MWC: Winners and losers in Verizon's LTE contest

THE WILD CARDS

NSN may not have secured a lucrative radio access contract, but it did win a piece of the IMS services architecture. In the past, such a win may not have been impressive, as IMS has not had the significant impact on networks that the industry expected. But a critical component of IMS is its ability to bridge wireline and wireless services. Since LTE will be used as an alternate access means for Verizon Communications, broadband services offered to the home via DSL and fiber will also have to traverse the wireless network, making IMS a far more critical component in 4G. In the past, Verizon has also said that LTE will deliver the necessary bandwidth to allow Verizon to offer a unified set of broadband applications regardless of access technology. The same video, for instance could be streamed to the PC, TV or mobile phone. A robust IMS implementation would be necessary to negotiate those services over disparate networks.

The biggest surprise in Lynch’s announcement at Mobile World Congress was the pick of Starent Networks to supply elements of the packet core. Starent wasn’t on anyone’s potential vendor list, except Verizon’s, but Lynch said it shouldn’t be too shocking that the gateway vendor was picked. Starent along with Alcatel-Lucent has been supplying the packet data serving nodes (PDSNs) that power Verizon’s CDMA 1X and EV-DO core networks for years.

“The 3G core network and the 4G core network are, in essence, the same,” Lynch said. “We just felt [Starent] had earned their way into a continuing relationship with us. That’s how they ended up in the core network.”

What role Starent will play in the Verizon packet core remains to be seen. Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson will likely supply their service architecture evolution (SAE) gateways—the LTE equivalent of the PDSN—in the markets they build. Starent Networks officials would only confirm that they would supply elements of the evolved packet core, though they would not offer specifics. Earlier this week at MWC, though, Starent unveiled its high-rate packet date (HRPD) serving gateway, a key network element in the evolved-HRPD standard, which would allow a CDMA operator’s EV-DO packet core to communicate with the LTE packet core.

“Starent’s involvement is another indication that this strong player in the core network domain is well positioned for LTE migration,” Ovum’s Hartley and Grivolas wrote. “Its experience in CDMA and expansion to UMTS, makes it a strong candidate for other CDMA operators seeking to migrate to LTE.”