From “Walled Gardens” into the
“Telecom Chaos”
Key trends in
Contemporary Communication Systems
Jens Zander
Director, Wireless@KTH
Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
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Outline – Technology track
• Key trends and challenges (JZ)
• Key area: Infrastructure (Jan Markendahl)
– Mobile Broadband and the ”Revenue Gap” (”teaser” today)
• Key area: Services & user behavior (Zary Segall)
– What would Google do ?
• Meeting 2: Networks & Services (Gerald Maguire)
• Meeting 3: Personal logistics & Terminals (Mark Smith)
• Meeting 4: Infrastructure deployment (Jan Markendahl)
Part I:
Key challenges & trends
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Trend 1:
Much more for (even) less
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The Long term Vision:
Wireless - A “Disappearing” Technology
Vanishing (”Hidden”) technology
Penetration
”Everyone” has it
Exclusive
Time
Mobile access
anytime – anywhere
1 device/person
Personal & home
networks
10 devices/person
”Things that communicate”
100-1000 devices/person
Trend 1: (Much) More for less
First fixed IP access – then mobile access
Vision 2000
• Mobile Web-browsing – the multimedia
service platform
• Interactive information services
• Streaming audio/video
• Rich exponentially growing content
• Adapted to small terminals
+ Location & context aware services
+ Same price as mobile telephony
TODAYs reality:
• Same price as home-ADSL
• Mobile telephony prices dropping
• Take-off was delayed – but
happening now
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Traffic volumes rapidly increasing
Volume
• Flat rate tariffs create
data traffic boom
• Typical users:
Traffic
– EDGE 50 MB/month
– HSPA 800 MB/month
Revenue gap
• Revenues are not
following. Example:
Data traffic + 300%
Revenues +11%
Revenue
(”major operator data”)
Voice dominated
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Data dominated
Time
Why is it so expensive ?
The 4 cost drivers
Csystem
• High bandwidth
 Buser Aservice f (Q)
N user
• Wide Area
• High speed mobility &
lossless handover
• Real time/low delay
1 Mbit/s at GSM service quality 
50-100 times more expensive
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The street light analogy
Why are parts of Sweden dark at night ?
– Technical limitations ?
– User demand ?
– Economical limitations ?
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Trend 2:
Bits are just bits and can be
produced anywhere –
now also in the mobile domain!
Services provided by anyone
- except the network operator ?
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Open IP access- ”Intelligence Outside”
The Walled Garden
The Outback
Service n
Service 2
Content
provider
Service 3
Service 1
”Intelligent
Network” IMS
Service 3
Service n
Content
provider
”Dumb”
IPconnectivity
Service 2
Service 1
•
•
•
•
•
User
Terminal
User
Terminal
High QoS
Simple Terminals
Low flexibility
High cost
Required for new demanding applications
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•
•
•
•
•
End-end principle
Best effort
High flexibility
Low cost
Mature application platforms
Computing in the cloud
”Infinite” bandwidth
Arbitrary distribution and physical
location of resources:
–
–
–
–
Computation
Storage
Sensors
….
Services not tied to neither networks nor access
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The changing value chain
Affecting industry players
consumers
vendors
Telco
operator
’90s and before
today and the future
evolved users
vendors
Telco
operator
Mobile services .. ”over the top”
• Sufficient mobile bandwidth:
• Services ”over the top” (IP)
• No need for networked
services
• New Actors:
– Apple (Appstore)
– Google (Android Market)
• New Service paradigm
– Try & Buy
• Death of SMS, Voice ..?
(Google Talk ?)
Some consequences: Mobile TV
• Mobile TV –
–
–
–
–
Operator provided service
Streaming
Real-time
Existing TV-content
is dead !
• Personal Multi Media
– Individual personalized content
– Non-real time – on demand
– Time-shifting
is ”out there” and lives but without access operator intervention!
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Questions for discussions
• Where is TS going in mobile ?
– High quality bit-pipe provider?
– Content aggregator
– (e.g. Mobile entertainment) ?
– Generic IP based Services
– Business solutions ….
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Part II:
Challenges and potential
Showstoppers ahead ….
The Challenges & potential
”Showstoppers”
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Spectrum
”Shannon”
Energy
Cost
Complexity – Reliability
Legal issues
Health Hazards ?
New business models ?
Do we need more spectrum for
wireless access services ?
• Basically no: Higher data rate – short range
communication
• But: More spectrum – cheaper systems – less
energy
Low power
Spectrum
Efficiency
Low Infrastructure
Cost
Dynamic Access Modes for White Space Access
?
Opportunistic (Overlay) Access (”Cognitive Radio”)
Underlay Access (”UWB”)
Primary users
Temporarly unused spectrum, ”holes”
Business implications ?
• From ”exclusive ownership” – to
commodity
• Lower price of spectrum due to
– Increased supply of spectrum
– Increased interference from
secondary users
• Easier access to spectrum - more
competition
• More difficult to guarantee service ?
• New spectrum business models ?
Energy
• Global scale:
– Energy consumption of
IT-technology not neglectable
(2% of CO2-emission)
– 3G technology example
• Base station RF output (at antenna): 60 W
• Power input: 6 kW (Efficiency 1%)
• Reason Spectrum efficient – not power efficient
• Application scale:
– More processing, more power- battery life
does not keep up
– Low cost low maintenance (disposable)
devices _ extremely low power consumption
Storage
• Mobile Storage rapidly increasing
– 100KB  1TB .. and more
• Cost down
– HD < 10c / GB
– Flash < 1$/GB
• Always connected and everything stored
centrally OR Everything in the devices ?
• New storage based internet paradigm ?
The Vision
Complexity & Reliability
Yesterday
0.1-1.0 billion of users
Complex networks
Complex expensive devices
•
Complex to use
•
Does not scale
Tomorrow
10-100 billion of users and devices
Even more complex networks
Complex but in-expensive devices
•
Simple to use and deploy
•
Extremely reliable
•
Affordable for everyone
Some conclusions
• Key Opportunities:
– Moore’s law keeps going: more memory, more processing in
less space
– Plug-and-play / Zero configuration systems
• Key challenges:
– Energy – both global and battery life
– Spectrum – plenty availblable but difficult to access
– Complexity – Reliability
www.wireless.kth.se
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