Trouble in the VoLTE World!

This is going to be a serious problem particularly for those in the Public Safety world who think VoLTE is going to replace PTT radio networks.  It will be interesting to see how battery life will be expanded, maybe the VoLTE hand set will look like the old cellphone "bricks"!

1. Study: VoLTE slashes smartphone battery life by 50%

By Tammy Parker

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Operators hoping to engage in widespread deployment of voice over LTE in order to gain spectral efficiencies in their network may face some unhappy customers because one vendor's recent tests showed that VoLTE calls can slash a device's talk-time battery life by half. The study comparing device battery life for calls placed over an LTE network vs. calls placed over a CDMA network was conducted on an unnamed U.S. operator's network in two major markets using a smartphone capable of supporting both CDMA and VoLTE voice calling. "The device's estimated battery life was reduced by 50 percent or about 252 minutes of talk time when voice calls were placed over the LTE network, compared to voice calls placed over the CDMA network," according to the study, authored by Ardeshir Ghanbarzadeh, director, services development, for Metrico Wireless, which was acquired by Spirent Communications in September. "The significant difference in current drain between VoLTE and CDMA technologies for voice calling applications suggests further optimization of devices supporting VoLTE calls are needed in order to give end-users talk-time battery life expectancy levels similar to that of 3G devices," said Ghanbarzadeh in the report, a copy of which was obtained by FierceBroadbandWireless prior to its public release. The smartphone tested had a fully charged, lithium-ion 3.7-volt 1540 mAh battery. View a larger version on the Web. CDMA voice-only calls resulted in an average battery current drain of 183 milliamps (mA), and average power consumption of 680 milliwatts (mW). That was about 50 percent less than the power gobbled up by VoLTE calls, which produced an average current drain of 365 mA and average power consumption of 1358 mW. Interestingly, tests of multi-service simultaneous voice and data calls using just the LTE network revealed 11 percent less current drain than multi-service sessions using CDMA for voice and LTE for data. "This is possibly attributed to the fact that only the LTE radio is in use when using VoLTE/LTE, where as the CDMA radio and the LTE radio are in use when conducting the session in CDMA/LTE," wrote Ghanbarzadeh. Specifically, the average current drain for CDMA voice combined with LTE data was measured at 889 mA, and the average power consumption at 3280 mW. Employing VoLTE for calls along with LTE for data service produced an average current drain of 790 mA, and 2915 mW of power consumption. CDMA operators, such as MetroPCS (NYSE:PCS) and Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ) have led the charge into LTE and VoLTE as they seek to replace their older 3G technology with something more data friendly and spectrally efficient. In addition VoLTE enables carriers to set up a native mobile VoIP solution the can compete with over-the-top calling services such as Skype and incorporate new features, such as video, into traditional voice service. MetroPCS became one of the first mobile operators in the world to deploy VoLTE when it launched service this past summer in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. DespiteFierceBroadbandWireless' inquiries, the operator did not make a representative available to discuss whether MetroPCS' VoLTE users have suffered from the types of battery-life issues described in the Metrico/Spirent study. T-Mobile has said it will continue supporting MetroPCS' VoLTE deployments after the two operators' merger closes, likely in the first half of 2013, but has no intention of expanding the VoLTE service anytime soon. Verizon Wireless CTO Nicola Palmer recently disclosed the operator expects to begin consumer trials of VoLTE in late 2013 with commercial VoLTE service expected in 2014, two years later than initial commercial launch plans. Verizon has indicated a desire to sunset its CDMA networks by 2021. AT&T (NYSE:T), meanwhile, consistently targeted 2013 for its VoLTE launch. The operator intends to shut down its 2G GSM network by 2017 Related articles: Verizon pushes back VoLTE service until 2014 Updated: Verizon Wireless to sunset 2G and 3G CDMA networks by 2021 T-Mobile will support MetroPCS' VoLTE but won't rush to expand it AT&T will shutter its 2G network by 2017 The next generation of voice: VoLTE

Keep your Priorities in Order!

