IN-BUILDING CONNECTIVITY - Getting into the building
Andrea Casini explains how operators can look to grow their existing operations in the face of a tough market environment 
It’s common knowledge that the mobile phone market in developed countries is highly competitive, and opportunities for revenue growth are not as clear-cut as they once were. Mobile operators need to grow the potential of their network in order to grow the business and survive, rather than simply rely on finding additional subscribers. Evolution, it seems, is the only way forward. Having accrued a huge customer base, there is pressure to keep pricing low in order to keep churn to a minimum.
However, new technologies such as mobile VoIP are poised to change the established income model. To be seen as a mobile phone company alone is no longer good enough. In the consumer market, applications like the mobile Internet and content such as ringtones are big business; services such as mobile TV have yet to take off but are also potential revenue generators.
Meanwhile, enterprises are increasingly offering mobility as an option to their workforce. There is now a plethora of mobile technologies in, or entering, the marketplace - all vying for enterprise business. For a mobile operator looking to take a slice of the lucrative enterprise mobility market, they need to compete with fixed line technologies such as VoIP using Wi-Fi or WiMAX. Enterprises that opt for mobile services to support their workforce will expect unprecedented reliability.
A crowded market
We’ve reached a stage of mobile phone ubiquity. There is an expectation, from both leisure and business consumers, that their handset will be able to find a signal wherever they are. Currently, places that are densely populated or experience large spikes in usage, such as city centres or football stadiums, can suffer a drop in service with patchy coverage and call drop out. As a high number of users all vie for a signal in one small area, reception quality will inevitably suffer.
Delivering consistent service in enclosed public spaces is further compounded by the fact that leisure customers will tend to use entertainment applications such as mobile TV and gaming when they’re sitting indoors, making in-building penetration necessary. Business users will also spend a significant proportion of their time accessing e-mails and transferring data whilst indoors. The border between private and business users is becoming more and more undefined, with people trying to use similar services and data rates.
Analysys predicts that half of all telephone calls made across Western Europe in 2008 will be made on a mobile phone. A tall order, admittedly, and one that will only be possible if mobile operators evolve to embrace the need for in-building technology.
The very nature of 3G signalling makes it difficult to penetrate areas such as office blocks and tunnels. In addition, high-rise buildings will require additional capacity and bandwidth due to the higher number of users. Resolving the problem of poor reception in built up areas and at large events, by embracing in-building wireless coverage and capacity, has become an important service differentiator for wireless carriers.
In-building solutions can vary in power, offering high capacity blanket coverage in shopping malls through to limited home capacity boosters. Products such as distributed Antenna systems and RF repeaters are designed to guarantee wireless coverage in highly populated areas and provide cost-effective, common infrastructures. This infrastructure will support all of the various standards, while providing a high level of omnipresent coverage to mobile phone users. If there were not be a seamless transition to 3G, its adoption could be threatened by alternative fixed-line services.
The future of in-building
In the consumer and enterprise market, femtocells and picocells could, in the future, help with coverage problems at home and at work. These products transmit mobile signals over a LAN and have a more limited range than large-scale in-building products. Picocells are a higher power indoor basestation alternative to femtocells.
In the UK, Ofcom recently auctioned off 3.3Mhz of the wireless spectrum, equating to a series of twelve low power licenses to allow both fixed line and mobile operators to compete for the option to install picocells into buildings and public spaces. Deployment has been slow as operators appear reluctant to embrace the potential revenue opportunities. However, O2 is due to launch picocells later this year for roughly €100 each.
While femtocells show promise for solving some indoor wireless coverage issues, the technology is still in the early stages of development. Deploying femtocells for individual buildings could, in the long term, reduce operator costs and allow operators to offer smart tariffs. The first femtocells have gone on sale in the UK and are currently being promoted as a way to boost mobile reception at home, but the market is still in its infancy.
The idea of dual tariffs, using femtocells, will mean users can get the best deal when using their phone at home or out and about. New handsets could automatically hand over from a basestation to a femtocell as users come into range at home. Operators may also offer femtocells as part of a subscriber package. Vodafone is already trialling the technology and this is one step on from the current BT Fusion system, which is reliant on Wi-Fi. Femtocells could even see mobile operators grab a share of the home phone market by offering blanket coverage.
Femtocells and picocells will effectively usurp the need for WLAN and other fixed/wireless offerings. Currently technical issues, such as standardisation and integration with existing networks, need to be resolved before these products will gain wide acceptance. However by offering devices that boost coverage, operators could eventually look forward to increased revenue, as their services are more widespread and readily available. This could also prevent churn.
