Published twice a year, the report provides operator case studies, vendor points of view, interviews and technology analysis.  Richard Lord, CTO of Altobridge, a leading vendor of network equipment for remote network deployments in the developing world, has contributed to the 2nd report which features:

• Financing solutions from the IFC for renewable energy networks
• Case studies from Bharti Infratel and Zantel Tanzania
• An energy efficient, solar base station solution from VNL
• A summary of the key findings of recent GSMA research; ‘Community Power: Using Mobile to Extend the Grid’
• A detailed report on the future of powering mobile networks, by Richard Handford, a freelance journalist for the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and The Economist

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Note: the GMP team continue to track progress that the industry is making towards reaching the GPM target of powering 118,000 new and existing off-grid base stations in developing countries using renewable energy by 2012, via the Green Deployment Tracker.  This database is hosting information on over 9000 live renewable energy base stations worldwide.

Mobile telecoms technology firm Altobridge is keen on helping Chinese mobile phone operators to hook up small, remote communities which due to the low numbers of subscribers would otherwise not be commercially feasible to connect.

The firm has spent nearly a decade coming up with a system that combines satellite and software technology to “backhaul” or connect remote communities to the networks of mobile phone operators.

Connecting far-flung places is difficult for the likes of China Mobile, given the costs are not justified by the low numbers of mobile subscribers in such areas.

Asia sales director Mark O’Sullivan explains how Altobridge’s system works.

What are your key technologies?

Our Split Architecture software system and Local Connectivity systems use software and satellite bandwidth to reduce the cost of transmission of calls through an on-demand use of the satellite link. Split Architecture ensures that the link is only used when revenue-generating calls are being made.

Local Connectivity ensures in the case of mobile-to-mobile calls where both subscribers are located at the same site that we switch or connect those calls locally rather than bringing them over the expensive satellite link back to the main network.

Why can’t these remote areas be linked to the normal mobile phone network?

Often in remote communities there’s no reliable power supply or transmission network. It’s difficult for mobile phone operators to build a cost-efficient transmission network there.

We use existing satellite ground bases in the area, or install satellites, to install base stations that can work independently of the main network.

How do you power these bases?

We use solar to power the bases and transmission technology. The Altobridge solution has the lowest power consumption in the industry: ideal for solar and wind electricity.

Are mobile phone operators keen to use your equipment?

Some operators want to buy the equipment and use it themselves, while others want to hand off particular geographical segments to us.

We get the coordinates of the area they want us to cover, and we operate our system for a fixed price every month.

We use our own teams to install, and then manage remotely. Different operators have different strategies. Some are bound by universal coverage obligations. Sometimes it’s too risky for the operators. They’re not familiar with green power or satellite technologies.

What are the opportunities in China?

China is slightly different because even remote villages are the size of cities elsewhere. Operators are working from the lowest-to the highest-density areas and we’re now talking with local operators.

Are other large telecommunications equipment-makers offering similar equipment?

The majors like Ericsson and Huawei all claim to have solutions for remote areas, but they are more focused on larger populations of subscribers. Our solution is suited to 1,500 people per site.

Is it worth the mobile operators’ time and bother to do this?

It’s estimated there are 1 billion people living and working in non-urban communities who remain unconnected to networks. This is also potentially a major source of new revenue for mobile operators.

Cormac Sreenan, professor, Department of Computer Science, University College Cork; Karen Kelly, development manager, UCC; Mike Fitzgerald, chief executive, Altobridge; and Richard Lord, chief technology officer, Altobridge.

Kerry company Altobridge is collaborating with University College Cork in a €250,000 research project which will enable cost-effective mobile internet access in remote communities.

Part of Enterprise Ireland’s Innovation Partnership programme, The Back-haul Optimisation in Heterogeneous Wireless Access Networks (BACOPT) project aims to lower the cost of 3G mobile internet in remote villages, airplanes, boats and oil platforms.

It will be led by Cormac Sreenan,a professor in UCC’s Computer Science Department, who will collaborate with telecommunications engineers from Altobridge to devise novel approaches for optimising data delivery. Its aim will be to reduce the cost of satellite usage and open up the internet for new users.

Altobridge develops mobile communications over, satellite for remote communities, including die aeronautical and maritime industries.

Sreenan said a growing number of people in remote communities wanted internet access at reasonable prices.

“This collaboration is particularly significant for users in developing countries where wired networks are less prevalent and so mobile access to the internet is relied upon for education, commerce, medical, entertainment and social needs,” said Sreenan.

“The research is challenging and will require breakthroughs in the design of software and communication protocols for these remote networks. Outcomes of the BACOPT project will be evaluated on an experimental mobile network that links UCC and the Altobridge headquarters in Tralee.”

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UCC has begun the research project with Kerrybased Altobridge Ltd, which is chaired by former Tanaiste Dick Spring.

It is hoped the BACOPT (Back-haul Optimisation in Heterogeneous Wireless Access Networks) project will lower the cost of 3G mobile internet in remote villages, airplanes, boats and oil platforms.  It could also lead to huge benefits for developing countries.

The research will involve a team of computer scientists at UCC, led by Prof Cormac Sreenan, working with Altobridge’s telecommunications engineers to improve the speed ef data delivery.

This will in turn lead to reduced costs for satellite usage, thereby opening up the internet for new users.

Mr Sreenan said while most people take mobile internet access for granted, people living in remote sites have to rely on expensive satellite links to connect mobile networks to the internet.

“This collaboration is particularly significant for users in developing countries where wired networks are less prevalent and so mobile access to the internet is relied upon for education, commerce, medical, entertainment and social needs,” Mr Sreenan said.

“The research is challenging and will require breakthroughs in the design of software and communication protocols for these remote networks.”

The research will be tested on an experimental mobile network linking UCC and Altobridge in Tralee.

UCC president Dr Michael Murphy welcomed the collaboration.

“Partnering with industry and funding agencies such as Enterprise Ireland is a fundamental aspect of the university’s strategy,” he said.

“I am particularly proud of the partnership between Altobridge — a company founded by UCC graduate Mike Fitzgerald — and the School of Computer Science and Information Technology.”

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Interviewer: John Daly

Interviewee: Mike Fitzgerald

Occupation: CEO and Founder, Altobridge

When Altobridge was named Ernst & Young’s Irish Entrepreneur of the year 2009 in the Emerging category last October, the judges singled out Mike Fitzgerald’s vision and leadership for driving the company’s success in the emerging markets of Mongolia, Malaysia and Latin America.

Operating in a competitive environment where Altobridge is the pint-sized minnow shaping up against what Fitzgerald calls “the bit seven – companies like Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens” – the winning of awards can often make the difference between clinching the deal and heading home empty-handed…

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The Altobridge Remote Community Solution – A viable and cost effective solution for MNOs.

A perfect acquisition that will benefit remote communities in need of cost-effective, intelligent mobile communications, took place on the very last day of 2009, when Altobridge acquired the Mobile Network Solutions division of ADC. There is a natural synergy between the two, with world-leading software solutions from Altobridge and a groundbreaking base station and switching product portfolio from the ADC division. This means a coming together of two pioneering entities resulting in a company of almost unrivalled experience in delivering viable, intelligent mobile communications solutions into emerging market remote regions.

