After all the waiting games, Thailand looks set to leapfrog 3G | Bangkok Post: tech

OPEN Thought

Thailand is going to leapfrog 3G entirely and go straight to 3.9G, according to newly appointed National Telecommunications Commissioner Dr Natee Sukonrat, who has burst on to the Twitter scene under his username of @DrNatee39G.

The Twittersphere has gone into a minor frenzy with the promise of 4G (well, 3.9G) broadband wireless access and finally an NTC who can talk technology to the people. 3.9G is all about bridging the digital divide and providing last-mile access. In the long run, Dr Natee promises FTTH (fibre to the home), but first, we will need wireless broadband.

In Dr Natee's Tweets, 3.9G is LTE and HSPA+ at 42 MBPS.

For most of us, first-generation phones are analogue (NMT, AMPS); second-generation phones are digital (GSM and CDMA); while third-generation equates to W-CDMA or CDMA-EVDO. Fourth-generation, to most of us, equates to the new technologies designed for mobile broadband, LTE (Long Term Evolution), WiMAX and the stillborn UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband).

The UN ITU sees things a bit differently and divides things up by speed. According to them, the latest EDGE (what many call 2.5G) specifications are actually 3G and what most of us call 4G (LTE and WiMAX) are still 3G, or, as Dr Natee and others put it, 3.9G. LTE-A (advanced) will be 4G, but right now LTE is just 3.9.

In my humble opinion, I feel the UN ITU's definition is like a person's life, only slightly skewed so they can at times be a little bit pregnant and a little bit dead.

Dr Natee has announced a new round of auctions with a new set of rules. Gone is the old NTC's plan for three licenses at 15 MHz, 10MHz and 10Mhz with starting prices of 5.2 and 4.6 billion, respectively, and Dr Natee said the auctions will be for three licenses, each with a pair of 15MHz spectrum. No opening bid was mulled.

Spectrum in the telco world traditionally comes in pairs. In the standard Band I 3G, for each bit of 2100 MHz used for the downlink (base station to handset) and a bit of 1900 for uplink (handset to base station). Each 3G channel is 5 MHz wide, so 10 MHz can accommodate two channels, 15 MHz 3 channels, and so on.

Or the telcos can do what is called DC-HSPA (dual-channel HSPA), using 10 MHz merged, or they can use MIMO (Multiple In, Multiple Out) using two 5MHz channels at the same time. Unfortunately, early network rollouts in Europe have failed to see anywhere near a doubling of speed, with the increased spectrum usually due to the way vendors have taken shortcuts in implementing the specifications, and for power savings. A slight speed drop to 20 percent gain is what has been seen in the real world with both technologies, according to Alcatel-Lucent.

Dr Natee says that the NTC licenses will be technology neutral, so licensees can run three 5 MHz 3G HSPA+ channels if they wish, or one 15 MHz LTE channel or anything else they want.

Qualcomm have noted that OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access, the technology behind LTE, WiMAX and WiFi-N) does not provide any benefit in spectral efficiency (bits per second per hertz) over CDMA (Carrier Division Multiple Access, the technology behind 3G HSPA) at 10 MHz channels and really needs 20 MHz fat channels for them to offer real benefits.

As for timing, Dr Natee says that the rules will be announced early June, auctions will take place in September this year with commercial rollout before the end of the year. Three months to roll out an LTE network is hardly feasible, unless it is a couple of cells in central Bangkok. The NTC will set conditions of 50 percent coverage in two years and 80 percent in four years as part of the bid.

More importantly, I asked @DrNatee39G why he was not waiting for concession conversion first so that there will be clarity on reuse of existing infrastructure and fibre networks, and what would happen to the 2G operators.

Under the new rules, 2G operators will not be able to continue operating 2G after their concessions end should they choose to bid for 3G.

He views the networks that AIS and Dtac and TrueMove, run as belonging to ToT and CAT, respectively, and thus it is not a question of how the 2G operators will reuse ''their'' networks, but rather a question of how ToT and CAT will open their networks out for third parties to use, which the NTC will issue rules on.

I told him that Dtac has mentioned that without clarity, they simply do not know how much they can bid for 3G; without the rules on reuse of existing infrastructure, Dtac CEO Tore Johnsen told me he simply does not have the numbers to put into his spreadsheet.

Tore also told me that in his view, the relationship between CAT and Dtac is like one of a car leasing company and a car _ the leasing company technically owns the car, but does not tell you where you can drive or what you can do with it. Dr Natee said: ''I would be very happy to speak to him,'' not quite answering my question.

I asked him if he agreed with Finance Minister's Korn Chartikavanij's view of concession conversion (turning 2G concessions into licenses first before 3G licensing). That way, telcos could conceivably bid much more for 3G spectrum as they already have core networks, fibre and base stations they can reuse.

Dr Natee said that Thailand cannot wait after 10 years of inaction already and that the providing access to the people must come first. However, he shall talk to the Ministry of Finance and CAT and ToT on this matter.

He said that Universal Service Obligation (USO) funds are still important, even though many countries feel that it is better to scrap them and fund projects directly from central budgeting.

Asked about in-band migration from GSM 900 to HSPA 900 (AIS) or AMPS 800 to HSPA 850 (Dtac and TrueMove), Dr Natee says the NTC has always allowed in-band migration. Apparently the sticking point is CAT and ToT rather than the NTC in this regard.

Asked about the timeframe for taking non-concession frequencies such as 800 and 470 back to be reallocated, as per NBTC bill article 80, Dr Natee said he saw the timeframe as three to five years. Article 80 will allow the NBTC to set an arbitrary date for frequencies that are not currently under concession for return.

It will take a while for all of Dr Natee's comments to sink in and to analyse who wins and who loses from this rush to auction. Auctioning off new licenses without the clarity on how to reuse infrastructure benefits nobody except vendors and results in redundant investment, slower roll-out and higher prices for consumers. Not doing anything costs the economy in lost growth and opportunity costs. Dr Natee and his fellow commissioners have a balancing act to do; one that is compounded by the imminent passage of the Frequency Allocation Act (sometimes referred to as the NBTC Bill), which will set up a converged regulator to look after both telecommunications and broadcasting. Perhaps they are rushing to get the licenses issued before the NBTC Bill takes effect. Time will tell.