Stress is a Choice An Empty Pickle Jar A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly he picked up a very large and empty pickle jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was. So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous "yes." The professor then produced two glasses of chocolate milk from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed. The Moral of the Story - The professor waited for the laughter to subside.... "Now," said the professor, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things...your family, your children, your health, yourfriends, your favorite passions. Things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full." "The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your home, your car." "The sand is everything else...The small stuff. If you put the sand into the jar first, there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are critical to your happiness." "Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house or fix the disposal." "Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities, the rest is just sand."

FirstNet Board Meets, moves forward, Utilities didn't even get an honorable mention!

The FirsNet Board met recently to kick off their new activities to build a nationwide 700 MHz LTE network in the D-Block but despite all the rhetoric floating around the industry about sharing with other critical infrastructure users, such as the nation's utilities, there was not even mention of utilities reported by the trade press at this meeting.

See Urgent Communications article here!

Marc

Is Solar fading into the Sunset?

The article below is indicative of the realities of solar energy, great product in theory but the economics just don't work, at least not yet.

Continuing lowering prices for less effective solar cells make it impossible to make money in the business as a manufacturer.  Reminds me of the story of the Texas Aggie grad selling watermelons, he decided he needed a bigger truck for us his business.  When asked why he said, "well I am losing a dollar on each melon but with this small truck I can't sell enough to even break-even, so I figure if I could just get  a bigger truck I could make up the loss by significantly increasing my volume of sales!"  Rumor has it this Aggie went broke, got into politics and ended up as the Mayor of large Texas City.

Marc

Is the sun setting on solar?

By Barbara Vergetis Lundin

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While low prices for PV technology have led to increasing installations, these prices are also likely to lower quality technology and installations, possibly resulting in a global backlash against solar power, Pike Research contends. Solar technologies, including concentrated solar power, photovoltaic , and concentrated photovoltaic, are going through a significant correction as a seven-year period of capacity building, aggressive pricing, and promises of grid parity driven largely by feed-in tariffs comes to an end, according to Pike. Given high levels of capacity, mounting inventory, and decreasing incentive levels, PV industry growth could be flat to negative for the next couple of years, Pike concludes. "Low prices and generous tariffs have led directly to the expectation of even lower prices, even as manufacturing capacities have increased and new market entrants have flooded the industry, most assuming that the outcome would be high profits," said Paula Mints, Director of Solar Research for Pike. "For technology suppliers, the expectation that prices will consistently decrease has led to painful consolidation and failure. Certainly, selling less and losing less would be in the industry's best interests. Historically, however, the PV industry has behaved in a manner that indicates growth is the desired state, even if this growth is unprofitable." All this aside, solar is not going away and will play an important part in the future energy mix, she added.

FCC PLANS TO ENFORCE UHF/VHF NARROWBANDING MANDATE

Aug 28, 2012 5:26 PM, By Donny Jackson

More From Policy & Law

• PSCR seeks global support for public-safety LTE
• FCC plans to enforce UHF/VHF narrowbanding mandate
• Video: Dowd on FirstNet board appointment
• Gurss: Congress may have to revisit T-Band mandate
• NTIA releases information on planning grant program for 700 MHz LTE

» more

With a little more than four months left until LMR systems operating on frequencies below 512 MHz are required to migrate from 25 kHz channels to 12.5 kHz channels under the FCC’s narrowbanding rules, licensees should be prepared for enforcement consequences if they do not meet their obligations or secure a waiver from the agency, a commission official said last week.

“In the past year, we’ve seen a lot of progress, as many licensees have migrated their systems to narrowband operations—this has been very gratifying,” David Furth, deputy chief of the FCC’s public safety and homeland security bureau, said during a session at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) conference last week. “But we still have thousands of public-safety licensees who are operating in wideband mode, and time is short.

