Radio access network (RAN) capacity and congestion are key priorities for wireless network operators in the mobile internet era. Today, congestion occurs primarily at the cell site and backhaul in densely populated urban areas. It can appear suddenly, with no advance warning. For operators, capacity planning has become a challenge of constantly locating and resolving congestion.
Networks become congested when demand for bandwidth exceeds capacity and users are forced to compete for resources. Rather than rising with demand, actual traffic is limited by capacity, leaving demand unfulfilled – and therefore revenue unrealized.
Competition for network resources intensifies as traffic volume increases. Congestion causes the user experience to deteriorate – for example, videos stall during periods of elevated usage, and users become frustrated. As a result, they churn to other networks offering better quality of service.
Bytemobile’s Unison™ Mobile Internet Platform provides a versatile traffic gateway that enables operators to do more with less. Specifically, traffic optimization expands effective network capacity by reducing cost per bit, removing wasted bytes and pushing bytes out of peak usage periods. Policy enforcement helps operators manage network yield, prioritize users in terms of service levels and maintain a superior user experience.
Since no subscriber migration to a new network or adoption of new service is required, the benefits of the mobile internet gateway are immediate. Operators are able to recapture revenue that had been lost due to unfulfilled demand.
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.
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.
