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Utilities Turning to WiMAX for 4G Smart Grid Now

Katie Fehrenbacher — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:58:40 +0000

Utilities Turning to WiMAX for 4G Smart Grid Now

Katie Fehrenbacher — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:28:04 +0000

Will the smart grid be the savior of the wireless standard WiMAX? When it comes to the next-generation of wireless broadband known as 4G, WiMAX has generally been taking a back seat to the more telco-friendly LTE (or long term evolution). But in an interview with Mark Madden, Vice President of Energy Markets for Americas for telco gear company Alcatel-Lucent, he tells me that “many” of the 4G smart grid networks that the company is helping utility customers build right now are based on WiMAX.

Why? Because it’s available now. Whereas LTE won’t be available to utilities for quite some time. And the $4 billion in smart grid stimulus funds have injected a sense of urgency for utilities to use those funds now, rather than wait many months down the road. Madden says that Alcatel-Lucent is working with utilities like Oklahoma Gas & Electric and Pennsylvania Power & Light on WiMAX-based smart grid networks. Alcatel-Lucent doesn’t actually make all of the WiMAX smart grid gear for these networks, but works as a network provider and integrator.

Madden tells me that he thinks that LTE is actually a better fit for smart grid networks, because of some technical features, like that LTE can prioritize certain traffic, and can work with both mobile and fixed networks. Eventually we think utilities will turn to LTE for the smart grid, “it’s a perfect fit actually,” says Madden. But in the mean time WiMAX seems to be the 4G network standard of choice because of its availability.

It’s not unusual for large injections of government funding to shift markets like this. The $4 billion in smart grid stimulus funds is such a large amount of money compared to the little money that has been historically spent on the nascent topic of adding IT to the power grid, that it has simultaneously both stalled and in some cases sped up utility buying habits. And because the smart grid industry is so new, the standards making process was also fundamentally sped up, too.

For the case of WiMAX, which hasn’t delivered on many of its wireless broadband ambitions, the stimulus funds for the smart grid could be one of its saviors.

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Image courtesy of ImagineWiMAX

Alcatel-Lucent to Help Carriers Open Up

Stacey Higginbotham — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:00:04 +0000

Alcatel-Lucent today is launching a group of products and services aimed at bolstering the service side of its business as well as helping its carrier customers feel better about their prospects in an increasingly open world. The telecommunications equipment maker is introducing its Application Exposure Suite, an Open API Service and consulting services that it envisions becoming the bridge between apps developers and the carrier networks.

However, to make that bridge a viable market opportunity, it has to convince app makers that carriers have something to offer them, as well as overcome years of proprietary behavior and code that has dominated the telecommunications industry. Johnson Agogbua, VP of global application enablement solutions, says 73 percent of carriers are willing to allow access to their network for API calls, so he believes carriers are ready to open up their networks selectively behind the Application Exposure Suite. He added that the Open API service will allow developers to build and test their apps so the code will work with the information from the wide variety of different operators which may be using non-Alcatel-Lucent gear in their networks.

To handle the fact that not all operators use Alcatel-Lucent’s equipment, the company is trying to sign partnerships with other equipment vendors as well as service providers to ensure an app works across the whole telecommunications infrastructure, from wired to wireless. However, it’s not clear how far along Alcatel-Lucent is when it comes to those partnerships.

Even as Agogbua assured me that carriers are willing to open up their networks to API calls, and have great information to share, I’m not convinced that carriers are ready or able to become like the big web firms such as Twitter or even Salesforce.com and provide access to their data. Also, that data won’t be free. Carriers will expect to be paid for their intelligent pipes. Location data is the only thing carriers are offering at the moment. Agogbua says in the future they will make billing information, content delivery across multiple devices, voice mail info and intelligent presence available to application developers. If they do it soon and well, it could be compelling enough for big apps developers to use, but a lot has to go right before we reach that point.

