Vodafone

Femtocells to fall below US$100 next year, claim insiders

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:54:03 -0500

Despite the lack of operator enthusiasm for commercial femtocell deployments, industry chatter in Taiwan claims that the price of the consumer devices will fall below US$100 per unit in the second half of 2010 compared to US$250 currently.

While consumer indifference dogs the uptake of femtocells, operators have been struggling to justify the business model based upon today's high-priced units. However, manufacturers in Taiwan, including Gemtek, Asusteck, Foxconn and Zyxel--which have each ventured into femtocell territory--are apparently much keener to push the technology now production costs have plummeted.

Also of note is the information that Huawei, which has won contracts to build cellular networks for Vodafone in countries like Ghana and the Czech Republic, has confirmed that it will start femtocell and 800MHz LTE research with the UK-based operator.

Vodafone, and more recently SFR, have been the first large European operators to commercially offer consumer femtocell products. However, the cost to the customer of around €200 is seen as a significant barrier to uptake.

While a halving of this price would ease this barrier, NEC, which is the end-to-end integrator for the SFR femtocell project, said that the technology must provide more than simply improving 3G voice coverage. "We will see femtocells changing the role of mobile phones in our lives further," said Richard Hanscott, VP network solutions, NEC Europe. "We're looking at new applications such as automatic synchronisation with the home PC network. This will enable photos taken on your handset to be automatically uploaded or music/video you've downloaded on your home PC to be sent to your handset when returning home. The possibilities that the femtocell network can bring are endless."

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Digitimes

Cellular goes underground in Munich

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:49:49 -0500

While commonplace in Japan, cell phone coverage in metro tunnels remains scarce in Europe. But Vodafone has helped remedy this shortcoming by advising how coverage could be achieved using antennas and cellular amplifiers within the core network of Munich metro or subway system.

The company said that, having conducted extensive propagation tests, over 400 cellular antennas and around 100 amplifiers had been installed in approximately 75-kilometres of metro tunnel and in the 89 stations. The antennas are spaced between 300 metres and three kilometres apart depending on the RF conditions within each section of tunnel.

The underground system is connected using fibre optic links and managed by a central switching point. Voice and data calls are routed via this central switch to participating operators.

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Portal.de

SFR goes commercial with femtos

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:39:13 -0500

Having earlier raised doubts over consumer enthusiasm for femtocells, SFR decided the time was right and has become the second operator after Vodafone UK to commercially launch a femtocell product in Europe.

Dubbed ‘SFR Home 3G', the company has positioned the device firmly at consumers looking to improve indoor 3G coverage, and willing to pay €199 for the privilege - a price similar to Vodafone UK's home femtocell which seemingly remains firmly off consumer's wish list.

According to SFR (which is 44 per cent owned by Vodafone), the femtocell is being sourced from UK-based Ubiquisys (Vodafone UK's comes from Alcatel-Lucent of France) and uses silicon developed by picoChip. The device, which SFR claims will offer services such as FMC in the future, also supports Kineto Wireless' femtocell network gateway.

However, the French operator was keen to clarify that this femtocell initiative was not part of a larger strategy to become a quad play operator - as seen with Bouygues Telecom. "We don't need this today, we still do four times as many sales than Bouygues, said CEO Frank Esser. "We will continue to watch this offer but we're in no rush."

Esser said the group is very happy with the commercial dynamic in its mobile operations, having sold more than 500,000 iPhones since it started selling them in April 2009. Esser said the company aims to sell over 600,000 by the end of the year.

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Rethink-Wireless and Total Telecom

Vodafone brings intelligence to its data network

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:37:04 -0500

Presently under trial in Spain, Vodafone is testing tiered data services that aim to provide premium users with priority data services together with the intelligent application of ‘fair use' capping.

For customers on Vodafone's €49 per month business tariff, data connections will be made regardless of cell congestion - effectively meaning that non-business users will see their connection dropped in favour of high-paying business subscribers. Currently, the system will usually drop connections to those at the edge of the cell, or operate on a first-come-first-served basis.

However, non-business users will have the benefit of exceeding their fair-use restrictions when data traffic is light. Existing systems restrict traffic to customers who use too much data, but now Vodafone has taken the positive step to throttle the data only if there are other Spanish customers waiting to use it.

