Some mobile backhaul companies have been struggling in the past year, as the bandwidth demands expected to be created by LTE have taken longer to arrive than they had planned. Still, others in the backhaul game are continuing to expand and upgrade the backhaul facilities to handle the explosion they know is coming.

This week, mobile backhaul provider Zayo Group said it had reached its goal of getting 2,000 unique cell towers on-net with its fiber-to-the-tower offering. The company now offers about 100 Gbps in overall bandwidth to more than 3,000 tower tenants in 46 markets. Zayo also said it is close to activating in six new markets, and is in the process of building more than 500 new towers.

Meanwhile, wholesale network operator Phonoscope is upping its network capacity with help from Ciena. The carrier is deploying the vendor’s 6500 Packet Optical Platform with WaveLogic technology to help Phonoscope create a network of 25 multi-gigabit Ethernet rings that will be able to support 10 Gbps, 4o Gbps and 100 Gbps capabilities for backhaul and other applications. Phonoscope also will be deploying Ciena’s 5410 and 5150 Service Aggregation Switches, and 3930 and 3931 Service Delivery Switches.

Phonoscope said a major wireless carrier already is planning to purchase 10 Gbps capacity to move aggregated LTE mobile backhaul traffic.

For more:
- see this Telecom News Now post on Zayo
- check out this FierceTelecom post on Phonoscope

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Mercury Wireless went with wireless backhaul

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

Just last month, Taiwan reported a massive jump in the number of WiMAX subscribers in the country, almost 85 percent growth for the six months ending November 2011. However, the world is changing fast to LTE, and the government of Taiwan is now getting attention for continuing to endorse and support WiMAX.

The government said it would drive an increase in development of WiMAX applications and would help the country’s six WiMAX operators to expand their networks. As a rule, the government claims to be technology-neutral in its awarding of 4G licenses, and plans to remain that way as new licenses become available next year, according to local reports from Taiwan.

Taiwan was caught at the center of technology controversy last year, when Intel began to wind down its support for WiMAX, but the government insisted it would push ahead with ambitious plans for local WiMAX-related deployment and manufacturing. It does not appear as though the government is staunchly supporting WiMAX and turning completely away from LTE, but the attention Taiwan is getting for backing WiMAX may reflect just how quickly LTE is becoming dominant.

For more:
- read this Tech Eye story

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Taiwan reported 130,000 WiMAX subscribers late last year
The GSMA said last year Taiwan needed to move toward LTE

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

We’ve only just started our second month of 2012, and some carriers are only just starting their initial LTE deployments, but there is already a good reason to look forward to next year: LTE Advanced, recently authorized by the ITU. As carriers start deploying LTE Advanced sometime in 2013, the difference compared to what we know of LTE right now should be breathtaking. LTE Advanced has more has more than triple the downlink speed and more than five times the uplink bandwidth of today’s LTE. Article

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

The migration to LTE has not stopped Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR) from introducing two new WiMAX products, something that Clearwire partner Sprint (NYSE:S) already has said it will no longer do.

Clearwire this week announced two new hotspot products to go with the network that is on its way out. The Clear Hub Express is a combination WiMAX hotspot and Wi-Fi router to enable easy connections for homes and offices. It costs $99. The other new product is the $124 Clear Spot Voyager, which link up to eight devices with WiMAX. It has six hours of battery life.

Sprint said last month that it would no longer support WiMAX in new devices, sending the message that it is all about LTE from now on. Clearwire’s move is a reminder that the LTE migration may not exactly happen overnight. It also might be encouraging for current WiMAX customers to hear that they still have choices for new devices, even though WiMAX future is limited. Whether or not they feel the current WiMAX network is worth continuing to buy new devices for is a whole other story.

For more:
- see this Verge story

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Clearwire started thinking about LTE four years ago

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

Cisco Systems has released its Aironet 3600 Wi-Fi access point, a four-antenna multiple-input/multiple-output (4×4 MIMO) unit with three spatial streams that is aimed at expanding coverage for enterprises. The 4×4 MIMO trend has been developing at the service provider level and in the consumer market for some time already.

The 802.11n product is being released at a time when much of the Wi-Fi sector has been talking about the coming 802.11ac standard, but Cisco points out in reports about the new product that 802.11ac will probably happen first at the consumer level.

The Aironet 3600 also supports 802.11r, the fast roaming standard for improving hand-offs from one access point to another in a large coverage area. The company said the new product includes ClientLink 2.0 beam-forming capability, which delivers greater downlink performance to all of the devices within range of an access point, rather than just those that are closest to it.

The product also includes the vendor’s CleanAir technology, which scans multiple channels to look for the cleanest, most secure channel to use for transmission.

These features are likely to appeal to corporate enterprises pursuing bring-your-own-device strategies, allowing them to let more devices on their networks with some assurances that performance and security won’t be compromised.

For more:
- read this InfoWorld post

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The industry has been pursuing 4×4 MIMO in recent years
Quantenna also has been a champion of 4×4 MIMO

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

Would-be LTE wholesaler LightSquared finally got some good news at the end of last week, as the Federal Communications Commission opened a request for comments on LightSquared’s argument that GPS equipment should not be legally protected from interference potentially caused by LightSquared’s network.

The public comment period will be open until Feb. 27, with follow-up responses due by March 13.

