Accelerating 4G

Months ago, I conjectured that given the growth 4G technology and slow customer adoption of 3G, India may jump to 4G sooner. While Indian operators are slowly ramping up their 4G network deployment, 4G is not likely to see strong growth before 2014. But showing all signs that 4G is gaining strength faster, Verizon reported that they are banking on 4G data growth to fuel their revenue growth in a saturated subscriber-base of US.
In its recently published report, Verizon said that almost 50% of its all present data traffic is on its 4G LTE services, covering more than 260 million Americans. Verizon also said that it now had a total of 21.6 million LTE-enabled devices on its network, a rise of 23.3% on last year.
That shows clear sign of 4G acceleration. However it does not tell us whether that growth is happening at the cost of Wi-Fi or CDMA/3G. In US, Wi-Fi is more ubiquitous compared to other developed countries. So data growth could be at the expense of CDMA/3G or it could be simply complementing Wi-Fi hotspots. However from its report, it appears that Verizon is converting its CDMA data connections to LTE. Verizon may start supporting voLTE this year. That would initiate complete switchover to 4G for its subscribers. AT&T and Sprint are not too far behind. Both have already started 4G data service and fast expanding 4G coverage in more US cities [ source: techradar].
Europe's scenario is little complex with each country at different phase of 3G/4G adoption. Telecoms.com lists plan from various networks in Europe for launching 4G service. Europe's recessive economic condiiton has slowed down 4G adoption a little. The question whether it is more profitable to continue with 3G or it makes better economic sense to transition to 4G, is going to linger with European operators this year.  A recent study from Arthur D. Little and BNP Paribas seems to warn that European operators with present inclination to keep 3G and LTE data tariff same, may not see growth in next 3 years. Now if the operators increase LTE tariff, it is bound to have a slow-down on overall adoption rate of LTE in Europe. Since Economics always has the upper hand, European operators may focus on near-term profitability and instead of committing a full-scale overhaul from 3G to 4G, they most likely will take a staggered approach.
 Japan on the other hand has traditionally been first-adopter in wireless telecom space. DoCoMo launched its 3G network in Japan when 3GPP were still debating about the 3G standard. In fact 3G proliferated lot faster in Japan compared to any other developed country. So to understand whether 4G is really being considered as replacement for 3G, we need to look at Japan. 
In a clear signal that Japan may transition to 4G sooner than anticipated, CN reports that 
 • Japan’s total mobile infrastructure (2G, 3G, 4G) market surged 78% in 2012, to $3.9 billion, owing to a strong LTE push fueled by NTT DOCOMO, KDDI, and SoftBank Mobile and
• 3G declined 11% in Japan in 2012

"LTE revenue in Japan soared 188% and will keep its momentum this year, driven by accelerated rollouts and the increasing willingness of service providers to shut down 3G,” notes Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research.

ABIresearch, another reputed research firm, projected LTE data traffic to grow by 200% this year. "4G LTE traffic is accelerating, with a growth rate of 207% in 2013 compared to 99% for 3G traffic.", it said. In India. Reliance announced yesterday that it received Govt''s permission to start testing of its LTE network including voLTE service.  And if one has to go by the local buzz, Airtel and Vodaphone are planning full voLTE launch by early next year.

So it looks like that US and Japan are going to see strong wireless data growth over LTE this year. Europe will see slow transition from 3G to 4G. China and India will most likely see comprehensive data and voice growth over LTE by early 2014.

India one step closer to pan-India 4G adoption

Reuter reports that Indian Government has taken a decision this Monday to allow all the wireless broadband airwave holders to support voice over 4G by paying a one time fee of $306 million. This will remove the last regulatory hurdle to deploy LTE as the technology for both data and voice. Three large players, Reliance, Vodaphone and Airtel are expected to go full-steam in this year with LTE. For voice however, technology is still in the catch-up mode. Ideally, with LTE, the bearer protocol for the voice was expected to be voice over LTE. But voice over LTE still has some distance to cross before the technology can mature to substitute existing circuit-switched voice service provided by GSM. This is a case where market is moving faster than the technology.  For countries like India, who do not have large technology R&D investment in LTE or 3G wireless, market driving technology is in fact a boon. India does not need to follow a particular country (e.g. USA) or a technology, it has the freedom and latitude to follow the best of the breed. Fact is although GSMA adopted voice over LTE as the bearer protocol service for LTE technology in 2010, world's first ever commercial deployment of voice over LTE happened only in last quarter of 2012 when SK Telecom of South Korea launched the service with Ericsson and LG as the technology partner in September, 2012 [news announcement].
Operators in US and Europe have been trying with alternatives to voice over LTE as an interim solution but none of them match the spectral efficiency that VoLTE can provide. Heavyreading article provides a good summary on the alternatives that operators are trying for providing voice service over LTE. I have pasted their summary table here for those who are hard-pressed for time.
 As one can imagine, lack of clear choice impacts not only the network readiness but the handsets too. Huawei spokesperson stated last year that the aim is to bring voLTE enabled handset by 2013. Operators definitely want a single IP-based voice delivery solution, for LTE, which can simultaneously deliver voice, video and data so that it becomes credible deterrent against existing VoIP service like Skype. So there is no doubt that all the handset manufacturers would focus their resources to bring out fully voLTE capable handsets but challenge of interworking with multiple evolving technologies can be a serious hurdle. The hurdle can be somewhat reduced if the handset manufacturers work together. For a service to function smoothly, handsets from different manufacturers must agree on a single common procedure for voice call transfer, or voice/video call switch or roaming service. Some of them are part of the standard, but many are design artefacts which handset manufacturers must settle between themselves. For the first generation voLTE smartphones [from LG or ZTE] call switch quality appear to be satisfatory but power consumption appear to be on higher side [source]. Fallout of all these is, we may have to wait till the end of 2013, to see fully functional voLTE handsets from leading handset manufacturers like Samsung, Nokia or Sony-Ericsson. Indian operators have another hurdle. Indian operators have adopted LTE-TDD, as opposed to LTE-FDD that European operators adopted, following China and other Asian countries [check my previous posts]. This may mean that Indian operators may have to depend on Huawei or ZTE to bring the first set of handsets for Indian LTE voice/video consumers.Incidentally Airtel last year launched LTE multimode based Huawei smartphone, in India, that actually use 3G CS fallback alternative for voice calls [first alternative in the table]. In other words they do not support VoLTE yet.
So what does all these mean to you? If you are a technology enthusiast looking forward to buy a 4G smartphone, it means that you perhaps would like to wait till the end of the year when voLTE enabled handsets will be launched. Otherwise you are quite likely to replace your handset with another 4G handset in 2014.