| |  | News, views and updates – October 2015 | | | | Contents | | | | | | The office has gas, electricity, water… what about wireless? | | | | |  | | | As part of our growth strategy, Real Wireless has been working to support a broader range of vertical markets recently. The commercial property sector is one of the most important. The significance of wireless connectivity for modern developments is becoming increasing apparent. For example, recently a prestige residential development in Stockholm struggled to find tenants because its energy efficient build meant there was next to no in-building mobile coverage. It has had to be expensively retro-fitted for wireless, when planned wireless connectivity should have been integral to the utility specification. This said, more enlightened developers are increasingly responsive to three main drivers: the growing significance of mixed use developments and the general complexity of infrastructure demands it implies; the demand for energy efficiency in new and refurbished developments, which is in turn demanding a new approach to every type of specification; the short term leases that are prevalent in Europe which mean that increasingly a building has to be ‘ready for anything’ in terms of usage. Developers and their suppliers need to ensure wireless infrastructure sits alongside every other utility spec when high-density buildings are planned. Download our free report on Wireless technology and commercial property. | | | | | Strength to strength | | | | |  | | | The wireless industry has changed significantly since Real Wireless was founded in 2007. Wireless customers face ever-changing demands for even better technology, with increasing customer and workforce expectations of what wireless can achieve. The role Real Wireless plays is a vital one, building the gap between the wireless industry and wireless users by providing independent expert advice to both sides. We help businesses to meet these increasing demands of wireless by aligning the right technology with specific use cases and identifying market drivers and commercial opportunities to inform investment decisions. To achieve this, Real Wireless has expanded its pool of experts and strengthened its management structure to ensure that our clients are always able to stay one step ahead of the competition. From autumn 2015, Real Wireless Co-Founder and Commercial Director Mark Keenan will take over as CEO. Existing Director of Technology Professor Simon Saunders leaves for a role with Google at the end of the year but will retain his share interest in the company. Julie Bradford will become responsible for Technical Quality; Oliver Bosshard takes over delivery and budgets and John Okas will continue to develop new business and be responsible for sales. Mark Keenan said: “This is a busy time for Real Wireless with significant long-term projects that include our involvement in the European 5G NORMA programme, substantial work items for two large international operators on mobile technology strategy, recent analysis for Cisco and Airvana, and ongoing support for sports venues and stadia. I want to thank Simon for his commitment to the company we set up together, he has played a significant role building the business and setting us on a road to success. We have a strong team, a healthy order book and a leadership role as experts-of-choice in one of the world's most vibrant and expansive industries.” | | | | | Shoppers who mobile more, buy more | | | | |  | | | Seventy-nine per cent of smartphone owners are now smartphone shoppers. And of these 84% use their phone to shop while in-store. Which helps explain why retail is another vertical sector Real Wireless has been working to support. To be fair, the best modern retailers have a very good awareness of the need to invest in technology to stay afloat. The online onslaught has hammered the high street and big name retailers are innovating hard to attract and retain shoppers. In fact their corporate structures are increasingly reflecting this change, with the growing number of board positions going to executives with digital expertise. Many of the big retailers are poaching experts from partners and suppliers to support this new emphasis. However, in most cases the focus is almost entirely on finding new ways of getting consumers to engage in-store. There seems little attention paid to anticipating the implications of success – i.e., massive data use overloading business critical infrastructure. Outside-in wireless connectivity is not a long-term solution to anything. Retailers need to embrace wireless to deliver mobile-payments, personalised offers and deals, price comparisons and stock control. Given that the same Google survey tells us that connected shoppers spend more than the unconnected, it’s time for every right thinking retailer to download the free Real Wireless report on the value of wireless to the retail sector. | | | | | How to leave $18 billion on the table | | | | In our recent study for XCellAir, we demonstrate that poor management of Wi-Fi assets severely limits their usefulness in dense urban environments. Our analysis revealed that 92% of access points do not adjust their operating frequency, no matter how badly performance is degraded by interference. It also found that on average, two channels worth of bandwidth is unused at any given time, despite congestion and interference. Each channel equates to 50MBps of idle bandwidth totalling 100MBps unused. In practical terms, this is enough latent capacity to concurrently stream 25 HD videos, or more than 3000 HD voice calls. To support the study we developed a cost model of an operator that ignored these issues, and compared it with one that could effectively manage interference and spectrum utilisation across an operator’s Wi-Fi assets.This means that operators could fail to capture up to $18bn of opportunity cost if they continue to poorly manage unregulated spectrum. Read more » | | | | | | Every little helps | | | | Isn’t it about time you paid a little more for your mobile services? No? Well the fact is UK mobile operators receive four times less average revenue per user than Japan, two and half times less than the US and one and a third less than the rest of Western Europe. And what are the implications? A 2013 report in to Europe’s telecoms infrastructure found a 34% difference in investment per head between Europe (£111,000) and the US (£167,000). What’s more, the same report found that European investment is declining at a rate of 4% per annum. Unsurprisingly, without the money to invest, operators cannot roll out their networks to deliver the coverage and capacity we need. Since poor coverage costs UK businesses over £30m a week as employees waste time hunting for mobile phone reception, the need to eradicate black spots has never been more pressing. So isn’t it time you paid a little more for your mobile services? Have your say » | | | | | Listen before talk | | | | More often than not the debate around the use of licence-exempt spectrum is driven more by passion than analysis. Which is why Real Wireless was delighted that Cisco asked us to help it redress the balance by introducing some hard technical data into the narrative. At the heart of Wi-Fi’s success is the premise of fair co-existence, so that multiple Wi-Fi system owners can deploy Wi-Fi access points in the same unlicensed spectrum in an unmanaged fashion. Now service providers want to make more use of unlicensed spectrum to contribute to mobile system capacity, and one of several means of doing this is through a feature called Licensed Assisted Access (LAA-LTE). The work for Cisco was presented at the recent CEEC 2015 conference and forms part of their LAA-LTE contributions to 3GPP. Cisco’s contribution turns on a feature called listen before talk (LBT). Using a Real Wireless tool called the Wi-Fi and LTE (WaLT) system simulator, we modelled co-existence performance between LAA-LTE and Wi-Fi for different candidate LBT schemes. The results of our simulations clearly demonstrate that the details of the choice of LBT scheme and settings of that scheme matter significantly to achieving fair coexistence. Find out more » | | | | | | What will 5G mean to end-users? | | | | We've reported before on our role in Europe’s 5G NORMA initiative, the aim of which is to develop a conceptually novel, adaptive and future-proof 5G mobile network architecture. Real Wireless is responsible for the socioeconomic assessment of 5G NORMA innovations, translating technical KPIs into business KPIs that hold relevance to each sector. We’re pleased to announce that our European 5G socioeconomic study ran its first workshop in Brussels on 22 September, engaging with verticals industries (automotive, transport, healthcare, utilities) to determine scenarios for 5G to deliver value. The next workshop on 19 October, also in Brussels, will present the findings from that exercise and go on to examine the case for 5G in rural, smart city, home and workplace environments. To register and follow the progress on the project join the LinkedIN group. | | | | | | |
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