The Key Challenge up to now…

Expensive satellite transmission used for backhauling calls, that’s the major barrier still facing Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) the world over when considering mobile service roll-outs to remote user groups – but not anymore.

Solving the challenges of transmission – and many others besides – is the Remote Community Solution from Altobridge, which delivers a more ‘Intelligent’ Base Transceiver Station (BTS) site to the MNO than any other solution. And it’s now a total solution of Altobridge software integrated with the hardware of its new BTS Pod enclosure.

As a result of what Altobridge CEO, Mike Fitzgerald, calls a “perfect acquisition”, Altobridge can now offer customers a broader portfolio of products and services resulting in even greater cost savings than their previously separate systems. These new offerings include both a complete end-to-end network solution and network extensions by interfacing with existing networks, both are available with Fully Managed Services.

Mike Fitzgerald said,

“When we acquired the Mobile Network Solutions division of ADC, along with its full hardware portfolio, we acquired the perfect hardware solution with which to integrate our software technology. By doing so, we can now offer MNOs the most intelligent, turnkey system for delivering lower transmission costs, lower power consumption and optimum returns from the delivery of mobile services to remote communities.”

Green Peas in a Pod

Just like green peas in a pod, the new Altobridge BTS Pod enclosure at the heart of the Remote Community Solution differentiates the system from others by delivering a series of intelligent ‘green’ functions’ to the installation: Intelligent Transmission Management, Intelligent Power Management, an Intelligent Data-at-the-Edge™-of-the-network capability, and efficient handling of the BTS radio resource. All of these functions enable a compelling and unbeatable ‘green’ business case for a more cost-efficient, intelligent and profitable BTS site.

The intelligence designed into the Altobridge technology that manages and restricts the use of expensive transmission bandwidth comes from two of the company’s patented technology platforms. First is the Altobridge Split Architecture™, which ensures an ‘on-demand’ use of the satellite link when only revenue-generating traffic is occurring, and uses the lowest level of bandwidth in the industry at 5-8kbps per call. This system not only cuts transmission costs, it also cuts power consumption, which is further reduced with a ‘night mode’.

The second is the Altobridge Local Connectivity™ Platform, which enables the intelligent switching of all local calls locally at the base station or handover between base station clusters. This eliminates unnecessary transmission costs, double satellite hops and improves network quality and longer call holding times resulting in increased call revenues. As up to 70% of calls can be local, significant opportunities exist to reduce transmission costs in all areas of the network.

The systems based on these platforms have proven to significantly cut backhaul and power costs and have been successfully deployed on wireless telecoms networks, aircraft and ocean-going vessels around the world. The benefits of these two technologies combined in the Remote Community Solution with the additional intelligence embedded in the BTS Pod and including a Fully Managed Service offering and VSAT bundling, make this the most cost-effective solution for rural communities on the market. Leading mobile operators in the Far East, including Maxis in Malaysia and MobiCom in Mongolia, have been using Altobridge Remote Community solution technologies since 2007.

Green Power

One of the strengths of the Altobridge Remote Community solution is that it has one of the lowest power consumption figures on the market, but it takes intelligent power optimisation to reduce power consumption. For solar installations, the solution has an intelligent ‘Night Mode’ reducing power use at night during low traffic periods. The intelligent control of the BTS can be used to vary services and coverage at night or during periods of low power availability, with further power savings achieved through intelligent management of the power amplifier.

Altobridge Technology in Operation

Several leading MNOs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are overcoming the challenges outlined above with the deployment of the Remote Community Solution and its technologies.

In a recent deployment, the Local Connectivity element of Altobridge’s Remote Community Solution has been put through its paces in the desert regions of Northern Africa, where the developing telecoms market is focused largely on mobile. One of the country’s three MNOs wanted to reduce satellite bandwidth use in backhaul scenarios, thereby reducing its OPEX, and has rolled out Altobridge’s Local Connectivity technology to do just that. The installation has now been in operation since the first half of 2009 and from its early deployment covering small user groups has now been expanded to cover multiple clustered sites serving, in total, some 10,000 remote-location users.

The MNO has already reported per-site savings of 20%, equating to $11,200 per E1 link over satellite, representing savings in the region of US$600 per site per month. In addition, the QoS improvements experienced by users making local calls have had a significant impact by increasing call holding times for these calls, on average, by over 100%. So, while transmission savings for the MNO are easy to prove, call revenues are also increasing without affecting the satellite backhaul OPEX.

As a result of this deployment, this Northern African MNO has seen a doubling of call holding times for local calls, resulting in increased revenues and a ‘win-win’ scenario for both the MNO and the customers.

In a further recent African implementation, the Altobridge Remote Community Solution has been deployed in the western part of the continent, close to the Sahara, where there are hundreds of remote villages with hundreds to thousands of potential users in each, as well as a growing number of Remote Enterprise campuses.

One of the main operators was looking for a low-CAPEX solution to provide exceptional service quality and generate profits and was attracted to the Altobridge Remote Community Solution for its combination of easily (and therefore cheaply) deployed BTS, with low OPEX through its ‘on-demand’ use of expensive satellite bandwidth. The solution’s low power consumption also factored into the low-OPEX equation and its Local Connectivity function, switching all local calls intelligently at the campus or village BTS, was a further important factor.

The first deployment with this MNO is an enterprise deployment of the Remote Community Solution and has been running since late 2009, providing services to an average of 250 individual users registered each day since deployment. The MNO reported that Quality of Service (QoS) has been very good with the solution’s Split Architecture ensuring that location updates and other signalling is unaffected by any satellite delay. In particular, local calls enjoy superior quality as they are not sent back and forth over the satellite link as a result of Altobridge’s Local Connectivity technology.

The second deployment with this MNO has been located in a village. This population is primarily an agricultural community. On a typical day, the average number of registered users is 80-100. On market days, user numbers increase to 120-140. ARPU for the users on this site has reached double the network average and SMS usage per user is four times the network average. (These statistics are in line with Altobridge’s experience with customers in Asia including MNOs, Maxis and MobiCom).

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Delivering Intelligent Mobile Connectivity to Remote Communities in Africa

Intro: The high capital outlay typically associated with macro base station sites and the exceptionally high operational overhead costs, in particular, transmission and power supply, have all been major barriers facing those Mobile Network Operators considering mobile service roll-outs to remote groups in emerging markets. As a result, in two thirds of Africa mobile penetration remains below 40%, and small enterprises and villages in such regions still have no effective means of communicating. This neglected remote community segment presents both a major service-delivery challenge for regional operators but also a serious revenue-generating opportunity.

