Bytemobile has produced a new video that creatively profiles the benefits of Smart Capacity at the Core™ for mobile network operators and their subscribers:
Multimedia content and applications are fast coming to dominate data traffic on wireless networks (40% in 2010), and one-to-one video communications – a.k.a. video chat – is the “new new thing” for mobile consumer lifestyles and a looming challenge for even 4G network bandwidth.
Bytemobile’s Unison™ Smart Capacity™ Platform enables operators to improve the utilization and performance of their existing network capacity by 50% - without costly new spectrum or infrastructure build-outs. As a result, they can deliver consistently superior quality of experience (QoE) for the most popular and demanding video and web services in the face of increasing network congestion. With Smart Capacity in the core of their service provider’s network, consumers can routinely enjoy high-definition (HD) video and streaming media – while video chatting with family and friends – on their smartphones and tablets.
Bytemobile’s Mobile Minute Metrics reports over the last five quarters show that video became the dominant form of mobile data traffic in 2010 – accounting for an average of 40% of the total volume in wireless networks worldwide. With the rise of full-length and studio-quality videos and live streaming of multimedia content on mobile devices – as well as the emergence of personal two-way video communications, or “video chat” – Bytemobile expects mobile data traffic to spike to an all-time high in 2011, causing tremendous capacity strain on already challenged network resources.
Bytemobile anticipates the following developments in the coming year:
Video-based content will account for over 60% of network traffic – up from 40% in 2010 – and two-way video chat will dominate network capacity
10% of subscribers will generate 90% of total network traffic
Pressure on capacity will continue to increase with LTE and other 4G network roll-outs, due to subscriber consumption of all available bandwidth
The growth of video traffic is rapidly outpacing that of overall data traffic. Unless operators are able to intelligently manage network capacity through data reduction and related technologies, the explosion of multimedia content will continue to erode their monetization of data services.
Last month, The New York Times reported that people watched 60 billion videos on YouTube each month — or 730 billion videos throughout the year. The average Internet user watched 186 videos each month. The same week that the article appeared, YouTube announced that 200 million videos per day are being played on mobile devices – up 300% from January 2010.
Video stalling due to network congestion is becoming a non-stop condition, eliminating the concept of the “busy hour” and severely impacting customer satisfaction and churn.
Source: Bytemobile Mobile Minute Metrics
A small increase in video resolution results in a significant increase in data traffic.
Increased demand on capacity requires greater control of networks and the ability to measure the quality of subscribers’ mobile video experience. Operators need to monitor data rates, resolution and stalling in order to ensure service quality and consistency, reduce churn, and plan tiered services for different subscriber profiles. Operators will continue to implement various data offload and small cell technologies to meet escalating demand. They will also deploy “Smart Capacity” solutions in their networks to better utilize existing capacity and increase customer satisfaction.
Download Volumes Reduced by 40-60%
Smart Capacity at the core of networks enables operators to control and reduce the total amount of multimedia traffic on the network, thereby improving the user experience during periods of congestion and increasing network efficiencies. By dynamically controlling network capacity utilization, operators can deliver the best possible user experience under network conditions and congestion patterns at any point in time.
Live customer deployments have shown that Smart Capacity solutions can reduce network download volumes by 40-60% – decreasing the cost of content delivery while improving the overall economics of mobile video and other data services offered by operators. A Smart Capacity platform is designed to help operators reduce network costs – capex and opex – by improving utilization of existing network capacity. It is also designed to help them increase revenue by serving more content to more subscribers and delivering a better user experience to reduce churn. Yield management and content policy enforcement capabilities enable operators to plan and implement tiered service plans for monetizing traffic by subscriber usage.
Smart Capacity at the Core of 3G and 4G Networks
Even with the migration from 3G to 4G networks – or RAN and backhaul upgrades to 3G networks – demand on capacity for multimedia traffic will continue to increase. Taking advantage of new content, applications and devices, subscribers will consume all available bandwidth and still expect the same quality of service that came with their original service plans – if not better. One U.S. operator is currently processing an average of 7GB per subscriber per month. Another operator in the Scandinavian countries is moving 17GB per subscriber per month. This trend will continue as live streaming video broadcasts and video on-demand go mainstream.
Smart Capacity has the potential to change the operational paradigm for mobile networks as traffic volumes continue to accelerate. Carriers will be able to deliver the highest-quality video and web content now and keep pace with exponential increases in demand – driven by progressively richer and more complex applications, as well as rapidly growing consumer adoption. This will help operators not only maximize the return on their infrastructure investment, but also capitalize on revenue opportunities that require delivery of the most sophisticated content with a leading-edge user experience. In the not so distant future, terabyte will become part of people’s everyday vocabulary – and yottabyte a standard metric for baseline network capacity.
Bytemobile was featured in Mobile Europe yesterday. With the largest distribution of any wireless magazine in Europe, Mobile Europe is the leading publication for the European mobile industry. The article includes details and images from a ‘2010 Mobile Year in Review’ snapshot from Bytemobile’s quarterly Mobile Minute Metrics reports and focuses on the premise that video is going to have a significant impact on the overall data load of wireless networks in 2011.
We have received some nice stats and graphs in from Byte Mobile, providing an insight into the network activity it observed during 2010. Some of the highlights Byte observed might be well known by now, but they reveal some good insight all the same - and particularly into how video is impacting the overall data load of the network.
1. The death of the busy hour
Network capacity is under a constant strain throughout the day and evening. With traffic peaks lasting up to 12 hours, so called “busy hours” are a thing of the past.
