By Julia Yao
EE has a head start on its competitors in the LTE game, and it’s looking to maintain this lead with a fast, massive rollout. Mansoor Hanif, EE’s Director of RAN development & Programmes, describes the rollout as the fastest of its kind in the world, despite the operational model being among the most complex in the industry.
It’s about time
WinWin: Your commercial LTE launch was in October 2012; how has the progress been so far?
Hanif: The scale is massive. We have already covered almost 60% of the U.K. population after only nine months. It’s been really fast. It’s being brought into our customers’ hands much faster than they expected. We believe it’s the fastest LTE rollout in the world of this size and scale. In terms of customer take-up, we have been very pleased with the progress. We have almost 700,000 customers already, and we’re on target to exceed one million customers by the end of this year. We are also pushing the coverage further, to achieve our goal of covering 98% of the population by the end of 2014. It’s definitely going to be a very fast and challenging rollout.
WinWin: How have the customers responded to this brand new service experience?
Hanif: Our customers are very interested in the new 4G service. We are in the process of a big education operation, showing consumers and businesses what 4G really is and what it can do for them. We are the first in the market, so the onus is on us to explain 4G to the U.K. We find that once people try it, they love it. They really do understand that they want to stay with 4G rather than moving back to 3G. 3G is really good, but 4G is a whole new experience for end users.
WinWin: How does EE plan its investment across both the legacy and new networks?
Hanif: We’ve got a very clear strategy of where we want to go. We now operate 2G, 3G and 4G. In terms of 2G, we have already refarmed 2x20MHz (for LTE) in 15 major cities. We have no plan to switch off our 2G network, but we do actively encourage our customers to step up to 3G, because we believe the user experience is much better now with 3G. We are still investing in the 2G and 3G network, as well as rolling out our 4G network.
A big part of our investment strategy is to fully integrate our current network assets into a single EE network – this will significantly improve the customer experience. That also increases our capacity for 3G customers. As we integrate those two networks, we free up four frequencies for 3G. That will improve the customer experience as well. We have also invested in dual-cell HSPA technology, so we are offering the highest throughput in the country for customers on 3G.
As well as continuing to invest to the roll out of our 4G network, we are also increasing speeds and throughput via new technologies, including carrier aggregation. This will begin in the Tech City area of London where we can help startups to build new applications for those technologies.
WinWin: What is EE’s load balancing strategy across different networks in terms of device planning and network engineering?
Hanif: For the 1800MHz layer, I think it’s very clear it’s a sweet spot. In terms of coverage and capacity, it’s a really good balance. 2600MHz is very clearly about speed and capacity in urban areas. On the 800MHz layer, there is potential for further enhancing indoor coverage in urban areas, and efficiently deploying 4G in rural areas.
We have almost 27 million customers. Many of them still use 2G, many use 3G, and now we have a growing number using 4G. We focused on handsets from launch and we now estimate that up 25% of our total customer base will have LTE-capable handsets within the next two years. That’s a significant market there for upgrade to 4G. We are specifically targeting those customers in our networks to upgrade to 4G, for a small premium. At the same time, at the 2G layer, we are reducing the number of devices that we offer for sale. We are actively encouraging customers to upgrade to 3G.
Technically speaking, we have changed our parameters on the network to push more traffic from the 2G layer to the 3G layer. This allows spectrum refarming for 4G to go ahead while ensuring the best possible customer experience. This is a very delicate and difficult engineering challenge.
A handset focus
WinWin: You said EE took a different approach in focusing on handsets rather than dongles and data cards at the initial service launch. What was the rationale behind this?
Hanif: We believe that we were the first major LTE launch that focused on handsets from the beginning. We also offer a lot of data devices, and 4G Mobile Wi-Fi is very popular with our business users, but the majority of customers are handset consumer users. The day we launched, we already had a range of about five handsets which were LTE capable.
We wanted this to be a mass market launch. We strongly believe end users get strong quality uplift from the use of 4G handsets. We were also very clear that we wanted all our LTE handsets to be capable of the latest technology on 3G as well. All our handsets must have dual-cell HSDPA. It means that, for the customer, it is quite an easy proposition. They don’t need to choose from a dual-cell HSDPA and LTE. They know that by taking a 4G upgrade with us, they can get the best of 4G and best of 3G in their subscription with the right handset. It is a very easy choice.
