All eyes are on CES this week – with many of those eyes on the Digital Living Room. Current Analysis states, “Looking forward, the mobile and fixed consumer electronics worlds are on a collision course, and 2012 is when mobile is going to start asserting dominance. Mobile ecosystems for content and apps are extending into the digital living room, and mobile devices are going to play an increasingly important role managing, controlling, and delivering content to larger displays.”

To underscore the point, AT&T held its Developers Summit at the same time in the same place, clearly signaling sensitivity to the traction of mobile in the Digital Living Room.

As mobile devices, content and apps increasingly become integrated with digital entertainment systems, we expect mobile subscribers to continue pushing the limits of mobile networks. Smart Capacity^TM solutions can help mobile operators maximize network capacity and performance without burdening their capital expenditure budgets.

-Anna Yong

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On September 28, Mobile Minute and Informa Telecoms & Media collaborated with Vodafone D2 in Germany to present “The Impact of Video Traffic Growth on Mobile Networks”. The webinar attracted a mix of network operators, analysts and media, with over 400 registrants from around the world. To access a full replay, please visit us at Mobile Minute.

Contributors to the webinar included Dr. Volker Sebastian, head of Multimedia Application Engineering at Vodafone D2; Mike Hibberd, editorial director of Telecoms.com; and Jeff Sanderson, head of Pre-Sales for EMEA and Latin America at Bytemobile.

Mike Hibberd began the discussion by summarizing the key growth trends driving the wireless market today. Most strikingly, he noted a projected 76% CAGR in global mobile data traffic from 2008 to 2013. This is due to a combination of factors, including flat-rate tariffs used by operators to stimulate adoption, improvements in network infrastructure, and the spread of high-end, data-hungry devices.

Volker Sebastian expanded on the challenge created by these growth trends, noting the role that various technological solutions will play in helping operators manage traffic. Vodafone D2, like many carriers in developed markets, is looking for ways to meet consumer demand within its capital budget constraints – specifically, demand for data that is skewed by the enormous popularity of streaming video content. With optimization techniques implemented by Bytemobile, Vodafone D2 has been able to realize a total data savings of approximately 25% of HTTP traffic (85% of its video traffic is streamed via HTTP).

Jeff Sanderson rounded out the session with an overview of the various media optimization and policy enforcement solutions that Bytemobile offers operators to realign revenue generation with bandwidth consumption. Through optimization techniques such as Just in Time video downloading, Quality-Aware Transcoding, Dynamic Bandwidth Shaping, and Media Caching, operators are able to enhance the efficiency of their networks and increase their ROI in network infrastructure. Most importantly, consumers enjoy an improved user experience, which supports retention and growth of the operator’s subscriber base.

Additional Mobile Minute events are planned for the coming months. We will cover these events on our website and blog as part of our ongoing efforts to provide thought leadership and consultative education to the rapidly evolving mobile internet space.

- Peter Turner

Image courtesy of Hector Milla via the Creative Commons attribution license.

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Wired Magazine recently published an article declaring the demise of the Web.

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.

- Girish Wadhwani

*See Bytemobile’s quarterly Mobile Minute Metrics reports for more information.

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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.

-Tod Bottari

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