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Like That Little Engine, Nokia Siemens Thinks It Can Make It

Stacey Higginbotham — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:55:53 +0000

Nokia Siemens, a telecommunications equipment joint venture, plans to lay off up to 5,700 employees, or 7-9 percent of its work force, in order to cut about $740 million in costs. The company, which is a joint venture between Siemens and cell phone maker Nokia, will also whittle down to three business units from five. But you wouldn’t really get it after reading the headline on its press release which states, “Nokia Siemens Networks Targets Improved Financial Performance, Return to Growth.”

Look, I get that you probably don’t want to title your press release, “We’re Laying off 5,700 Workers,” but the headline chosen is too divorced from reality for my tastes. Emphasize the positive by all means, but the title amounts to wishful thinking, especially given the incredible difficulties the entire telecommunication equipment market faces. Remember Nortel? Like that “Little Engine that Could,” Nokia Siemens may think it can, but this isn’t a children’s story, and it might not have a happy ending.

With intense competition coming from European competitors Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson and even more fierce rivalry from the upstart Asian vendors, Huawei, and ZTE, selling telecom equipment is getting more cutthroat. The company is dragging down its backers, with Nokia marking down $1.4 billion of its investment in the joint venture during the most recent quarter, despite efforts a year ago to cut costs. Cutting costs is only going to take Nokia Siemens so far, and it’s not likely to get it over the hill into profitability and growth.

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Qwest Sees 100 Gbps in Its (Long Haul) Future

Stacey Higginbotham — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:00:41 +0000

Qwest today said it has purchased gear from Alcatel-Lucent that will one day allow its long-haul network to achieve speeds of 100Gbps. Since the company decided last June to keep its long-haul network, the upgrades were part of a continued and necessary investment in greater speeds and capacity, Qwest CTO Pieter Poll said. However, before folks get too excited, the new equipment makes the Qwest backbone network 100Gbps-ready, rather than delivering those speeds anytime soon. Current long haul networks are delivering about 40Gbps.

Just for fun, the Qwest release offers examples of how fast a 100Gbps network can transfer data:

138 4.7GB DVDs in 60 seconds
A 2-hour HD movie or presentation in less than 9 seconds
A fully loaded 500GB hard drive in 46 seconds
90 digital mammograms per second

Those at home won’t see these speeds, as this is for Qwest’s business customers that connect to its fiber-based long-haul network to link data centers and for the broader wave of Internet traffic aggregated by ISPs that is sent out over the giant backbones of the web. But because Qwest is saying that Internet traffic is doubling approximately every 19 months, and that each year, individual Internet users consume approximately 43 percent more bandwidth than the previous year, it’s clear that demand for backbone capacity will continue to rise. Heck, Qwest is doing its part to increase usage by upgrading its broadband customers in some areas to faster services with better upload speeds.

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Germans Get Cheaper Cell Phone Service In Exchange for Ads

Stacey Higginbotham — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:13:28 +0000

Alcatel-Lucent said today that it’s begun providing German carrier E-Plus with equipment that inserts advertisements onto mobile devices based on demographic information provided by a subsidiary of the carrier. Customers opt in to the service and in exchange get extra minutes or texts on their cell phone plans. Gettings, the E-Plus subsidiary collecting the information and delivering the ads, offers plans that send between 10-25 ads per week. When customers sign up for the program they are asked to indicate via a checklist topics that interest them so they are subsequently delivered relevant pitches.

Will this become a high-quality targeted advertising effort similar to the ads delivered by Google based on search, or will this sort of advertising instead remind users of the experience offered back in the late 90s when ISPs such as NetZero offered free dial-up in exchange for irritating pitches? If the experience is unobtrusive and the incentives are right, I can see plenty of younger subscribers signing up, and merely accepting ad-based mobile service as the way to do things, much like we do today for search. That could change the business model around low data-rate mobile services such as texting and voice calls, to one in which carriers offer them for free or at reduced rates to folks that accept ads.

