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NGMN Conference at CeBIT 2008 looks ahead towards a Bright Future of Mobile Broadband Communications

Frankfurt/Hannover, March 6th, 2008 – This year’s CeBIT trade fair featured a half-day Conference of the international Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance (NGMN) held at the Convention Centre. Five renowned leaders of the mobile industry provided a vivid outlook into the future of mobile broadband communications, currently one of the hottest topics in the mobile and internet industry.

In his key note speech, Hamid Akhavan (Chairman of the NGMN Board and CEO, T-Mobile International), outlined the great potential of mobile broadband as well as key challenges and objectives. “Mobile broadband is a reality today in many markets,” Akhavan said. “The mobile data traffic is growing rapidly as people increasingly mobilize their personal, social, and working lives. The NGMN Alliance has been established by leading mobile operators to drive the development and to ensure the success of the mobile broadband ecosystem. NGMN will provide a true mobile internet experience with personalization and attractive, easy to use devices and applications."

Hartmut Kremling (CTO, Vodafone Germany) followed up on this by presenting the key success factors for next generation mobile networks from an operator perspective. He pointed out: “Increasing network traffic load beyond Pentabytes/month and the demand for high data rates indicate a clear need for a step-change in spectrum and network technology. Spectrum - the blood of our industry - is a scarce resource. Sufficient spectrum allocation and efficient use is therefore essential for NGMN. The performance of LTE / Mobile WiMAX is getting closer to the NGMN requirements; however, there is still a way to go. Most importantly, network deployment must be feasible on the existing 3G site grid, and transmission costs need to be drastically reduced through advanced backhauling solutions.”

How advanced network technologies and architectures contribute to resolve the challenges of next generation mobile broadband, this was the emphasis of the speech from Matthias Reiß (Head of LTE Radio, Nokia Siemens Networks): “Reduced network cost per Megabyte is a clear prerequisite for maintaining the profitability of mobile broadband networks,” Reiß said. “LTE/SAE offers an evolutionary network migration path enabling investment protection for operators and low network cost per Megabyte by flat architectures, optimized backhaul transmission, high spectral efficiency, and a scalable bandwidth. We are enthusiastic as “LTE live on Air” field trials carried out in Berlin have shown very encouraging performance results for LTE including the feasibility to deploy it on existing 3G sites.”

„Services are Key“, this was the key message from Dr. Jinsung Choi (Vice President Mobile Comms Tech, LG Electronics), who gave a lively impression of what customers can expect from future mobile broadband end-user devices and applications. “It is very obvious that the convergence of mobile, fixed, internet, gaming and computing industries and applications drives the mobile broadband market growth,” Choi explained. “Drastic handset performance improvements will make the internet experience portable and more personalized. Two major trends will be the convergence of mobile-centric devices integrating many different functions and the divergence of specialized application-centric devices. In either case, service personalization delivers lasting incremental value – increased revenues and customer loyalty,” he concluded.

Semiconductor technology and chip sets for end-user devices are critical enablers for any new and ever more demanding mobile wireless technology. Fortunately, Bill Krenik (CTO, Texas Instruments) had good news for the industry when he pointed out: “Whereas implementation of 3G terminal chip sets was a big challenge over 2G, OFDM-based next generation mobile broadband technologies are much more manageable. Advanced semiconductor process technology maximizes integration and minimizes cost. And integration drives features and functionality. The mobile future is bright. Chip sets for next generation include devices that will enable a 10-fold application processing performance, 8+ hours of continuous video viewing, 100+ hours of music, and much more."

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• Press_Release_NGMN_Conference_at_CeBIT_2008.pdf