Vodafone insists that ordinary users will not suffer poorer performance. A spokesman said that the software tried to "use every scrap of capacity" and all users would benefit. It will assess the system's performance in Spain before deciding whether to roll out it out elsewhere.

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The Register

Vodafone tags mobile internet services for revenue boost

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:20:48 -0500

As operators around Europe continue to report stagnant or declining voice revenues, Vodafone has revealed it will be looking closely at methods to capture more revenues from mobile internet services. The company said that top of the list was the development of premium services and micro-billing beyond what has already been launched or announced, such as Vodafone 360.

Vodafone Europe CEO, Michel Combes, believes that additional revenues are needed to continue investment in the data networks, but without simply becoming high-speed dumb pipes that would continue to benefit the main winners in the mobile internet space, such as Google and other big search engines.

According to Combes, ideas that could be considered to boost revenues include content providers paying operators to guarantee their content is carried over the network without disruption, and operators receiving a fee from micro-billing and providing location services. Vodafone is also offering its business customers the chance to pay a premium fee to guarantee a better service.

"This is about unlocking additional value all along the chain and making sure that all the players can see the benefit," said Combes. "Some customers may be ready to pay more for a differentiated quality of service depending on their need."

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Reuters

Vodafone draws Huawei into mobile core R&D lab

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:13:02 -0500

In a move that must have sent alarm bells ringing within the HQs of its established infrastructure suppliers, Vodafone has announced the opening of a new lab in Italy dedicated to mobile core networks, in association with Huawei.

While this R&D effort was reported to be focusing on IMS, mobile broadband support and FMC, observers have taken Huawei's move as a firm indication for further involvement within the evolved packet core sector, and to push its credentials higher up the LTE value chain.

Unstrung reported the news as Huawei manoeuvring for a position deeper in Vodafone's mobile network and which could be seen as muscling in on the operator's current mobile core suppliers, which are Ericsson, NSN and Starent Networks. Huawei already supplies Vodafone with circuit-switched mobile soft switches in Hungary, Romania and South Africa and, on the mobile core front, the vendor won a contract with T-Mobile International in December 2007 that was viewed as a European breakthrough deal.

Vodafone and Huawei have teamed up before to co-operate over mobile R&D, with the effort then being on RAN technologies which helped Huawei develop its SDR radio for base stations which Vodafone subsequently trialled.

Commenting on this latest move, Vodafone said: "We're planning our core network architecture evolution and making sure that Huawei's [roadmap] is aligned to match that."

While Vodafone has stated several times it has no plans to deploy LTE until 2011 or 2012, there is growing speculation that it may award some initial contracts as early as a year from now. This could open the doors to new suppliers if Vodafone is willing to adopt a new approach where the core and RAN vendors are more separated.

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Unstrung and Rethink-Wireless

Femtocell shipment forecasts cut by 55% for 2009

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:51:18 -0500

Despite 2009 being positioned as ‘the year' when operators would start to deploy femtocells in their millions, a leading market research firm has dramatically reduced the expected number that it now believes will ship this year.

ABI Research had previously forecast that 790,000 femtocells would ship in 2009, but has now cut this number by over 50 per cent to about 350,000. The company blames this huge shortfall on mobile operators being slower to adopt the technology than anticipated.

ABI's Aditya Kaul said, "Even femtocell vendors are a bit surprised that the operators haven't pushed femtocells as much or as soon as expected. We expect that deployments in 2010 will pick up but will be slower than expected--our data suggests about a 40 per cent reduction on previous estimates."

Kaul also speculates that the slower uptake of femtocells has been due to ongoing doubts about the value proposition, the poor economic conditions and fears in some quarters that a rapid increase in femtocell numbers would cause interference in the macro network.

"Next year will be critical: if conditions don't improve by the end of 2010, some smaller vendors may find themselves in trouble," Kaul added.

While all the major US operators along with Vodafone in Europe offer femtocells, the US offerings have been criticised for being highly priced, and Vodafone's Access Gateway device has sunk into near total obscurity.

