The ups and downs of UMA
UMA of GSM/WiFi is een veel belovende technologie, echter resultaten blijven uit. Wat is daarvan de oorzaak?
Com World Series heeft een interessant artikel gepubliceerd over de up en downs van UMA telefonie.
Unlicensed Mobile Access was one of the earliest technologies to enable fixed/mobile-convergence (FMC) services, having been used by BT and Orange since late 2005. Other operators, including TeliaSonera and Ono in Europe and T-Mobile in the US, have also adopted the technology. One of the main advantages of UMA is that its close alignment with GSM-network architecture means that GSM operators see it as an efficient and economic way to roll out FMC services.
But UMA’s strengths are compromised by the complex integration necessary to use it in the enterprise sector, which limits its opportunities to address this emerging market segment. And the technology is not designed to be compatible with CDMA networks, which also limits its market prospects.
UMA has long been criticized for enabling service continuity with GSM-based voice services only. But the addition of 3G support to the UMA/GAN standard, approved by the 3GPP in early 2008, is a major development, because the technology now offers capabilities similar to the yet-to-be-ratified voice-call-continuity (VCC) standard. But although 3G UMA devices are unlikely to appear before mid-2008, there are more than 70 SIP-enabled handset models on the market, the majority of which offer 3G and wifi connectivity. The devices use much less power than UMA devices but do have the drawback of not enabling handover between cellular and wifi networks via SIP.
There are mixed messages in the industry regarding the success and popularity of UMA.
Early adopters, such as Orange in Europe and T-Mobile in the US, recognize UMA’s flexibility and ease of implementation compared with alternative technologies. UMA services launched by these two operators are seeing healthy growth. The commonality between Orange’s and T-Mobile’s business models is their reliance on their widespread hot-spot coverage, which enables them to expand their offers beyond FMC at home to enable UMA subscribers to make calls from any compatible wifi hot spot. Orange, for example, has made its 30,000 hot spots in France and 10,000 in the UK available to more than 1.3 million UMA subscribers. T-Mobile is also expanding its UMA offering to hot spots, via partnerships with Hyatt hotels, Starbucks coffee shops, airports and other places.
But BT’s Fusion-based UMA, launched in June 2005, has been far less successful, having attracted fewer than 50,000 users. The main reason for its slow takeoff is the operator’s confusing marketing, which is based mainly on the proposition of enabling cheap mobile calls while at home.
But the biggest blow to UMA has come from Telecom Italia, which dumped it as the core technology for its UNICA service, which it relaunched using a proprietary SIP-based technology. The change came after Italy’s regulator, AGCOM, pressured the operator to open up its network and wholesale UNICA to enable other operators to offer similar services.
The mixed messages from mobile operators about the success of early UMA services has left device vendors divided about the level of commitment they should devote to UMA.
Since the launch of UMA services in mid-2005, fewer than 20 device models have been announced for the service, with fewer than a dozen available before 2008. Samsung, RIM, Motorola, LG, Sagem and Nokia are among the device manufacturers involved in the development of UMA. Samsung, the manufacturer of the first commercial UMA phone, continues to back the technology with an impressive portfolio of seven models serving the leading UMA operators, including T-Mobile and Orange. While Samsung and RIM continue their strong commitment to UMA, leading handset manufacturer Nokia is voicing its concern about the slow growth of UMA-subscription figures.
Sales of Nokia’s UMA-enabled devices are low and facing competition, mainly from Samsung and Sagem. Although Nokia has a strong and varied portfolio, its UMA devices are not the best-designed. They are midrange GSM/EDGE phones powered by its S40 OS, with a WAP browser, and their relatively poor battery capacity is not enough to enable the user experience required by WLAN applications. Nokia has built its UMA devices based on early indications from mobile operators that UMA services will be targeted mainly at offering cheap calls at home.
But customers are expecting competitive prices and high-quality mobile voice from their service providers, so the prospect of cheap calls is not enough to promote the adoption of UMA and alternative technologies. Device manufacturers and mobile operators should provide their customers with advanced phones that can enable the use of value-added data services and applications over WLAN, should they need UMA services to be successful.
The still-limited range of UMA handsets available, their poor battery life and their lack of support of 3G networks will continue to postpone the takeoff of UMA services.
NXP is one of the leading chipset makers in the UMA space and the first committed to creating a UMA-enabled 3G product. NXP UMA chips are already powering a number of devices on the market, from firms including Samsung and LG. Its chipsets are best known for their power-management systems, which enable high-quality voice with an impressive nine hours’ talk time over cellular networks and two hours over WLAN. Other chipset makers committed to UMA 3G offerings include Ericsson Mobile Platforms, Texas Instruments and, most recently, Qualcomm, which is also committed to VCC technology.