Things have been looking bleak for LightSquared in recent weeks after a leaked federal government report indicated that instance of interference had occurred during testing, and that no further tests would be administered. That news had come not long after LightSquared investor and partner Sprint officially put its partnership with LightSquared on hold.

The company also has been gradually running out of money, though billionaire Carl Icahn and others have been buying up debt, which arguably could signal some confidence that LightSquared will see better days.

LightSquared’s future is still largely up to the FCC, which has yet to officially rule on whether or not the network will be allowed operate as planned. The FCCis awaiting official interference test results, which could come at any time, though the new public comment period suggests that a decision could be at least a month and a half away. LightSquared still lives.

For more:
- read this BusinessWeek story

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Federal officials this month said there would be no more tests
Sprint froze the LightSquared deal after initially extending it

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

The broadband wireless sector lost one of its champions late last week when the White House confirmed that U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra would step down the federal government job that he was the first person in history to fill.

The reason for Chopra’s departure has not been officially detailed, but reportedly he is set to pursue state-level political ambitions in Virginia. Chopra was significant in the development of the White House’s National Wireless Initiative, which among other things called for the creation of a national public safety broadband network, and for more spectrum to be released for the wireless industry’s use through incentive auctions. At times, the amount of time Chopra spent publicly discussing wireless policies and mobility applications almost made him seem more like a Chief Wireless Officer.

Chopra was named the U.S. CTO in the spring of 2009. He reportedly will remain on the job until Feb. 8.

For more:
- check out this LA Times report

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Chopra was one of the keynote speakers at the CTIA Wireless 2010 show

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

AT&T, which now claims to operate the largest Wi-Fi network in the U.S, announced late last week that traffic through Wi-Fi network tripled last year, with about 1.2 billion Wi-Fi connections being made during the year. Almost 487 million of those connections came in the fourth quarter alone, a major jump over the roughly 302 million Wi-Fi connections through AT&T in the final quarter of 2010.

The mobile carrier said Wi-Fi uploads from mobile devices on its network were up 550 percent on a monthly basis throughout last year, with 3 million connections occurring every day. The AT&T Wi-Fi Network consists of 30,000 hotspots, a figure that grew about 60 percent between 2008 and 2011, but AT&T also provides access to 190,000 Wi-Fi hotspots overall throughout the world.

AT&T updated these numbers a day after talking up its 2011 and fourth quarter earnings, which included record sales of iPhone and Android smartphones. The separate Wi-Fi announcement may speak volumes, as AT&T and other mobile carriers may still be conflicted about how often their customers are using Wi-Fi. This isn’t to say AT&T isn’t proud of its Wi-Fi success-the carrier deserves a lot of credit for recognizing fairly early the increasingly important role Wi-Fi would play.

For more:
- see this TechCrunch post

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Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

Investment bank Jeffries came out with a research note last week that suggested mobile carriers might want to be careful how much they open their networks and customer bases to Wi-Fi. The research predicts that growing Wi-Fi usage by mobile customers is eventually going to put mobile carriers in a pricing bind at a time when they are looking to increase average revenue per user.

Is Wi-Fi competitive with mobile broadband or complimentary? That’s now a question of constant debate in the industry, but what else is new? It’s the same question carriers have been asking themselves for years.

Initially, the answer was that it was competitive enough that carriers for the most part didn’t want smartphones to have Wi-Fi connectivity. That attitude may have begun to change as carriers realized that consumers would need both to have a seamless broadband experience, and that Wi-Fi could actually aid traffic management. Yet, as Wi-Fi only continues to become more popular and more available without the cost or limitation of mobile broadband, we may be ready to see the prevalent attitude swing back toward viewing Wi-Fi as competitive.

If consumers continue to use Wi-Fi as a substitute for mobile broadband, either to avoid mobile usage fees or because Wi-Fi offers better coverage on some situations, mobile carriers could have a hard time raising prices even as the world goes increasingly wireless. Jeffries noted something that should be obvious but that many of us probably take for granted–65 percent of wireless data usage happens indoors and that benefits Wi-Fi.

Jeffries said that is just one of the factors leading them to believe that Wi-Fi could become a greater threat to the mobile industry. The firm went to pains to clarify that they were not suggesting that Wi-Fi could completely replace mobile broadband networks-only that Wi-Fi could negatively impact mobile industry ARPU growth. That could be enough for the mobile industry to once again sound the alarm against the intruder.

For more:
- read this ZDNet post

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AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots saw 1.2 billion connections last year

Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”

EXFO, a maker of network field test equipment, has announced it now supports capabilities to test multi-service bursty traffic characteristics on Ethernet mobile backhaul networks and other Ethernet architectures as part of its EthernetSAM solution.

The new capabilities are in line with the optional features of the year-old ITU-T Y.1564 Ethernet service activation test standard. The tests phases include step to test constant burst size and excess burst size. The tests can be used to validate customer service level agreements on a pre-service basis so that carriers can assure customers that they can meet the SLAs they have agreed to.

The Y.1564 standard tests address any kind of Ethernet service, but were developed largely to target the growing demand for testing mobile backhaul links, where carriers are likely to see multiple service types and applications with burst characteristics that make them particular sensitive to latency issues.

Better testing at the time of service activation will likely lead to more reliable backhaul of mobile traffic at a time when mobile broadband traffic is growing rapidly.

For more:
- here’s the EXFO press release

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Courtesy: Fierce Telecom”