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FREE MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING CONCEPTS - TRAINING_MODULES_WITH_TONS_OF_VIDEOS

LTE means Learning-Training-Evolution....(just kiddin')

With its architecture based on Internet Protocol (IP) unlike many other cellular Internet protocols, Long Term Evolution supports browsing Web sites, VoIP and other IP-based services well. LTE can theoretically support downloads at 300 Megabits per second (Mbps) or more based on experimental trials. However, the actual network bandwidth available to an individual LTE subscriber sharing the service provider's network with other customers is significantly less.

Long Term Evolution service is only available in limited geographic areas, but telecommunications providers have been actively expanding their LTE services.

T-Mobile USA's merger with MetroPCS, announced early this year, promises to create the "leading value" wireless carrier in the U.S., according to officials from both companies.

Their claim is based primarily on the premise that the merger will create a combined and expanded nationwide LTE wireless network -- using complementary spectrum -- and that the new company will offer no-contract, unlimited-data service to customers at a low cost.

The combined entity would still be the nation's fourth-largest wireless carrier in terms of subscribers -- behind AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. The proposed merger poses the greatest threat to third-place Sprint, which has about 56 million customers. The merger is expected to be finalized in the first half of 2013, and T-Mobile's customer base will grow from 33 million to 42 million subscribers when that happens.

By the end of 2013, the nationwide contiguous LTE network of the combined company would be 40% bigger than what T-Mobile could offer alone. 

There will be a focus on major metropolitan areas, such as New York, Los Angeles and Dallas, said John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile, who will become the CEO of the combined company.

Also, with the combined resources of MetroPCS and T-Mobile, the new network will be 20% denser, because it will have more coverage that takes advantage of a larger number of towers that use a fatter wireless channel than what T-Mobile's LTE network would have had, he said.

Noting that the merger would close the gap between T-Mobile and Sprint, Legere said in a conference call with reporters: "We're not just here to compete, we're here to win.... This has the potential to be a game-changer."

Similar pgs on this site

http://clear-cloud.com/what_is_iptv.html

http://clear-cloud.com/exploring_iptv.html

http://clear-cloud.com/ip_tv_for_mobile_device_brokers.html

http://clear-cloud.com/what_are_lte_4g_cloud_services.html

http://clear-cloud.com/the_ip_internet_tv_guide.html

http://clear-cloud.com/the_ip_internet_tv_guide.html

Later, he said that while the combined entity would offer various service plans to customers, including more traditional two-year contract options, he also vowed that it would be "the leading provider of no-contract services."

In the wireless market, no-contract services are growing at an annual rate that is three times faster than the annual growth rate of contract services, he noted.

Leger also reached out to enterprises wrestling with the trend of employees who want to use their personal smartphones on the job. The various service plans from the merged entity will be combined with bring-your-own-device (BYOD) plans, he said, adding, "We hear [customers] loud and clear."

Some analysts and investors were concerned that by merging with MetroPCS, T-Mobile will incur added costs because it will have to convert MetroPCS's CDMA cell towers to support the GSM service that T-Mobile offers. Both companies are committed to 4G LTE, a common technology platform, but the conversion of 3G CDMA towers to 3G GSM will be necessary in order to support customers who will need 3G service when they can't find a 4G LTE signal.

Also, LTE is a data-only network, which means GSM will be needed to transmit voice calls for a period of time.

Officials said the CDMA-to-GSM conversion effort will start as soon as the merger is finalized in 2013, and all MetroPCS customers will be converted to GSM by the end of 2015. MetroPCS customers get new phones more often than customers of other carriers -- at a rate of 50% to 65% a year -- and that will speed the conversion, Legere said.

"We expect minimal [MetroPCS] customer losses and will be managing this very carefully," Legere said. "To MetroPCS customers: You will not be abandoned."

In the wake of T-Mobile's failed 2011 merger with AT&T, the announcement of a merger with MetroPCS sounded like good news to analysts.

T-Mobile has been losing customers, and gaining spectrum via the MetroPCS merger is a less costly way to expand its network than buying more spectrum on its own, analysts said.

"This merger makes the combined company attractive against Sprint," said Jack Gold, an analyst at J.Gold Associates. "T-Mobile needs more customers but is losing them, and is still just about half the size of Sprint. So it has become a question of spending a ton of money to upgrade to LTE, but how do you recoup those costs without subscribers?"

The merger is "obviously bad news for Sprint," and other no-contract services, even those offered by the two largest carriers, AT&T and Verizon, said Julien Blen, an analyst at Infonetics.