“Let me reiterate what the commission has said all along: We are not moving the narrowbanding deadline. It is, and will be, Jan. 1, 2013.”

Furth said affected licensees have two choices to remain in compliance: make the transition to narrowband technology or get a waiver from the FCC. The commission has detailed the conditions for waiver approval, one of which takes into account when a waiver application is filed, Furth said.

“In order to obtain a waiver, you need to make a timely request—that means now, if you have not filed a waiver,” he said. “I cannot overemphasize that waiver requests that are filed at the 11^th hour before the deadline will be viewed with skepticism and are very likely not to be granted.”

Affected licensees that fail to narrowband and do not obtain a waiver will suffer consequences, Furth said.

“Will the commission enforce its rules? The answer is emphatically, ‘Yes,’” he said. “We are already working with the FCC’s enforcement bureau to prepare for 2013, and the enforcement bureau plans to issue guidance soon, reminding licensees of their narrowbanding obligations and of the commission’s intent to aggressively enforce the narrowband mandate.

“It is important to get the word out to your friends and neighbors to make sure that everyone is taking this obligation seriously. This is serious.”

Harsh words from David Furth to the Public Safety world, but can anyone imagine the FCC actually shutting down a Public Safety Network in January 2013 because they did not narrowband?  I certainly can't. 

If you want an example of an FCC hard deadline in the Public Safety world I will refer you to the 800 MHz Re-Banding Mandate issued in August 2004 to be finished in December 2007, it is now August 2012 and it is still not done and the process has outlived not only Nextel, but the actual iDEN Network which is now being decommissioned. 

It will be an interesting 2013 in the regulatory world!

Marc 

Sprint Crows about its Backhaul, made possible in part by the efforts of L&W's Steve Hill and Shane Dickson

Because of the efforts of L&W's Steve Hill and Shane Dickson, Sprint is telling the world about its backhaul network.  Steve and Shane are of course part of Alcatel Lucent's design team that is planning and helping deliver this network for Sprint.  

L&W has been a part of the Alcatel Lucent team for a couple years now and we are very proud of our team members and their contributions to both Alcatel's and Sprint's success.  Nice work guys!

Marc

Sprint: Ethernet backhaul gives us 20 times more bandwidth

By Sue Marek

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Sprint Nextel's (NYSE:S) upgrade of its backhaul network from T1s to Ethernet will create such better efficiency for the company that it will reduce the cost of delivering data, even as consumer demand for data skyrockets. In fact, making the switch to Ethernet backhaul will give Sprint 20 times the bandwidth capacity at a cell site location, said a Sprint executive. Speaking at the Pacific Crest Global Technology Leadership conference earlier this week in Vail, Colo., Sprint Nextel's Vice President of Strategic ProgramsMarty Nevshemal said that one of the goals of the company's Network Vision network modernization plan is to lower the cost of delivering data. As an example, Nevshemal  said that the company might pay $1,500 per month for T1 backhaul at a tower site. That T1 might deliver 4.5 MB of backhaul capacity. When Sprint switches to Ethernet, Nevshemal said that for the same price of $1,500 per month, Sprint will get almost 20 times the backhaul bandwidth at that location. "Your unit cost for that part of the network--the backhaul--is 95 percent cheaper to put a bit of data through that backhaul. That is Network Vision," he said.    When asked whether Sprint can continue to offer its $79 per month unlimited data package, Nevshemal said that it's hard for the company to predict whether it will be able to offer unlimited data to customers indefinitely because it depends on how much data consumers will use--U.S. operators have seen data usage skyrocket as consumers rapidly upgrade to smartphones and those smartphones become more sophisticated in their capabilities. Sprint made headlines last month when an executive said that the company expects to offer unlimited data service for Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) LTE-compatible iPhone 5 when it comes out this fall--that is, if the rumored iPhone 5 actually launches and if Sprint gets it. Interestingly, Nevshemal also said that the company will likely accelerate its launch of LTE markets in the fourth quarter. He said the carrier will have around 25 markets equipped with LTE by year-end. In mid-July, Sprint launched LTE in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City and San Antonio. He said that Sprint will begin notifying customers of the impending LTE launch in a market about 30 days in advance of the service being commercially available.