The in-building theory is not new. Andrew Corporation has already deployed many in-building solutions to provide indoor wireless coverage. The company deployed an ION™-B fiber distributed antenna system (DAS) at Dallas Fort-Worth International Airport Terminal D, its parking structure and the nearby Grand Hyatt Hotel to extend wireless coverage to customers. The ION-B utilises head-end equipment that interfaces with multiple, co-located, operator base stations.
Providing blanket mobile coverage and a set of competitive tariffs to match will mean mobile operators will finally be in a position to claim glory. Users who can make important calls and access data wherever they need to are less likely to look to another operator. In the UK, O2’s churn for contract customers was 23 per cent for the year ending December 2006. Coupled with a £2 lower average revenue per user (ARPU) over 2006, the financial cost of losing customers and paying to retain them in an increasingly competitive market is high.
Location based services
Growing the potential of a network through in-building is only one side of the story. Location Based Services (LBS) are already offered by some mobile phone networks and are a way to generate significant revenue for operators. From child-finder services to tracking enterprise equipment and location-targeted advertising pushes, there is money to be made from LBS.
In the UK, Ofcom has stipulated that by early 2008, any VoIP service allowing users to make calls to ordinary phone numbers must also be able to make calls to the emergency services. Research by the communications watchdog has revealed that 78 per cent of VoIP users who cannot use their service to call 999 either thought they could, or did not know whether they could. This development means that geo-location will be provided on a “push” basis (where information is sent to the user without them explicitly requesting it) and it will be done at the operators’ expense.
The cost of forced geo-location can be offset in the long term with other LBS options, however. Currently, the solution is primarily used as a way to send custom advertising and other information to mobile phone subscribers based on their current location. Major operators, focusing on recouping the cost of 3G licenses and falling voice revenues, have yet to exploit the full potential of LBS. Yet this is set to change with a wave of new lower cost devices, including the Nokia N95, that offer LBS capabilities. In fact, ABI Research predicts that by 2011, the total population of GPS-enabled location-based services subscribers will reach 315 million, up from 12 million in 2006. This represents a rise from less than 0.5 per cent of total wireless subscribers today to more than 9 per cent worldwide at the end of the study's five-year forecast period.
The business case, as demonstrated by Nextel in the US, which currently has a 53 per cent market share of the LBS, is there. Operators, with an influx of hardware, should look at LBS in a new light. It has been over-hyped previously, but it is another way to generate revenue with a relatively low outlay.
The growth potential
The mobile phone market is changing. Operators have succeeded in establishing huge customer bases, to the point where phones now\ outnumber people. Yet, in the mature markets of Europe and the US, there is a need to look beyond voice and data services in order to prevent churn and drive revenue.
In-building, in its simplicity, overcomes one of the most common reasons for a customer changing operator: lack of signal. Meanwhile, the market for LBS and geo-location has been over-hyped, but with an influx of new devices and increasing operator confidence it will be possible to overcome cynicism and make a positive business case to consumers and enterprises alike.
After all, we are in an age of convenience, and in-building solutions and LBS are about to make everything that little bit easier.
Environmental and radiation issues
EM and radiation compatibility, health hazard with exposure to non-ionizing radiations has always been a hot topic, recently coming as a burning issue following a recent article about interferences from mobile phones to medical equipment in hospitals.
As every RF engineer knows very well, unlike many generalist reporters and the general public, 2G and 3G mobile terminals and phones are power-controlled by the network, so as to ensure that networks function properly, interferences are minimised, and battery life is prolonged for more air-time and subscriber’s convenience.
The degree of action for Power Control extends over 30dB, or 1000 times, for GSM and to much more (in the range of 70dB, or 10 million times) for UMTS terminals; which means more transmit power is requested in Uplink (up to 1 or 2 Watts) when radio coverage and visibility are poor (high path loss, high penetration loss - i.e. in buildings from outdoor cells), and on the contrary, very low power (down to 1 mW in GSM or much less for UMTS) is needed with good coverage and antenna visibility - i.e. with an efficient in-building system.
Moreover, specific parameters can be set at certain locations, so that Uplink power will never exceed a pre-set value not to cause out-of-control interferences to the own operator’s network or to other services.
And, by the way, well designed in-building systems would have several distributed low-power antennas (or DAS), with power in the range of mW and radiation levels well below the most stringent EU Country-specific limits (.5 V/m).
Actual results of implementing in-building coverage show local RF power density decreasing by three orders of magnitude, with any previous interference issues turned to non-existing.
In-building coverage is therefore the only solution that ensures, on top of seamless communication and proper service for the network and its subscribers, the highest degree of EM and radiation compatibility, either to delicate equipment like navigation instruments in airplanes or medical equipment in hospitals, and to the human beings.
Andrea Casini is VP EMEA Sales & Marketing,
Andrew Corporation
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