XCOM - A 5G start up from Qualcomm EX.

Former Qualcomm Chairman, Paul Jacobs recently launched a wireless startup called XCOM. The company plans on focusing on advancing wireless technology, specifically in the 5G sector. Along with Jacobs, two former Qualcomm executives, Derek Aberle and Matthew Grob have also joined the company.

While a solid business model still hasn’t been laid out, Aberle confirmed in an interview with CNBC that the company will try to tackle important 5G problems, especially around latency and reliability. The company is also expected to license its proprietary 5G technology or provide software solutions to other companies that can be used in their semi-conductors. The three executives also plan on expanding the company’s workforce in coming months.

catch news here 

Terragraph - Facebooks New Plan along with Qualcomm to Test the 10 gbps WiFi based backbone networks

The two tech companies announced the joint effort for test of, Facebook's mesh network technology, Called  Terragraph. it already has announced tow field trials in Europe. Now Tests are also expected to begin in partnership with Qualcomm in the U.S. next year.

The technology could deliver significantly higher bandwidth via Wi-Fi — perhaps as fast as 10 gigabits per second at peak speeds. If this gets a successful feat it would do wonder much like 'fiber in the air'.

"With Terragraph, our goal is to enable people living in urban areas to access high-quality connectivity that can help create new opportunities and strengthen communities," said Yael Maguire, vice president of connectivity with Facebook.

The technology is complicated. But it taps 60 gigahertz unlicensed airwaves — know as millimeter wave — to bring high speed Internet to big cities.

Millimeter wave spectrum can deliver a lot of data fast. But it's prone to interference and doesn't travel very far — only a few hundred feet at best — before degrading. It needs to be within line of sight of devices, small cells and access points.

The Terragraph system would use advanced and future generations of Wi-Fi standards to generate uber-fast speeds. Qualcomm is producing the chips and software to enable outdoor operation and avoid interference.

"Our collaboration with Facebook will bring advanced 11ad and pre-11ay technologies to market, increasing broadband penetration and enabling operators to reduce their capital expenses for last-mile access," said Irvind Ghai, a vice president with Qualcomm Atheros.

There ar obvious challenges with the deployment of such WiFi hotspots across the cities and delivering millimeter waves technology, but these challenges are there with others smallcell centric technology too, like 5G fixed broadband systems. 

"There are licensed and unlicensed approaches," said Jesse Burke, a product marketing manager at Qualcomm. "The point is our customers are looking for increasing capacity. There are various approaches in both the licenses and unlicensed bands, and we are providing solutions, along with our customers."

T-mobile and Sprint merger- talk of town of telecom carriers

T-mobile and Sprint merger is being talked about with the asteroid falling impact on US economy and consumers, both are boasting each others with their capabilities and capacities those gonna changed the game and transform the combination to stand at 3rd largest, following Verizon and AT&T. They are going to create the 'ultimate network', based on 5G, an example of their mega plans and also to boost the confidence and showcase their strength.

The deal still awaits regulatory approval and raises plenty of questions if you pay Sprint or T-Mobile for your service, while the $26 billion deal still has to face approval from the FCC and Justice Department.

"This new company would represent more than 90 million retail wireless phone customers in the U.S., roughly one-third of the market", said research firm Recon Analytics.

With the two companies combining their networks, it's possible service on both will improve. In a joint statement, the companies promise that existing customers, with both services, will benefit from increased speeds, coverage, and performance.

There are many talks of the towns, and much expectation and anticipation, in terms of consumer benefits and economical impacts, but any naive guy who is following industry around the globe, must be understanding the emerging games , that could be for survival of industry 4.0  and upcoming technological advances as for 5G.

5G is anyway about scaling up, whatever it be, technology or its performance, capacity, throughput or data rates.. That scaling up is also for business, operation, investment, revenue, comprehensiveness in approaches etc etc.

That is need of hour, nothing to boast here, you can't move into next level of the game if you are not big enough.

Ajit Pai, current FCC chairman, rightly said it's not about number of player in the game as no one can justify whether it should be 4 or 5. The main concern is competitive environment among them and growth and sustainability in the marketplace.

Lets see how this goes up, regulatory authorities are going to be conducive but ball is mainly supposed to be hanging with department of justice.