You didn't build that!

Those of you know me, realize that I am never politically correct, nor reserved about my opinions.  Those of you who know me will also already know that I have ZERO respect for President Barack Hussein Obama.  And my lack of respect has nothing to do with his questionable citizenship, it has to do with his attitude that America is somehow the aggressor in the world and that we owe the world an apology for our success.

So it will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I am livid about the President’s statement at a campaign rally in Roanoke, Va. on July 13^th when he was off teleprompter and in his full class warfare mode and enthusiastically blurted out, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that! Somebody else made that happen!” 

Here is a man who appeared out of nowhere in 2004 when he made a speech at the Democratic Convention. The only job he has ever had other than that as a paid politico is that of a community organizer, aka an agitator.  He has lived his entire life off of other people’s money.  As best anyone can tell, he has been a ward of the State living off of your and my tax dollars for his entire adult life.  Yet he dares to tell businessmen that we have had nothing to do with building our business and that if it were not for government, American businesses could not survive!

So after he said that I went back and checked to be sure I had not missed something over the last 40 years!   I mean I even went back to my high school yearbook, The Chieftain, to see if it was really me in that SHS Class of 1968 picture.  It looked like me, it had my name under it, but now I question if I really did graduate. 

So I went on to my 1972 Texas A&M yearbook and looked myself up and by gosh, there I was and my degree says I have an Electrical Engineering degree.  But now I don’t know.  Maybe it was someone from the government that stayed up and studied all those nights to get through A&M. 

Then I went back and looked at the bank note’s I signed in 1979 pledging my personal assets and providing my personal guarantee for the money that I borrowed to start my business and provide the paychecks, and yep, that was my signature and I confirmed there were no government grants or government loans.  And I checked to see if the banks really did have a lien on my assets, and sure enough they do!

But I thought hey everyone tells me that Obama is so brilliant that we common folk just can’t understand him, so I decided to check further,  I went back and looked at all the tax returns both personally and for the business that I filed paying our personal and business taxes from the money we had left over from paying our bankers, our license fees, and our employees.  Yep seemed to be my signature on all those documents.

I looked for pictures and other evidence of government employees who were working with me day and night and while I found lots of pictures of my family and our employees who were working hard, I simply can’t find any evidence that my survivability, so far, can be attributed to anyone from the government.  Hell I can’t even find any evidence that anyone from the government was around when I wanted them to help. 

During the downturn of 2009 (that would be after Mr. Obama took office) I did experience new governmental regulations that made it even harder to survive.  Thanks to the Dodd Frank Act, passed by Mr. Obama and his buddies, the banking relationships most business owners had either vanished or changed significantly.   Government regulations have made it increasing hard to get anything done or finance any expansion. 

So Mr. Obama you are just WRONG, businesses do not exist because of government; businesses exist in SPITE of government!

However Mr. Obama did say something else that night in Roanoke, “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.”   And he was right, in my case there were/are great teachers such as Mrs. Welch, Mrs. Brinkman,  Mr. Williford, Mr. Pinkerton, Dr. Linder; great family and friends, Sue Ann my lifelong friend, partner and wife; my parents who made my life easy and convinced me that I could do anything; Jimmy Schoppe who not only let me do everything, he challenged me to do more; Charlie White, a great mentor, friend and partner; Jim & Cindy  Jennings who have been part of my business so long they are now considered family; Walter Hinkle, who came into our business in 2002 when things were really tough and helped me dig my way out; my kids who were always my inspiration and best cheerleaders, and all the wonderful employees who work their butts off everyday to keep our business going.  

So yes Mr. Obama I will give you that, there are always people who have given and continue to give people help along the way, but none of them I know worked for the government!

Marc