Solving the Challenges – Experience,Technology Breakthroughs and Intelligence

Several leading Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are overcoming these challenges with the deployment of the Remote Community Solution from Altobridge, which delivers a more ‘intelligent’ base station site to the MNO than any previous solution. The company’s practical experience working in remote regions of the world, has ensured an unsurpassed understanding of the business, technological, practical and cultural challenges facing MNOs and infrastructure providers trying to deliver services to remote community users. Applying that knowledge, the company developed its Remote Community Solution – the most cost-effective solution for rural communities available on the market today. Altobridge has designed, as a key element of its solution, a low-capital-cost, pole-mountable, intelligent Base Transceiver Station (BTS) that manages to cut transmission costs and power consumption to the point where relatively low subscriber numbers can deliver a positive return on investment.

Part of what differentiates the Altobridge technology from other solutions is its ability to intelligently manage and restrict the use of expensive transmission bandwidth by combining two of its patented technology platforms. First is the Altobridge Split Architecture™, which ensures an ‘on-demand’ use of the satellite link when only revenuegenerating traffic is occurring, and uses the lowest level of bandwidth in the industry at 5-8kbps per call. This system not only cuts transmission costs, it also cuts power consumption, which is further reduced with a ‘night mode’.

The second is the Altobridge Local Connectivity™ Platform, which enables the intelligent switching of all local calls locally at the base station or handover between base station clusters. This eliminates unnecessary transmission costs, double satellite hops and improves network quality thereby encouraging longer call holding times resulting in increased call revenues. As up to 70% of calls can be local, significant opportunities exist to reduce transmission costs in all areas of the network. The Local Connectivity Platform has been licensed to worldleading infrastructure providers.

The benefits of these two technologies combined in the Remote Community Solution, including a Fully Managed Service offering and VSAT bundling are, in part, what makes this the most cost-effective solution for rural communities on the market.

However, like peas in a pod, the new Altobridge Pod BTS at the heart of the Remote Community Solution, further differentiates the system, by delivering a series of ‘green’ functions’: Intelligent Transmission Management, Intelligent Power Management, an Intelligent Data at the Edge™ of the network capability, and efficient handling of the BTS radio resource. All of these functions enable a compelling and unbeatable ‘green’ business case for a more efficient, low-cost, intelligent and profitable BTS site.

Mike Fitzgerald, Altobridge CEO, said, “When we acquired the Mobile Network Solutions division of ADC at the start of 2010, along with its full hardware portfolio, we acquired the perfect hardware solution with which to integrate our technology. By doing so, we can now offer MNOs the most intelligent, turnkey system for delivering lower transmission costs, lower power consumption and optimum returns from the delivery of mobile services to remote communities.

Green Power

Power consumption is a key challenge in reaching remote areas. One of the strengths of the Altobridge Remote Community solution is that it has one of the lowest power consumption figures on the market due to the special features of the Split Architecture, which ensures transmission is used ‘on-demand’, as stated above. The solution also minimizes the amount of data transferred over the VSAT link, reducing bandwidth requirements, which in turn means smaller VSAT antennas are needed, and less power is consumed.

Intelligent power optimization is crucial to reducing power consumption. For solar power installations the Remote Community Solution has an intelligent ‘Night Mode’ whereby power consumption can be reduced at night during low traffic periods between the hours of, say, 12am and 6am. The BTS is controlled intelligently and this can be used to vary services and coverage at night, or during periods of low power availability. Further power savings are achieved through intelligent management of the power amplifier.

Solar Power for rural communications can be a viable and attractive option to commonly used diesel generators. But low power consumption and intelligent energy management by the systems drawing on the solar power source is critical for operations of telecoms equipment in remote areas, which is why the Altobridge optimised power solution is so appropriate.

In Remotest Africa

In Africa, the Altobridge Remote Community Solution has been deployed in the western part of the continent, close to the Sahara, in a developing market where very little exists in terms of general infrastructure. Penetration of both land lines and mobile phones is extremely low although three MNOs do operate in this market. Primarily unpopulated semi-arid desert, the region supports hundreds of remote villages with hundreds to thousands of potential users in each, as well as a growing number of Remote Enterprise campuses due to increasing mining and exploration activities.

One of the main operators approached Altobridge to explore the company’s capabilities to deliver a ‘low-cost-of-ownership’ communications site that would enable it to continue coverage expansion into remote regions. With traditional site infrastructure CAPEX for towers and high-output-power equipment being too costly, a low-CAPEX solution that would provide exceptional service quality and generate profits was required.

What attracted the MNO about the Altobridge Remote Community Solution was its combination of easily (and therefore cheaply) deployed BTS, with low OPEX through its ‘on-demand’ use of expensive satellite bandwidth. The solution’s low power consumption also factored into the low-OPEX equation and its Local Connectivity function, switching all local calls intelligently at the campus or village BTS, was a further important factor, both for keeping OPEX low and for consumer experience.

The first deployment with this MNO is an enterprise deployment of the Remote Community Solution and has been running since late 2009, providing services to an average of 250 individual users registered each day since deployment. However, these initial users are not, as yet, the enterprise customers themselves, (who are awaiting the next phase of roll-out), but villagers from nearby communities. This highlights the spinoff social opportunity such a remote enterprise network offers to the surrounding population and the additional revenues, even from such low-ARPU users, an operator can expect. In addition, the operator has detected a second source of revenue from the installation, offering the enterprise users Internet service via the same VSAT link used by the GSM service.

The MNO has said that Quality of Service (QoS) has been very good with the solution’s Split Architecture ensuring that location updates and other signalling is unaffected by any satellite delay. In particular, local calls enjoy superior quality as they are not sent back and forth over the satellite link as a result of Altobridge’s Local Connectivity technology. The call completion ratio, i.e. the ratio of initiated calls that progress until terminated actively by the called or calling party, is close to 100%. As DAMA technology is used, the average satellite bandwidth utilization per call will be reduced further when additional sites are deployed, due to statistical multiplexing gains, estimated to be 30-50% over 30 sites.

The second deployment with this MNO has been located in a village. This population is primarily an agricultural community. On a typical day, the average number of registered users is 80-100. On market days, user numbers increase to 120-140. ARPU for the users on this site has reached twice that of the network average and SMS usage per user is four times the network average. (These statistics are in line with Altobridge’s experience with customers in Asia including MNOs, Maxis and MobiCom).

Local Green Power

A major difference between the two sites is that the enterprise site has its own power, sheltered accommodation and offices, while the operator needs to supply both power and shelter for the village installation. Here, a diesel generator is used, although solar power will be introduced soon, in line with Altobridge’s commitment to utilising cost-saving, low-powerconsumption green/sustainable power sources for its commercial installations wherever and whenever possible.

The installation’s Altobridge BTS offers an output power of 10W per carrier with less than 200W input power, making the site very suitable for solar power. As traffic levels drop, e.g. at night, one transceiver is put on stand-by mode and, thanks to the Split Architecture the VSAT modem is also put into stand-by mode, reducing power consumption further.

‘Anywhere-and-Everywhere’ Logistics

Mountains, rivers and other natural obstacles are no barriers to Altobridge deployments. The company’s flexible and adaptable approach to each project ensures rapid roll-out even in the harshest environments.