2. The data hog does exist
10% of all mobile data users generate approximately 85% of overall traffic in the network. Touch smartphone subscribers access and view video five times more than non-touch smartphone subscribers.
3 Video is the driver, and higher resolutions are set to take that further
Video accounts for 48% of total network traffic, with user-generated content such as YouTube dominating the consumption of network capacity. Today, higher-resolution video is requested a third less often than lower-resolution video yet generates a similar amount of the total data traffic in the network – 31% to 39%. This trend indicates that even a small increase in the number of users consuming higher-quality video will generate a significantly greater network traffic load. 4 Data offload is an option - as is optimisation
Mobile network operators are quickly evolving their networks in order to manage the strain on the radio access network (RAN), backhaul and core. They are employing data offload strategies using small cells and Wi-Fi, upgrading their backhaul, and adding smart capacity utilisation products to improve network efficiency and the delivery of multimedia content and video services.
Byte Mobile’s 2010 Mobile Minute Metrics Highlights User Behavior
●The peak hours for data traffic in wireless networks are consistent throughout the day and evening.
●The most prevalent type of video on wireless networks worldwide continues to be user-generated content available on YouTube and Google Videos. On average, this content currently accounts for 48% of the total network video traffic.
●Today, higher-resolution video is requested a third less often than lower-resolution video yet generates a similar amount of the total data traffic in the network – 31% to 39%. This trend indicates that even a small increase in the number of users consuming higher-quality video will generate a significantly greater network traffic load.
●10% of all mobile data users generate approximately 85% of overall traffic in the network.
New Class of Mobile Devices
●A new generation of touchscreen mobile devices is driving increased video consumption, and the operators servicing these devices are experiencing significant network changes. This trend indicates that as mobile devices get smarter and the user experience improves, video consumption will continue to rapidly accelerate.
Multimedia Applications are Consuming Wireless Networks
●The mobile applications that consumed the highest amount of network bandwidth in 2010 were Media Player (mobile video), Web Browser (a significant portion being mobile video), iTunes, and Facebook. Media Player, Web Browser and iTunes generate approximately 87% of total data volume in the network. This trend confirms the shift to entertainment-based usage and demonstrates the impact of multimedia applications on wireless networks.
In an article published by Light Reading yesterday, European Editor Michelle Donegan discusses recent network investments made by Vodafone Group plc to combat the data deluge, based on an interview with Andy MacLeod, Vodafone's group network director. The article (full text below) focuses on the rapid growth and changing profile of data traffic across Vodafone Group’s European wireless networks and the technologies that Vodafone has selected as mission-critical to meet this challenge.
“To address the mobile data volumes, traffic patterns, and user behavior, MacLeod highlighted some of the capabilities that Vodafone is working with, including traffic inspection, application optimization, content caching, and traffic offload (in the access network as well as in the transport network).
With these tools, there can be many "levels of personalized experience that users can get," he said. "And [Vodafone can] optimize what traffic we want when we want it."”
In an effort to improve customers’ user experience, increase network efficiency and address the impact of the data tsunami that’s hitting its network, the world’s largest tier-one wireless operators have turned to optimization and traffic management - validating the technology’s indispensable role in 3G/3.5G/4G and beyond. For more information. For information on Bytemobile’s market-leading video and web optimization solutions, please visit http://www.bytemobile.com/products-applications/.
Vodafone Group plc (NYSE: VOD) is beefing up its traffic management capabilities in an effort to improve its customers' service experience, make its network more efficient, and stem the impact of the data deluge that's hitting its network.
Faced with mobile data traffic growth of 100 percent per year in Europe, it's no longer adequate for Vodafone to provide a best effort service, according to Andy MacLeod, Vodafone's group network director, who was speaking at the Broadband Traffic Management conference here in London. (See Data Surge Fuels Policy Control Boom.)
That's why Vodafone is creating what MacLeod calls a "smart network" across its European footprint.
"To provide customers with the best experience for them, we need to change how we manage the network… That's the aim of the smart network that we're building across our business," he said.
MacLeod gave a snapshot of the mobile data traffic patterns on Vodafone's European network to show what it has to deal with: Sixty-five percent of Vodafone's mobile data traffic is generated by 10 percent of users, and 30 percent of the traffic comes from just 1 percent of users. Also, 80 percent of the traffic comes from consumers, rather than business users, and 85 percent of the traffic is generated by PCs — that is, USB dongles or embedded 3G devices. Only a small minority of mobile data traffic today comes from smartphones or tablets, he said.
As for what that traffic comprises, MacLeod said 70 percent is Web browsing and video, which are about evenly split, and the remainder of the traffic is mostly peer-to-peer (P2P).
"A very small number of users generate most of the traffic," he said. "Mobile data isn't terribly mobile and the usage is mainly from home."
To address the mobile data volumes, traffic patterns, and user behavior, MacLeod highlighted some of the capabilities that Vodafone is working with, including traffic inspection, application optimization, content caching, and traffic offload (in the access network as well as in the transport network).
With these tools, there can be many "levels of personalized experience that users can get," he said. "And [Vodafone can] optimize what traffic we want when we want it."
For Vodafone, the goal of this kind of policy management is to resolve how best to provide an adequate level of service quality, which will keep customers happy, while at the same time generating an acceptable return or profit from the services, which will keep shareholders happy.
"The biggest upside [of traffic management] is having the ability to help us personalize the experience for customers and optimize yield and profitability," said MacLeod.
