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July 14, 2010

Earlier this week in Shanghai, China, L.M. Ericsson has successfully demonstrated its new end-to-end LTE (long term evolution) solution to a bunch of wireless industry analysts and technology reporters.

Ericsson, the world's largest wireless networking infrastructure supplier, said it used a USB 'dongle' with a TD-LTE (time-division long term evolution) chipset from ST Ericsson with its new TD-LTE base station.

In the past, the company said it had verified a single user peak rate of 110 Mbps in the downlink. Now things are improving.

Ericsson said it is conducting interoperability and performance tests with two other chipsets and terminal vendors and that it expects those tests to be completed in the next week.

Furthermore, Wi-MAX proponent Alvarion Ltd. also announced its support for TD-LTE technology. Some attendees in the room didn't expect that, however, since Alvarion has been concentrating itself mostly on WiMAX in the past two years, and its sudden shift to LTE is seen as largely unexpected.

Originally dismissed by some in the wireless industry, TD-LTE has since garnered a lot of attention recently and for several good reasons.

China Mobile Communications, the world's largest wireless operator, announced it plans to deploy the technology in the next few years as it upgrades from 3G technology. Further, it turns out that there is a lot of unpaired spectrum available in Europe that could be well-suited to the technology.

And Qualcomm also said it plans to deploy TD-LTE technology as it builds out its network in India.

"This successful demonstration today reflects not only Ericsson's undisputed technology leadership in LTE technology, but also our strong commitment to the development of TD-LTE in China and elsewhere in the world,” said Mats Olsson, president of Ericsson China & North East Asia.

“We will make every effort to support China Mobile in bringing revolutionary mobile broadband experiences to tens of millions of Chinese consumers in the near future,” added Olsson.

Coming back to Alvarion, the company said it would support the TD-LTE standard, incorporating it into its 4-Motion wireless solution.

However, Alvarion was also quick to point out that it will continue to support WiMAX technology, including standardization efforts and products.

But some wireless industry analysts are now predicting that WiMAX technology will be shorter lived than originally expected as TD-LTE rapidly gains traction.

But Visant Strategies just released a new study that said it expects a sizable WiMAX equipment market for 10 years. Alvarion said it plans to participate in field trials sometime in February or March 2011.

And just this morning, Sebastian Cano, vice president of telecommunications for Gemalto NV, the world's largest SIM card manufacturer said "The LTE SIM card is evolving from a simple card that can store and authenticate a user to the network to a Universal Integrated Circuit Card."

Overall, the prospects for SIM deployments are great as CDMA providers like Verizon Wireless and MetroPCS Communications deploy LTE services, thus increasing the potential marketing base for smartcard solutions in the U.S., said Heather Klein, director of marketing communications at Giesecke & Devrient, which also makes SIM cards.

Today, wireless carriers want to ensure interoperability between their CDMA and LTE networks, and at all costs.

Some of the best areas of growth will be in the NFC (near-field communications) space and in the growing vertical market sectors that need M2M communications. As NFC gains traction around the globe, both SIM manufacturers expect financial institutions, which already use smart cards, to embed wireless technology in them.

But one of the issues with the intersection of wireless services and financial services is who owns the customer, Cano said. Having a third-party solutions provider is one way to solve that problem.

Both Gemalto and G&D have been acquiring companies in recent years to expand their presence in the smart-card space.

For its part, Motorola is introducing what it calls an Intelligent SIM platform that lays over the SIM card. The micro-miniature four millimeter-thick wafer connects the mobile device and the SIM, which can enable wireless carriers and enterprises to write mobile apps on the SIM and manage security protocols, said Venkat Eswara, Motorola's director of marketing for its Applications and Mobile Video Services division.

Motorola's iSIM is now geared for 3G networks as they are implemented today. However, the company plans to move into LTE technology very soon. Motorola's new platform is already available in three chip configurations – as a low-end microcontroller chip, as an NXP Java applet and as an NFC chip.

The iSIM platform can store up to four different SIM profiles, which is important for wireless users that travel internationally and need to roam, and for enterprises that are security-focused, like mobile banking applications.

Motorola is targeting large enterprises with its platform, noting that large companies can use the iSIM platform to manage the work environment apps of employees who use different networks and different wireless carriers.

Bipper Communications is the first company to launch Motorola's platform to offer parents a way to manage their child's mobile-phone use, including a safety alarm and GPS location-based service from a few Web portals that have been designed specifically for those tasks.

Last month, a new report from WiseHarbor Research revealed that wireless broadband technologies, including LTE, HSPA and the CDMA 2000 1x EV-DO implementation should be dominating the mobile segment until at least 2020, though the rise isn't expected to hit its peak until about 2015.

WiseHarbor, which laid out a number of forecasts for the next ten years, said it expects mobile broadband technologies will actually bridge the digital divide through the current decade for Web and data communications by 2020.

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Source: L.M. Ericsson Inc.