Adrian Scrase from 3GPP said that as there are already over 200 operators committed to LTE, its the fastest growing mobile technology ever.
Bart Weijermars from TMobile Netherlands said future growth will be data centric fuelled by appealing terminals, new usages, broadband and ubiquity.
Future challenges include Network sharing, required to keep the cost under control; everyone allowed to roam freely everywhere; all the content is stored in the cloud and voip is the only option for voice.
New services will be possible with the advent of '4G' but care has to be taken because background apps are already using up a lot of capacity.
There is still work that needs to be done on Spectrum, Smartphone challenges and Network of networks.
Huawei has been one of the main sponsors of the event and the award and Ying Weimin spoke on how LTE is the way to more competitive Mobile Broadband.
According to him, wireless solution is a personalized solution and will go everywhere you go.
Spectrum is the main concern though as a combination of low and high frequency will be needed. Hetnets are coming and they will be the future of the networks.
The way forward is to start the LTE with data only and build on top of that. The network should be simple evolution and will contain of cloud baseband, wideband RRU and AAS.
Pocket Wifi is definitely going to be a killer device and Innovative LTE business and Apps will be needed in the long term like Instant LTE broadcast, Wireless Video surveillance, etc.
LTE is faster than expected and this is the reason there are so many operator commitments. Huawei has 40+ LTE contracts and 10 have already been launched. This is just the beginning.
Seizo Onoe from NTT Docomo spoke about Crossy. In fact during Christmas the employees were wishing each other 'Merry Crossy'. Docomo believes that the users dont care about HSPA or LTE so the Crossy is a service they are selling to the users.
Docomo are getting 75Mbps max DL speeds (using 10MHz band). The phones are capable of 100Mbps though (category 3).
Docomo has recently announced 24 new devices. 2 are Wifi routers. Unlimited data plans on the LTE network cost 5000 yens.
On the spectrum side they are expecting the LTE network to co-exist with UMTS and will be using the 2.1GHz band. In fact Docomo thinks that 2.1GHz should be the universal band that all devices should support so In future when the networks are deployed all these existing devices start working without problems.
The RRE equipment that Docomo has been deploying works with both HSPA and LTE.
Japan has already shutdown its 2G PDC networks but other cannot do the same for GSM. Onoe-san believes that we should stop the evolution of 2G as EDGE has still been evolving and we should focus all the energy into LTE evolution.
Onoe-san did emphasise that LTE is 3.9G and not 4G.
Onoe-san also said that ETWS was very helpful in the recent tsunami in Japan and services like these should be standardised quickly as they will be useful for someone or the other.
Thomas Wehelier from Informa presented the survey results of LTE ecosystem.
In 2011, the LTE deployments will quadruple but 2012 will have most deployments. Spectrum fragmentation is still prevalent but the core bands for LTE are 800MHz, 1800MHz and 2.6GHz. Capacity still cited as a big driver for the deployments.
TD-LTE represents a new market and new opportunity. In fact Ericsson bills this a year of TD-LTE.
Chris Kimm from Verizon spoke on their 2020 vision.
In Dec. 10 Verizon were covering 110 million people in the US by 2013 the plan is that 290 million will have LTE coverage. In fact LTE was launched in new cities on the day. At the moment though only 250K users are using LTE.
The rate of change is breathtaking and as a result CIO has changed from Chief Information officer to chief innovation officer.
In the Q&A, Chris said that they will deploy voice in 2012 using VoLTE. OTT voice will also be ok.
Panel Discussion:
Adrian Scrase brought up the topic of Global Roaming. As there are already 30 bands specified for LTE, do we need a roaming band that should be standardised. Should this band be an Industry initiative or will it be market driven?
The consensus was that this will be market driven.
Question was asked if LTE will be more profitable than previous technology.
NTT Docomo believes that LTE as a technology cannot generate new revenues but the services around it can.
Adrian Scrase asked the question that a lot of Services are defined by the standards but most of them do not get deployed. Does NTT DoComo think ETWS has been defined correctly as per the standards.
Onoe-san from NTT Docomo said that this service has been of utmost importance in the recent tsunami disaster. Even though the service was implemented and available on the phones, it was not used so people were not aware of it. So when the disaster struck everyone was surprised to receive this message. Now everyone knows about this service. Docomo has been using meteorological data since 2009 for this service.
参考：3g 4g wireless blog
