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August 04, 2010

On Mobile WiMAX and More: Interview with Samsung Electronics' VP of Global Marketing, Telecommunication Systems

By Carl Ford
Partner, Crossfire Media

Samsung has a strong relationship with all the major carriers and it’s important to pay attention to them as a company influencing our communications future. They build out solutions from chips to base stations to almost everything in between with a great deal of their efforts being placed on consumer electronics. The network side of the company is not well-known. However, it’s the cohesive glue that allows them to bring WiMAX (News - Alert) and LTE into the market as quickly as possible.

The WiMAX Forum and many of its members pointed out that IMT-2000, the specification by the ITU for LTE was achieved with WiMAX 2.0. That extends the lead by WiMAX on the LTE standards by at least two years according to most experts. To discuss what has been happening with the announcement of WiMAX 2.0, we interviewed Dr. Song, Samsung’s vice president of the Global Marketing Group in Telecommunication Systems Division.

In his capacity, as VP, he is responsible for worldwide marketing and business development of Samsung’s Mobile WiMAX and Fixed Mobile Convergence solutions. He joined Samsung Electronics in 2000 and worked in strategic marketing, business development, and global business management roles for the fixed and mobile communications network systems division.

Dr. Song has more than 20 years of international management experience in the telecommunications industry and has held a number of technical and marketing roles in telecommunications service and communications companies including US WEST, Bellcore and AT&T Bell Laboratories. He is also an internationally renowned speaker on Mobile WiMAX, mobile communication services, fixed mobile convergence, enterprise and home services and solutions.

Dr. Song holds a doctorate in Computer Science, a Master of Science and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering.

WiMAX Development & Deployment lead by Samsung

Dr. Song: As you know Samsung Electronics is a big corporation. It's a combination of business units that have semi conductors and memory and flash memory and also consumer electronics like TVs, very recently HD TV and 3D TVs. Our LCD business unit produces LED and LCD panels. We have a mobile business unit that produces very good handsets. We also make laptops, Notebooks, Netbooks, printers, cameras and other electronic devices. I am part of the Telecommunication Systems business unit in Samsung Electronics.

Dr. Song: In the Telecommunications Unit we have two major solutions. The first is home and office solutions, focused on IP phones, PBXs and home managed solutions. The second bigger unit is the one focused on mobile network systems. This is the unit I support with global marketing for mobile network systems including CDMA, Wideband CDMA, WiMAX and LTE. The mobile network systems unit provides a complete portfolio of equipment for the access network systems -- base stations and base station controllers, IMS and all the applications and servers. I am responsible for Global Marketing including CDMA, Wideband CDMA such as HSPA and HSPA+, WiMAX and LTE.

Dr. Song: About five years ago I started developing the business for our Mobile WiMAX solutions. Samsung has invested heavily in Mobile WiMAX starting back in 2003. At that time the Korean government and private companies sponsored research development centers and small application development initiatives. We started working on this with the government of Korea which we called Highspeed Portable Internet [HPI] Solution in Korea. We made a good specification for HPI, and while we are promoting HPI worldwide, we started talking to the WiMAX Industry. This was at the beginning of the WiMAX forum. At that time the WiMAX Forum (News - Alert) was principally focused on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing [OFDM] for fixed WiMAX and for most of the proprietary systems.  Our system was OFDM Access based which would allow for multiple users and that model is the standard for Mobile WiMAX. Our HPI activity merged with the International community to work with the IEEE ISC Group 16.

Dr. Song: In December 2004, the fixed WiMAX (IEEE 802.16d) standard was released. In 2005 when we came to join the board of the WiMAX forum, we agreed that we would only focus on developing Mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e) in the future. At Samsung we were aware of the limitations of CDMA and saw that mobile broadband was the future. We developed base stations, base station controllers and our big brother mobile phone electronics unit delivered WiMAX devices.

Dr. Song: We saw that mobile WiMAX was a good solution for fixed, portable, nomadic and mobile services. At the end of the day, everyone will want to have mobile services. If mobile delivers the speeds and the capabilities, then every moving object will have a mobile IP function inside. Everyone can have good connectivity everywhere with whatever device they want to use. That is why we have been focusing on mobile WiMAX from day one.

Dr. Song: This is the reason we were the first ones to deliver mobile WIMAX commercially in 2006. When we launched in Korea at the time Germany hosted the World Cup event in June. People loved the ability to use their mobile devices, the dongles with their computers to access the Internet and watch the game via our solutions. Remember at that time both Korea Telecom (News - Alert) and SK Telecom had CDMA services and 90 percent of Korea had broadband at the home. Even with that competition we were highly successful.

Dr. Song: Our solutions are used by Clearwire (News - Alert) to service areas such as Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Clear intends to deploy our systems in New York and Florida as well. Most of the systems on the East Coast and Texas are ours and on the mid-west they use Motorola. Clearwire, in the first quarter of this year stated they have 971,000 subscribers and they continue to grow. Clearwire is also well-positioned to adopt WiMAX 2 (based on IEEE 802.16m) which is the IMT-Advanced compliant version of WiMAX that will deliver IMT-Advanced speeds ahead of the LTE market.

