LTE is famously being deployed in a huge variety of bands, but one of the most obscure is 450MHz, which Brazil aims to use for rural coverage. There has been little interest in building it out so far, but Huawei has signed an agreement with the country’s government to develop appropriate 4G hardware.
The deal was signed in capital Brasilia by the Communications Minister, Paulo Bernardo, and by the president of Huawei Brazil, Veni Shone. In return for kickstarting a niche segment of the LTE space, Huawei will get tax breaks ‘ and of course, guaranteed access to one of the fastest growing major mobile economies.
Brazil recently auctioned its 2.5GHz spectrum for LTE, which was snapped up by the country’s four main cellcos – Vivo, Claro, TIM Brasil and Oi. However, although the 450MHz licences were offered too, there were no bids. As a result, the government ruled that the four 2.5GHz winners would also be required to invest in that rural segment, which requires download speeds of only 256Kbps.
Bernardo said that there was significant inequality between urban and rural areas in terms of internet access and is targeting a figure of 70% of homes linked to the Net by the end of 2014.
The unpopularity of the 450MHz licences is unsurprising. It is difficult to find a profit model when deploying in remote rural areas, of which Brazil has many, and there are few choices of equipment or devices in the band, hence the Huawei deal.
There have been CDMA deployments in the former analog telephony band, in parts of Asia, Latin America, Africa and eastern Europe, but these have been small in scale and not geared to full broadband. And Huawei and ZTE have been particularly active in the niche, both via their strong rural CDMA businesses and because both want to target minority LTE bands as their own (ZTE has been pushing 3.5GHz heavily, for instance).
Huawei showed its interest in 450MHz for rural coverage as far back as 2004 when it joined the main industry groups working in the band ‘ the CDMA Development Group and the International 450 Association – to demonstrate the use of CDMA2000 1X and EV-DO in the spectrum in Argentina. In 2006, the International 450 Association and the Americas telecoms agency CITEL announced a cooperation to seek harmonization across the band in the Latin America and also in other regions such as eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific, central Asia, Russia and Africa. All were seen as key candidates for CDMA450, and perhaps now for LTE450, though real world results have always lagged well behind the interest of trade bodies and development agencies ‘ as seen by the development of UMTS and TD-CDMA implementations for this spectrum, neither of which came to commercial fruition.
While rural access is the usual reason to harness 450MHz ‘ as seen in the Hungarian auction of the spectrum in 2010 ‘ some countries are eyeing it for other purposes. In the Netherlands, KPN has used CDMA450 technology for a dedicated network to run machine-to-machine services. KPN says CDMA450 offers several benefits for M2M, including strong indoor penetration and the low number of base stations required for these cost sensitive networks. KPN acquired the frequencies with the takeover of broadcast services group Nozema Services in 2005.