Massive MIMO-Hit The Road- A Step forward to 5G

Courtsy ETT Telecom....

Verizon, Ericsson and Qualcomm Tech complete Massive MIMO advancement trial, makes progress towards 5G

US based telco Verizon, equipment manufacturer Ericsson and chipmaker Qualcomm's subsidiary, Qualcomm Technologies claim that they have completed the first ever FDD Massive Mimo trial with a fully compatible customer service which will build the momentum from the deployment of FDD (Frequency Division Duplexing) Massive MIMO (Multiple Input - Multiple Output) on Verizon’s wireless network in Irvine, California.

In this trial, the three companies used the latest Ericsson Massive MIMO software and hardware on Verizon’s network, along with a mobile test device powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform with X20 LTE using TM9 (Transmission Mode 9), which is an enhancement for consumer devices that will make them fully compatible with Massive MIMO.


“Advanced Antenna Systems and Massive MIMO are key technology enablers for 5G, and 4G LTE service providers and end users will also benefit from the superior capacity and network performance these technologies enable. The latest trial is another important step in the collaboration we have with Verizon and Qualcomm Technologies to further evolve 4G and prepare the network for 5G,” said Niklas Heuveldop, Head of Market Area North America, Ericsson.

5G development moving fast than anticipated....

Recently 3GPP, the telecom industry standards body, has ratified the Non-Standalone (NSA) 5G New Radio (NR) specification, half a year earlier than expected. The specification for the non-standalone 5G NR (new radio) standard is now expected to form the basis of commercial 5G products by vendors like Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, LG and Qualcomm among others.

TM9 Functionality

To realize the gains of Massive MIMO, both the networks and the devices need to support new TM9 functionality that leverages advanced beamforming schemes between the network equipment and the mobile device to raise network spectral efficiency and customer speeds.

India's Telecom Policy Contrived to be Fitting with Next Gen Era.

The DoT is in process of formulating a National Telecom Policy that will focus on areas such as Internet for all, next-generation technologies like 5G and Internet of Things (IoT), skills development, and security, among others.

The discussions held a week ago were around policy and regulatory framework, spectrum framework, security requirements for telecom networks, ease of doing business, and even manufacturing and exports. Ideas around cloud economic zones, aligning of the Center and states to achieve telecom objectives, and devising network and regulations for IoT devices, were mooted.

The DoT plans to go for a wide consultation and outreach before finalizing the new policy.

The Department of Telecom (DoT) has already held its first round of discussions with operators, industry associations and research organisations on the broad contours and key focus areas under the new telecom policy, which the government wants to bring in by 2018.

"We're expecting the draft of the new telecom policy to be out by December, the working groups are being created as we speak," telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan said on the sidelines of a CII event on fintech.

DoT plans a wide consultation and outreach before finalising the new policy, and has said it will invite views from the likes of Apple, Google and Amazon, along with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), during consultations on NTP. It will also seek views of the public at large.

Source HERE.

UK's First 5G Fixed Wireless Access Trial Kick off

Leading ahead from NR technology, Samsung and Arqiva using mmWave has done it. 

Leading UK communications infrastructure company Arqiva and Samsung Electronics have today announced that the first field trial of 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) technology in the UK and Europe is now live in central London.

Despite a link distance of several hundred meters, the system has established a stable two-way mmWave link with downlink speeds of around 1Gb per second at the CPE. Allowing for simultaneous streaming of more than 25 UHD 4K TV channels as an illustration, this more than meets the needs of today’s typical household with considerable room for future growth.

The primary aim of the trial is to demonstrate the stability of the FWA service, and its potential as a fast-to-market and cost-effective alternative to fibre for connectivity to homes and businesses.

Powered by Samsung’s 5G network solution and customer premises equipment (CPE), and using Arqiva’s 28GHz millimetre wave (mmWave) spectrum, the 5G FWA system consists of three main components:

A Radio Access Unit located on the rooftop of Arqiva’s Fitzrovia office wirelessly links to an easily installable CPE – or router – located by a window inside Arqiva’s nearby headquarters. Samsung’s system – which implements intelligent beam-forming technology and high-frequency mmWave spectrum – then provides high bandwidth connectivity. In commercial implementations, the compact access unit can be mounted on lampposts or similar street furniture to provide reliable gigabit-per-second service to neighbourhoods and businesses alike. The final component is Samsung’s virtualized core – responsible for managing user connections and data routing from Arqiva’s network to the internet – which is running on Arqiva’s data centre servers.

