Forget global roaming with LTE devices

Stuart Corner
Monday, 04 April 2011 08:33

Business IT - Technology

Buyers of LTE devices will have to take a punt on which countries they want to use the devices in because fragmentation of spectrum allocations will make it almost impossible to build devices that will work anywhere.

The problem of supporting a wide range of frequencies is that LTE devices must also be able to fall back to 2G and 3G operation outside what will be limited LTE coverage areas, and this already requires device to support multiple frequencies.

Herns Pierre-Jerome, Qualcomm's director of technical marketing, told ExchangeDaily: "The footprint of LTE in the first three or four years will not be significant enough that it will be possible to have a single device that can support six or seven bands and is able to roam in the majority of markets where people might need to travel.

"Devices will need to be able to roam on to 3G when they are out of LTE coverage and also need to be able to roam on to a 3G network to answer a phone call because initially LTE does not support all the features needed for voice'¦That will come later but there had to be some prioritisation at the standards level to get LTE out as soon as possible [in the face of competition from WiMAX]."

Pierre-Jerome forecast that "A lot of [device] OEMs will have to decide which markets they are focussing on and how many bands of LTE can they afford to support in addition to the four bands for 3G and four bands of GSM'¦ It will be frustrating for customers to have to make a decision upfront as to which countries they are likely to want to visit."

Pierre-Jerome said that the ITU had identified 2.5GHz, 2.6GHz and 700MHz as the bands of choice for LTE initially, but global harmonisation at these frequencies was proving difficult. "Various countries and regions have had different frequencies allocated for different uses so harmonisation at 2.6MHz and at 700MHz is proving to be challenging globally'¦If you look at the USA, the FCC auctioned 2.5GHz and 2.6GHz several years ago and the band plan does not look the same as Europe, so we are already seeing a fragmentation in terms of how LTE devices will be able to roam from the US to Europe."

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