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New Spectrum Paves Way to 4G

By John August 2, 2007 9:24 pm

Location: On vacation

Earlier this week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the U.S made several changes to the rules governing the commercial services portion of the 700 MHz band. The goals of these changes are aimed at helping create "a national broadband network for public safety that will address the interoperability problems of today’s system, provide for a more open wireless platform that will facilitate innovation and investment, and facilitate the emergence of next-generation wireless broadband services in both urban and rural areas."

This ruling is an important step in the continued evolution of the industry and is helping pave the way to 4G.

I invited John Hoadley, Nortel’s newly appointed Vice President of 4G Business and Ecosystem Development, to share his views. John has been with Nortel for more than 18 years in a wide spectrum of roles, including as leader of Nortel’s Wireless Technology Lab (WTL), which has been largely responsible for Nortel’s leadership in OFDM and MIMO – the foundations for all 4G wireless technologies.

John Hoadley
John Hoadley

Congratulations to the FCC once again for its leadership in opening new spectrum to pave the way to the future.

Over the last 12 years, the FCC has been the global leader in making attractive spectrum available to new and existing wireless carriers. By my count, the FCC has auctioned off more than 450 MHz worth of attractive spectrum at 700 MHz, 1.7/2.1 GHz, 1.9 GHz and 2.5 GHz. 700 MHz is one of the top prizes for any wireless carrier because its great propagation characteristics allow for large rural cell sites and good in-building coverage.

Looking back, the long-term impact of the auction of 120 MHz of spectrum at 1.9 GHz in 1995-1996 has been impressive:

  1. The US has one of the most competitive wireless markets in the world. Look in any paper, on TV, on the Web. US consumers have lots of wireless choices.
  2. Each U.S. wireless user chalks up more than 800 minutes of wireless voice each month (source: Pyramid Research, 1Q07), far outpacing any other country.
  3. Innovation and creativity are thriving. Blackberrys are ubiquitous. Early high-speed data offerings, such as Verizon’s V CAST and Sprint's Power Vision, are gaining traction.

So, what is next as carriers start to introduce new services at 700 MHz, 1.7/2.1 GHz and 2.5 GHz? 4G, starting with WiMAX 802.16e. Success in 4G will occur when consumers and devices are connected — in fact, when they are hyperconnected — to an affordable wireless broadband network. Low cost and convenience will allow users to have full access to the web and applications wherever they and their laptop, game device, MP3 player, etc. are.

There are 3 essential ingredients that will make 4G work: embedded silicon, OFDM – MIMO, and adequate spectrum.

  1. Embedded silicon in laptops, game devices, etc. allows all of the consumer electronic devices in our lives to be conveniently hyperconnected at a low cost. Companies like Intel, Qualcomm and TI will make this happen.
  2. OFDM-MIMO standards, along with other advanced antenna techniques, improve the spectral efficiency (the number of bits/Hz that can be sent) by 4 or more times what is possible today. If wireline networks are any indication, users want lots of bits (throughput) for video, images and music; therefore, the improved spectral efficiency of OFDM-MIMO is essential.
  3. Adequate spectrum gives the capacity and scalability needed to deliver 4G.

Again, congratulations to the FCC. You have done your part by continuing to deliver spectrum in a proactive, timely fashion to the market. Using the spectrum to make 4G a reality is now up to us.

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  1. […] Based on the recent dialog around 4G, I’ve invited Richard Lowe, the president of Nortel’s Carrier Networks group, to do a guest blog on Nortel’s 4G strategy, which he’s agreed to do and which I expect to post within the next couple of days. Because Richard ultimately owns the delivery and execution of our 4G solutions, his views are obviously very relevant. In the meantime, a few observations on the dialog from my last entry… […]

    August 15th, 2007 at 8:00 am from John Roese’s Blog » Blog Archive » Strategy versus Tactics

  2. […] thought the best way to do that would be to directly tackle some of the comments and questions that Paul Stevens […]

    August 16th, 2007 at 4:24 pm from John Roese’s Blog » Blog Archive » Nortel’s 4G Strategy

Comments

  1. Hi, I was just at NewsVisual and ran across and article they published about Nortel today. It looks like they have this program that can map the relationships of people at the company to a different company. For this article they did Nortel to Tellabs and 3Com, and since you’re pretty big at the company, you may be interested to see what they came up with. Here’s the link to the article: http://www.jimcramerblog.com/2007/08/nortel-networks-corp-nt-stock-falls-on.html

    August 3rd, 2007 at 3:37 pm by Shelly

  2. “Congratulations to the FCC.” I hope this blatant back-patting gets Nortel what you want.

