Chapter 15
Recommendations
15.1 Introduction
The history of mobile network rollouts seems to reflect the advances of mobile communication systems, the milestones of which are marked by appearance of new generations of wireless technologies. Taking Europe as an example, notice that the early analogue wireless networks started to appear in the mid-1980s (NMT, 450 MHz band), followed by GSM, with a major expansion around 1995 (900 MHz band, then also 1800 MHz). Next came UMTS (early 2000s, 2100 MHz band), enhanced with HSxPA technologies in the middle of the 2000s. It was common practice for the mobile operators to try to cover traffic hotspots first, and then gradually extend the coverage to the whole population (which was also quite often mandated by the regulators). With the advent of LTE things look more complex. This chapter addresses the multitude of innovative approaches to rolling out this technology in practice. As discussed in Section 15.2, it is not obvious that the operators intend to replace existing legacy wireless networks with new one, built only around LTE technology. It is more likely that the LTE component will be used to complete and enhance the overall wireless service portfolio of the operator but will not replace the networks that are already in existence.
The flexibility of LTE technology makes for a break in the rigid association ...