In both deployments road infrastructure is basic and has made transport by 4×4 vehicle necessary. Whereas that might cause a problem for other solutions’ heavy infrastructure and large masts, the low cost, sectioned, mono-pole mast used by Altobridge in this instance, is not only easy to install – fundamental to the low cost deployment – but also does not require large trucks for transport, instead being easily carried on the roof of the engineering 4×4. A site design not requiring major civil works or concrete foundations has further reduced the costs and deployment time for these installations, with each deployment taking a single Altobridge engineer only two days to complete.

For the MNO involved, these two initial deployments have proven it is possible to build out coverage successfully and profitably to remote communities providing high quality service with low cost sites. In the future, further deployments and extensions are expected.

An Added Advantage

As a direct result of the ease of deployment and low CAPEX delivered by the Altobridge solution, this operator also considers it to be a huge advantage to deploy the Remote Community Solution quickly to sites where, traditionally, macro sites are deployed. In such scenarios, introduction of macro-site infrastructure can wait until subscriber numbers are high enough to merit such investment, at which time Altobridge’s Remote Community site will be moved to the next remote towns or villages.

Moving North

In a further recent African deployment, the Local Connectivity element of Altobridge’s Remote Community Solution has been put through its paces, this time in the desert regions of Northern Africa, where the developing telecoms market is focused largely on mobile. One of the country’s three MNOs wanted to reduce satellite bandwidth use in backhaul scenarios, thereby reducing its OPEX, and has rolled out Altobridge’s Local Connectivity technology to do just that.

The installation has now been in operation since the first half of 2009 and from its early deployment covering small user groups has now been expanded to cover multiple clustered sites serving, in total, some 10,000 remote-location users.

The MNO has already reported per-site savings of 20%, equating at 8,000 per E1 link over satellite, representing savings in the region of US$600 per site per month. In addition, the QoS improvements experienced by users making local calls have had a significant impact by increasing call holding times for these calls, on average, by over 100%. So, while transmission savings for the MNO are easy to prove, call revenues are also increasing without affecting the satellite backhaul OPEX.

This deployment has again demonstrated the functionality and application versatility delivered by the Altobridge Remote Community Solution and its Local Connectivity platform, reducing MNO transmission OPEX and positively impacting user experience.

As a result, this Northern African MNO has seen a doubling of call holding times for local calls, resulting in increased revenues, and a ‘win-win’ scenario for both the MNO and customers, alike.

The GSMA Green Power for Mobile programme has published a new white paper today called ‘Community Power – Using Mobile to Extend the Grid’.

A significant opportunity exists to provide environmentally sustainable energy to people in the developing world who live beyond the electricity grid. And it is the mobile telecoms industry – which has already brought phones beyond the fixed telecoms grid – which holds the key to this next infrastructure innovation.

The opportunity exists for mobile network operators to provide electricity beyond the base station and into local communities, a phenomenon which the GSMA Development Fund calls “Community Power”.

Mobile network operators are trialling different approaches: at a minimum, operators can provide excess power to the community for small needs like charging up mobile handsets, large household batteries and rechargeable lanterns. At a maximum, the consistent power requirements of a mobile base station provide a stable “anchor” demand for a bigger investment by a third party company in a village energy system, powering both the base station as well as local homes and businesses.

The GSMA forecasts that there is potential for 200,000 Community Power projects worldwide, which could provide sustainable electricity to 120 million people.

To accelerate the formation of this energy ecosystem GSMA Green Power for Mobile calls on existing and emerging stakeholders to highlight their interest in this proposal, specifically:

1. Operators and tower companies that are interested to pilot and move to full scale implementation of the Community Power model
2. Vendors and energy companies that are positioned to provide off-grid, renewable power to both the base station and community simultaneously
3. Financing institutions and development organisations that can facilitate large scale implementation of the Community Power model

The private company is actively seeking to raise in the region of USD 20m from a new partner in order to meet increasing customer demand. “For us, we need to raise money for capital expenditure; if we get our hands on capital it becomes revenue stream from the first day,” noted Fitzgerald, who is also a co-founder.

For this reason, Altobridge is targeting investment houses such as developments banks like the EBRD, which have a particular requirement to get communication to remote locations. This way, he added, the investor would receive a double return, through Altobridge, and by connecting these remote locations which has a knock on effect on the local economy and businesses.

According to Fitzgerald, there have been several discussions with “a handful” of potential investors, including a well known name. The stake in play will be decided on a case by case basis, he added. However, Fitzgerald said he doesn’t expect to do a road show to find investors as he doesn’t deem it necessary, given that many investors have been approaching the company proactively.

Canaccord Adams remains the company’s corporate adviser on an ongoing basis.

Although Altobridge is primarily targeting a particular type of investor, it would be open to hearing from other strategic firms as long as they are “aligned with our particular area and put up capital in place, [with a view of securing] recurring revenues”, Fitzgerald said. An initial public offering is another opportunity the company could pursue in the future, but only once the economy recovers, he added.

In 2010, Altobridge expects growth to come especially from South East Asia, Africa, South America and India, where telecommunications in remote locations has primarily been expensive. Altobridge specialises in cutting the cost of communications to, from and between wireless devices. Its areas of expertise include solar-powered satellite backhaul in remote areas and enabling phone calls on commercial flights.

Earlier this month it acquired ADC Telecommunication’s portfolio of GSM base station and switching product, which doubled the size of the company to 150 employees. The experienced personnel the company gained with this deal will be particularly important in this next growth phase, Fitzgerald said.

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Download full Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment press release here

Minister for Science, Technology & Innovation Conor Lenihan T.D., today (Tuesday 10th November 2009) congratulated Irish mobile communications companies, Altobridge and Sentry Wireless, on being selected as finalists in the prestigious GSM Association’s Mobile Innovation Grand Prix, Asia Pacific Tournament.
Minister Lenihan said, “The Mobile Asia Congress is one of the industry’s highest profile events, and for two Irish companies to be represented in the final five demonstrates the pioneering breakthroughs both have made on the global mobile technologies’ stage.”
Leading provider of mobile security solutions, Sentry Wireless, has been nominated for its anti-SMS spam solution, SpamGuard, which uses Sentry Wireless’ award-winning and patented technology to enable subscribers to identify and block SMS spam in ‘one click’ using a client on the SIM or handset. This is the only spam solution that is visible to the subscriber and demonstrates that the operator is taking proactive action against messaging abuse.
Matt Norton, Chief Executive Officer of Sentry Wireless, said, “SpamGuard addresses one of the biggest frustrations that operator’s subscriber’s experience – the inability to deal with SMS spam. It sets the standard for stopping SMS spam.”
Leading provider of cost-effective wireless solutions for mobile network operators (MNOs), Altobridge, has been nominated for its pioneering technology behind the company’s Remote Community Solution, which is aimed at MNOs in emerging markets and has been deployed successfully in commercial operations in Asia, with further deployments ongoing in Africa and Latin America. The deployments in Asia, (in Malaysia and Mongolia), have seen profitable cellular services reach small, remote communities where no viable delivery of mobile telephony services had previously been possible. The patented breakthrough technologies are set to make a powerful contribution to MNOs in other emerging markets where several trials are underway.
Mike Fitzgerald, Altobridge Chief Executive Officer, said, “Our Remote Community Solution is set to change the lives of people living and working in small communities in the remotest parts of the world. We are delighted it has been recognised in this prestigious, objective, industry awards process”
Minister Lenihan went on to say that “Building Ireland’s Smart Economy is about establishing Ireland as an innovation hub. It involves building the innovation or ‘ideas’ component of the Irish economy and developing a high-value, research-intensive, multinational community alongside thriving innovative Irish companies.
Minister Lenihan added, “Altobridge and Sentry Wireless’s progress is a positive reflection of the Government’s Smart Economy blueprint, which sets out to achieve that precise model for the software sector. I am confident that this strategy will ensure Ireland’s software industry meets these new market opportunities delivering more highly skilled, sustainable and well paid jobs in our economy.”
The two companies will present their solutions to judges, who are made up of senior industry figures drawn from large mobile operators and venture capitalists, at the Mobile Asia Congress in Hong Kong, 18-19 November. Two overall winners will win a trip to compete for the Mobile Innovation Grand Prix title, part of the GSMA’s Global Mobile Awards, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2010, the most important event in the mobile industry’s calendar.

