M2M - the wireless business model

At the end of 2009, the wireless industry reports more than 90% cell phone penetration. Approaching saturation for voice services on mobile networks, which supported the spectacular wireless expansion, the rich source of business and has reached a plateau; voice-based income is falling rapidly. Now, this forces the operators to explore new growth options. Where can new revenue come from? Is there an area replete width growth potential waiting to be tapped?

Machine-to-Machine communications is now viewed as such a frontier.

M2M consists of using a device (e.g., sensor, meter, etc.) to capture an "event" (e.g., temperature, inventory level, location, environment status, etc), relayed through a network (e.g., wireless, wired or hybrid) to an application (software program), translating the captured event into meaningful information (there is a breach, vending machine is empty, tank level is low, etc). This is a technology that is pervasive and invades all kinds of venues throughout our daily lives.

The Negroponte Switch announced a new era in telecommunications. It is called "M2M Switch".

The ABCs of the mobile carier business model is that
A): ARPU --- Average Revenue per Unit
B): Bandwidth --- consumption per unit is high
C): Churn --- the turnover of subscriber accounts is high
There are indicators of a competitive market that favors network business expansion. M2M flips this model on its head: in the M2M market, ARPU is low, Bandwidth used is low, and the Churn is low.

According to data collected by research firm Strategy Analytics, wireless carries posted blened ARPU ranging from $37.61 to $52.71. Regarding bandwidth, average data consumption of smartphone from 90MB to 298MB per month. Finally, monthly churn ranged from 1.27% to 5.0%.

In comparison, the M2M market, deals with different numbers. Depending on the application, ARPU is in the single digit range. The need for bandwidth access is limited as "bread and butter" exception-based M"M solutions use only tens of kilobytes. Finally, churn, as an order of magnitude, is much lower than what is traditionally observed in the cellular market.

M2M is all about new service opportunities. It is service providers - both traditional and "new age" - who hold the key to the future growth of M2M. Remote healthcare, for example, is a huge market that can be addressed by M"M technologies and for which the ABCs need to be complemented by a thorough knowledge of the value chain - including specific enviromental conditions such as laws and regulations.

参考：http://telecomengine.com/search/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_6561

Self Organizing Networks and Enhancements

I have blogged about SON on two days before.

SON concepts are included in the LTE (E-UTRAN: is the air interface of 3GPP's long Term Evolution upgrade path for mobile networks.) standards starting from the first release of the technology and expand in scope with subsequent releases. A key goal of 3GPP standardization is the support of SON features in multi-vendor networks environments. 3GPP has defined a set of LTE SON use cases and associated SON functions.

The scope of the first release of SON includes the following 3GPP functions, covering different aspects of the eNodeB self-configuration use case:

1. Automatic Inventory
2. Automatic Software Download
3. Automatic Neighbor Relations
4. Automatic PCI Assignment

The next release of SON will provide SON functionality addressing more maturing networks to help decrease the CAPEX and OPEX. It includes the following additional use cases:

1. Coverage and Capacity Optimization: Coverage and Capacity Optimization techniques are currently under study in 3GPP and will provide continuous coverage and optimal capacity of the network. The performance of the network can be obtained via key measurement data and adjustments can then be made to improve the network performance. For instance, call drop rates will give an initial indication of the areas with the network that have insufficient coverage and traffic counters can be used to identify capacity problems. Based on these measurements , the network can optimize the performance by trading off capacity and coverage
2. Mobility Robustness Optimization: Mobility Robustness Optimization aims at reducing the number of hand over related radio link failures by optimally setting the hand over parameters. A secondary objective is to avoid the ping-pong effect or prolonged connection to a non-optimal cell.
   
3. RACH optimization: To improve the access to the system, RACH Optimization has been proposed to optimize the system parameters based upon monitoring the network conditions, such as RACH load and the uplink interference. The goal is to minimize the access delays for all the UEs in the system and the RACH load.
   
4. Load balancing optimization: Related to Mobility Robustness is Mobility load Balancing , which aims to optimize he cell reselection and handover parameters to deal with unequal traffic loads. The goal of the study is to achieve this while minimizing the number of handovers and redirections needed o achieve the load balancing.
   

SON version 2

Then main functionality of SON includes:self-configuration, self-optimization and self-healing.

Self-configuration process is defined as the process where newly deployed nodes (eNBs) are configured by automatic installation procedures to get the necessary basi configuration for opration

Self-optimization process is defined as the process where UE and eNB measurement and performance measurement are used to autoune the network.

