Cellular Technologies for Emerging Markets

2G, 3G and Beyond

Ajay R. Mishra

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780470779477
• eBook ISBN: 9780470975671
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications
• Index: Technology & Engineering

In this book, the author addresses technologies that are being used in emerging cellular markets. These include GSM/EGPRS and CDMA which are being deployed at a rapid pace, while technologies such as UMTS (3G)/ HSPA (3.5G) which have started to find a place in these high growth markets, are also considered. The book examines other technologies including LTE (3.9G) which have already moved out of research labs into the commercial world. 2G-CDMA is widely used, while further developments, e.g. CDMA2000 are also finding acceptance in the commercial arena. IMS/Convergence is increasingly popular all over the world; UMA, which is deployed mostly in North America; and DVB which is gaining worldwide popularity, especially in South Asia, are all reviewed.

Each chapter discusses a different technology and is structured into three parts. The technology is examined at an overview level, first explaining what the technology is and then considering the technical features of the technology. The chapter concludes by looking at the planning/implementation aspects of the technology.

Key Features:

• Useful for all cellular industry professionals as provides an overview of the currently deployed technologies in mass scale, and the forthcoming technologies that are expected to make an impact in the future, such as 4th Generation Cellular Networks.
• One of the first books on the market to encompass all the major cellular technologies, as well as considering the design and implementation perspective.

Wireless Technology will play a key role in uplifting the economies of the Emerging countries globally. Ashok Chandra, Wireless Advisor to Govt. of India

Foreword 1

Role of Technology in Emerging Markets

Telecom wireless technology has been progressing rapidly over the last two decades. Initial introduction of the GSM platform created global standards in the 1980s and provided opportunities to innovate new business models to reduce costs and increase affordability, leading to substantial growth and expansion in the emerging countries. In the process, GSM technology was enhanced through several new features and functionalities to add data capabilities. In the 1990s, third generation wireless technology was introduced in advanced countries of the western world and Japan. At the same time China and India witnessed an unpredicted growth with over 700 million subscribers in China and over 500 million subscribers in India. Similar growth in many other emerging markets of Latin America, Africa and Asia pushed the number of global mobile phone users to over 4 billion worldwide.

The expansion of mobile phones in the emerging markets has been critical in the overall development of the rural areas and the people at the bottom of the pyramid. This has provided a unique access to basic telephone services and a variety of new SMS based applications related to entertainment, news, agriculture, payments, etc. It has been shown by the OECD and other studies that a 10 % increase in the mobile phone coverage increases the GDP of the country by 0.6 %. This offers hope for new features and functionalities with more data capabilities and applications related to education, health, governance, etc. to benefit the poor in the emerging markets.

All of this was possible because we were able to make a business case for affordable technology and bring down the total cost of ownership for the people. This is where Ajay Mishra’s book steps in. It provides a comprehensive coverage of many technologies that will give the readers a quick understanding of the upcoming new opportunities. A basic understanding of the evolution of technologies will help make the right choices for future network capabilities.

Once we are able to bring down the total costs of ownership by placing the right technology, we can provide an opportunity for real economic development and growth to the community. The key is to continue to focus on lowering the cost of mobile services where basic voice services will become a commodity and the future revenue for the operators will come from novel and useful applications and transaction services. Only then the real potential of the mobile revolution will be realized.

Sam Pitroda
Advisor to the Prime Minister of India
Former/First Chairman Telecom Commission of India

Foreword 2

Connecting the Unconnected

The world now has more than 4B telephone lines – thanks to wireless connectivity as more than 65 % are mobile connections. The increase has been tremendous in emerging markets such as India where mobile connections are now happening in double digit millions every month. It has been a phenomenal journey of perhaps one technology (i.e. wireless/mobile) that has not only outgrown the vision of the founding fathers but has been quite successful in touching the lives of people living in the remotest of locations. We have many studies that have very strongly pointed to the fact that an increase mobile penetration would impact the lives of people and this is absolutely amazing.

As we talk about ‘connecting the un-connected’ and reducing the digital divide, it is absolutely necessary that the benefits of technology reach to people living in the remotest places on this planet. Many of the emerging markets, although immensely successful for highest connectivity growths, have not achieved similar success in making its people reap the benefits of being connected to the world.