Dr. Song: We are also in Japan with UQ Communications, a KDDI’s subsidiary. The rollout of this service by UQ is not completed so the adoption rate should increase when the coverage is complete. They are at 90 percent coverage in the major cities and the feedback from the customers is wonderful. It’s better than any 3G service and they like the speed and services they are receiving.

Dr. Song: Like Clearwire they have a very aggressive business model. UQ Communications has an MVNO model. UQ is the network operator, but they will offer wholesale network services to any one looking to roll out WiMAX services. For example Japan Railroad is using UQ’s network to support a WiMAX service they intend to rollout eventually on the trains. The system is also being used to offer services to Japanese cable operators. We also have deployments around the world in Malaysia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Middle East.

Smart Life: The Future of Converged Services

 

Carl Ford: Well we can see why Samsung has such a strong market share in WiMAX worldwide, but I would like to take advantage of your time and your location in Korea. Korea is such a leader in the adoption of broadband services. Here in the states we have some carriers looking to roll out services that in effect will limit us to about 11MB. I would like to hear what the demand is like in Korea.

Dr: Song: Sure. If Korean mobile service is any reference to the world, even though we have very good 2G and 3G services, most of these services are voice oriented. SKTelecom and Korea Telecom have about 25 percent of their revenues from data services. Recently KT especially launched the iPhone here in Korea. It was around November 28, over the Thanksgiving holiday. In the first 100 days of KT offering the iPhone the mobile traffic increased 122 times. In contrast ATT increased 65 times in three years. KT besides having 2G, 3G and WiMax, they have 27,000 WiFi Access Points. Korea Telecom is using all of this plus their cabled facilities to support the demand for data.KT is looking to have WiMAX be as available as WiFi in the future.

So Korea Telecom has 2G, 3G, WiMAX and WiFi services, and because of the demand they are pushing converged services. One good example of these services is the so called 3W services. So with one smartphone you can use WCDMA, WiMAX and WiFi. You will get connected anywhere in Korea using anyone of these wireless strategies for your data and voice services. So Samsung, LG and Pantech are all coming up with smartphones to support this. The latest one from Samsung is Galaxy S. You have to experience the super AMOLED display. It is unbelievable clarity on the screen you will have in your hands. The Galaxy S is Android platform based. Samsung also supports our own platform, called BADA. BADA in Korean translates to the English of sea or ocean, but the point is to deliver converged services.

Note: Samsung talks about the concept of Smart Life with the Galaxy S and BADA the goal is to have an immersed experience not just you voice and data but a completely converged experience.

Dr Song: I expect we are going to see more and more video services and devices like the iPad and Mobile Internet Devices, like the Samsung EBook. Similar to the United States, Koreans want the convenience of access at their finger tips anywhere they are, even when they are in route. That is the main reason for the explosive growth of mobile broadband services.

Dr. Song: With the ability to migrate from Mobile WiMAX to WiMAX 2, Clearwire is going to have an easy time making the transition to the new business models. I see the very traditional markets for incumbents shrinking. The voice revenue is shrinking and they (the incumbent carriers) themselves are shrinking. They are looking to compensate for the lost voice revenue through the increase of the data revenue.

Dr. Song: At the same time many countries are looking to open telecommunications to new services. Like Japan, when they issued the [licenses] for 4G services, the criteria was that the existing telco could not own more than 32 percent of the new company. That is why UQ Communication was created and launched.

Note: This recording was in advance of President Obama’s memorandum looking to free up spectrum for competition.

Dr: Song: We see many countries looking to develop the market for ISPs that can grow as big as the existing telecommunications so the new companies and the incumbents will be a 50/50 mix.

Carl Ford: What you are saying is that even though the data services does not offset the revenue lost the market is expanding beyond the traditional voice services.

Dr: Song: That’s right; people love to use any services on their fingertips in their hands.

Dr: Song: The only way for green fields and ISPs to compete with the incumbent is to break the old business model and have the first mover advantage. Clearwire, UQ, KT, all of these companies are basing their strategies on supporting the customers overall converged needs.

Carl Ford: Note the current capacity pricing of $60 for 5GB is roughly cross elastic with the average use of T1.

Dr Song: The WiMAX 2.0 specification is a candidate (like LTE Advanced) for the IMT 2000 specification of 100 MB. This is the transition for the future that enables video and brings the future faster than the incumbents can deliver.

Dr: Song: We call WiMAX 2 to help explain this to the people not use to working the IEEE standards.  We are not alone in moving this standard forward. Alvarion, Motorola, Intel (News - Alert), Beceem a total of ten got together to form the WCI to make sure that by the end of the next year we will have services in the marketplace and ready for WiMAX Forum interoperability testing.

Carl Ford: Dr. Song thank you for you insight. I look forward to seeing you in the future.

Learn more about M2M at ITEXPO West 2010, to be held October 4-6, 2010, in Los Angeles.


Carl Ford is a partner at Crossfire Media.

Edited by Marisa Torrieri


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