Under the terms of the announced deal, T-Mobile's parent, Deutsche Telekom, essentially retains a 74% share of the combined company and will provide $500 million in revolving credit to help the new entity. In the conference call, DT CEO Rene Obermann said the company remains committed to "creating a sustainable and financially viable national challenger in the U.S." and added that the deal "strengthens our position in the U.S. market."

MetroPCS shareholders will receive $1.5 billion in cash and 26% of the new company.

Legere said the merger will accelerate T-Mobile's rise to prominence in the U.S. wireless market. "This is a deal not about surviving ... This is about thriving," he said.
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If you live in Houston and are considering buying an iPhone 5 for its zippy LTE cellular data connection, you may want to think twice before selecting AT&T as your carrier.

For the past few weeks, current users of AT&T’s 4G, LTE network have experienced intermittent connection issues in the Houston area. Based on postings in the carrier’s support forums and discussions on Twitter, customers using LTE-capable AT&T smartphones are having difficulty connecting to the network during workday hours.

An AT&T spokesperson said the company is looking into the complaints, but offered no specifics as to a cause or when the problem would be fixed:

“Some AT&T customers may be experiencing issues with data service in the Houston area. A team of engineers is investigating this issue, and we apologize for any inconvenience to our customers.”

Based on descriptions in this discussion on AT&T’s support forum, the issue appears to begin in the early morning, as people are going to work, and lasts throughout the day. In the evening, after rush hour, it goes away. This comment is typical of the pattern:

I work a 6:30-3:30 shift just outside of the beltway, and very early in the morning, my data works great, just like it should. Then about an hour into my morning, when traffic starts picking up just a bit, I’m plagued with data issues again for the remainder of the day. Then late at night, around 11:00 or 12:00 it starts to work fine again.

This may hint at a congestion issue, a problem that has plagued AT&T’s 3G network, particularly in large cities like New York and San Francisco.

What is LTE?

LTEⁱ (Long Term Evolution) is initiated by 3GPPⁱ to improve the mobile phone standard to cope with future technology evolutions and needs.

The goals for LTE include improving spectral efficiency, lowering costs, improving services, making use of new spectrum and reformed spectrum opportunities, and better integration with other open standards.

LTE provides downlink peak rates of at least 100Mbit/s, 50 Mbit/s in the uplink and RAN (Radio Access Network) round-trip times of less than 10 ms.

LTE standards are in matured state now with release 8 frozen. While LTE Advanced is still under works. Often the LTE standard is seen as 4G standard which is not true. 3.9G is more acceptable for LTE. So why it is not 4G? Answer is quite simple - LTE does not fulfill all requirements of ITU 4G definition.

Brief History of LTE Advanced: The ITU has introduced the term IMT Advanced to identify mobile systems whose capabilities go beyond those of IMT 2000. The IMT Advanced systems shall provide best-in-class performance attributes such as peak and sustained data rates and corresponding spectral efficiencies, capacity, latency, overall network complexity and quality-of-service management. The new capabilities of these IMT-Advanced systems are envisaged to handle a wide range of supported data rates with target peak data rates of up to approximately 100 Mbit/s for high mobility and up to approximately 1 Gbit/s for low mobility.

The evolved architecture comprises E-UTRAN (Evolved UTRAN) on the access side and EPC (Evolved Packet Core) on the core side.

The figure below shows the evolved system architecture

The E-UTRAN (Evolved UTRAN) consists of eNBs, providing the E-UTRA user plane (PDCP/RLC/MAC/PHY) and control plane (RRC) protocol terminations towards the UE. The eNBs are interconnected with each other by means of the X2 interface. The eNBs are also connected by means of the S1 interface to the EPC (Evolved Packet Core), more specifically to the MME (Mobility Management Entity) by means of the S1-MME and to the Serving Gateway (S-GW) by means of the S1-U.

What are LTE Interfaces?

The following are LTE Interfaces : (Ref: TS 23.401 v 841)

• What are LTE Network elements?

eNB
eNB interfaces with the UE and hosts the PHYsical (PHY), Medium Access
Control (MAC), Radio Link Control (RLC), and Packet Data Control
Protocol (PDCP) layers. It also hosts Radio Resource Control (RRC)
functionality corresponding to the control plane. It performs many
functions including radio resource management, admission control,
scheduling, enforcement of negotiated UL QoS, cell information
broadcast, ciphering/deciphering of user and control plane data, and
compression/decompression of DL/UL user plane packet headers.

Mobility Management Entity
manages and stores UE context (for idle state: UE/user identities, UE mobility state, user security parameters). It generates temporary identities and allocates them to UEs. It checks the authorization whether the UE may camp on the TA or on the PLMN. It also authenticates the user.

