Vodafone, Huawei Test LTE over Digital Dividend in Germany

Vodafone Germany and Huawei will jointly test LTE using the digital dividend frequency range, reports DMEurope. Besides assessing the technical scope of the digital dividend variant of LTE, the trials, which are meant to start this quarter, will explore if and how much the solutions disrupt services using neighbouring frequencies, such as digital TV and radio broadcasts.

Outlook and Implications

• Enables Rural Deployments, Improves Indoor Coverage in Cities: As far as mobile broadband deployments go, by the digital dividend the telecoms industry refers essentially to the frequencies within the 790-862 MHz range, which become vacant as analogue TV broadcasts are switched off and turned digital. What makes the airspace available for reutilisation valuable is that—besides comprising a substantial range of spectrum—is that its lower frequency enables cell sites to cover territories significantly vaster than by using the higher ones, such as the 2.1 GHz and 2.6 GHz typically reserved for 3G and LTE respectively. As such the benefits are clearest in sparsely populated areas, although the lower-frequency solutions can add urban infrastructures as well, since transmission over them generally penetrates physical objects better and thus improves indoor coverage of the networks. Back in February this year, the German government officially identified the digital dividend as a key part of its national broadband strategy, and following the subsequent legislative procedures the frequencies are indented to be auctioned to operators possibly in early 2010 (see Germany: 16 June 2009: German Federal Council Approves Proposal to Allocate Digital Dividend), in a process that will be Europe's largest post-3G licensing. IHS Global Insight sees the deployments over the lower frequencies—most notably the digital dividend and 900 MHz—as crucial for carriers, let alone countries, that want to achieve seamless, nationwide mobile broadband coverage, and therefore advises national regulators to move fast with the reallocation of the relevant frequency bands (see Europe: 28 July 2009: EU Approves Release of 900-Mhz GSM Spectrum for Mobile Broadband and World: 30 April 2009: The Potential of UMTS900 as a Mobile Broadband Technology).
• Huawei Remains Among LTE First-Movers: The Chinese vendor partnering Vodafone in the trials is currently also constructing a municipal LTE infrastructure for TeliaSonera in Oslo, the Norwegian capital (see Norway – Sweden: 15 January 2009: TeliaSonera to Launch Commercial 4G LTE Network), to deploy what is set to be one of the world's first, if not the first, commercial LTE network. By teaming up with Vodafone, which in anticipation of the forthcoming auction is using Germany as something of a laboratory for digital dividend solutions (see Germany: 28 July 2009: Ericsson, Vodafone Germany Launch Second Digital-Dividend Pilot), the company ensures that its LTE portfolio will remain up to date in terms of lower-frequency developments; until now, Vodafone had also worked on similar tests with Ericsson; the Swedish vendor, in turn, is currently running trials also with KPN's E-Plus (see Germany: 2 March 2009: E-Plus, Ericsson to Pilot HSDPA Using Digital Dividend). Possible disruptions to other technologies concern mainly TV and radio transmission, as well as wireless microphones, since those all use proximate frequencies, and an important part of the trials is to identify and assess such interference issues—particularly because if remaining unsolved, they pose a legal risk for the spectrum reallocation.