As an opt-in program, presumably people will understand what exactly they are giving up, making this less underhanded than other planned mobile advertising schemes. However, it’s still an invasive form of advertising.

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Global Cell Phone Growth Slowed During Q1

Stacey Higginbotham — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:43:31 +0000

Global revenue growth from mobile phone subscriptions has slowed, according to data released today by research firm Telegeography. The firm notes that the top 20 global service providers generated $251 billion during the first three months of 2009, which was only up 3 percent from the same period last year. Part of the slowed growth was related to market saturation, but Telegeography said it was also tied to the lousy economy, which depressed demand.

India and China, which together accounted for 48 percent of the global growth, were bright spots on the world stage. The U.S. and Canada saw only 2 percent growth, however the U.S. did add 1 million broadband subscribers, demonstrating how wireless data can offer some growth for a carrier in saturated markets. Worldwide broadband subscriber additions during the quarter came in at 14 million.

The top 10 telecom equipment vendors (Telegeography includes handset makers in the group), generated $59 billion in sales during the quarter, down 5 percent from the same period in 2008, and a 15 percent drop from the previous quarter. Huawei, Samsung, RIM and LG Electronics had respectable sales during the first quarter, while Nokia, Cisco, Motorola and Alcatel-Lucent struggled. Meanwhile, Nortel was cut from the Top 10 entirely.

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Qualcomm May Slow Verizon's LTE Plans

Stacey Higginbotham — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:23:36 +0000

Verizon has been aggressively pushing its fourth generation wireless network plans, which would bring Long Term Evolution, or LTE, to 20-35 markets by the end of 2010. But in the interconnected world of telecommunications, the desires of a vendor can be waylaid if all the pieces of the puzzle aren’t there in time. And for Verizon, Qualcomm’s pieces may be showing up late. Its LTE chips for data cards won’t be generally available until the second half of next year, and chips for handsets might not be available until well into 2011, according to an industry analyst.

That means Verizon won’t make its plan to have LTE handsets in 2011, and it will likely struggle to launch its network in 2010 with many devices capable of using the speedy new network. According to a report issued by Deutsche Bank this morning:

“We found a slide in their booth nailing down Qualcomm’s LTE roadmap. They will sample their first LTE chips in the middle of this year. This should make them ready to ship in commercial product by roughly the second half of next year. Their first two chips are the MDM 9200 and MDM 9600. The MDM moniker means they are suitable for data cards. The 9200 will have LTE and HSPA, the 9600 will be tri-mode with LTE, HSPA and EV-DO Rev. B. Qualcomm expects to sample its first chip for LTE handsets in the middle of next year.”

Qualcomm’s intellectual property is in all of Verizon’s devices (handsets or data cards), because Qualcomm controls the IP around CDMA networks. So, until Qualcomm gets an LTE/CMDA combo chip out, Verizon would either have to source the LTE radio chips from a different vendor or wait to provide devices that can travel from 4G to 3G networks. With a limited deployment at first, an LTE-only device would have limited appeal.

Once the chips are out, device makers need to build them into phones, a process than has taken up to 18 months (although, with PC makers getting involved, it may take less time). There’s also Verizon’s rigorous testing of devices for its network, which could slow handsets down even more. So while I’m still hoping that Verizon’s LTE network is up and running in certain places in 2010, I’m not going to hold out for LTE handsets in the 2011 time frame. Data cards will come sooner, but may still lag the network buildout by a few months.

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GigaOM Spring Cleaning: Motorola and Others Hit the Dustbin

Stacey Higginbotham — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:30:21 +0000

We’re no rating agency here at GigaOM, but Om and I got together this week to figure out our coverage priorities for the coming months — let’s call it a spring cleaning — and decided there are five companies that we’re just not going to spend a lot of time on anymore. Nortel , AMD, Motorola, Vonage and Alcatel-Lucent are getting the boot.

