Digital Lifescapes

Commercial buildings are getting smarter. They now include a growing variety of technologies that are part of the Internet of Things (IoT) phenomena. Across the globe, new buildings are being constructed with both wired and wireless IoT infrastructure that enables innovation. According to the latest worldwide market study by Berg Insight, the installed base of sensors, actuators, modules, gateways and other 'connected devices' deployed as part of IoT-based automation in smart commercial buildings was an estimated 151 million units worldwide at the end of 2018. Commercial Building Automation Market Development Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33 percent, the installed base will reach 483 million units in 2022. About 4.5 million of these devices were connected via cellular communication networks in 2018. The number of cellular connections in the building automation market will grow at a CAGR of 44 percent to reach 19.4 million in 2022. In terms of reve...

High speed packet access (HSPA) will be a key driver behind future wireless femtocell adoption, according to the latest market study by Infonetics Research. Once users adopt high speed mobile data services, their report contends, subscribing to a femtocell service could follow to ensure coverage and capacity consistency for services delivered to the home or office. "When HSPA becomes more widely available, mobile broadband adoption will get an extra push. Femtocells, in turn, should see an uptick in adoption, as they provide consistent indoor wireless coverage and give mobile operators a stronger positioning in the home broadband network," said Richard Webb, directing analyst at Infonetics Research. Once launched, femtocells offered with home-zone tariffs could be seen as a recession-buster deal for consumers seeking to reduce mobile voice call charges, and the early market could see decent growth, despite the prevailing economic climate. Highlights from the Infonetics study ...

ABI Research forecasts worldwide deployment revenues from in-building wireless systems to grow from $3.8 billion in 2007 to more than $15 billion in 2013. Drivers for this tremendous growth include consumer's growing dependence on wireless voice and messaging communications, as well as an increasingly competitive mobile operator environment. But underlying all demand drivers is a fundamental connectivity issue. According to principal analyst Dan Shey, "The higher frequencies used by 3G technologies impose limits on wireless coverage inside buildings based on current cell site distributions. The business case is made for deployment of in-building wireless systems because mobile data services are capturing a greater share of subscriber's mobile phone services spend." But every region and operator has a different set of network technologies, competitive conditions and cell phone usage. Fortunately for the owners of in-building systems, which include businesses, operators...

Wireless carriers may still be focused on the wrong customer need. Consumers often do not care about which particular technology provides them with service -- but consumers always care about quality and the consequent benefits of those services. ABI Research believes femtocell solution providers must recognize this fact and then direct attention toward the development of potential services that can be enabled by an intelligent femtocell solution, especially with the majority of technical hurdles already overcome. Not only is this critical in differentiating from competitive solutions such as Dual-Mode Wi-Fi solutions, but also it will be critical in ensuring profitability for carriers. ABI Research vice president Stuart Carlaw states that "with a very conservative uptake of new innovative services enabled by femtocell solutions, it could take as much as five years before carriers go into the black following the trials on femtocell solutions." "It is important to put this...

Operators are now rolling out converged services on fixed and mobile networks, converting trials to commercial deployments. 2008 will see another spate of trials, as femtocell technology begins to become available. The move to FMC infrastructure is a natural evolution for the mobile network as broadband services, including Voice over IP and other Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) services, begin to be deployed. Both Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) and SIP infrastructures are being deployed and dual use Wi-Fi and cellular devices will be joined by femtocells in 2008. According to a new ABI Research report, operators are fully aware of the increasing threat from mobile VoIP services and FMC will allow them to offer similar services and tariff packages. "As we move to the end of the decade, mobile networks will emerge with a flat all-IP architecture using 3GPP standards to deliver multimedia services and VoIP," says principal analyst Ian Cox. In the meantime operators want to off...

The worldwide fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) market -- including UMA network controllers, multi-access convergence gateways, and dual mode cellular/Wi-Fi phones -- is forecast by Infonetics Research to soar to $46.3 billion in 2010. The report entitled "FMC Equipment, Phones, and Subscribers Market Outlook," says that of all the current seamless and non-seamless variations of FMC implementations, Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) has seen the most significant push, triggered by intense competition. The fiercest battles are coming from attackers in Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK, where each incumbent service provider is trying to protect its home turf. UMA is also the quickest fix prior to any migration to IMS, the report indicates. "UMA, which was believed to have short legs just a year ago, is the predominant technology deployed today to implement seamless FMC between wireless LAN and 2G cellular networks. For those who still believe UMA will be short ...

The worldwide wireless market in the developed world is approaching saturation, with mobile phone service providers offering little compelling differentiation except for price points and market coverage, according to In-Stat's latest assessment . Mobile triple-play services (voice, video, and Internet) revenue opportunities are a potential solution to this situation, but only when cell operators first solve signal coverage and capacity issues in the indoor home environment, the high-tech market research firm says. "Femtocells -- small cellular base stations designed for use in residential and small business environments that provide enhanced coverage at the edge of the wireless network -- are a practical, near-term cure for these problems, with no practical limitations," says Allen Nogee, In-Stat analyst. "Femtocell technology is unlikely to be superseded by another technology in the foreseeable future." If only it were that simple -- where wireless market satur...

With 3G adoption, smartphones, and mobile data usage on the rise, apparently there's an urgent need for mobile operators to improve the indoor coverage of their networks, says Infonetics Research in its latest white paper entitled "An Evaluation of In-Building Wireless Coverage." Cellular is still the dominant technology for wireless voice, but it is well documented that cellular signals -- particularly 3G signals -- have difficulty penetrating into buildings. Infonetics' white paper assesses the viability of different solutions for addressing this issue, particularly distributed antenna systems, picocells, femtocells, and alternatives such as VoIP over wireless LAN. "Improving in-building cellular coverage should be a pressing concern for mobile operators if they want to drive up revenue per user, particularly from enterprise customers," said Richard Webb, wireless analyst for Infonetics Research. "If they don't, these high value customers will loo...

Not that long ago, many telecom sector analysts thought that Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) had run its course as a means of bridging cellular and Wi-Fi networks. However, because of the delays in the growth and development of viable competing solutions (SIP, or VCC), the opposite is true -- UMA services, devices, and subscribers are still growing, and subscriber numbers should reach 65 million by 2012. A new Research Brief from ABI Research indicates that at least seven handset vendors currently offer UMA-enabled handsets, and mobile operators are actively pursuing the technology. "Until recently, proponents of competing fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) solutions frequently cited the fact that UMA was only usable with 2G or enhanced 2G cellular services," says principal analyst Philip Solis. "But recently, the UMA client software has received an upgrade that will allow it to work with 3G handsets and services, offering another mobile broadband FMC option that will be viab...

The most productive times, when communications are critical, are often spent indoors. This reality, as well as increasing usage of 3G wireless data services, is creating a growing demand for better in-building wireless coverage, according to a report from ABI Research. ABI's estimates that more than 180,000 buildings will utilize in-building wireless systems by 2011. According to principal analyst Dan Shey, "The combination of supply-side enablers -- 3G networks, handsets with advanced capabilities, mobile applications -- with a strong customer need means operators will be focused on establishing a coverage footprint inside buildings to retain customers who are using mobile data services. We expect this market to show a compound annual growth rate of nearly 20 percent by 2011." Until now, carriers have focused on extending coverage from the macro network into buildings, but with 3G networks, that approach will have limited results for customers using data services that de...