Technology will play an important role in bringing down the total costs of ownership. With a host of technologies at the disposal of emerging markets, it would be even easier for operators and industry in general to bring connectivity to the door steps of people in the farthest of locations. I think that by giving the right overview of the technologies that will play a role in emerging markets, under one cover, this book will prove to be extremely useful to decision-makers in the cellular industry. The book brings technology and design aspects that one would need for day-to-day decision making in a simple and lucid way. Only when both connectivity and its benefits will reach every one single person would we say that we are living in a truly connected world.

Adel Hattab
Vice-President
Nokia Oy

Preface

Emerging markets have seen an unprecedented growth in the last few years. The operator focus has been on giving complete coverage to all regions (urban to rural) and to subscription to all – people from the highest to the lowest income groups. When the idea is taking coverage for the remotest of the regions and getting the ‘unconnected–connected’, technology and business modelling are two important focus areas. This book covers one of them – technology. Many of the mobile technologies find importance in one network. No more do we see networks that are working on just one or two technologies but we are seeing networks that are an amalgamation of technologies. Engineers and executives working in the field sometimes find it challenging to get hold of a single manual that gives them an overview of technologies that are existing in the mobile field. This book tries to address that challenge – providing an overview of technology, designing and applications of the few important technologies under one cover.

There are many books that are available dealing with individual technologies and so this book is not for in-depth reading of one technology but rather a quick overview of some key technologies. Experts of one technology can quickly understand what they can expect in other technologies. So, this book will be beneficial to beginners, experts, managers and technocrats at the same time.

Chapter 1 discusses the scenario in emerging markets and technologies that are making their mark. Chapter 2 focuses on GSM and EGPRS and includes a technology overview, details on network architecture and network planning/optimization.

Chapters 3 and 4 are concerned with UMTS and CDMA, covering technology, network architectures and designing issues.

In Chapter 5 we go beyond the third-generation technology. Technologies that are sometimes called 3.5G (HSPA) and 3.9G (LTE) are discussed. These are of immense interest in current scenarios – both in the developed and emerging markets.

Going further, we look into OFDM and All-IP technologies in Chapter 6. Both of these have started to make an impact and are being studied with much greater interest by the technocrats of emerging markets.

We look into the world of Wi-Fi, WLAN and WiMAX in Chapter 7. Although Wi-Fi and WLAN have established places in the technology world, they are finding more importance as we move towards fourth-generation networks.

WiMAX and LTE are still being debated but leaving that for cellular operators to decide, we focus on looking into the technical aspects of WiMAX in this chapter.

Convergence is again a fascinating world and is covered along with the underlying technology of IMS in Chapter 8.

Although UMA has been more common in North America, it is briefly covered in Chapter 9 to give the reader an overview of the concept that is implemented in one of the biggest cellular markets in the world.

Chapter 10 deals with DVB-H, the underlying technology for mobile TV. This technology is now making inroads into emerging markets and has an impact on the life of ‘common man’ – taking TV to his/her handheld devices.

There are two appendices as well – one which covers VAS applications while the other one concentrates on highly important areas for anyone and everyone in the telecom industry – ‘energy’.

Finally, at the end of this text, there is a Bibliography with a carefully chosen list of books and papers for further reading which I hope the interested reader will find useful. In conclusion, I would appreciate it if readers can give me feedback with respect to comments concerning this text and suggestions for improvement, via [email protected].

Ajay R. Mishra

Acknowledgements

Writing this book has been nothing short of an exciting journey – and no words are sufficient to thank those people who have helped in various ways during the course of this project.

My big thanks go to Mark Hammond and Sarah Tilley from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, who believed that this project would finally be completed in spite of numerous delays.

Special thanks are due to my following colleagues and friends for taking out the time to read the manuscript and give their valuable comments: Johanna Kahkonen, Mika Sarkioja, Sushant Bhargava, Shweta Jain, Pauli Aikio, Munir Sayyad (Reliance Communications) and Cameron Gillis.

Many thanks go to Sam Pitroda, Advisor to The Prime Minister of India and First Chairman of the Telecom Commission of India, and Adel Hataab Vice President, Nokia Oy for donating their precious time in writing the Forewords and sharing their vision with us.

Many thanks are due to Rauno Granath and Amit Sehgal for their contributions to Chapter 1 and to Sameer Mathur and Anne Larilahti for their contributions in writing the Appendices.

Thanks also to KanakShree Vats, Kanchan Agarwal, Shankar Shivram, C. Ravindranath Bharathy, Das Bhumesh Kailash, Dandavate Pushpak Ravindra, Abhishek Kumar and Kriti Vats for helping me during the last phases of the writing of this book.

