VERY Important Guideline for LTE Migration.

[Lesmana]

Dear LTE Experts,

Please share your suggestion/guidelines from your experience on deploying LTE over existing 2G & 3G network.
Your suggestion will be considered with high priority.

We have the resources in GSM 900 = 7.5 MHz Band; GSM 1800 = 10 MHz Band; and in 3G = 1 Carrier of 5 MHz.
Considering The frequency Reframing process, please share your valuable suggestion which will be really helpful
for us.

[which band we should consider to refarm & why ? advantage / disadvantages
How to manage the existing HUGE 2G Traffic if refarm from GSM 900 OR 1800 ?
Once deploy LTE, do we need Release 99 any more ?
etc.. etc..]

[tremalnike]

With this spectrum you don't have many opportunities. The realistic approach is to implement LTE in Band3 (1800MHZ) with 5MHZ bandwidth or LTE in Band8 (900MHz) with bandwidth of 1,4 MHz or both.The expected downlink throughput can be seen here http://www.lte-bullets.com/LTE%20in%20Bullets%20-%20DL%20Bit%20Rates.pdf All depend of your GSM traffic and traffic distribution between 900 and 1800MHz. Of course, the best solution is to buy another 5MHz in 1800 if available,and implement LTE with 10MHz bandwith.

[Lesmana]

Dear tremalnike,

Thanks a lot for your comment.

U know buying new spectrum will increase the costing very high. so for time being, refarming seems the best solution.
We have no available spectrum to buy in 1800 band.

- 1 thing to know : If i buy an LTE enable handset, will it cover the entire range of LTE band ? suppose one operator refarm their 900 band but another operator of that same area deploy LTE in 2100 MHz. In such case, whether my LTE handset will work in both LTE network or not ?

- Please tell more about your comment "All depend of your GSM traffic and traffic distribution between 900 and 1800MHz." why and how our LTE prospect depends gsm traffic distribution?


Thanks in advance for your valuable reply.






With this spectrum you don't have many opportunities. The realistic approach is to implement LTE in Band3 (1800MHZ) with 5MHZ bandwidth or LTE in Band8 (900MHz) with bandwidth of 1,4 MHz or both.The expected downlink throughput can be seen here http://www.lte-bullets.com/LTE%20in%20Bullets%20-%20DL%20Bit%20Rates.pdf All depend of your GSM traffic and traffic distribution between 900 and 1800MHz. Of course, the best solution is to buy another 5MHz in 1800 if available,and implement LTE with 10MHz bandwith.

[DJ Download]

Not all LTE handsets cover all frequencies. Although more and more LTE handsets are trying to cover big part of the spectrum, there is always some LTE frequency that is not gonna be covered by the UE.
For example the possibility of LTE at 2100 MHz in europe is small since the band is occupied by UMTS thus LTE handsets will focus their European version of the device at the already auctioned frequencies.

iPhone5 is a good example for this. Their strategy is to provide LTE connectivity in the most widely used band at that time which is 1800 MHz.

[tremalnike]

Dear Lesmana,
I mean that if the traffic in your network is concentrated mainly in 900 band,it will be difficult for you to reduce spectrum, in order to implement LTE900 even at 1.4 MHz,because re-farming requires configuration reducing as well.
About phones - take look at gsmarena and you will find that most popular lte handsets supports LTE bands 1(2100), 3(1800), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900)