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Daily Tech

Vodafone look to tempt staff away from Orange/T-Mobile UK

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:49:05 -0500

Given that the agreed merger period is around 18 months before Orange UK and T-Mobile UK come together, staff working at the two firms will have plenty of time to review their likelihood of being offered a role within the new company.

This uncertainty has prompted Vodafone to launch an aggressive campaign to recruit staff from Orange and T-Mobile, which has seen Vodafone positioning advertising vans outside the headquarters of the two companies.

With little attempt at subtly, the advertising vans' hoardings showed a woman, roller brush in hand, pondering the colours orange and pink--the respective colours of Orange and T-Mobile. A slogan asked: ‘Need another option? See Red.'

Vodafone HR director, Matthew Brearley, said the operator decided to ‘seize the moment' and launch a targeted recruitment campaign after ‘an influx of applications' from both Orange and T-Mobile staff ‘at all levels of both organisations'. Brearley said the recruitment drive did not contradict Vodafone's wave of redundancies last year, or further huge cost-cutting announced last week.

An Orange spokesman said of Vodafone antics: ‘It is a cheap tactic but we are not surprised.'

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Mobile Today

LTE can wait; HSPA+ is good for next 2 years, says Voda CEO

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:48:20 -0500

Having revealed better than expected financial results, helped by completing a £1 billion cost cutting programme one year early, Vodafone CEO, Vittorio Colao, let slip that the company saw HSPA+ as meeting its needs over the next two to three years and would focus its investment in further deploying the technology. Under these conditions, the CEO admitted that LTE was unlikely to be needed until late 2011 or possibly 2012.

Despite confirming that it was continuing to work closely with its LTE partners, Verizon Wireless and China Mobile--both of which are rapidly pushing forward with LTE--Vodafone seems content to rely on HSPA+ on meeting its mid-term data requirements.

As reported by Unstrung, Colao indicated that the company was in the process of enhancing its data speeds from the present 3Mbps to 7Mbps, and then on to 21Mbps and perhaps eventually 56Mbps before LTE is needed.

While the launch of the iPhone on Vodafone's UK network might impact network loadings--as O2 has seen in London with its data network nearing meltdown at times, the company is presently relaxed given the spare 3G capacity it has across wide segments of its network. In Europe, while data traffic volume is 2.5 times that of voice traffic, network utilisation was around 30 per cent in Q2 of the operator's 2009/2010 financial year, and only 5 per cent of Vodafone's European sites have more than 90 per cent network utilisation during busy hours.

This cautious approach to adopting LTE could also be due to the announcement from Vodafone that its plans to increase its cost-cutting by a further £1 billion by 2012.

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Unstrung

Vodafone 360 goes live, with focus on social networking

Paul Rasmussen — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:34:25 -0400

Vodafone will either be widely praised or ridiculed depending on the success of the gamble it is taking with the launch of its new 360 service. The company, which switched on the service last Friday, said that two Samsung handsets - the H1 and M1, have been tailored to support 360 with access to an app store containing around 1000 products.

However, Vodafone is betting on the new 360 service attracting enough people that want to join its community - which will require an easily understood marketing message from the company.

The main element of the new service is called Vodafone People, a connected address book. The service is automatically backed up and synchronised, regularly and wirelessly, between the mobile and PC or Mac. All contact updates, e-mails, photos and conversation history or settings changes made either at home or when on the move are saved.

However, Facebook and Google Talk will be integrated before Twitter - driven by the sheer number of users that the leading social networking website has, although users will be able share things like photos, music and their location with others that have signed up to 360.

Vodafone has also confirmed that 360 will be downloadable before the end of 2009 as client for Symbian handsets, which could mean that over 100 phones form Nokia and Sony Ericsson should be compatible with the Vodafone 360 service.

Interestingly, to help grow its apps base, Vodafone has said that it will make its APIs freely available, including those which cover its LBS and billing apps. The company is also promising SDKs to become available in the near term.

While Vodafone has spent almost two years developing its 360 service in-house, it is likely to take much less time for others to catch up, using external service providers. Platforms, such as Android, are seen as being much better placed to innovate and deploy new services, and, unless managed in the right way, Vodafone might struggle to cope with this pace of innovation.

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ITPro and Tech Radar