Source HERE Samsung News.

Biased TRAI (indian regulator), Where the benefits?

Trai has held discussions on the latest IUC consultation paper, including a special workshop on the costing model each telco has, and an open house discussion. It has said it will give its recommendations soon.
Earlier TRAI recommended govt to levy a Rs 1,050-crore penalty on the carrier for allegedly not providing adequate points of interconnect to Jio, against which Vodafone has knocked the court. 

This time Vodafone has against filed petition against TRAI for debunking over IUC (Interconnect uses charges) issues. This one is the second such case on IUC that the telco has filed against Trai. The first instance was in November 2015, when Vodafone challenged Trai's move to reduce IUC to 14 paise per minute from 20.

It’s a transparency petition… since it is incumbent upon the regulator to share cost models with all the stakeholders, in its consultation process, which they have not done, despite repeated requests,” said a legal executive who has seen the petition.

“Since they haven’t shared the cost model, it is violation of principles of natural justice… It is also violating Section 11 (4) of the Trai Act, which provides that in carrying out functions of Trai, it must do so transparently,” the person, who did not wish to be named, said. The matter is set for a Friday hearing.

Section 11 (4) of the Trai Act, 1997, states that “the Authority shall ensure transparency while exercising its powers and discharging its functions”.

Vodafone India has taken the ground of transparency, after the Supreme Court had struck down a Trai regulation that made it mandatory for telcos to compensate subscribers for call drops, holding it as “arbitrary, unreasonable and non-transparent“.

original news from HERE

Merger with Tata to help Bharti Airtel close gap with Vodafone-Idea

Airtel will face some challenges from a merger: over Rs 30,000 crore in debt and a modest 48 million subscribers of Tata’s mobile service business, breach of market share cap in eight circles, and the need to spend $1.7 billion (over Rs 11,000 crore) to pay market rates for airwaves in the 1800 MHz band held by Tata Teleservices to use them for 4G, they said. 


Bharti Enterprises and the Tata Group held exploratory talks to evaluate a mega alliance involving their telecom, enterprise services, overseas cable and direct-to-home TV businesses, ET reported last week. Both entities have not commented on the matter. 

If a deal gets confirmed “and subsequently completed, Bharti Airtel would have an RMS of 40% on the cellular business front, closing the gap with the potential Idea-Vodafone merged entity (that will command a 44% RMS),” Bank of Amer .. 

Experts see strong business sense for Airtel to buy both the listed Tata Communications, a provider of network, cloud and security services, and Tata Sky. 
“TataComm potentially brings a lot of value to the table by virtue of its sizeable intra-city fibre resources, its sub-sea cable system assets coupled with its strong enterprise business which would complement Airtel’s,” said an analyst at a Mumbai-based brokerage. 

Read more 

Tatas to inject Rs 12,000 crore more in telecom arm

The Tata group’s holding company, Tata Sons, has decided to infuse Rs 12,000 crore more into its telecom arm in the current financial year, so that it can repay its debt and improve its financial metrics. This follows Tata Sons’ investment of Rs 2,000 crore into Tata Teleservices in financial year 2016-17. The investment was approved by the board led by Group Chairman N Chandrasekaran, who has chalked out an elaborate plan to tackle the loss-making businesses of the Tata group.

Source : Business-standards

ETSI’s MEC plans were signified with a name change and expanded focus to include hetnets using LTE, 5G, fixed broadband and Wi-Fi technologies.

In addition to the name change, ETSI said the group’s focus will expand to “address multiple MEC hosts being deployed in many different networks, owned by various operators and running edge applications in a collaborative manner.” This expansion is set to include work on heterogeneous networks using LTE, “5G” technologies, fixed deployments and Wi-Fi technologies, with current work to simplify application programming interfaces, standards-based interfaces for multi-access hosts and an alignment with network functions virtualization architectures.

ETSI explained the move to “embrace the challenges in the second phase of work and better reflect non-cellular operators’ requirements.”