Mike Fitzgerand, CEO of Altobridge, said to Convergencialatina that “this platform unifies satellite and mobile worlds in one solution. It is an opportunity for mobile operators who want to reach isolated communities at the lowest cost available in the market. “Remote Community Communications is now used by companies as Maxis in Malaysia and Mobicon in Mongolia, among other operations in Southeast Asia.”Two years ago, Altobridge´s feasibility study began to operate in Latin America. The strategy will consist of two phases: first, to approach local satellite operators, and then communities,” he said.

AS OF MARCH 2008, the total wireless user figure of the African Continent stood at 280 million, although it was widely predicted that the 300mn subscriber mark would be reached by Q4 of the same year.

Research house Telegeography more recently stated that 96mn new subscribers were added to Africa’s total in Q1 2009, alone. While this rate of increase maintains Africa’s first place as the fastest growth market in the world, it still remains second smallest1 in terms of cellular connections, behind the Middle East.

However, cellular penetration figures would drop dramatically to single digits at most, if the urban/sophisticated markets (some of which exhibit penetration rates of around 60 per cent) are excluded from the statistical analysis and are viewed separately from these remote communities, which remain largely unconnected.

Viable service provision

With Universal Service Obligations (USO) mandating service delivery to even the most remote small populations, African mobile operators need viable ways to deliver cost-effective services.

The major obstacle has always been the high cost of transmission bandwidth, whether for terrestrial core network or satellite backhaul, and this has prevented profitable or even sustainable service delivery to these enterprise or village communities.

Some of the technologies deployed in certain parts of the world to deliver services to remote regions and meet USO requirements, have simply not enabled a sustainable business model. While initial roll-outs have been cost-effective and basic wireless services have reached a large number of isolated communities, the cost of continuing services has often come as a shock to the operator. With very little revenue-generating traffic, the monthly overhead costs have become too high. The cost for a single BTS might appear small on paper but rises exponentially when hundreds of BTSs are involved. Therefore, the infrastructure providers have, in several cases, left the operators incurring massive operational overheads and costs – even before a call has been made – just to maintain a service for small groups of users whose ARPUs are, in any case, extremely low.

The key running cost is the expensive ‘always-on’ use of transmission bandwidth where the network backhaul resource remains open, whether core network or satellite link, even when no revenue-generating traffic is occurring. Despite the situation being addressed by the industry, widespread availability of suitable solutions remains low.

However, one specialist in the field, Altobridge, has been successfully working to solve these issues for many years and has produced the patented Remote Community Solution.

Altobridge’s practical experience working in remote parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, has ensured an unsurpassed understanding of the business, technological, practical/logistical and cultural challenges facing mobile operators and infrastructure providers trying to deliver services to remote community users.

With leading operators already deploying the Altobridge Remote Community Solution across Asia, the company is also currently trialing its technologies with operators in Northern and Western Africa (as well as in Latin America).

Managing bandwidth, managing technology

What differentiates the Altobridge technology is its ability to manage and restrict the use of expensive transmission bandwidth by combining two of its patented technologies.

The first is the Altobridge Split Architecture, which ensures an ‘on-demand’ use of the satellite link only when revenue-generating traffic is occurring, and uses the lowest level of bandwidth in the industry at 5-8kbps per call.

This system not only cuts down transmission costs effectively, it also cuts down power consumption which is further reduced with a ‘night mode’.

The second technology is the Altobridge Local Connectivity Platform, which enables the intelligent switching of all local calls locally. This eliminates unnecessary double satellite hops and improves network quality, which encourages longer call holding times, resulting in increased call revenues.

As up to 70 per cent2 of calls can be local, there are significant opportunities to reduce transmission costs in all areas of the network. The Local Connectivity Platform has been licensed to world-leading infrastructure providers, including Ericsson.

The benefits of these two technologies combined in the Remote Community Solution, including a Fully Managed Service offering, makes this the most cost-effective solution for rural communities available on the market today.

According to Wireless Intelligence, the average penetration rates were 35 per cent in West Africa and 60 per cent in the Northern African regions at the end of 2008, but combined, these two regions show around 168.5 million connections, representing around two thirds of the continent’s total connections.

Within this network activity mix, the current Altobridge trials of its Remote Community Solution will demonstrate to African mobile network operators how to profitably meet their USO requirements to provide profitable services to their remote user groups.

Mike Fitzgerald, CEO, Altobridge

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In the mobile and wireless technology stakes, few countries are as cutting edge as Japan. But Ireland has one wireless resource that is scarce in the east Asian country: lots of radio spectrum for trying out devices and services.

Enticing Japan and other spectrum-scarce countries over to dabble with our radio aplenty is a goal of communications regulator ComReg, which has been quietly working to develop a global market around unused Irish spectrum but has begun to specifically target countries such as Japan.

Spectrum is attractive for comprehensively testing and trialling wireless products that would only have small lab-based networks available for such experimentation elsewhere. In many countries, most available spectrum is already divided up between research, industry and military and policing services.

As Ireland moves towards digital broadcasting for television and radio, additional spectrum is being freed up too – the so-called “digital dividend” – because digital utilisation of spectrum is far more efficient.

However, Ireland isn’t the only EU country trying to flog its spare spectrum.

“Every country in Europe is trying to maximise their spectrum market, but the others don’t have our advantages,” says ComReg commissioner Mike Byrne.

Those include nicely isolated, interference-free chunks of spectrum thanks to being an island nation, and plenty of spectrum, especially in the eagerly sought after mobile device ranges.

ComReg has put in a dedicated website – www.testandtrial.ie – and stresses Ireland has amongst the lowest international prices for test or trial licenses – €200 for the former and €500 for the latter.

But surely this is hardly a money-making industry, then?

Byrne says it’s not the license income per se – deliberately kept very low – but the fact that offering spectrum may bring in new companies, innovative research and development projects and, ultimately, jobs.

