Tracking Trends!

Something hit me today. GTPv2 is not exciting any more, because I figured it out and understand things there is pretty easy now. Read this.

I want to start looking at different things and blog about them instead of dumb GTP. So I figured out my wish list. I had a wish list before but this is new one. :-D

• Volga: Volga is first the thing I want to track. My future posts post will be mostly on this technology. I have to say I absolutely have no idea about its architecture. I only know that in LTE circuit switched calls and SMS is not possible at this moment. CS fall back is not a good option and IMS is still far away. So this weekend its all about Volga.
• Femtocells: I want to rip these femtos apart and look into the devices. Specs? Architecture? etc etc
• OFDM/MIMO/64QAM: Radios signals and systems are my favourites since my engineering days. I still remember those days when I soldered a FM transmitter and broadcasted Eminem songs in college and apartment. I was pretty good with modulation, sampling and shannon;s theorems. TCP/IP made me forget them completely. I need to start reading radio.
• S11 interface: The code which I wrote in last post needs to move ahead. I am working on dragging my friend in.
• Mobiles: I am not a expert here. But I love to read reviews about them and may be post a few.

If something crazy is on my mind why should it be on blog and irritate the subscribers? There are few times where I said something would happen and it never happend, something I said I would do and never did. So I thought if I blog about what I want to do, I actually might do just for the sake that I wrote about it.

Wish me luck and have a nice day.

Femtos for India?

This is just one of those days I day dream. I have few thoughts popping in my head for a while, in fact I started thinking about them during my vacation. I am living in corporate world for past 2 years and I totally understand the network requirements there. But one week stay in my home town with my parents made think about the network in little different way.

Status in India right now : Non Corporate : Majority of India is middle class. With kids going to schools and colleges internet has become a revolution in India. People are using broadband connections offered by local vendors. Couple of years back came the DSL revolution. Every one started adopting to the DSL and ADSL. This brought in major players like Reliance, Bharti, TATA into access network zone. I have a BSNL DSL connection in my home here in Hyderabad. Couple of months back I purchased a wireless access point and my dad is enjoying his wireless connectivity. This applies to most of the homes in my apartment too except that they are still running on DSL without wifi.

OK. Why this back ground check. I started understanding femtos. There are new laptops coming into the market which are pretty cheap. Easily affordable by college students and people like my dad who just needs to check couple of websites and emails. This is my target segment for the discussion.

3G spectrum auctions are still due in India. LTE is still not mature for deployment. So India has to stick to HSPA+ with may be 3 Mbps speeds which is pretty good for the above market segment. The whole idea is "Replacing Wifi with Femtos". Is it possible. Consider this. There are 100 flats in my apartment. Every home has minimum of 2 mobile phones and one computer. Recently people have started purchasing small laptops. So what if, say Airtel, deploys a femto for my apartment giving out mobiles and wireless internet. A laptop with Airtel sim card built in providing internet over HSPA is perfect for my dad and off course great for college students. What will Airtel get by this? 200 mobile connections and 100 internet connections which is definitely good.

I see few difficulties here. First is the laptop with HSPA cards inbuilt. Is it good to have a inbuilt card or should service provider stick to usb sticks? If the cards are inbuilt customers are at the feet of service provider which I hate. But USB sticks are still not affordable, they are expensive. People would go for a DSL connection rather then investing heck lot on a USB. Next is femtos deployment. Migrating customers from one service provider to other is tough as there is still no number portability available. BTW number portability "may" arrive in India by end of september.

Is there is a way to manufacture HSPA cards which can work with any network? Can we make them as generic as wifi cards? Will technology allow it? My whole point is can India deploy femtos skipping wifi boom. A park with femto zone for people to relax and read on web. Coffee pub with femto. Apartments with femto. Isnt it wonderful? Corporate would any way go for them. Femtos will definitely be big hit in corporates.

What do you folks think? Am I completely out of mind or just started to loose my mind. I would like to know your views on this.