Self-healing function aims at automatic detection and localization of most of the failures and applies self-healing mechanisms to solve several failure classes, such as reducing the output power in case of temperature failure or automatic fallback to previous software version.

A self-configuration SubSystem will be created in QAM to be responsible for the self-configuration of eNB. For self-optimaisation functions, they can be located in QAM or eNB or both of them. So according to the location of optimisation algorithms, SON can be divided into three classess: Centralised SON, Distributed SON and Hybrid SON.

参考: 3g 4g wireless blog

Self Organising Network (SON) version 1

SON has been around for quite some time now and is not a new concept.

The first time I heard of SON was in relation to Femtocells. Remember, a Femtocell has to start in an unfamiliar environment, learn about its surrounding and then adapt to the environment.

SON also means "Plug and play", "Zero Touch", "Auto Configured", "Self Managed" and so on. Son is a very useful feature that will allow for the automation of several tasks lowering the OPEX costs. (OPEX: Operating expense is an ongoing cost for running a product, business, or system). Examples include plug and play or a cell in between existing ones, neighbour recogintion and (re-)configuration, optimizations, etc. Properly implemented, it could kill off drive-testing.

SON can be explained with the basic diagram above. A new cell created in an existing environment possibly due to too many existing resources being in use or too many users in an area during a paticular time (football match for example) and this cell has to look at the surrounding and adjust its conditions. The other existing cells also have to adjust themselves with the change in surroundings

According to recent analysis in NEC Whitepaper on SON, about 17% of wireless operator's CAPEX is spent on engineering and installation services. (CAPEX: a capital expenditure is the cost of developing or providing non-consumable parts for the product system) SON's self-configuring fuctions are expected to eliminated many on-site operations for the basic settings and subsequent updating of network equipments, and thus reduce CAPEX.

It is also know that about 24% of a typical wireless operator's revenue goes to network OPEX, which are the cost of network operation and maintenance, training and support, power, transmission, and site rental. SON's

self-optimizing functions will reduce a workload for site survey and analysis of network performances, and thus reduce OPEX. Moreover, SON's energy-saving functions reduce the costs of power consumed by the equipment.

参考：3g 4g wireless blog

Against the Limited "Unlimited" data plans

Once upon a time the Mobile Operators had loads of bandwidth and not enough data users. So they decided to lure the poor users into buying the 'unlimited' data plans. They were sure that the devices are quite rubbish and no one can use enough data. Just for the precaution some clever operators added a small print where unlimited meant 1 or 2GB. The operators thought that the users will never reach this amount.Then came the iPhone and changed the whole world. People actually started using the data on their devices. The operators started panicking. Android just compunded this problem. So the operators now have started advocating against these unlimited plans.

The CEO of Vodafone , Vittorio Colao , has told attendees at this year's Nokia World 2010 event that he welcomes the end of "unlimited" Mobile Broadband data plans. Colao also warned consumers that "data pricing has to adjust", thus signalling a greater focus on tiered pricing models.He added: "The principle here must be that, a bit like motorways or hotels, every class of service needs to have its own price and customers must be able to pay for the level of service [they want]. Pricing should be adjusted to reflect the usage and load. We are approaching the end of the free era."

The cowboy salesmen are still fooling the average Joe when it comes to unlimited plans. People sue the operators but dont succeed.
We are begging to see the return of those bad old days when WiFi was the only option in conferences, etc and they were really expensive. Now instead of WiFi we have got our dongles that may not work well anyway inside the conferences or hotels due to the structure or location but when they do, you again have to think about the costs.
In Korea, KT Telecom had to introduce unlimited plans because the other rival introduced one. This is probably because they still have spare bandwith available. Once that gets used up then they will either be running for caps or advocating against the unlimited plans.
I have been against the unlimited plans from the beginning but I advocate that the operators become a bit wise in the way they charge us, the end users.
If I have 4 devices I dont want limited data on all devices because I dont want to keep track of which devices use how much data or have an allowance. Maybe what I need is a data bundle that I can use across devices and maybe share with my family members. Wallmart has recently come up with something similar in US. Wallmart is a MVNO using T-Mobile network. Though their data plans are expensive compared to T-Mobiles plans just because they allow data sharing and rollover, people may go for them.
Rollovers are available on Pay as you go plans but not on Pay monthly which makes the pay monthly (generally on contract) people seem stupid. Operators should encourage this, maybe keep a maximum that can be rolled over.
Finally, there is this net neutrality and QoS discussions are going on. Eventually some kind of QoS or destination based speeds, etc will come but for the end user they will go where they will get what they want. The operators should remember this

参考: 3G 4g wireless blog