HOLLYWOOD, Fla. – In comments kicking off this week’s PCIA Wireless Infrastructure Show, keynote speakers from Sprint and AT&T both noted the importance of small cells, spectrum and software in terms of their abilities to meet growing demand for mobile data services.
AT&T Labs President and CEO Krish Prabhu said the carrier was looking to begin trialing carrier aggregation capabilities embedded in LTE Revision 10 that would allow the operator to package more spectrum to serve customers. Prabhu would not single out what spectrum bands it will use for the tests, but did say that the carrier’s 2.3 GHz spectrum could be part of the plans and that it hoped to at some point be able to use all of its spectrum assets. The trial will include both infrastructure and devices, with specific spectrum dependent on their vendor partner and location.
Prabhu noted the move to carrier aggregation would be important from a competitive standpoint as all operators will have LTE networks up and running in the short term, thus the ability to take advantage of adding more spectrum into the mix will be able to differentiate services.
Those carrier aggregation plans are also expected to integrate with AT&T’s continued push into small cells to help bolster coverage and capacity. Prabhu explained that in addition to the more than 10,000 new cell sites the carrier expects to have on air by the end of 2015, AT&T had plans for more than 1,000 distributed antenna systems and more than 40,000 small cells. Those small cells are expected to include what it terms metrocells that can provide support for both 3G and LTE and serve up to 32 simultaneous users per site. AT&T is currently trialing that technology in both indoor and outdoor environments, with the main challenge in making sure there is no interference between the small cell and macro networks.
To counter that challenge, Prabhu said AT&T will also be looking at self-optimizing and organizing networks in order to help with deployment challenges. He explained that the carrier was already seeing great success with SON in its HSPA-based 3G deployments, including a 15% improvement in dropped calls at cell edges, but that the software upgrade would be even more important as the carrier began weaving in thousands of small cells. Prabhu said those advancements are expected to begin showing up in the network over the next three to four years.
In the near term, AT&T expects to begin rolling out VoLTE services sometime next year, with Prabhu noting the major holdup at this point seemed to be in getting device to market. He expects there to be at least one device available by the end of this year, with an “iconic” device sometime next year.
Sprint stuffed with spectrum
Stephen Bye, CTO and SVP of technology development and corporate strategy at Sprint, touted the carrier’s recently bolstered spectrum holdings that have resulted in a layered approach to its plans. Bye noted that the carrier’s 800 MHz spectrum holdings, recently freed up by the turn down of its iDEN network, will provide a good base layer of coverage for the carrier’s CDMA and LTE services that should help the carrier better match 850 MHz and 700 MHz spectrum deployments for footprint and in-building coverage by its larger rivals. Sprint has been actively deploying CDMA voice service across this band and is in the process of layering in LTE services as well.
Bye also touched on the carrier’s workhorse 1.9 GHz band, which has proven the backbone of its 3G and LTE services, noting that its ongoing Network Vision program has resulted in better use of these spectrum resources. The carrier is looking to boost its holdings in the 1.9 GHz space through the federal government’s plans to auction off the H-Block that is adjacent to Sprint’s G-Block holdings, though that auction could see its timing slip from early next year due to the current government shutdown.
Of course, the bulk of Sprint’s spectrum holdings now lie in the 2.5 GHz band following its acquisition of Clearwire earlier this year. While Sprint has been including those spectrums in much of its materials touting its LTE plans, having full control of those assets should help the carrier accelerate those integration plans.
One advantage Bye touted from those 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings was the use of TDD-LTE technology, which will allow the carrier to dynamically alter the uplink and downlink channels in order to better support increased demand for streaming video content.
“This is growing and consumed content is getting richer and richer,” Bye said.
As for support from small cells, Bye noted that Sprint currently had more than one million femtocells in the market supporting 3G services and that greater use of small cells was a great technology to take advantage of spectrum re-use. One area the carrier continues to not have much interest in, at least internally, is the use of Wi-Fi offload. Bye said the carrier would continue looking for ways to better integrate all access services in supporting customer needs, but that the carrier is not interested in deploying a carrier-owned Wi-Fi network.
As for software, Bye said he saw a lot of potential for gleaning analytics out of the network, noting that while current services are driving revenues, he thought there was a significant opportunity in driving revenues from analytics. One way the carrier is looking to bolster those offerings is to tap into parent company Softbank’s cloud RAN strategy that will help Sprint better manage network deployments through dynamic management of resources, improve spectrum efficiency and more efficient capital spending.
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