Hence, using spectrum as an innovation and jobs lure was one of the aspirations highlighted by Communications Minister Eamon Ryan this week, when he claimed there was the potential to create a major content and services industry here.

Many of the projects he mentioned, such as the SmartBay sensor project in Galway Bay, involve ComReg because they make use of radio spectrum.

But a wider effort to bring in international spectrum projects is already under way. In hopes of attracting Japanese companies here, ComReg headed to Tokyo at the start of summer to make formal presentations to 120 Japanese companies at a one-day “Japan-Ireland Forum on Ubiquitous Innovation”, sponsored by the two governments.

Such was the interest from Japanese industry that the event was oversubscribed, says Byrne, who travelled over for the event. Alongside him were Dr Linda Doyle of the Irish universities’ spectrum-focused Centre for Telecommunications Value-chain Research and Mike Fitzgerald, chief executive of Kerry mobile services company Altobridge, to give a research and industry perspective on spectrum use.

Now is the time to be talking to such East Asian nations, Byrne says, because the Japanese market is saturated with devices and services, and handset makers, mobile operators and service providers are looking to Europe and other regions for fresh income.

“[ Japanese telecommunications operator] DoCoMo had profits last year of €5 billion. The scale [ for telecommunications services and devices in Japan] is massive. But they need to expand out of their markets,” Byrne says.

“A lot of those companies have to look abroad.”

Europe, another sophisticated mobile zone, is an especially attractive market for the Japanese, as well as for the South Koreans and other Asian mobile-focused countries, he says.

The issue is persuading those industries to come to Ireland, where we have what amounts to “a spectrum playground”, says ComReg spectrum development manager Kevin Kennedy.

If Japanese companies and universities decide to set up projects here, many benefits could be realised. The Japanese government already has developed what it calls “special ubiquitous zones” in regions of Japan where infrastructure is put in to support research and innovation.

The possibility of developing sister sites in Ireland for joint innovation was discussed in Japan, says Byrne. No spectrum license sales have come as a direct result of the Japanese event yet, says Byrne, but Kennedy is confident several projects will be in the offing by the end of the year.

Many of the contacts are “a long game”, with Japanese business players traditionally moving cautiously into new ventures, says Byrne, but these should develop over time.

Along with the potential for cutting-edge research in spectrum use, other possible research and development projects could be in life and medical sciences, mobile communications, broadcasting or development of commercial products, he says.

“Any area of innovation that requires a wireless network, we’re here,” concludes Byrne.

“Every country in Europe is trying to maximise their spectrum market, but the others don’t have our advantages.

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times

By Ian Kehoe, 19 July 2009, Sunday Business Post

Mobile phones on aircraft? Check. Broadband for ocean liners? Check. Blackberries on oil rigs? Check. Now Mike Fitzgerald, the Kerry entrepreneur whose company first enabled in-flight mobile phone usage on commercial planes, is turning his attention to some of the most remote villages in the world.

His company, Altobridge, has spent the past seven years developing and refining a pioneering technology that slashes the cost of providing mobile phone coverage in far flung, isolated locations.

Fitzgerald said the technology was ready to go. ‘‘The hard part is over. Our engineers have developed a software that works. The next step is to get it out there,” said Fitzgerald, who established the company in late 2002. His new target market is the one that most operators have left behind – small villages of between 200 and 500 people in distant locations where it makes little financial sense for a telecoms operator to build masts or install expensive telecoms infrastructure. He estimates that more than one billion people in the world live in areas without phone coverage.

By using Altobridge’s technology, Fitzgerald said, it was now economically viable for mobile phone operators to enter these virgin territories. Altobridge’s technology is complex, and involves creating a local mobile network off a base station connected to a satellite.

Fitzgerald said the company had registered s ix international patents.

The business case, however, is much simpler. ‘‘We can look our customers in the eye and tell them we can cut the cost of delivering wireless communications. It is a compelling proposition,” he said.

Fitzgerald knows a thing or two about compelling propositions. Although only in his early 40s, he has been in the telecoms business for more than 20 years, rising to become vice president of two Nasdaq quoted companies.

In 1999, he led a management buyout of a division of a US company to form Microcellular Systems, before flipping it on a year later for $20 million after returning it to profitability.

After spending millions of euro on research and development for his latest venture, Fitzgerald said that Altobridge had been profitable in the last quarter, while its order book and turnover were both expanding quickly.

‘‘I don’t think anyone is recessionproof, but we are lucky in that this is our growth year. Typically, you spend a lot of years and a lot of money developing the software. We have done that. Now our job is to start selling it,” he said.

Most of that sales effort will centre around Altobridge’s Malaysian experiment. Two years ago, it entered the Malaysian market through a partnership deal with Maxis, the Asian mobile phone operator, whereby it agreed to develop, deploy and manage a remote mobile network.

Altobridge trained local companies to install and manage the base stations – small portable devices that make the technology work.

Fitzgerald said that the overall deal was designed to prove that the technology worked, and that it could work anywhere.

‘‘If you want to get sales in this market, you need a beachhead reference. You have to provide proof that your technology works. Malaysia was our beachhead reference. The market was very remote, but we proved our technology and our business model there.”

According to Fitzgerald, Altobridge is now at varying stages of deploying its technology to a further nine countries.

After Malaysia, he said, the big market was Indonesia, which has a population close to that of the US, spread over 17,000 islands. ‘‘It is a massive market, but a monstrous country for telecommunications. There are so many small villages and towns. We are also working on three countries in South America, and several in Africa,” he said.

The international expansion will require money, however. Additional sales staff will have to be recruited, while capital projects will have to be funded.

The company has received funding from a range of investors including Claret Capital (the investment company headed by Domhnal Slattery), the late Tony Ryan and Shannon Development.

Now Fitzgerald is planning to go back for more. This week, he will begin an investment roadshow in the US, where he aims to tap investors for funding to finance the company’s growth over the next three to five years.

‘‘We are in discussion at the moment. We are not looking for crazy money, and we are conscious that this is 2009. But we think there will be interest. You can never be cocky, but you can be quietly confident,” he said.

Fitzgerald said the company had raised a ‘‘relatively modest’’ amount of funding, allowing senior staff and management to retain a majority stake in the business.

Although it has only one product, Altobridge has two distinct ways of doing business. In certain cases, the company will manage the entire network, as it has done in Malaysia. Fitzgerald said the benefit of this model was that it provided a recurring revenue stream.

In other cases, the company will operate through channels. It has signed licensing deals with two of the largest wireless network providers, including Ericsson. These two deals provided Altobridge with access to almost 80 per cent of the global market, Fitzgerald said.

‘‘In a recession, it is important to have a mixture of business. That is why we sell our software through channels and do managed services. Both are important to us.

‘‘This is not a quick play, a quick sell. It is a long-term business plan,” he said. Down the line, Fitzgerald said, it was possible that Altobridge would decide to spin off one of the two business units in a separate company to allow it to scale up.

It is a model that has worked for the company before. In 2007, its technology formed the basis for Blue Ocean Wireless, an Irish company that provides GSM mobile phone network for merchant ships. Altobridge retained a 15 per cent stake in Blue Ocean, which now has a customer base and order book approaching 700 vessels.