“In phase two, we are expanding our horizons and addressing challenges associated with the multiplicity of hosts and stakeholders,” explained Alex Reznik, who was recently elected chairman of the MEC ISG. “The goal is to enable a complete multi-access edge computing system able to address the wide range of use cases which require edge computing, including [internet of things]. We will continue to work closely with [Third Generation Partnership Project], ETSI NFV ISG and other SDOs as well as key industry organizations to ensure that edge computing applications can be developed to a standardized, broadly adopted platform.”

for Detail news click here - Source : RCRwireless

Indian telecom regulator has invited all companies, app providers and hardware or software providers, for setting up a pilot project of public wi-fi hotspots

Source : ETTelecom

Fundarc Communication

Indian telecom regulator has invited all companies, app providers and hardware or software providers, for setting up a pilot project of public Wi-Fi hotspots - which it calls as Public Data Offices (PDOs) - which will allow pay-as-you-go 'sachet sized' wi-fi facilities priced between Rs 2 and Rs 20, making internet access affordable for the common public.

PDOs will be akin to the public calling offices (PCOs) that connected all of India before the advent of low cost mobile phones and low cost telecom services, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said Friday, while issuing the broad objectives of the pilot program, the guidelines and pre-requisites for companies who want to participate.

"TRAI invites all interested entities to be a part of this Pilot to establish nation-wide, pay-as-you-go PDOs," the regulator said. “The products available for consumption should begin from “sachet-sized”, i.e. low denominations ranging from INR 2 to INR 20, etc,” the Trai added.

The pilot will help in identifying the positives and problem areas before national proliferation of such hotspots.

The vision of this initiative is to establish an open architecture based Wi-Fi Access Network Interface (WANI), which will allow users to do one-time enrollment into the service through KYC and mobile one time password, and access through purchase of sachet sized data packs.

This will bring in new customers and boost the consumption of data by the price sensitive Indian customer who rations her cellular data usage, the regulator added. Participants have been asked to send their details by July 25.

Through this plan, the broad objective of the regulator is to have multiple hotspots available for the public to use at multiple locations across the country, allowing data use in last mile connectivity.

The regulator also envisions that the hotpots will be able to offload data pressure from existing telecom networks given that only limited number of towers or routers can be added at every locality, enough to support the growing data usage owing to low cost tariffs. The hotspot plan will also take the total number of hotspots in India up from the present 31,000, abysmally lower than 10 million in US and 13 million in France.

"Overall, these suggestions encourage the PDOs to become bustling centers of economic activity, where consumption of data for the average Indian becomes as common as consuming a cup of hot chai," the regulator said.

The pilot program will aim to prove that multi-provider, inter-operable and collaborative model increases the overall innovation in the system, dismantles monopolies and encourages passing of benefits to end user. The pilot will also test out integrated payment methods such as coupons - purchased using cash by user or gifted to user – credit or debit cards, net banking, e-wallets, and Unified Payments Interface.

The regulator will issue WANI Technology Architecture document within three to four days, which will provide the necessary technology and architecture for allowing multi-provider, interoperable system across the country.

Trai aims to provide a simplified, consistent experience across hotspots from various providers, which would mean unbundling authentication, payment and accounting from hardware and software running on the access point.

This will allow small entrepreneurs such as tea shops, to set up and maintain access points whereas device manufacturers, payment companies, internet and telecom service providers and consumer internet companies can provide the remaining pieces to set up PDOs.

The proposal to set up open public wi-fi hotspots comes after the regulator issued recommendation on “Proliferation of Broadband through Public Wi-Fi Networks” in March this year. The regulator had recommended setting up public Wi-Fi hotspots, reducing import duty on Wi-Fi equipment, infrastructure sharing and authentication of the users through eKYC process.

It had also suggested that Public Data Office Aggregators (PDOAs) should be allowed to provide public Wi-Fi services without obtaining any licence, but should be subject to telecom department prescribed registration requirements, including ensuring that e-KYC, authentication and record keeping of customers, devices and PDOAs enlisted with the PDOs.

Indian Telecom on IoT technologies : Industry is looking forward to orchestration of standards, infrastructure and policy framework.

Source : ETTelecom

As India has slowly started to emerge as a global destination for many of the IoT technologies, the industry is looking forward to orchestration of standards, infrastructure and policy framework in order to generate new business models and accelerate the adoption of technology.

