Thursday, Jul 05, 2012
By Naushad K. Cherrayil
Staff Reporter
Dubai The 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) spectrum crunch is becoming more interesting as hardware manufacturers are aggressively announcing connectivity for next-generation devices.
The rush to roll out this service in the Middle East has been impressive, principally in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar.
A report published by the telecom body GSMA’s Wireless Intelligence Service predicts that at least 38 different radio frequency combinations may be used in LTE deployments in the next few years.
Operators in the US mostly use 700MHz spectrum, while those in Europe and the Middle East prefer 1800MHz and in China it is 2.5GHz.
In the UAE, etisalat started in the 2.6GHz band because that was the only frequency available. The commercial launch of LTE took place in September 2011 while du started with 1800MHz frequency.
According to Saeed Y. Abdullah Al Zarouni, senior vice-president for mobile networks at etisalat, the future expansion will be on the 1800MHz spectrum.
“As the frequency goes higher the penetration will be lower,” he said. “For instance, 2G is on 900MHz, so the coverage is everywhere while 3G is on 2100MHz. The coverage is less and we have to add more sites.
“It is the same for the LTE. The quality of service will be good, lesser latency and better than 3G.
“We are testing the 1800MHz spectrum and the trials are going on.”
Mouin Abdallah, CTO, Integrated Telecom Co of Saudi Arabia, admits that the challenge of 2.6GHz is that it requires a large number of sites to compensate for the relative lack of coverage it provides. One way to lower costs is through site sharing.
“Basically, when we roll out the networks there are certain things you have to put in place, to find the sites, to acquire the sites [and] install the equipment,” Abdallah said.
According to Frost & Sullivan, LTE subscribers in Saudi Arabia are expected to reach 11.8 million by 2017 with revenues expected to reach $368.4 million.
LTE subscriptions in the Middle East will number only 1.94 million at end-2013 but will reach 15 million at end-2016, according to forecasts by Informa Telecoms & Media.
Abdullah Al Zmame, deputy CTO, STC, said, “All major operators suffer from the availability of the spectrum, even STC. STC offers TD-LTE in 2.3GHz spectrum. In the future, we will also offer multi-band spectrums.
“All spectrums are good. At the moment all the players in the Kingdom have TDD spectrum and this enables us to deploy immediately. As demand rises, we expect that we will have to use additional FDD blocks [1800, 2600] as and when these blocks become available.”
By Naushad K. ?Cherrayil Staff Reporter
Gulf News 2012. All rights reserved.
