There's still life in UMA

Almost since the standard was born in September 2004, UMA has had the reputation of the playground weakling who all the kids love to pick on. The standard has come in for a battering from all sides: operators have expressed concern over the lack of support for handoff between access points, vendors complain that there’s no migration path to IMS and analysts have been quick to point out that SIP is fast gaining traction in the enterprise.

However, at last month’s UMA conference, hosted by Informa Telecom & Media, there was a sense that the skinny kid has bulked up with Charles Atlas, and returned to kick sand in the face of his tormentors. This is not to say that the event was a UMA love-fest: there was some fierce criticism of the technology and stark warnings for operators choosing to support the standard. However, the overwhelming message was this: for a GSM operator wishing to deploy a fixed mobile convergence service today, UMA remains the only standards-based route open for travel.

There are about 20 UMA trials currently underway worldwide, with about 10 of these in Europe. BT’s Fusion service, currently using the Bluetooth implementation of UMA, is the only commercial deployment. Operators involved in trials include TeliaSonera in Denmark, Telecom Italia in Italy, SaunaLahti in Finland and T-Mobile in the US.

The overwhelming opinion of the companies which have trialed or deployed UMA is that the technology works well. Voice quality is good, and the handover between the unlicensed network and cellular performs consistently. This is great PR for UMA, from the lips of service providers with first hand experience of the technology. However, several challenges remain for the standard if it is to achieve wide deployment.

Handset availability remains UMA’s Achilles' heel. Essentially, there are just four UMA handsets commercially available. While handset vendors, like Nokia, Samsung and LG, have been keen to hype their widening portfolio of UMA-enabled phones, the reality is that many of these devices are slide-ware, and will not see the commercial light of day until these manufacturers are convinced of operator demand. This has led to the classic Catch-22, since operators’ reticence of UMA results largely from the lack of compliant handsets. For example, having extensively trailed the technology, TeliaSonera admits that the poor availability of handsets is the main factor hindering a 2006 commercial roll-out of its UMA-based fixed mobile convergence service in Denmark.

However, silicon vendors, like Philips and Comneon, and handset makers, like Motorola, believe this handset bottleneck has reached a turning point and forecast 20 to 30 UMA handset models in 2007. Jumping from a base of four to 30 UMA handset models within the space of 12 months does seem a little delusional, but even a selection of 10 attractive UMA phones would be a sufficiently wide portfolio which many operators would be comfortable taking to their subscribers.

The other challenge facing UMA is how it is increasingly viewed alongside other FMC technologies, like SIP, but, more importantly, IMS. Some feel that UMA has a narrow window of opportunity, after which IMS will become the convergence technology of choice – others believe that UMA has missed the FMC boat altogether.

The reality is that IMS with VCC (Voice Call Continuity, which handles inter-network call handoff in the IMS paradigm) offers the full convergence capability of UMA, and with a stronger level of network agnosticism. But, as UMA proponents are keen to point out, IMS networks don’t exist. While European and US operators have been gradually adding IMS-enabled elements to their network core, there are simply no end-to-end IMS networks in operation, and it’ll be another five years before operators are supporting fully implemented IMS networks.

There is clear evidence that consumers are interested in a fixed mobile convergence offering. In a survey carried out by Kineto Wireless, 61% of US and European respondents said cost was the main reason they did not use their mobile phone more, while 68% use computer-based VoIP applications (e.g. Skype, Google Talk etc.). Overall, 75% said they would be interested in a homezone service (where mobile calls made from the home are charged at a lower cost). The success of O2’s Genion service in Germany is evidence of how popular these homezone services can be with consumers.

For the operators, FMC can, in theory, boost ARPU through the substitution of fixed voice minutes. In addition, operators can make saving on their GSM and UMTS infrastructure costs since they can exploit the Wi-Fi coverage present in the home to add network capacity, instead of building additional basestations.

Operator are now making some fairly major steps towards fixed mobile convergence – O2’s acquisition of the broadband provider, Be There, in the UK and France Telecom’s decision to wrap its fixed, mobile and broadband services all under the Orange brand, are examples of this. The main reason that the decision to deploy UMA remains contentious is that the technology is not the appropriate FMC solution for all GSM operators: homezones, SIP clients on dual-mode devices, pico-cells, PC-based solutions or a more rapid move to IMS are alternative approaches which operators need to consider.

There is little point taking on the CAPEX of deploying UMA purely for the purposes of fixed minute substitution: it would be better to achieve this by offering a cut-rate homezone service. However, if the mobile provider is also the PSTN provider, UMA can offer an effective defense against cannibalization of voice minutes from VoIP. For pure mobile operators, with no fixed-line network, the UMA decision is perhaps the most complex: if the cost of pico-cells drops fast enough, a pico-cell plugged into a broadband connection could become an attractive option for this operators.

While the skinny kid has fought back, he’s by no means the new school bully. UMA will sit alongside a range of FMC solutions which operators will leverage as the market moves forward. For some, it’ll act as a stepping stone into IMS, but from that point onward, the need for a technology which stitches together the IP and circuit-switched worlds will be questionable.