffic was 49.8% of total mobile data traffic at the end of 2010, and will account for 52.8% of traffic by the end of 2011.
Examples of the video capabilities announced by wireless infrastructure vendors in 2011 include:
–Ericsson/Akamai Partnership: Ericsson will be deploying a node in the mobile network to interface to Akamai’s content delivery network, and ensure that quality-enabled content is locally cached in the mobile network and receives appropriate quality of service handling through the mobile network.
–Huawei cloud/video solutions: Huawei is developing entire cloud video solutions to store, encode, and deliver video content in fixed and mobile networks. As part of its base core network platform, Huawei incorporates deep packet inspection capability to identify high and low priority traffic and deal with it accordingly across the mobile network.
Operators such as Videotron in Canada, who have access to broadcast and film content are rushing to offer high-quality video as a premium service through their mobile broadband networks, relying on advanced HSPA+ technology to deliver the bandwidth and QoS required. Clearly, video offers a way to monetize mobile broadband that does not require waiting for LTE
Mobile cloud trends
Looking into 2012 and the rapidly evolving cloud services market, the key question and uncertainty for operators is defining what a carrier-class cloud platform is and what infrastructure and technology is needed to truly enable differentiated cloud services. The wild card in the equation for developing operator cloud technology is in the use of OpenStack, the open source cloud platform that is attracting the attention of many vendors and operators as the foundation for battling Amazon.com and Google in cloud services.
While the vendors are taking different approaches to enable the operator cloud, the common theme is that the network is essential in enabling carrier-class cloud services to support real-time applications and enterprise cloud services with service level guarantees. Telecom vendors are focused on exposing, or enabling the use of network assets and unique telecom capabilities to allow the operator and its partners to develop more robust and differentiated cloud services to compete against Amazon.com, Google and other public cloud providers.
–The over-the-top players will continue to dominate public cloud services, but telecom operators will emerge as leaders in providing secure and guaranteed business cloud services.
–Carrier-class cloud architectures and platforms will emerge and disrupt the cloud services value chain as the cloud market moves from the early adopter phase to mainstream adoption.
–4G networks combined with carrier-cloud services will enable innovative and unique machine-to-machine and vertical solutions.
–OpenStack will evolve and mature into the standard choice for developing carrier-cloud platforms that can compete with the leading public cloud providers.