The company is also backed by Claret Capital and Filipino telecoms group Smart Communications. Last week, Blue Ocean announced that it had raised a further $7.5 million in funding, with the equity coming from both Altobridge and Smart Telecommunications. Claret Capital did not participate.

The company is now valued at more than $87 million.

‘‘We have a stake in the sister company, but we really view it as a customer. It is a great source of recurring revenue. It uses our software,” said Fitzgerald. Altobridge is also pushing ahead with its in-flight technology, which offers mobile phone and Blackberry access to airline passengers. It now has deals with seven airlines, including Emirates and Qantas.

(Ryanair selected Altobridge’s main rival as its partner.)

The technology garnered the Kerry company headlines around the world, but, Fitzgerald said, it was always going to be the firm’s secondary market.

‘‘One of the big challenges for an indigenous R&D company is to create a brand. The aircraft market was good to us. It got us attention and it proved that our technology worked. When we sit down with customers, people know who we are,” said Fitzgerald. ‘‘But we need to be able to back it up. If you create hype without credibility, it is a dangerous thing.”

Fitzgerald, who is on the shortlist for this year’s Ernst &Young Entrepreneur of the Year award, is quick to point out this is not a one-man operation. The company’s workforce, he said, probably worked harder than he had to, and was among the best qualified in the country.

He also sings the praises of Enterprise Ireland and Shannon Development. ‘‘There is a great network out there. They can really open doors for you.

Likewise, our ambassadors around the world are great for helping businesses,” he said. He has also started to back fledgling companies, though Mianach Venture Capital, a new funding house backed by Fitzgerald and some other software veterans.

‘‘I think it is good to help grow and scale Irish companies,” he said. ‘‘That is what we are trying to do at Altobridge, and what Mianach is trying to do with other companies.

Irish entrepreneurs have to realise that they don’t have to sell their business when someone waves a few dollars under their nose. Sometimes, you can make more by growing it. That is our strategy with Altobridge.”

(By John C. Tanner – June 12, 2009) For some time, the mobile industry has known that the next wave of growth was going to come not just from emerging markets, but the rural areas beyond the reach of any telecom infrastructure or even the electrical grid. It’s not just a huge untapped market, it’s also a growing one, according to satellite market research firm NSR. It estimates that while urbanization in many key Asia-Pacific countries is growing, drawing rural denizens to the cities, the rate of population growth in rural areas is offsetting that to the point where the total rural population base in Asia will grow from 2.43 billion in 2007 to 2.68 billion by the end of 2017.

One of the many challenges in deploying cellular services to remote villages has been the backhaul link from the base station to the network. And for many year, satellite has been touted as an ideal solution, primarily because it covers a wide footprint and can connect thousands of base stations in one go. Just about every major satellite player offers cellular backhaul services in one form or another, and equipment vendors such as Gilat, Hughes, iDirect and others sell equipment to enable it on the ground.

NSR has projected that cellular backhaul revenues from equipment and transponder leases will grow from an estimated $227.1 million in 2007 to almost $573 million by 2017.

However, takeup of cellular satellite backhaul has overall been slow. Cellcos in sub-Saharan Africa have been the most enthusiastic, but in Asia, despite hundreds of thousands of unconnected villages and a number of satellite operators willing to provide the backhaul link, cellcos have been approaching satellite-based cellular backhaul with caution.

By most accounts, that’s largely to do with the tendencies of cellcos to focus on dense urban markets first before stretching out to the rural areas. The reason for that is that, regardless of backhaul technique, rural cellular has typically been a problem of too much equipment cost for too little return. And that was just for the base station. Satellite equipment and bandwidth, while cheaper than rolling out fiber or microwave, were also expensive.

But that’s changing. With many urban markets now sufficiently covered, many cellcos are prepared to focus on rural coverage – especially since mobile equipment vendors have spent the last couple of years designing base stations for rural deployments with a heavy focus on cost-effectiveness and alternate power. That leaves the backhaul – the most expensive opex cost of any mobile network – and satellite players are getting attention again. In the first half of 2009 a number of vendors announced cellular satellite backhaul trials and contract wins in markets like Malaysia, Nepal, Inner Mongolia and Fiji.

Equipment costs lower

Part of the renewed interest in cellular satellite backhaul can be chalked up to maturity, says Doron Elinav, marketing VP of Gilat.

“It’s really mainstream now compared to five years ago when it was really a new technology,” Elinav says. “Now the market is maturing. It’s also growing. Five years ago, it was mostly used for remote towns with relatively fixed links, now we’re looking at the next billion users, who are in even more remote areas.”

Another factor, says Mike Fitzgerald, CEO of GSM/VSAT software provider Altobridge, is that mobile operators tended to see VSAT as a competitor for remote enterprises, and decided they were better off focusing on their urban buildouts and leave the rural connectivity to the VSAT players.

“But now GSM operators look at a VSAT coverage map where they’ve already deployed, and the synergies become much more obvious,” he says. “We describe the VSAT as a transmission line with an existing power source and site location. When you have those three things, life becomes easier for the GSM operator, which only has to put in a pico and combine them together.”

Also, he adds, the cost of VSAT equipment has come down sharply in the last few years, so that cellcos have the option of installing their own VSAT along with the base station. “So either way, we’ve reached the point where everything’s ready to accelerate.”

It helps as well that rural base station solutions are now available as pico cells rather than macro-cells covering huge areas – not ideal for covering areas with populations above 5,000, but ideal for a small village of 500 or less.

“A growing trend we’re seeing is pico base stations with one or two TRXs that can handle less than 20 calls simultaneously,” says Elinav. “That means an order of magnitude less in the cost of the solution. If you think of where the next billion subscribers will come from in the next few years, it will be from those types of deployments. We’re seeing requests for more of these types of deployments at tens of sites at a time.”

Bandwidth efficiencies

The level of integration has also gone up, Elinav says, which makes satellite backhaul solutions easier and less costly to install.

It’s not just the cost of the equipment, but also improvements in bandwidth efficiency that make cellular satellite backhaul potentially more attractive.

For example, RAD Data Communications says that optimizing GSM Abis traffic (i.e. the traffic between the base station and the base station controller) could yield savings ranging from 30% to 70% of backhaul costs. Toby Korall, senior product line manager at RAD Data, says that the company’s new gateway trunking solution, can compress 16 E1s over a single E1 line or IP uplink, “so the savings could jump as high as 94%.”

Mike Fitzgerald says Altobridge has taken things even further with his company’s “split architecture” for GSM/VSAT base station deployments, which allows the satellite link to be used on an on-demand basis and gives base stations the intelligence to identify local-to-local calls – and switching them locally.

“That’s a key element because 70% to 80% of the calls on that base station are being made to others in that community,” he says. “You don’t need to use the satellite link for those calls, but in the past, there was no other way. If you have a thousand sites, an operator isn’t going to deploy a softswitch at every one of them because it’d be a nightmare to manage.”