Serving Gateway
The SGW routes and forwards user data packets, while also acting as the mobility anchor for the user plane during inter-eNB handovers and as the anchor for mobility between LTE and other 3GPP technologies (terminating S4 interface and relaying the traffic between 2G/3G systems and PDN GW).

Packet Data Network Gateway
The PDN GW provides connectivity to the UE to external packet data networks by being the point of exit and entry of traffic for the UE. A UE may have simultaneous connectivity with more than one PDN GW for accessing multiple PDNs. The PDN GW performs policy enforcement, packet filtering for each user, charging support, lawful Interception
and packet screening.

In LTE architecture, core network includes Mobility Management Entity (MME), Serving Gateway (SGW), Packet Data Network Gateway (PDN GW) where as E-UTRAN has E-UTRAN NodeB (eNB).

VoLGA stands for "Voice over LTE via Generic Access". The VoLGA service resembles the 3GPP Generic Access Network (GAN). GAN provides a controller node - the GAN controller (GANC) - inserted between the IP access network (i.e., the EPS) and the 3GPP core network.

The GAN provides an overlay access between the terminal and the CS core without requiring specific enhancements or support in the network it traverses. This provides a terminal with a 'virtual' connection to the core network already deployed by an operator. The terminal and network thus reuse most of the existing mechanisms, deployment and operational aspects.

What is CS Fallback in LTE?

LTE technology supports packet based services only, however 3GPP does specifies fallback for circuit switched services as well. To achieve this LTE architecture and network nodes require additional functionality, this blog is an attempt to provide overview for same.

In LTE architecture, the circuit switched (CS) fallback in EPS enables the provisioning of voice and traditional CS-domain services (e.g. CS UDI video/ SMS/ LCS/ USSD). To provide these services LTE reuses CS infrastructure when the UE is served by E UTRAN.

The following are some of the principles of 3GPP E-UTRAN security based on 3GPP Release 8 specifications:

In LTE E-UTRAN measurements to be performed by a UE for mobility are classified as below

According to 3GPP specifications, the purpose of the Automatic Neighbour Relation (ANR) functionality is to relieve the operator from the burden of manually managing Neighbor Relations (NRs). This feature would operators effort to provision.

Intra E-UTRAN Handover is used to hand over a UE from a source eNodeB to a target eNodeB using X2 when the MME is unchanged. In the scenario described here Serving GW is also unchanged. The presence of IP connectivity between the Serving GW and the source eNodeB, as well as between the Serving GW and the target eNodeB is assumed.

The intra E-UTRAN HO in RRC_CONNECTED state is UE assisted NW controlled HO, with HO preparation signalling in E-UTRAN.

A important component in LTE network is the policy and charging control (PCC) function that brings together and enhances capabilities from earlier 3GPP releases to deliver dynamic control of policy and charging on a per subscriber and per IP flow basis.

LTE Evolved Packet Core (EPC) EPC includes a PCC architecture that provides support for fine-grained QoS and enables application servers to dynamically control the QoS and charging requirements of the services they deliver. It also provides improved support for roaming. Dynamic control over QoS and
charging will help operators monetize their LTE investment by providing customers with a variety of QoS and charging options when choosing a service.

The LTE PCC functions include:

• What is SON & how does it work in LTE?

Self-configuring, self-optimizing wireless networks is not a new concept but as the mobile networks are evolving towards 4G LTE networks, introduction of self configuring and self optimizing mechanisms is needed to minimize operational efforts. A self optimizing function would increase network performance and quality reacting to dynamic processes in the network.

This would minimize the life cycle cost of running a network by eliminating manual configuration of equipment at the time of deployment, right through to dynamically optimizing radio network performance during operation. Ultimately it will reduce the unit cost and retail price of wireless data services.

3GPP network sharing architecture allows different core network operators to connect to a shared radio access network. The operators do not only share the radio network elements, but may also share the radio resources themselves.

Read Network Sharing in LTE for more.

In LTE, when UE wish to establish RRC connection with eNB, it transmits a Random Access Preamble, eNB estimates the transmission timing of the terminal based on this. Now eNB transmits a Random Access Response which consists of timing advance command, based on that UE adjusts the terminal transmit timing.

The timing advance is initiated from E-UTRAN with MAC message that implies and adjustment of the timing advance.

List of operators committed for LTE has been compiled by 3GAmericas from Informa Telecoms & Media and public announcements. It includes a variety of commitment levels including intentions to trial, deploy, migrate, etc.
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