We’re making room for five companies that we think deserve a little more attention and/or deeper scrutiny: Qualcomm, MetroPCS, Huawei, Juniper Networks and Clearwire. All but Huawei are public companies, but Huawei is big enough to matter. This isn’t to say there aren’t tens of other companies we plan to cover closely, but since we’ve essentially upgraded a few and downgraded these others, we figured you guys might care to know what we’re thinking. If not, just skip our rationale below:

Downgrades:

Nortel — It’s bankrupt and may never emerge. ‘Nuff said.
Motorola — Motorola may have a great turnaround story coming, and we’ll definitely keep our eye on them, but it’s no fun to air the same old doubts every single time we mention them.
AMD — The perpetual underdog role is wearing thin. AMD is playing second fiddle to Intel on the x86 side, Nvidia on the graphics side and doesn’t even have a mobile strategy. Splitting off manufacturing isn’t the game-changing move that AMD needs.
Vonage — The former VoIP superstar is losing money and subscribers. At least it stopped running those commercials all the time.
Alcatel-Lucent — We know it just won a big Chinese equipment contract, but the company is still finding its way in a difficult environment. It’s all pretty meh.

Upgrades:

Qualcomm — The titan of CDMA hasn’t sat back waiting for its licensing royalties to halt. We’re eager to see what it can do to make its Snapdragon chip more competitive on the graphics side and how its bets on MediaFLO and Gobi play out.
Juniper — The networking company is planning some serious forays into the data center with its Project Stratus. What can we say? We’re interested.
Huawei — This Chinese networking and telecommunication equipment provider is making waves in the world of WiMAX and as its home country builds out a 3G wireless infrastructure.
MetroPCS — The budget wireless carrier is interesting because it stands to grow during the crappy economy, and because it’s planning on an upgrade to LTE sooner than most of the national carriers.
Clearwire — WiMAX may never be the success Intel, Sprint and Clearwire hope it will be, but it will be interesting to see how and if Clearwire and its partners can parlay the first 4G network to their own advantage.

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Like Facebook or Google, Wireless Carriers Need to Scale

Stacey Higginbotham — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:17 +0000

Most in the technology world think about scaling in relation to web sites and data centers, but the carriers operating the world’s wireless networks are worried about scale as well. As they transition to fourth generation (4G) wireless networks, they’re not just thinking about increasing data speeds; they’re also trying to figure out how to deliver more data-consuming new services over their networks in a way that generates more money for them. Otherwise they’re planning to sell your personal data to advertisers to boost their bottom lines.

Currently, a huge number of data-using subscribers can drive up costs over the traditional packet-switched networks in use today. By moving to an all-IP network like LTE or WiMAX it’s possible for carriers to offer IP services like unified communications, with lowered costs, to an increasing number of users. Estimates from Analysys Research assume that carriers will be able to deliver more data for less: about 1,800 terabytes per month for 1 euro cents on an LTE network, compared to delivering 500 TB per month for 6 euro cents on a UMTS network.

The lowered cost per bit and the ever-increasing need for data services delivered over a mobile network will eventually drive carriers to choose an all-IP network structure, posits a Deutsche Bank report out today. From the report:

Operators we spoke with also pointed out that a flat packet core infrastructure diverts the focus of their capex dollars from upgrading legacy equipment to ‘revenue-generating’ middleware platforms for offering value-add Telecom 2.0 and Web 2.0 mashup services (refer to our recent ‘Telecom 2.0’ report). … Several operators we spoke with mention that it is increasingly important to upgrade to network equipment that scales logarithmically to user traffic demand, given the decoupling that operators are witnessing between data traffic growth and services revenues.

However, even though they know the benefits of moving to 4G networks, carriers are still moving slowly. Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and Motorola certainly would love for carriers to start on their all-IP equipment buying sprees, but issues around voice quality and spending on new equipment are one of the biggest hurdles.

But, as IP wireless networks deliver more data, carriers can offer new, revenue-generating IP-based services and deliver that data for less. Perhaps then equipment vendors will get the all-IP networks they’ve been pitching.

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