Keeping as much unnecessary traffic off the satellite link as possible adds up to a lot of savings, he adds. “You might only be saving about 5 kbps of bandwidth, but if you look at a market like Indonesia where you have 10,000 remote villages, that bandwidth adds up, and someone has to pay for that.

So with our solution, you’re looking at an overhead of zero, which makes a USO-type site quite viable.”

Rural base stations combined with VSATs can also reduce power consumption by using a VSAT power-saving feature in which the power amplifier (PA) is turned off at night. Cellcos are typically hesitant to switch off towers at night in case someone needs to make an emergency call. But VSAT PAs can be triggered back on by someone picking up a handset receiver, says Fitzgerald.

“By having the VSAT site off at night, 40% to 50% of the battery backup requirements can be removed from that site,” he says. “You can manage both sides of the link and wake up the PA on the VSAT side. So you have GSM and VSAT working together with minimal power at night, rather than keeping them both running 24 hours a day.”

The bandwidth efficiencies also translate into lower costs for the actual space link, which has also been a barrier to cellular satellite backhaul in the past. “There’s also more competition among VSAT players, so that’s pushing the price down as well,” he says.

What all this adds up to, says Fitzgerald, is a cost per subscriber that’s “incredibly low – maybe a couple of dollars per user, whereas before it was usually greater than the ARPU.”

As for ARPUs, in February Altobridge released the results of two case studies in which Malaysia’s Maxis Communications and Mongolia’s Mobicom spent four months each trialing a managed BTS service in locations so remote that the nearest town was eight hours away. According to results released by Altobridge in February, one site serving over 440 remote-enterprise subscribers generated $25.86 in ARPU a month. Another site served 50 subscribers with ARPUs of $19.60 a month.

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(Excerpt…)

Squeezing more value from existing technology is what one of Altobridge’s products is chiefly concerned with. The Ireland-based firm provides telecommunication solutions that cut the cost of connecting wireless devices, and its “local connectivity” product can reduce the cost of backhaul by cutting out the unnecessary transmission of locally originated and destined calls out of the local area to the mobile switching centre (MSC). Instead, the base station switches local calls locally, keeping backhaul costs to a minimum. The savings that it promises were enough to pique Ericsson’s interest, and the vendor has licensed the technology for use across its portfolio of base stations.

Mike Fitzgerald, Altobridge CEO, says the breakthrough occurred two years ago when they found they could switch voice calls locally at a base station. “Soft switches do exist and have been around for a while,” he says. “You can put a soft switch at a base station and switch the calls locally. Soft switches aren’t that expensive, but operationally it is a nightmare for operators to manage that many sites, so they needed something different. They needed to be able to do this without turning their base station into a switch, and that’s the key breakthrough that we had.”

The first version relates to voice, and is suited to emerging markets and remote base stations where there is a lot of local communication going on. Altobridge is now working on a solution that will perform the same function for data.

“Most network topology, no matter what Altobridgetechnology, is very hierarchical,” Fitzgerald says. “So what happens is that you move up and down through the networks and when a user communicates with another user it can be very data intensive, with the data going up and down through the networks.”

Fitzgerald says that transmitting large amounts of data back through the networks puts them under strain they were not built to put up with. With smart phones growing in popularity, and many mobiles able to access the internet, the demand for quick information delivered to mobile devices is growing as is the insistence on quicker speeds.

“If you are just surfing the web on your mobile phone or you are communicating with your school friends and you are sending information and pictures, it becomes incredibly inefficient in the network topology that we have in a traditional wireless sense. So what we have done is add further intelligence to the network on this user,” he says.

“If we do that, then the cost of running that network can be reduced. And it’s critical that we do. Because we can’t have a situation where ARPU is dropping but the amount of data that is being used is increasing dramatically and the revenue isn’t being generated from that data, and the network operator’s bottom line starts to disappear.”

The first major licensing agreement for the voice solution was signed in 2007 with Ericsson. The data version is undergoing tests relating to patents, but so far Fitzgerald says it has seen increased efficiency of approximately 30% to 45% of bandwidth.

“If you had a GSM base station in the traditional 2G, you’d be looking at having an E1 or a G1 to keep that base station running under standard traffic measurements. If you have a 3G base station you need to have about eight E1s to that base station. So for us to come in with a proposal that will take a couple of those E1s away is a dramatic saving.

So far, demand for the products has come from emerging markets in South America, across the Middle East and into Asia with the local connectivity solution already sold to operators in Africa.

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Irish tech company Altobridge aims to blow the economics out of the water with a managed services solution that lets cellcos outsource their remote base station connectivity far more cheaply. Altobridge isn’t the first vendor to think of this – Hughes Communications, for example, has been doing it for some time now – but Altobridge’s secret weapon could be its inhouse technology: a split-BSC architecture combined with local switching capability.

Altobridge’s split-BSC architecture effectively makes it easier to integrate on-demand VSAT capability into a BTS. Ericsson licenses the technology, and it’s also been deployed in Blue Ocean Wireless’ maritime GSM service and the in-flight mobile service offered by ARINC/Telenor owned Aeromobile.

Altobridge has been pitching its technology as a rural BTS solution for years, but it’s recently added something potentially more compelling: local switching technology that allows a rural base station to switch local calls in the same cell site without sending them across the backhaul network. Combined with split-BSC, which connects the satellite only when it needs a link, rather than 24/7, the Altobridge proposition can save cellcos thousands of dollars in backhaul costs, says Janne Hazell, Altobridge’s general manager of wireless solutions.

“Rural coverage is often too low on an operator’s priority list because of the economics,” Hazell told Telecom Asia. “There has to be an economic incentive with low effort for the operator to be interested enough.”

Case Studies

That’s also why Altobridge is offering cellcos an outsourcing option to design, build and operate GSM/VSAT base stations with managed services ranging from dimensioning and capacity analysis to 24/7 monitoring, fault management and network/cell KPIs, Hazell adds. “Outsourcing means they don’t have to divert resources from other projects, and the set-up time is faster. What usually takes six to 12 months to put in place can be set up in a month.

At last month’s Mobile World Congress, Altobridge offered some extra metrics to make its case via case studies from its two most recent cellular customers: Malaysia’s Maxis Communications and Mongolia’s Mobicom, which spent four months each trialing the managed BTS service in locations eight hours from the nearest town (including a one-hour canoe trip in one case) with access dependent on favorable weather conditions.

One site which primarily served a remote enterprise customer, served over 440 subscribers with zero marketing and generated $25.86 in ARPU a month. The second site – a government-sponsored remote community – served 50 subscribers with ARPUs of $19.60 a month.

Altobridge didn’t disclose which site belonged to which cellco for NDA reasons, but Hazell said the ARPUs were double what the operators see on their macro networks, even though rural service was offered for the same package price plans as in the cities. Hazell also noted one other interesting metric from the trial: remote coverage means churning subscribers to your network.

“We saw a number of instances where users on competing networks came to the location, found another network providing coverage, then changed network providers before their next trip,” Hazell said. “So there’s definitely a first-mover advantage opportunity here.”

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