Will 3G-324M MONA be here this Christmas?
September 9, 2007
By Oren Libis
MONA (H.324 Annex K), the chosen call setup time reduction technique, was approved by the ITU-T and 3GPP over a year ago. How come we don’t see it in the market yet? It is mainly an issue of standardization and timing.
From past experience in 3G market, it takes about 6 – 12 months since a company has a prototype till the first model gets into the market. This happened in other standards and it has happened in 3G-324M time and again – WNSRP and channel negotiation conflicts are examples of this.
During this time many 3G-324M terminal vendors are working vigorously and intensively on their MONA implementations. Some of the implementations are more mature than others but all in all there is much more work to be done.
Implementing is not enough – you now need to test it. Most of the testing sessions are conducted in the 3G-324M Activity Group Face2Face events of IMTC. In these events many vendors perform interoperability testing against others but this is not that easy for new standards. H.324 Annex K is quite a complicated technique, which changed significantly the way 3G-324M call setup was done till now, so one can expect many interoperability clashes in the beginning of the testing – we’ve seen those in the last three events already. Obviously, the prototypes also need to maintain a very high level of interoperability with legacy terminals which makes it even harder. However, the interoperability level gets improved from event to event and the implementations mature as time passes. The upcoming Face2Face event in Tel-Aviv, Israel on October 8-12 will definitely show high level of interoperability as this is the 4th event that MONA is being tested.
Taking into account all of the above, I would expect to see MONA enabled models out in the market during the second half of 2008. Some initial models might actually hit the market prior to that, and maybe, just maybe, there will be a vendor or two that make it to Christmas this year.
Technorati Tags: 3G-324M, IMTC, Interoperability, ITU, Oren Libis
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Beginner’s Guide to 3G-324M MONA
August 15, 2007
By Oren Libis
MONA is a call setup time reduction technique used in 3G-324M. In the past several weeks I have noticed that a lot of handset developers and operators out there – not members of the IMTC, are a bit confused at what MONA is and how it really works.
The 3G-324M Activity Group in the IMTC is working hard in the past year on MONA. We’re doing interoperability testing whenever we can and we are going to meet again during October 8-12 for a face-to-face interoperability event with MONA as one of the main items.
What is MONA?
MONA is a call setup time reduction specification for 3G-324M. It is a set of 3 different techniques: MPC, SPC and ACP. I won’t go into the technical aspects of each, but it is important to understand the following points:
- Each of these techniques alone can reduce call setup time to below 1 second.
- Each of these techniques has its advantages and disadvantages – this is why MONA specifies three different techniques and not only one.
MONA Classes
3G-324M MONA specifies in addition to these 3 techniques, 3 different classes. 3G-324M products need to support only one of these classes. Each class indicates which of the 3 techniques (MPC, SPC and ACP) need to be implemented:
- Class 1, which requires MPC, SPC and ACP
- Class 2, which requires MPC and ACP
- Class 3, which requires SPC and ACP
The different MONA classes are interoperable with each other. For example, if two handsets support MONA, one supporting class 1 and the other supporting class 2, the call that will be established will either end up using MPC or ACP; if one supports class 2 and the other supports class 3, the call will simply use ACP.
What does is mean to you?
- If you are a developer, you should choose to develop the class that makes the most sense to you in terms of resources, footprint, memory and time to market.
- If you are a mobile operator, you should not force vendors to support a specific class – let your vendors choose their own class – in the end result, you will still get below 1 second of call setup time and you will be giving the vendors some flexibility.
Technorati Tags: 3G-324M, MONA, IMTC, Interoperability, Oren Libis
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Hosting an Interoperability Event
July 15, 2007
By Oren Libis
It is now final. My company will be hosting the next face-to-face interoperability event for the 3G-324M activity group on October 8-12, 2007. It has been a bit over a year since we hosted our last event and it seems like I am getting the hang of it.
As we are planning our next event, there is this shopping list of issues that we will be taking into consideration:
- Location
Need to find a big enough place to accommodate the group. A table for each company, with some space between them. - 3G coverage
We have to make sure that there is good 3G coverage in the location of the event and that it can hold a capacity of 10 or more video calls simultaneously. - ISDN lines
BRI and PRI. There are those that don’t have direct access to the 3G network, or those companies that would like to test their gateways, so we need to provide ISDN access as well. - Connectivity of 3G and ISDN
Now that there are two separate networks (3G and ISDN), we must check that you can call from one to the other and vice versa. - Wireless LAN
Everyone wants to use the internet during this week. Might as well provide good access to it. - Lunch
The army walks on his stomach and engineers can’t think without sugar. We have to make arrangements for lunch each day – in different restaurants, with English menus. - Social event
We’re hosting the event, so we need to give people some good time. Last year it was Jerusalem – this time it is still open. Any suggestions?
There are additional issues such as banners for the event, visa invitations, and restaurants for the evenings…
This event is definitely going to be around MONA call setup time, H.264 video codec and AMR-WB speech codec again, but I have a pretty good feeling that these should go even better than the last time for our group. I can’t wait to meet all of the guys here in Israel!
Technorati Tags: 3G-324M, Interoperability, MONA, RADVISION, Oren Libis
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3G-324M - From Connectivity to Services
June 26, 2007
By Oren Libis
Today, 3G-324M is used for video telephony and it is deployed in Europe and Asia, and many many handsets. China is now joining the bandwagon as well, with their TD-SCDMA network.
At the IMTC, we have been covering the adoption of 3G-324M over the last several years, especially from the point of view of the handset. This includes interoperability testing between two points, each running 3G-324M. During that time, we focused on making sure that channels are opened properly, and that video codecs are negotiated reasonably. From there, we moved on to handling call setup time. Along the way, other technical issues were dealt with and solved.
Today, I feel confident that the technical issues of video calls between two handsets are solved. The level of interoperability we have achieved within our group is high. I am also quite impressed by the level of interoperability that the newest addition to the standard – H.324 Annex K (also known is MONA) enjoys. I had my doubts, but during the last SuperOp! event on April, I was able to interoperate quite well with several vendors – no small achievement for a new specification that several companies are implementing independently.
And this led me to think about what’s next in store for our Activity Group. 3G-324M is relatively limited. You can use it to open multiple multimedia channels between two points, and this is mainly used to execute video telephony calls. You can try adding text, adding more codecs or trying to increase the bandwidth, but I believe the next challenge for the 3G-324M AG will be services.
As 3G-324M is used by operators to offer interactive video services to customers, our primary concern should be making sure that 3G-324M is as flexible as possible for services. We already have basic calls up and running well. But there are other technical aspects that didn’t get as much attention as they needed. Deploying a video ring-back tone service, for example, is a technical challenge due to the way 3G-324M is defined. This is an issue that makes the deployment of such a service so expensive to operators. From my conversations with service providers, I believe that there are a lot more services that subscribers would like, but we don’t handle well enough. So we have our work cut out for us.
If you are an operator or if you are in the business of developing services for operators, I suggest you join the IMTC 3G-324M Activity Group. The time has come to make 3G-324M services a reality.
Technorati Tags: 3G-324M, ITU, MONA, Oren Libis, TD-SCDMA, WCDMA
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