MCI EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW
ment] commercially in eight different frequency bands in a single year.” In fact, having worked closely
with Australian, Chinese and Indian carriers’ TD-LTE deployments, Erics- son is keen to encourage the use of multiple standards in LTE. “From a technological perspective we should be very proud and happy of the fact that we have been able to cre- ate a technology that comes in two modes—one for paired and one for unpaired spectrum.” Talk of spectrum issues brings Norén onto a subject on which he holds strong feelings: the belief that more spectrum needs to be freed up by regulatory bodies for mobile communications use. “It’s clear that society benefits
very much from mobile broadband. If you look at how spectrum is used, mobile broadband is growing very rapidly and has a lot of consumer appeal. And many studies show that broadband usage drives productiv- ity and GDP growthfor countries” he says.
But Norén emphasises the fact
that the widespread introduction of LTE networks is not just about an increase in the consumption of ex- isting applications but also the new applications that will be developed to take advantage of improvements in the mobile networks. In the 3G world consumers are already used to the concept of accessing short You- Tube videos, but Norén believes that LTE will enable video-on-demand to become common-place. “Video on demand has grown very
rapidly as, instead of linear tel- evision, where a TV station decides when people should watch a certain show or programme, it’s much better that the individual can watch that on demand. Leading broadcasters, like
BBC recently, recognize that TV in the future largely will be on demand.I think this will soon be as natural as speaking over a mobile device rather than a fixed device. There’s room for both mobile and fixed but clearly people prefer mobile devices and they prefer to decide themselves when they should watch a certain programme. If that’s the case then regulators should try to prioritise mobile communications over other usage of spectrum, such as terres- trial broadcasts.” And while many people would think fixed line fibre connections the most suitable channel for the delivery of on demand video, Norén believes that LTE can step up to the challenge. “It’s obviously cheaper to build mobile broadband networks than fixed line broadband networks of the same calibre because there’s no need to put a cable down and dig into the ground and refurbish houses. You can do the last mile over a radio signal and that’s more efficient—and you have the convenience aspect of the mobility of course.” Norén is bullish in his belief
that LTE networks can not only beat fixed line for convenience but that they can also match them for real world performance too.
He
claims that this has been proven by research initiated and sponsored by the Swedish government, using data from a popular Swedish speed test web site which was created due to local consumers’ dissatisfaction with fixed-line broadband speeds. The site enables anyone to compare performance in different areas of the country, as well as between different technologies. If the speed they are getting is significantly less than what was promised by the
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package they have subscribed to a letter of complaint is automatically generated. “Take Stockholm for example,
which has had LTE commercially since December 2009,” he says. “If you go and check what speed you get on average, and then compare it with fibre to the home, you will see that the performances you get are pretty equal. The speeds that are promised over the fibre networks—you don’t get those.” As for now Norén believes Erics-
son’s experience deploying large scale networks such as those oper- ated by leading operators in the US puts it ahead of the LTE pack. “Deploying these networks we’ve been able to gain good experience on how to tune and optimise and that is of course a continuous process.” Looking beyond LTE to LTE Ad-
vanced he believes that Ericsson is well placed to lead the industry forward and believes that it will be a natural evolution. “We continue to be a strong con-
tributor [to LTE Advanced]—we hold about 25 per cent of all the essential patents. We think that LTE Advanced is “just” another release of 3GPP—it’s a natural evolution of LTE which is very, very good. We will be releas- ing more advanced features such as carrier aggregation and so forth and that will enable even higher bit- rates. Already in 2010 in Barcelona we demonstrated 1.2Gbps download, which beats the ITU requirement of 1Gbps so we have proven that the technology works very well.” n
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