    When do we get to congratulate Nortel? Here we have yet another blog post with pontification about what’s happening in the 4G world without ANY view of what Nortel is doing about it. Is Nortel a spectator or a player?

    Your competitors talk about what’s happening in the industry in the context of what they’re doing. Nortel behaves like an academic insitution and feels a need to educate us all on what will make 4G work. We get it. It isn’t complicated. We only want to know three things from Nortel in the context of 4G:

    1) You’ve opted out of 3G. How do you compete with the installed 3G players? Are you counting on rip and replace?

    2) What is your focus in 4G? Where will you play and why will you win?

    3) What is your high level roadmap? When should we expect to see your 4G business take off?

    Lots of other questions but until these fundamentals are answered, you don’t have a 4G business so the rest don’t matter.

    C’mon Nortel, step up and tell us what you’re doing, not what’s happening in the industry. We can get that anywhere.

    August 5th, 2007 at 1:01 am by Paul Stevens

  3. agreed Paul

    Although I have read some harsh criticism from you on other blogs,yu do bring to light a very important point.

    Nortel has a good chance to win in this market,however the customer needs to see a straight line right through from ambitions to product shipment.

    Demonstrating a straight line to the customer let’s them know that Nortel is fully committed to 4G,something that they have lacked in other technologies in the past.

    Time to step up to the plate!

    August 7th, 2007 at 10:00 am by Bill Stock

  4. Well, make sure that we are all in for the long costly road. The 3G Access that Alcatel bought from us is paying off nicely for them, even selling it back to AT&T who ripped Nortel. We had the best product, we just couldnt afford to stay in the game…

    August 8th, 2007 at 1:59 pm by Dan

  5. One good thing for Nortel about 4G is that it promises to be more competitive. The bad news is that it will take a longer time to reach the point of profitability and there is always the “next sliced bread” (it is more risky).

    Wi-fi is more powerful, but every study I have seen is that the range is limited to about 100 meters. Wi-fi is not mobile (no handoff) until 802.11r, if then.

    At the moment at least, I think Wi-fi is complementary not competitive.

    Now, can Nortel make headway in a complementary technology without “being there” already? I don’t know but it will be harder.

    What about MBWA you say? I don’t know enough about it to say. What has been done since October? I know it is *highly* political with John Roese’s former company slugging it out with Qualcomm/Flarion. I think it’s a long time coming though the courts though.

    I think based on recent decisions (which I don’t think are necessarily bad) it will be a bit longer between now and profit.

    August 8th, 2007 at 5:20 pm by many

  6. Many - one small but important correction. Broadcom shouldn’t really be referred to as John Roese’s former company. He was only there for months and he arrived there via an acquisition. John Roese is a small-company niche market player. IMHO, that’s why he is struggling to turn thought into action at a large company like Nortel. he’s never done that before. I don’t know why Nortel didn’t seek out an industry ‘player’.

    August 8th, 2007 at 11:41 pm by Paul Stevens

  7. Paul,

    Point taken.

    However, I have been impressed by things John Roese has written and I have come to believe that he has influenced policy and direction in a positive way at nortel. True, I am measuring him along side of his predecessors, who I think were mostly cutouts. There are still a lot of things wrong at nortel and one person can’t fix everything, but some technical leadership (rather than marketing hype) can go a long way toward finding the light at the end of the tunnel.

    I have to wonder where nortel might be if Roese had been around in 2001.

    Would nortel retreat been more orderly rather than a market rout with situational “musical chair” layoffs of some very talented people? Would some of these key design people still be around rather than some of the management sharks? Would the company have been more focused on the future rather than retreating to their comfort zone?

    The corrupt accounting would still have distracted the markets, but would the product portfolio be in better shape? Would there have been a more scientific approach to success and failure with lessons learned post mortems that are shared internally and acted upon without finger pointing? Would the MBAs still be making decisions like putting ads that mention explosions in airports? :) (Sorry, that was a cheap shot but to me a really good example of what I am talking about)

    In any case the current situation is wholly a creation of that management team in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. It is perpetuated by this management team (with a few notable exceptions) that do not understand the essentials of nortel any more than they understand the essential characteristics of the market and customers they are trying to sell to.

    I think as Rouse has pointed out time is running out. There is a sense of urgency to some of his comment. I agree there are a couple of key regulatory and technology changes in the wind that are going to move the market very soon. There is a dearth of available talent out there and it is about to get *much* worse. There is a whole lot of hostility toward nortel out there amongst former employees that either work for customers or competitors.

