STOCKHOLM – To promote its work with equipment vendors at enabling the Connected Living program, the GSMA arranged a media tour of Ericsson’s customer demonstration studio at the Swedish vendor’s Kista headquarters. The GSMA and Ericsson arranged for a roster of speakers to discuss how Ericsson approaches the Research aspect of R&D aimed at identifying and meeting the demands that Connected Living – i.e., 50 billion connected devices and more than 3 billion mobile broadband subscribers – will create on mobile broadband networks.
Connected Living: By the Numbers
Earlier in the month, Ericsson released its Traffic and Market Report that provides a good baseline for exactly how “connected” we can expect life to be five years from now. Key stats include:
- 3 billion smartphone subscriptions
- 85% HSPA coverage
- 50% LTE coverage
- 15x increase in mobile broadband traffic over today
However, beyond plying us with raw numbers, one of the organizers’ goals was to present the journalists in attendance with tangible examples of how Connected Living is impacting our lives today, and how it will be increasingly so in the future. One example given talked of how Iceland crowdsourced a draft of its constitution. While a little on the bizarre side, things got flat out weird when checking out the connected tree that can tweet and interact with people as they walk by. Then, it got downright spooky when Ericsson demonstrated how people might be able to pass personal information to each other’s mobile phones through a handshake. And, I don’t mean like a data authentication on a server handshake, I mean like a, “Hey, glad to meet you”, handshake.
Nevertheless, these and other examples seen here on the right provide a tangible glimpse into the pervasiveness that the Connected Living concept could have on lives in the not-so-distant future.
Connected Living: Operator Imperatives
Of course, there are always plenty of things that are technologically possible. They key to commercialization comes in whether or not someone can charge for it. Here is where Ericsson Consumer Labs took over the tour to add some perspective on how operators should be approaching their customers to sell the Connected Living experience.
Michael Bjorn, head of research at the Ericsson Consumer Lab presented recent survey results that, admittedly, indicated some of the standard fare as to why people buy smartphones – to surf the web, check e-mail, use apps, etc. However, one of the more interesting results indicated that according to U.S. survey respondents, more than 15% indicated that they buy smartphones to help them “manage their lives better”. This signals a fundamental change in the way consumers are viewing mobile devices. Additionally, roughly 70% of respondents worldwide indicated that they want to mobilize routine transactions associates with things like loyalty cards, event tickets, commuter passes, and financial transactions.
The question then becomes, “How to do operators act on this information to generate new revenues?” Here’s where the Ericsson’s report provides an interesting insight.
Within this quote are a couple salient insights into how operators need to approach pricing and customer interaction as Connected Living concepts begin to take root.
First off, it is no secret that U.S. operators are struggling with the need to move subscribers off all-you-can-eat (AYCE) data plans, especially as LTE subscriptions ramp up. Moving subscribers off of AYCE plans will require a delicate touch for sure. But, if operators can supply customers with unlimited access to the handful of key apps that they use most, while then applying a metered approach to some up and coming and/or lesser used apps, then operators could have the opportunity to deliver the core value that customers are looking for while opening up the possibility of growing revenues as new apps usage patterns emerge.
Secondly, the quote also underscores the need for operators to craft custom offerings. This speaks directly to some of the more advanced Customer Experience Management (CEM) capabilities that vendors such as Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks, et. al. have been touting for the past few years. If one of the fundamental advantages of advanced CEM solutions is to be able to target specific offerings to specific customers at specific times, then CEM also becomes a fundamental enabler of Connected Living. Speaking at the CTIA Wireless show this past April, Ericsson’s Grant Lenahan told RCR Wireless News that the key to serving customers in the future is, “not on how I can take a mass service an roll it out to 20 million people, but how can I take 1,000 custom versions of that service and roll it out in a way that is very efficient and agile.”
Connected Living: Network Enablers
Given that the host of this junket is a mobile wireless networking equipment supplier, at some point, the discussion had to turn to how all of the directional indicators regarding the proliferation of the Connected Life would impact the network. To this end, Ericsson gave several presentations on some of the things that it is doing to make Connected Living feasible from a networks perspective. While almost every aspect of the network will be impacted, three specific areas stood out as important problems that equipment suppliers and operators must solve in order to make mobile broadband, and indeed, Connected Living possible.
Energy efficiency for small cells
If the future of mobile broadband is heterogeneous networks (HetNets) enabled by small cells, then power consumption must be reduced dramatically on a per network element basis. While still somewhat foggy as to how they’ll accomplish it, Ericsson’s head of research, Jan Farjh put on a demo that indicated that the Swedish vendor is ginning up something that will allow multiple small cells to provide dramatically increased coverage and capacity while maintaining power consumption levels that are approximately equivalent to a macro cell covering the same area today.
Signaling and battery life
Ever since smartphones were introduced signaling has been vilified as one of the key robbers of not only wireless spectrum but also handset battery life. To this end, every successive mobile OS release generally features some meaningful statistic regarding the reduction in signaling load. In particular, Ericsson called out Fast Dormancy as a key standards based approach for reducing signaling load. While not a new concept, Gregor Blennerud, head of mobile broadband marketing at Ericsson pointed out that, partially due to Fast Dormancy suggestions put forth by Ericsson, Android 4.x achieved a 25% increase in battery live compared to Android 2.x.
Small packet superhighway
Beyond signaling and battery life issuges, another hitch in Connected Living’s giddyup is the inefficient transport of “small packets” which carry information related to things such as sports score updates, Facebook updates, and other items that tend to get refreshed often. In answer to this, Ericsson highlighted its work in helping to develop High Speed Forward Access Channel (HS-FACH). In essence, this takes increases the bandwidth allocated to FACH channels to enable rapid refresh cycles on a large scale.
While neither Fast Dormancy or HS-FACH are Ericsson exclusives, or even all that new, highlighting the work it is doing to move the needle in both areas helped to connect the dots between the futuristic demos on display in the Ericsson Studio, and the technological enablers that will be required.
Connected Living: What’s it Worth?
As the day wound down, eight hours worth of heavy-duty tech presentations, far-out proof of concept demonstrations, and way too much strong Swedish coffee left my head spinning just a little bit. It also left me wondering that despite how inevitable Connected Living might sound, it’ll only happen if somebody can get rich off of it. Just as we were about to pack up and head towards the door, I posed that question to Andrew Parker, the GSMA’s marketing director for Connected Living.
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