Worldwide demand for mobile data services is primed for explosive growth, fueled by rapidly improving quality and availability. Across the spectrum, consumers are demanding more from mobile services. They want expanded services, richer multimedia experiences, easier access and greater personalisation. Telecoms analysts believe that innovative approaches to Long Term Evolution (LTE) network rollout, especially in emerging markets, including Nigeria, will be very essential in delivering quality and profitable future mobile services. ADEYEMI ADEPETUN writes.GLOBALLY, the issue of improving telecommunications services has been a major challenge to telecommunications service providers, due to increasing customer base with few or inadequate facilities on ground to meet the explosion in customer demands.Besides, the increasing proliferation of Internet enabled mobile devices, such as tablets, iPads and Smartphones has added to the growth in consumer needs to access content on the go. This trend has resulted in the explosion of data traffic exerting an unprecedented demand on network operators.As such, it has become highly imperative for operators to enhance and upgrade their service offerings to remain competitive in the scheme of things, especially as bandwidth intensive applications would further expose the capacity restrictions subscribers might experience in getting contents at the speed of light.Basically, the key applications for the next generation of mobile users include person-to-person communications, machine-to-machine communications, content delivery, social networking, business services and mobile commerce. To deliver these applications with the quality of service that customers expect, mobile networks must achieve higher performance. The prerequisites are high-speed, broadband-like access via mobile devices, delivered anywhere and at any time.Though, to telecommunications experts and analysts, operators have invested heavily in various service upgrades across board, they argued that the technology that would do the magic in the immediate future would be the Long Term Evolution (LTE), the next-generation network beyond 3G.They posited that the LTE is the best technology for mobile broadband networks because it is faster, simpler, more efficient and more cost-effective than other options.LTE is a revolutionary Fourth Generation mobile technology, which enhances data transfer rates, delivering unmatched mobile broadband experience and highest data speed and reliability.According to NEC, an industry leader in LTE, by increasing speed and expanding bandwidth, LTE solution creates new services for end users and new opportunities for operators.NEC said LTE provides operators with a technically superior and cost effective solution to deliver true broadband experience.In Nigeria, Industry watchers are of the opinion that this technology has the potential of boosting operators' profitability and enhance significant reduction in CAPEX, which would in addition, enables fixed to mobile migrations of Internet applications, stressing that, LTE networks also provide the capacity to support an explosion in demand for connectivity from a new generation of consumer devices tailored to new mobile applications.According to the Director, Spectrum Policy, Africa and Middle East, GSMA, Peter Lyons in an interview with The Guardian in Cape Town, South Africa recently, operators must migrate to LTE because it is the future technology, which will enable more capacities.Lyons noted that by 2015, the Association expects about 350 million LTE connections worldwide, with about 1.1 million connections coming from Nigeria; 2.5 million connections would be from South Africa and about half a million LTE connections would be in Kenya, 'the LTE is the future. It will be very relevant for Africa, aiding the next generation of mobile connectivity.'According to him, over the next four years, mobile operators around the world would have invested over $100 billion in the next generation mobile broadband including HSPAs, LTE and others.Emphatically, Lyon advised the Code division and Multiple Access (CDMA) operator in Nigeria to embrace technology upgrade by migrating to LTE; this he said, would give them more leverage to penetrate the market.But earlier in September this year, Chief Executive Officer of Starcomms Plc, Mr. Logan Pather in an interview with The Guardian said LTE would in 2015 replace Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), the two telecommunications technologies being operated in the country.Pather said some leading global telecom operators were already test-running the new network and that Starcomms' CDMA network is almost LTE-ready.Also in January this year, Second National Carrier, Globacom, said it has launched the country's first 4G LTE network. At the launch of the LTE technology, Group Chief Operating Officer of the company, Mr. Mohamed Jameel said though people can already browse the Internet or send e-mails using HSPA-enabled systems and send or receive video or music, the experience with LTE will be even better.He said: 'As data dependence and applications grow, the need to deliver higher speed on wireless would continue to grow. LTE is the state-of-the-art technology to connect the demanding corporate customer and high data users through the latest 4G LTE wireless broadband connections. This is in meeting the mobile broadband need of subscribers.'LTE will further enhance more demanding applications like interactive TV, mobile video blogging, advanced games or professional services, enabling more Nigerians to be on top of their game. LTE offers the key benefits of performance and capacity.'According to Jameel, there are over 24 networks in the world, which have already adapted and launched 4G LTE networks across the world.He said by 2012, an estimated 1.8 billion people worldwide will have access to broadband services and that nearly two-thirds of this number will be mobile broadband consumers who will be served by LTE networks.Head of Networks Systems, Middle East and Africa, Nokia Siemens Network, a telecom infrastructure giant, Mohamed Abdelrehim at a forum in Lagos said the ramp up in LTE offerings is coming just in time for many Communications Services Providers (CSPs) faced with rapidly rising data traffic in their networks, while also needing to implement new types of services and applications.He added that the transition to the 'Internet of things' ' as billions of machines, devices and objects of varying nature get connected, is now in play, and LTE has the right architecture and efficiency to support new customer experiences and business opportunities, which will increasingly be the battleground for differentiation between CSPs.Technology Guru and president, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Mr. Titi Omo-Ettu, however, said that LTE is not a technology, but a station of travel in application of technologies. 'Everybody has to pass it and there is no choice to make. Of course technologies go into popular application only when they cause improvement in delivery of service. The caution is that they, in almost all cases, need to be well managed to serve the interest of service improvement.'LTE's are situated in the broadband realm so it is normal that broadband infrastructure will be a platform on which they ride.'At an MTN organized capacity training for journalists in Lagos recently, MTN Nigeria's BSS Optimisation/HLS Manager, Wasiu Otukoya described LTE as the last step toward the 4th generation (4G) of radio technologies designed to increase the capacity and speed of mobile telephone networks.Wasiu, who said the overall objective of LTE is to provide an extremely high performance radio access technology that offers full vehicular speed mobility and that can readily coexist with HSPA & earlier networks, added that the technology significantly increased peak data rates, scaled linearly according to spectrum allocation, which targets instantaneous downlink peak data rate of 100Mbit/s in a 20MHz downlink spectrum (i.e. 5 bit/s/Hz) and instantaneous uplink peak data rate of 50Mbit/s in a 20MHz uplink spectrum (i.e. 2.5 bit/s/Hz).The benefits according to him includes; providing supports real-time application due to its low latency; dramatically improves speed and latency; reduced cost per bit through improved spectral efficiency; delivers enhanced Real-time video and multimedia for a better overall experience and creates a platform upon which to build and deploy the products and services of today and those of tomorrow.But for the spread and adoption of the technology, Lyons advised government of emerging economies to unlock more spectrums.He said: 'To achieve this feat, there must be concerted efforts to make spectrum available for operators. With the right spectrum and low frequency band, the road for future development will be opened. The business environment must be conducive to attract investment in this area.'Omo-Ettu, an engineer, however, cautioned against upgrade to a technology that may become redundant in the near future.According to him, LTE technology, confined to mobile systems may become out modeled when fibres eventually and truly go into homes, and multimedia requirements dictate that we work more than we move.He said: 'Technology standards have actually been migrating and have been phasing out at such high speed that it has been one particular challenge to businesses.
Click here to read full news..