My all-time thanks must go to my Professors/Mentors, G. P. Srivastava, K. K. Sood and J. M. Benedict, and to my colleagues, Antti Rahikainen, Reema Malhotra and Prashant Sharma, for their moral support during the course of my career.

Finally I would like to thank my parents, Mrs Sarojini Devi Mishra and Mr Bhumitra Mishra, who gave me the inspiration to undertake this project and deliver it to the best of my capability.

1

Cellular Technology in Emerging Markets

Rauno Granath

Nokia Siemens Networks

Amit Sehgal

Nokia Siemens Networks

Ajay R. Mishra

Nokia Siemens Networks

1.1 Introduction

From the remotest areas of the developing world to the most advanced areas of the developed world, connectivity has become a key issue. How to connect the ‘unconnected’ is an issue that is facing the governments of most of the developing countries, while mobile operators in advanced countries are looking towards connecting their consumers to enhanced services. While the developing world is trying various advanced technologies, it is not necessarily following the path taken by the developed world. They are trying out various permutations and combinations of technologies to reach their goal to connectivity and profits. In this context, it becomes important to understand the various technologies that would help technologists in the developing world realize their ultimate goal – getting the ‘unconnected’ connected in the shortest duration of time.

1.2 ICT in Emerging Markets

During year 2009 the global cellular industry was able to celebrate its 4th billionth subscription to its services. By any means this is a staggering figure. It is even more staggering to realize how short a time it has taken to achieve this. It is hard to come up with any other example where a new technology has proliferated and diffused throughout the world, to all continents, countries and markets and among all consumer groups, cultures and socio-economic strata. How did this happen? Was it planned and designed into the specifications and implementations of early cellular technologies? It is quite safe to say that the huge success of the most common and used cellular technologies has taken the industry itself by a little bit of surprise. However the global ecosystems around the cellular technologies have not been ‘stunned’ by the success, rather the growth momentum and positive response have been used as strong levers to develop the next steps in the evolution towards even richer and more penetrated services.

Looking back 20 years, the first cellular or mobile services were clearly created for and targeted to the business segment. The clear value addition was the mobility itself. People who carry out businesses which are not tied to a fixed office desk and location obtained a great productivity boost by being connected all the time. One can think of some other examples where ‘freeing people from a fixed place’ will bring obvious economic benefits – at the macro level as well as at the individual level. One of these could be by comparing people having watches instead of a ‘grandfather's clock’ inside a house. Having a ‘time with you’ greatly enhanced the way one can plan and synchronize interactions with other people.

‘Mobility’ was the first phase of cellular penetration and while the actual number of users in the first phase was relatively low, it was as important because it demonstrated business viability as well as showing some of the main requirements. As the users were mainly from the business segment their requirements became very apparent in 2nd generation technology specifications and functionalit of the systems. Some of the seeds for future global success can be traced here: international roaming, globally harmonized frequencies allowing use of the same device – or a simpler device, certified interoperability between network and user devices, etc. All of this started to push the industry towards a truly global scale, enabling the immense cost benefits later.

The next phase of rapid penetration took place when individual consumers started to see a similar value in being connected. For the first time the concept of ‘affordability’ really kicked in. When the overall cost of getting and being connected became low enough compared to the perceived value there was a true mass market adoption – in any given market, throughout the world. One can only conclude that the basic demand – everybody's basic human need to communicate – is very universal.

In many mature markets that phase was reached during the early-2000s. Perhaps it's a better topic for a book about social behaviour but it became increasingly difficult – even impossible to participate the society without being individually connected – all the time. At this phase an additional boost for the mass market came through ‘fixed-to-mobile substitution’ – people actually gave up, or never subscribed to fixed services any more. It also meant that most households practically had a mobile device for every family member and market penetrations reached close to or above the 100 % mark.

Around the mid-2000s a similar development was already clearly seen in many developing markets as well. Here, the concept of ‘affordability’ comes out in the clearest way. There are three basi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword 1: Role of Technology in Emerging Markets
• Foreword 2: Connecting the Unconnected
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1: Cellular Technology in Emerging Markets
• 2: GSM and EGPRS
• 3: UMTS
• 4: CDMA
• 5: HSPA and LTE
• 6: OFDM and All-IP
• 7: Broadband Wireless Access: WLAN, Wi-Fi and WiMAX
• 8: Convergence and IP Multimedia Sub-System
• 9: Unlicensed Mobile Access
• 10: DVB-H
• Appendix A: VAS Applications
• Appendix B: Energy in Telecommunications
• Bibliography
• Index