Currently in its fifth year, IQPC’s mobile networks evolution summit looks at optimizing the mobile network to benefit from next generation revenue opportunities. Held in March 2010, the conference aims to bring together leading authorities in the mobile network industry to discuss regulation, financing as well as optimization and evolution of the network.

Mr. Yoshihiro Obata, the Executive Vice President of Emobile, speaks to IQPC Telecom IQ about the challenges in maximizing performance, reducing operating costs, and determining the viability of the long term evolution (LTE) spectrum in a country. Yoshihiro has over 25 years of experience in the telecoms industry and will be speaking at the 5th annual mobile networks evolution summit.

IQPC:
What are some of the challenges in minimizing costs while at the same time satisfying customer demand especially with the increasing popularity of smartphones?

Yoshihiro Obata:
Smartphones require very high bandwidth and small latency. Thus, avoidance of too many switching hops, minimization of IP routing, network architecture based on traffic and maximum usage of big interfaces like Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) or 10GbE are the key issues. Additionally, a backbone similar to fixed networks might be required to carry the traffic.

IQPC:
What are some strategies that Emobile is taking to ensure that network operating costs remain low without compromising quality when dealing with a market like Japan?

Yoshihiro Obata:
We are trying to maximize performance of the network by managing capacity of it in every segment according to the traffic demand rather than introducing complicated Quality of Service (QOS) mechanisms with traffic shaping, protocol filtering or packet dropping to control the traffic.

IQPC:
Why is there a huge debate over the uses of new strategies such as LTE, Wimax and HSPA+ and will we see a hybrid of these technologies in the future?

Yoshihiro Obata:
The reality is that all of them will perform in a similar manner for (internet protocol) IP packets as far as the spectrum is the same and use of antennas for multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) is the same. The differences are in backhaul capacity (GbE, ATM, T1, etc.), backbone capacity (saturated or not due to transmission and switching CAPEX spending), performance of aggregators (P-Gateway, ASN gateway, GGSN) and Internet backbone and not in the access technology except some parts of end to end latency which will only become a big issue if large data transfer is done by Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

IQPC:
Where does the future lie for LTE in the Asia Pacific?

Yoshihiro Obata:
It is still unknown whether LTE will be sold as an independent technology since it will not be visible in handsets. Difference in capacity of transmission of LTE will be more visible by USB dongles usage since a high performance CPU is used for the terminal (PC).

There is a chance that it will be also visible for iPhones or its competitors. However, since the LTE spectrum for each country might vary, it is not certain whether there will be a country where smartphones gain huge market share among consumers so that a large majority of customers will sense capacity of the mobile network.

IQPC:
Where do you see the growth areas in the network evolution cycle for mature markets and how will operators aim to take advantage of these new growth areas?

Yoshihiro Obata:
The growth area will definitely be mobile access to the Internet and various data terminals including machine to machine communication where either HSPA or LTE will be used depending on the development of these infrastructures and timing. The Telco’s need to determine which spectrum to use and when to invest in order to control CAPEX spending, and to avoid high cost of both infrastructure and terminals by synchronizing investments among a large number of operators.

Yoshihiro Obata will be speaking at the 5th Annual Mobile Network Evolution summit (22 – 25 March 2010, Amara Sanctuary, Singapore) organized by IQPC Telecom IQ. For more information on the summit please feel free to email enquiry@iqpc.com.sg or visit www.mobilenetworksasia.com