    The current wave of consolidation of service providers is almost over in certain parts of the world markets. Customers are looking for ways to differentiate themselves. Enterprises are understanding that communications is part and parcel of their products competitiveness and looking for communications vendors that understand the technology needs of their business. Both market sectors need more agile custom development and vendor participation/hosting. Both market sectors need more cohesion of process and solutions. Too much bad software is getting out (not just nortel). Labs are hopelessly overloaded and there needs to be better more agile prototyping and testing both internally and externally. There are natural partnerships out there (not non-exclusive showcase partnerships with big names like microsoft) that are not being explored.

    Nortel marketing quite plainly sucks and that has been discussed to death already.

    Unfortunately to a large degree, things at nortel still work by accident rather than by design.

    Nortel needs to address these essential problems and opportunities in a very honest and creative ways. I think Roese is capable of facilitating that dialog

    August 9th, 2007 at 9:16 am by many

  8. Many - I’m encouraged by your thoughtful and somewhat positive response to my somewhat cynical post(s). Maybe there’s still a tiny glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel?

    I was also very encouraged by John Roese when he arrived because he was a rarity in the executive ranks - he understands technology. Other than Pillipe Morin and Peter Carbone, who was the acting CTO when Roese was hired, I can’t point to anything but ‘cutouts’ in the Nortel executive ranks (to use your term).

    However, I’ve become less generous in my views of Roese as late because I don’t see any credible signs of change. Lots (!) of words, very little change. The only exception that comes to mind is the claim that Nortel is now spending more on 4G development. But still no strategy, plan, or roadmap, which is leading me to conclude that either the sitting presidents are ignoring Roese, or Roese and/or the larger Nortel leadership team are failing to execute.

    Bottom line - the enthusiam generated by words is growing thin. Plans and actions are needed to regenerate it. I hope your optimism is a sign of things to come because Nortel still has a lot of potential…at least for a littlle while longer.

    August 10th, 2007 at 2:28 pm by Paul Stevens

  9. Back to the subject at hand; wireless networking.

    What does the nortel CTO organization think of the nokia chip announcement yesterday? Sure looks good for broadcom and STMicro. Not so good for qualcomm and TI. Qualcomms general council Lou Lupin’s resignation today may finally spell the end of qualcomms hold on wireless CDMA technologies.

    All in all I think this is a very healthy development for the market and for the concept of “hyperconnectivity”.

    Probably not so much of an impact on 4G (unless I missed something?). It may be an effort to make 3G a commodity driving demand for faster rates?

    It will also be interesting to see if this development simplifies or makes more complex the protocol stacks at the edge. (trackback to the “IP unifying force or mask of complexity” posts)

    I also wonder if nokia’s purchase of twango and subsequent launch of its own social networking site indicates a very basic shift in strategy for nokia?

    Any thoughts?

    August 13th, 2007 at 7:51 pm by many

  10. I agree with John’s 3 essential ingredients for 4G success. However, as antennas are concerned, I believe that the development of innovative antenna techniques remains very slow compared to the development of other system components; to the extent that it can be a future bottle neck.

    Currently all WiFi, WiMAX access points use the conventional sleeve dipole antennas, developed 100 years ago! (I don’t know exactly when, but for sure it is too old). Despite its simplicity and abundance, the sleeve dipole antenna can be a real obstacle in front of 4G deployment because of the following:
    • 4G, unlike 2G and 3G, cannot have standard frequency allocation worldwide. It can be in some places as low as 700MHz and in others as high as 7.2 GHz and more. On the other hand sleeve dipole antenna are only available in single band, (there are some low-performance dual band versions). These two facts will lead the equipment manufacturers to manage the logistics of producing a per-region access point.
    • Moreover, the sleeve dipole antenna is not really performance-satisfying. It is external, electrical field (i.e. can be dead if close to any metal), single polarized and has low overall efficiency. In brief, it deteriorates the entire device efficiency.

    I recall the cellular handset experience, in which all handsets manufacturers were using external sleeve dipole antennas until mid-90’s when the first internal microstrip antenna for cell phones was invented. We can easily notice the impact of this invention on cell phone development in terms of size, efficiency and multi-band capability.

    In brief, I believe that there is a true need for innovative antenna techniques for wireless access points rather than, currently used, sleeve dipoles. The new antenna technique should be internal, multi-band, with high indoor performance and above all cost efficient.

    August 19th, 2007 at 7:50 am by Ramzy

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