Mobile and wireless news

March 2007

NTT DoCoMo has announced it has achieved a maximum packet transmission rate of approximately 5Gbps in the downlink using 100MHz frequency bandwidth to a mobile station moving at 10km/h. The field experiment of 4G radio access took place in Yokosuka .

Ericsson and Australian operator Telstra have launched what they claim is the world's first 200km cell range in a commercial mobile broadband network. Downlink speeds of 2.3Mbps at a 200km range have been achieved during testing.

TeliaSonera has announced it has been conducting trials for more than a year with the aim of evaluating the possibility of using fuel cells as backup power for telecom exchanges. TeliaSonera is now also beginning an equivalent test on fuel cells for mobile phone base stations.

Indian mobile operator Idea Cellular, Ericsson and the GSM Association's Development Fund have teamed up to develop biofuels as a source of power for wireless networks in rural India . The first phase of the project, which is testing the feasibility of non-edible plant-based fuels, such as cotton and jatropha, is nearing completion.

The European Commission is financing a project (Marius, Mobile Autonomous Reactive Information System for Urgency Situations) to allow temporary mobile networks to be set up in normally hard-to-reach locations during emergencies. The simplified mobile networks will be headquartered in helicopters.

Ericsson has announced live demonstrations of its Long-Term Evolution (LTE) system supporting Multiple In Multiple Out (MIMO) antenna technology with speeds of up to 144Mbps on a 20MHz carrier in the 2.6GHz frequency band. LTE is the next mobile broadband network standard, defined by 3GPP, set for release in 2007.

Vodafone, Telefonica, Orange , and 3UK have announced the results of their successful joint technical trial of TDtv. The TDtv trial, announced in October 2006, covered a large area of Bristol in the UK using only 12 macro-cell sites. TDtv is the UMTS TD-CDMA-3GPP Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services (MBMS) standard for mobile television solutions. The trial showed that eleven high quality channels could be delivered across the service area, with the potential to deliver up to fourteen channels with planned future technology developments. Significant coverage gains were demonstrated when using key TDtv performance enhancement technologies including macro site combining and receive diversity in the user device. The gains from these technologies demonstrated in the trial indicate that TDtv may be able to provide the same coverage as WCDMA when deployed on 35% of the WCDMA sites.

Alcatel-Lucent and Manx Telecom announced they have successfully completed the first UMTS and HSDPA network deployment using the 900 MHz spectrum on the Isle of Man. Deploying UMTS/HSDPA technology in the 900 MHz spectrum can help mobile operators cost-effectively deliver UMTS/HSDPA services because the lower frequency provides an important increase in base station coverage, significantly reducing (by 60 % in this trial) the number of sites required for rural coverage.

Vodafone and Orange have announced plans in the UK to share their respective Radio Access Networks (RANs). The RAN includes mast, antenna, sites, site support cabinet and power supply as well as antennae, combiners and transmission links, Nodes B, BTS and the radio network controllers which are linked to the core network. The latest developments in technology mean that base stations can now be configured to transmit more than one operator's signal, which leaves each operator free to determine its own service offering using its own spectrum.

Alcatel-Lucent unveiled for the first time seamless access to TV channels delivered via 3G or broadcast networks, on a single device. This single device allows viewers to seamlessly access and browse among a selection of 3G-based TV channels as well as broadcast TV channels using the S-Band (2.2 GHz).

Sprint Nextel intends to launch Mobile WiMAX broadband services in initial markets by year-end 2007 with a larger roll-out encompassing at least 100 million people by year-end 2008. Sprint Nextel last August announced WiMAX IEEE802.16e-2005 as its next generation mobile technology platform and formed an infrastructure development ecosystem with charter partners Intel Corporation, Samsung and Motorola. Sprint Nextel is expecting to invest up to $800 million in 2007 and between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in 2008 relating to the 4G WiMAX mobile broadband network.

Strategy Analytics has reported that global mobile phone shipments grew 25% year-over-year, to reach 1 billion units in 2006. Strategy Analytics has also forecasted 12% shipment growth during 2007.

Portio Research has forecasted that by 2012 global SMS revenues are expected to reach $67bn, driven by 3.7 trillion messages. By 2011, the firm predicts mobile instant messaging, especially in markets such as North America , will supplant SMS as the mainstream messaging service as smartphones and wireless Internet proliferate.

Juniper Research has announced that the total number of consumer MVNO subscribers will increase from around 93m globally in 2006 to almost 352m by 2012. The firm also expects revenues to MVNOs to rise, from $15bn in 2006 to $67bn by 2012.

According to Forrester Research, 79% of U.S. consumers are annoyed at the idea of mobile marketing. However, in a different report, Harris Interactive claims that adult users of mobile phones are more receptive to receiving advertisements on their phones. In particular, the study claims that 35% of adult users would watch incentive-based ads, with 78% of them saying cash is the best reward.

A new study undertaken by Deloitte for the GSM Association, claims that usage of mobile communications is a powerful economic growth engine, which governments can fuel by lowering taxes on mobile services and handsets. The study found that in a developing country, an increase of 10 percentage points in mobile penetration will lift that country's annual economic growth rate by 1.2 percentage points.

NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and SoftBank Mobile have confirmed that radio frequency energy from mobile phone base stations does not cause damage to human cells in vitro studies. Since November 2002, the companies have been collaborating to examine the effects of radio waves. Mitsubishi Chemical Safety Institute Ltd., a specialized research institution, conducted the experiments on behalf of the operators. Some results of the experiments have already been registered in the WHO database.

According to a study published by Mayo Clinic researchers, calls made on mobile phones have no negative impact on hospital medical devices. In the study, researchers claim that normal use of mobile phones results in no noticeable interference with patient care equipment

McAfee claims that the number of mobile security incidents reported increased by 500% from 2005 to 2006. According to the study, almost half of the operators admitted to seeing attacks in the last three months and the number of operators spending more than $200,000 on mobile security has doubled.