So I think it’s a question of getting the time right, and at the same time pushing the ecosystem a little. To get the handset manufacturers, the big names, ready to go with us just after our launch, it was critical to manage timing. So we were delighted that all the major handset manufacturers were in time for our launch.
WinWin: Is it fair to say that EE had a distinct advantage in getting handset manufacturer support because its LTE operates on 1800MHz, the mainstream band?
Hanif: It’s fair to say that 1800MHz is the mainstream now. But when our management made the decision to anticipate 1800MHz (handsets), it was far from being mainstream. And the general view at the time was that having a significant range of handsets was still two years away. So we took the challenge. We took the risk. And we decided this was the way we were going to go. And we needed to build a wide industry alliance across devices, handsets, operating systems and network vendors, to bring that vision forward by a year. I believe that we had some influence in making the LTE 1800MHz mainstream at a device level.
I think it was the right decision, because LTE 1800MHz has obvious advantages, both in terms of international roaming as well as user experience, and gives a good balance between capacity and coverage for our customers.
Castles on shifting sands
WinWin: What are the challenges EE faces with network layer coordination?
Hanif: The current challenge is about managing the interaction between the 2G, 3G, and 4G networks. We have a very complex situation in our network, because we are still integrating the legacy 2G and 3G networks, from ex-Orange U.K. and ex-T-Mobile U.K.
We have also optimized our sites by removing any overlapping sites. We have removed thousands of overlapping sites which were hindering a smooth user experience. At the same time, we have integrated sites from two different networks and PLMNs into a single network. In that way, we can all focus on optimizing that single network. In most of the main cities in the U.K., we have already either completed integrating the 2G and 3G networks. Now we are moving very fast in parallel with the LTE launch.
As you can imagine, it’s a massive engineering challenge. It’s a little bit like building castles on three or four layers of shifting sands. So the traffic is shifting all the time, and as we integrate the sites, the 2G traffic is changing and the 3G traffic is changing. We integrate, move and commission the sites, so it is a very delicate mix to keep that together. Thousands of people work on the network, doing changes all the time. Any change we do, we need to update our databases, making sure all of the types of adjacencies are maintained. That’s a massive challenge if you look at our network, not only with its vertical integration in 2G, 3G and 4G, but also across network adjacencies between 2G and 3G networks.
The interaction within the LTE system itself will be another big challenge, between 1800MHz, 2600MHz, and 800MHz. We need to make sure that solutions will allow us to control interactions between the LTE layers and from the LTE layer to the 3G layer, and back, regardless of the device or spectrum band being used. We would really like to have the intelligence built into the network rather than the device, so that we are controlling access to various layers and can effectively manage which handsets access which layers, and manage the transition between them to create a smooth customer experience.
One step ahead
WinWin: You mentioned EE’s interest in trialing carrier aggregation features in Tech City. Can you tell us more about your plan?
Hanif: Carrier aggregation itself has already been well trialed and tested. We know a lot of operators are working with Huawei to trial. However, we believe there are very few operators who are going for 2x20MHz. That is the headline shout in terms of the full throughput that you can achieve.
In terms of our plans, we certainly will not be the first to do carrier aggregation commercially, but we do expect to be in the leading tier of operators who do 2x20MHz carrier aggregation to get the speed up to 200-300Mbps in wider areas; that’s our target.
WinWin: Operators generally see devices as a hindrance for commercial carrier aggregation application. What’s your take on that?
Hanif: My feeling is that the big challenge for handsets for carrier aggregation at 2x20MHz is that two carriers of 20MHz will create a huge amount of data. The heat dissipation that keeps it in a reasonable phone form factor for the consumer market is a massive challenge. I can’t predict how long it will take for the device ecosystem to catch up with our network, but I would expect data-only devices to come first, because they can manage the form factor easier, and then perhaps the handsets will follow within six to nine months.
WinWin: In what areas will EE continue to maintain your first-mover advantage and your differentiation in LTE?
Hanif: Name any area of mobile service, and our target is to stay one step ahead there. We have the spectrum assets to do that, the engineering teams to do that, the partners to do that, and the ambition to do that.
We are ahead now, and we want to stay ahead. That means in coverage, speeds and experience for our customers. We will maintain our focus on quality to ensure we remain a world leader. We are adding more sites every single day, and we continue to do so. We are adding a lot of capacity in the backhaul networks as well.
So for every single sphere and every single area we can compete in, we aim to be the best. We respect our competition and we know that they will fight hard, but we are very confident that we have what it takes, especially the right people and right partners, to stay one step ahead.
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