LTE ADVANCED FEATURE
“There is a feeling that what you’ve got is a toolkit to enable higher bandwidth and the point at which it becomes LTE-A gets blurred as the different tools get implemented on top of one another,” says Dan Warren, senior direc- tor of technology at the GSMA. “The industry will need to work out how you separate LTE and LTE-A, and whether it matters.” It also remains to be seen how many of
the different technological solutions grouped together in the LTE-A toolbox will actually be required to effect the upgrade from LTE. Given that they will become available at different times, and that some will be practically more difficult to implement than others, this is an important question. Dimitris Mavrakis, senior analyst at In-
forma Telecoms & Media, explains: “If you look at uplink MIMO, that requires more than two anntenas in the handset, so it’s less likely that it will happen,” he says. “But other options, like carrier aggregation, downlink MIMO or relays, are very likely to happen. The operators will focus on the solutions that are easy to deploy and aren’t very expensive.” Mavrakis argues that not all the technologies included in the LTE-A specification by 3GPP are necessary. “They’ve also included cognitive radio. But this is entering fairytale land, the academic realm where it’s impossible to do things cost-effectively,” he says. New spectrum bands for LTE-A have yet to be identified, but early discussions centered on high bands such as 3.6GHz. Deployments in this band will likely be expensive and challenged in performance terms because of propagation characteristics and the sheer volume of cells needed (although a reliance on small cells is part of the LTE-A model). But with spectrum scarce, there are few alternatives. Lower down the bands, spectrum is already occupied so operators would be faced with either clearing bands in which they currently operate, or waiting for spectrum to be vacated by other users. According to Dan Warren, 3GPP is working on solutions that would enable in- band upgrades from LTE to LTE-A but this could cause the lines between LTE and LTE-A to be blurred yet further.
In one sense this point has been made moot
by the ITU’s decision to allow the 4G badge to be applied to a range of technologies—LTE, WiMAX and even HSPA+ — that do not meet the strict IMT-A technical requirements. In December 2010, shortly after having set what seemed to be hard and fast rules
about 4G being limited to IMT-A approved technologies, the ITU said: “It is recognised that this term [4G], while undefined, may also be applied to the forerunners of these technologies, LTE and WiMAX, and to other evolved 3G technologies providing a sub- stantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the initial third generation systems now deployed.” The ITU’s backtracking conceded the reality that operator marketing machines, particularly in the US, had already taken the 4G name on, in defiance of its rules. The technology purists remain unhappy about this development. Warren describes the use of the term 4G for these technologies in the US as “marketing pretty much at its laziest.” At the CTIA trade show earlier this year, he says, he leveled this accusation at the assembled US operators. “I find it ridiculous that they are all arguing that they’ve got 4G networks but trying to differentiate on coverage and speed. If they had just tried to differentiate on those things in the first place, there wouldn’t be a need for them to call these things 4G,” he says. In the end, he predicts, the operators follow- ing this strategy will fall victim to their own marketing ploys. Telling end users that they are being given a new generation of technol- ogy will lead to a process of self-education among consumers that will enable them to hold their service providers to account, he argues. The net result will be that customer loyalty will diminish. But marketing dictates that consumers are
offered something new on a time cycle that LTE-Advanced, true 4G, will not be able to meet. Informa’s Dimitris Mavrakis certainly doesn’t expect to see it any time soon. “My opinion is that we will not see LTE-Advanced in the market for at least another five years. There will be no need for it,” he says. Dan Warren concurs, pointing out that, because many operators have yet to reach or are still involved in the deployment process for LTE, its successor remains a number of years away. An operator investing in LTE in 2012 is probably not going to invest in LTE-A in 2015, he says. But not everyone agrees. The vendor com-
munity is always motivated to push new technology into the market as quickly as it can, and Nokia Siemens Networks’ Arne Schälicke predicts that LTE-A will be here sooner than others might expect, with the first upgrades coming in 2012. »
Mobile Communications International | First for news, best for business 27
Telling end users that they are being given a new generation of technology will lead to a process of self-education among consumers that will enable them to hold their service providers to account.
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