During the first decade of mobile data – 1998-2008 – wireless operators were focused on driving adoption. Data networks were built on voice networks with ample capacity that was largely unused. As a result, excess capacity meant that data service had little or no associated cost. It took years for used capacity to catch up with built capacity.
Today, operators are building network capacity to address exponential growth in data traffic. Despite this, network congestion is occurring in densely populated urban areas. Managing this congestion requires significant investment in new cell sites, spectrum, backhaul, and new technologies such as Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and femtocells. Consumer demand will continue to accelerate far beyond existing network capacity.
The technologies being deployed to increase network capacity will be unable to keep pace with traffic growth. For example, LTE and offload technologies such as Wi-Fi and femtocells are projected to reduce the cost per bit by approximately 50% by 2014*. However, between now and 2014, traffic is estimated to grow 2,000% to 4,000%. Demand will continue to accelerate beyond the impact of these technologies.
Traffic optimization increases effective network capacity by 30% to 40%. Since optimization is deployed in the existing network and applied to existing service, no customer adoption is required. Therefore, the benefits are immediate. Optimization produces a cumulative multiplier effect that increases the operator’s return on all other network investments.
Combined with optimization, policy enforcement enables operators to differentiate their services by subscriber usage profile in order to monetize demand. Services are differentiated based on their value and subscribers’ willingness to pay for that value.
The combination of traffic optimization and policy enforcement gives operators a strategic advantage. They can meet consumer demand for the mobile Internet and grow profitably at the same time. Bytemobile’s Unison™ Mobile Internet Platform provides optimization and policy control in a single gateway.
There is no one solution or panacea to the mobile internet traffic challenge. In fact, all solutions are required, and Bytemobile’s Unison platform multiplies their positive impact.
Since we at Bytemobile spend a lot of time processing and analyzing the network traffic of mobile operators around the world*, we were surprised. Our experience leads us to very different conclusions.
Let’s start with the area graph using Cisco data. While we agree with the data, we disagree with the use of traffic volumes to infer usage patterns.
The average video generates more than 30 times the traffic volume of the average web page. In other words, a user would have to visit 30-plus web pages to generate the same amount of traffic as one video. This ratio becomes even more skewed as users watch more long-form video from providers such as Hulu and Netflix. While video is the fastest growing form of traffic in terms of volume, it is hardly stealing usage from web pages. Video-generated traffic volume growth can be driven by a number of factors in addition to increased usage, such as longer durations or higher video quality. It is inaccurate to extrapolate traffic volume to usage patterns and conclude that users are moving away from the Web.
Wireless Data Traffic Mix – By Geographic Region
Source: Bytemobile Mobile Minute Metrics Report, February 2010
We also disagree with Wired’s classification of video as being separate from the Web. Video is an integral part of the Web. Most video is delivered from websites such as YouTube through a web browser. Further, videos are searchable and can be linked just as web pages are. Analysis of tier-one 3G networks worldwide shows that more than 95% of video traffic is delivered over HTTP on port 80 - just as web pages are. Video is simply another form of content on the Web.
As far as apps supplanting the browsed Web are concerned, while apps are experiencing tremendous growth on smartphones, the browser still generates a major portion of the traffic. In fact, web browsing generates as much traffic as all apps combined – about 30% browser, 30% apps, 40% video, according to our network data.
iPhone Data Traffic Distribution by Highest Bandwidth-Consuming Applications
Source: Bytemobile Mobile Minute Metrics Report, February 2010
Moreover, apps are built primarily on web infrastructure. They use the same technologies that are used by browsers, such as HTML, HTTP, JPEG, XML, and others. Therefore, while apps may change the way that users consume content, they are still very much a part of the Web.
What we see changing is not the Web itself, but rather the channels that consumers are using to interact with the Web. Far from being dead, the Web is alive, well and thriving. And growing.
Yesterday, ABI Research announced a new and very timely report, titled “Mobile Network Offloading”.
Noteworthy excerpts from ABI’s news release (italics ours):
The serious, well-publicized traffic overloads (including content data and radio signaling) that are starting to choke many mobile networks will only worsen as smartphones and other mobile devices proliferate, and operators must extend capacity. Brute force network expansion, requiring a doubling of capacity, isn’t an option.
Instead, several approaches and technologies will play specific roles in relieving network congestion. These include Wi-Fi, femtocells, mobile CDNs (content delivery networks), media optimization, and more.
“Each of these offload and optimization technologies is aimed at solving a particular problem and they will all coexist.” – Aditya Kaul, Practice Director, ABI Research
One of the most effective tools is media optimization – effectively improved compression – which is already being used widely. Media optimization will grow the fastest and deliver the greatest traffic reduction of all these methods.
For more information on the ABI report, click here.
On a global scale, the mass migration to 3G network technology is yet to come. The chart below – produced by In-Stat, the mobile internet/digital entertainment market intelligence firm – indicates that in 2010, only 17% of the world’s 4.3 billion mobile subscribers are on 3G networks or higher. This means that 83% are unable to play video and access other high-bandwidth applications that the proliferating iPhone/Android community uses every day.
In the second half of 2008, a number of 3G networks began showing signs of stress due to traffic congestion caused by multimedia-hungry subscribers with powerful mobile devices. After years of investment to drive data adoption and fill their 3G pipes, the operators of these networks were now facing frustrated consumers forced to contend for bandwidth and watch stalling videos.
Two years later, the stress has become seriously aggravated and elicited public comments like the following from the AT&T CTO, in response to widespread criticism of network service quality: “We will move heaven and earth [to meet our customers’ growing data needs]” (VentureBeat – July 12, 2010).
The In-Stat data, corroborated by other industry sources such as Gartner and Morgan Stanley Research, makes it clear that the challenge to operators is still in its infancy. Moreover, it will continue to accelerate for the next decade and beyond, as a) more consumers adopt mobile data, b) more consumers upgrade to iPhone-/Android-class smartphones, and c) more networks advance to 3G and beyond.
