Understanding LTE-Unlicensed // July 2015
Editor's Note
LTE-U Attracts
Controversy and
Industry support
Sponsored Content:
Revolutionary
Technology Demands
Revolutionary Testing
Can LTE and Wi-Fi
Coexist in the Same
Spectrum Band?
Sponsored Content:
Being a Good Neighbor:
Mobile Industry
Points the Way to LTE
Unlicensed
T-Mobile and LTE-U: An
Early Entrant Goes All-In
FierceWireless
An eBook from the editors of
share:
>> LTE-U Attracts Controversy and Industry Support
Ahmed Ali, Research Analyst, ABI Research, agrees that
deployment will initially focus on indoor locations using
small cells. "The main targets are enterprise and public
venues that have high data traffic. These locations are
already covered by Wi-Fi. To deploy LTE-U small
cells in such locations, operators need venue owners'
permission and collaboration. If venues believe LTE-U
might cause a possible disruption to their Wi-Fi
networks and their customers' experience, they won't
support it. So, I believe winning over those players is
crucial to drive large scale LTE-U adoption."
"LTE-U deployments will be limited until it is proven
that there will be no interference with Wi-Fi," Manjaro
agreed.
One big factor influencing the pace of LTE-U rollouts
is the pace of finalizing technology standards. "Some
vendors have promised to have products supporting
LTE in unlicensed spectrum this year," Gubbins said.
"But those early products aren't likely to be deployed
in some countries, because some regulators require
that the technology include a Listen Before Talk (LBT)
feature that guards against LTE interfering too much
with Wi-Fi."
That LBT feature isn't expected to be finalized in
industry standards for LTE-U until first-quarter 2016.
"Where regulators don't have that requirement (the
U.S., China, Korea, India), you could see early adopters
deploy the technology," Gubbins said. "Where they
do have that requirement ( Japan, parts of Europe),
deployment is likely to come later."
It's difficult to say how widely LTE-U will be deployed.
In one respect, it's a subset of how widely small cells
will be deployed. Small-cell deployments have been
climbing recently, but they have generally disappointed
earlier expectations of speed and volume.
Bottom line? So far, operators who have shown interest
in LTE-U/LAA are only testing and haven't declared
future plans to adopt the technology. Verizon and
T-Mobile US are the only operators committing to
commercial deployments, even using pre-standard
equipment, if available. "Unless the FCC rules against
LTE-U deployments," Ali said, "I believe that Verizon
and T-Mobile will continue with their rollout plans, but
they will probably be limited, small-scale networks. I
don't expect many operators to commit to commercial
deployments before the 3rd Generation Partnership
Project (3GPP) standard for advanced mobile
communications is fully defined and mobile device
support becomes available."
Will LTE-U lead to significant
cost savings?
Some in the industry predict that operators can feasibly
save money by moving into unlicensed territory, but
"LTE-U deployments will be
limited until it is proven that
there will be no interference with
Wi-Fi."
NADINE MANJARO, LEAD ANALYST, MARAVEDIS-WBA