Being the providers of network connectivity, telecom operators will play a crucial role in the process especially in M2M communication which would require operators to work around new rating plans and ensure seamless connectivity.

“Network providers have to see how they will ensure different kinds of rating plans and accessibility so that the transfer of data happens seamlessly between machines and for this new kinds of rating plans will be required,” said Rishi Mohan Bhatnagar, President, Aeris India and Chairman IET IoT Panel in an interaction with ET.

“In India, we also need to ensure a technology and legal framework that will allow machines to migrate network,” added Bhatnagar.

Meanwhile, exploring alternate solutions and technologies is as important for operators and some of them have already started working on it.

“Today techies are working not only on the GSM, 2G, 3G, 4G or 5G but also on other technologies like LoRa, narrow-band and ZigBee. Tata Communications has already implemented the LoRa network in Jamshedpur and they're trying to do some tests,” told Bhatnagar.
The industry believes that as far as the challenges of Internet of Things are concerned, the first challenge lies on the front of standards and interoperability.

“There is a lot of hard work to be done whether it is in the evolution of standards, or putting together the necessary infrastructure, aligning the industry and making sure that new business models emerge. We need to ensure that the new collaborations are forged between the government, academia and industry,” said IT Secretary Aruna Sundararajan at an IoT event.

Another challenge lies in terms of India’s cultural diversity and the huge population that the technologies have to cater to but at the same time IoT is a solution to many of India’s problems in sectors such as healthcare and energy.

“There is no solution in the western world which would be applicable for India as the way it is. India's challenge is huge mass. For the mass that we have to cater, the only way is Internet of Things technology,” expressed Bhatnagar.

Recent findings by the IoT World Forum (IoTWF) also suggested that while IoT sounds like it is all about technology, human factors like culture, organisation and leadership are critical.

While IoT helps people to get connected using sensors, controllers, devices which are capturing the data but the heart of IoT lies in analyzing the collected data, experts believe.

IoT units in India are expected to see a 31-fold growth to reach 1.9 billion by 2020 owing to advances in reliability, accuracy and technology of advance tech measures, as predicted by Deloitte.

Currently in India, telecom operators like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone are offering IoT solutions such as location tracker, automative telematics, smart metering, security and surveillance solutions, and managed IoT connectivity platform among others.

Indian IT : Taking the country to $1 trillion digital economy by 2022.

Source : ETTelecom


Minister of electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad will hold a high level roundtable on June 16 with chief executives of telecom, IT, banking, fintech and other industries to chart a roadmap of taking the country to $1 trillion digital economy by 2022.

The IT ministry’s meeting comes alongside the telecom ministry’s outreach to the telecom industry. Telecom minister Manoj Sinha is expected to meet top telecom leaders on June 22 to discuss the current state of financial stress in the sector.

“The government has partnered with the industry in the design of new services and platforms like MyGov, Digital Locker, E-sign, cloud services, Government eMarketplace, eNational Agricultural Markets, etc… It is time to take this partnership to the next level,” said people aware of the intimations sent out by the ministry of electronics and IT (Meity) to key industry executives.

The government aims to increase the partnership with the private sector to create new business opportunities and jobs, as it takes steps towards use of technology for enlarging the purview of the government’s Digital India program.

Sources aware of the meeting said that the department will take views from heads of various companies across industries to develop a program that will become the blueprint for increasing the use of digital services for multiple purposes including making financial transactions.

Part of the agenda will also be discussions on issues plaguing the sector, such as concern over jobs in the IT sector, which have been slowing due to shifts in technology, automation and growing protectionism in developed markets. The issue of the US government reviewing the H1-B visa program may also be discussed. The discussions, sources said, will include ways to find solutions to these issues among other things.

In a separate development, the telecom minister Manoj Sinha will hold meeting with telecom leader including Sunil Bharti Mittal, Kumar Mangalam Birla and Anil Ambani, for understanding financial problems being faced by the sector that has a debt of nearly Rs 5 lakh crore.

The meeting will take place after the inter-ministerial group (IMG) – created to resolve financial woes of the telecom sector – completes its company-wise meetings.

The IMG has called Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices, Aircel and Sistema Shyam Teleservices for a meeting on June 12. The other major players -- Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone and Idea -- have been asked for a meeting on June 15 by the panel, while state run carriers will be called on June 17, ET had reported previously.

