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The LTE/HSPA+ Disconnect
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In Dallas earlier this week ATIS hosted a 3GPP LTE conference that drew attendees from many of the major U.S. operators and key vendors. As expected, many of the vendors touted the benefits of moving to LTE and their projections for when commercial LTE will occur were much more bullish than some of the operators in attendance.
Although Hank Kafka, vice president of network architecture at AT&T, acknowledged that LTE will enable carriers to dramatically lower their operating expenses (1 Mbps of data delivered over LTE will cost about one-sixth of what it costs to deliver 1 Mbps of data over UMTS), he said that AT&T would probably not trial LTE until 2010 and not start deployments until 2011.
Instead, the operator plans to upgrade from HSPA to HSPA+ because that is only a software upgrade and offers a substantial increase in speed. In fact, Kafka said that HSPA+ offers a menu of choices and the carrier has not finalized what it will deploy when--in other words--AT&T hasn't determined whether it will deploy 64 Quam or MIMO--when it upgrades to HSPA+ this year.
But to take advantage of those increased speeds offered by HSPA+, consumers will have to upgrade their handsets and laptop cards. And once the operator deploys LTE, another device upgrade will have to occur to get the economics of scale and speeds that LTE provides. AT&T and others don't seem concerned by this fact. I heard repeatedly from other attendees that consumers upgrade their handsets every 18 months so this will be a natural progression. Nevertheless, I'm surprised that AT&T isn't in a bigger hurry to deploy LTE. With its main competitor Verizon holding fast to its year-end 09 debut of LTE, I would think AT&T would be more aggressive in the race. Kafka said that he didn't expect the upgrade to LTE to be as difficult as it was to upgrade to 3G. "With 4G we are going into new spectrum. With 3G the upgrade was harder because there was no new spectrum."
So why isn't AT&T more anxious to make use of that new spectrum? --Sue
Comments
Posted by Anonymous | January 29, 2009 - 1:40pm
Franz had difficult metamorphosis too. His buddy, Gregor, awoke as a gigantic bug. Needless to say, there were headaches a plenty.
Posted by Robert Syputa | January 29, 2009 - 9:16pm
The great thing about AT&T and Verizon's 'beach front property' 700 MHz spectrum is the signals travel far wide over large areas and into buildings. But as demand shifts to more symmetrical broadband, the weakness is delivering a competitive broadband experience, particularly in dense urban environments.
AT&T is in no rush to deploy LTE because they can afford to wait for the product offerings to become less experimental and because they depend less on consumers where the glitz of leading network innovation is more pivotal in growth of subscribers. AT&T helps fill the consumer market needs and image battle with the iPhone.
The main priority for Verizon and AT&T remains growth and retention of 3G markets and is pressed more from an image perspective than actual competition from WiMAX or each other's prospects for rolling out of LTE.
Prospects for LTE in 700 MHz has many possibilities but also limitations of spectrum bandwidth, open device access requirements, and potential for cannibalization of current revenues. Longer term, the shift to LTE (or WiMAX) that rolls up 3G and new spectrum such as sub 1 GHz holds great potential for increased service over a common infrastructure that greatly improves profits compared to multiple supported networks.
(R)Evolutions in wireless only fully occur over decades.
Posted by Anonymous | January 31, 2009 - 2:50pm
Verizon is also in a much better spectrum holdings position than AT&T when it comes to the 700 MHz spectrum. They hold contiguous coast to coast spectrum licenses where AT&T does not. I think it will be similar to the situation today where AT&T's 3G coverage pales in comparison to Verizon's. HSPA+ is great, except when you can't get it and are stuck with Edge.
Posted by Anonymous | January 31, 2009 - 4:42pm
AT&T is not in a hurry to deploy LTE because they have so much more room to grow within 3G. Verizon is at end of life with CDMA and must make their transition now or they will fall even further behind in speed.
Posted by Anonymous | February 1, 2009 - 3:32pm
"in other words--AT&T hasn't determined whether it will deploy 64 Quam or MIMO--when it upgrades to HSPA+ this year"
Sorry - you have just lost all credibility as a commentator in this area. To clear things up, firstly it is "64 QAM" not "64 Quam". QAM = Quadrature Amplitude Modulation and this modulation technique is used in HSPA+ no matter whether MIMO is deployed or not. The question is whether to deploy MIMO or not. MIMO new requires hardware i.e. new antenna's at the base station as well as device hardware support for MIMO.
Posted by Jim A | February 2, 2009 - 10:28am
Keep in mind that VZW only has 20Mhz of nationwide spectrum and there is still concerns in the vendor community, regardless of vendor spin, that they VZW & AT&T will both need 30Mhz+ if they are to dominate this space. Interesting that both think they need to start deploying Femtocells even with great penetration provided by 700Mhz.
When they combine voice and the demands HD Video downloads/ P2P and Gamers will place on these Mobile nets they both will have problems.
AT&T is better positioned to gain from VZW need to upgrade their entire network for an arguable difference in performance. Especially if AT&T gets aggressive and elects to deploy a Parallel (lead with)Data/Video network based on either their AWS-1 spectrum and new 700MHz with a WiMAX feature set. This off load of HD Video alone from their HSPA net will allow AT&T to focus on delvering a very high level of voice services while delivering a robust level or data,video, gaming and P2P services. The latter will kill both wireless networks with their weak upload speeds.
By AT&T providing their subscribers with new Dual or Tri Mode Sets-HSPA & or AWS/700Mhz based WiMAX based sets and WiFi, they allow customers the best of all worlds Fixed/Portable and Mobile Broadband Wireless.
Jim A.
Posted by Robert Syputa | February 3, 2009 - 12:28pm
Jim A. and all,
This conversation tails to look forward that shows where the real power of 4G will develop: A common IP based network using 'best use' of multiple spectra. If you were to ask yourself, ignoring the availability and re-farming of spectrum issues, "How would one go about designing the optimal multiple purpose network given current and reasonably expected standards based equipment and devices?" I think the answer would be a combined sub 1 Ghz plus 'broadband' spectrum such as AWS and 700 Mhz. The best solution would have 30 MHz or more of sub 1 GHz, preferably 70-100 MHz and 60-100 MHz or more of broadband spectrum to play with. You can imagine what can be done and how efficiently a variety of services from multicast, VOD, voice/messaging and very high localized broadband could be delivered.
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