Indian Telecom industry is at its weakest, govt will have to step in.

Source : Business standards

The industry is now composed of three sets of players:
1) Established incumbents like Bharti, Vodafone and Idea Cellular which have executed well in the past and have strong brands. Vodafone merger with Idea will solve the capacity constraints of both the players

2) Weaker players like Telenor, MTS, RCOM, BSNL, MTNL and Aircel which are exiting or are consolidating for survival. Even after consolidation, the operators ability to invest will pose a challenge

3) Reliance Jio which has defined the technological and strategic landscape.

In future, the industry will see slower investments and more consolidation. With so much supply in the market, revenue will grow with usage albeit with a lag. We expect 11 per cent revenue CAGR over the next 5 years but most of the growth will be back ended post industry consolidation. The weaker players will have to exit but their debt presents a structural problem for an exit. In this regard, the government might need to step in to improve the industry profitability to ease the exit of players and solve the structural debt issue. The government has many levers to improve the industry profitability which include reducing service tax to spectrum usage charges. All or any of these measures can improve the industry profitability significantly.

Finally, little help from regulator
 

The Indian telecom industry is at a critical juncture and faster improvement in profitability will be crucial for long-term health of the sector. Industry consolidation is critical but government interventions to improve industry profitability will help the sector immensely. The Indian telecom sector has immense potential for growth but realising the potential is in the hands of government and regulator. 

India’s LTE download speeds marginally faster than global 3G speeds.

Source: ETTelecom

According to a report by OpenSignal, download speeds in India have dropped more than one megabit per second in the last six months as traffic has surged, mainly on the back of Reliance Jio Infocomm's free services. Rivals such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular have also slashed prices and offered freebies, further adding to demand for data services.

In fact, India--ranked 74th--came below the likes of Pakistan and Sri Lanka and just ahead of Costa Rica in terms of speed. Singapore scored the highest in 4G speed, while South Korea scored highest in 4G availability. The global average 4G download speed was 16.2 Mbps.

Consumer complaints over sluggish pace have pushed the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to look closely at what carriers are providing.

“The widespread adoption of wireless broadband services in the last few quarters makes it particularly important to take into account the problems that may be faced by the users of these services, particularly in relation to data speeds,” the regulator said in a consultation paper on the topic.

India had 217.95 million data subscribers at the end of 2016, while average data usage has risen from 236 MB a month in September to 884 MB in December 2016, Trai data showed. The regulator had raised the minimum level of broadband download speed to 2 Mbps on January 1, 2015, from 512 kbps earlier.

The Mukesh Ambani-owned Jio has helped India make a big leap in terms of global 4G availability rankings, with users able to find a signal 81.6% of the time in the first quarter ended March, up from 71.6% in the third quarter of 2016. Jio’s 4G availability was at more than 90%, while the other major operators all fell below 60% in the tests conducted by OpenSignal. Still, the score was high enough to rank India at 15 among 75 countries in the State of LTE report.

“Most of that improvement can be attributed to a single operator: Reliance Jio,” OpenSignal said. “Ïndia shot up our LTE availability rankings, reflecting a rare instance in which a single operator can have an outsized impact on a mobile market in just a short time.”

However, OpenSignal termed “Jio’s success as a double-edged sword,” saying that the onslaught of data usage which Jio’s launch generated has taxed its network capacity, which has driven down 4G speeds.

Analysts said the mobile data explosion driven by the Jio launch and freebies or promotional offers by incumbent telcos, is putting huge pressure on mobile network infrastructure, especially in urban areas, leading to a capacity crunch which results in low speeds. Typically, 10% of sites account for 50 % of data traffic.

According to Motilal Oswal analysts, circle-wise data consumption indicates that 18-20% of overall consumption happens in the top-3 metros against 10 % in 'C ' circles, implying that data usage in the top-3 cities is twice the usage of all the 'C ' circle states put together. Thus, despite pan-India data capacity at 8-10x consumption, telcos need to add capacity in top-tier cities.

OpenSignal said it collected information from consumer smartphones and under normal usage conditions compared with drive-test data, which attempts to simulate what a user might experience by using the same devices to measure network performance in a small number of locations. OpenSignal took measurements from millions of smartphones owned by users who have downloaded its apps.