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 Flexes Traffic Management Muscle
Light Reading
November 17, 2010

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."

MacLeod explained that the personalization that traffic management enables is what improves the customer experience and can lift customer satisfaction. (See Policy Control Key to Personalized Services and Policy Matters to Mobile Broadband Operators.)

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.

— Michelle Donegan, European Editor, Light Reading Mobile

-Stacey Infantino

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Hank Kafka, AT&T senior vice president of Architecture and Planning, delivered the opening keynote presentation on Day 1 of the LTE North America 2010 conference in Dallas, Texas. Kafka opened the session with the following statement:

If there is one thing you should take away from this conference, it’s that consumers and businesses have an insatiable demand for data.

The AT&T executive’s presentation focused on the fact that one of the biggest challenges facing wireless network operators today is that the majority of consumers don’t understand capacity problems.

AT&T, which spends billions annually to improve its network infrastructure and address the capacity challenge, believes that increasing network speed is only part of the solution.

The company has seen a 5,000% increase in mobile data consumption over the past three years. Kafka attributed this to two key drivers: social networks and video.

With regard to social media, Kafka stated that the average mobile Facebook user spends seven hours a month on the site and that social networks are second only to email in terms of consumer usage.

In discussing mobile video, Kafka cited statistics from Bytemobile’s 3Q 2010 Mobile Minute Metrics report, highlighting the following point:

‘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 accounts for 48% of the total network video traffic.’

Kafka closed the session by setting the stage for the future state of mobile data demand – “It’s only going to accelerate.”

-Stacey Infantino

Image courtesy of Rene Reile via the Creative Commons attribution license.

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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.

-Tod Bottari
 

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Wireless packet data networks were built on voice networks and provided the basic connectivity between mobile consumers and the Internet.

For years, operators struggled to drive adoption of mobile data. The key barriers were the speed of the network, the cost of data delivery, the capabilities of mobile devices, and the availability of internet content. Bytemobile technology connected wireless laptops to the Internet and helped operators address network speed and data delivery costs. WAP phones provided access to walled-garden content on the operators’ portals.

Next, operators launched 3G networks and the first generation of smartphones, while connecting feature phones to the Internet. Bytemobile enabled this trend with the adaptation of web, Flash and media content for smartphones and feature phones, and the insertion of advertising in adapted content for the monetization of web traffic.

The commercial implementation of HSPA network technology supported compelling new devices such as high-end smartphones and rich new applications such as video. This confluence of factors caused mobile internet usage to grow exponentially, as data revenue and traffic volume accelerated far beyond operators’ expectations.

Operators now had to expand their network capacity quickly in order to capitalize on the revenue opportunity and manage the traffic challenge. They increased infrastructure investments in radio access, backhaul, and core network technologies. Bytemobile supported this requirement with a mobile internet gateway enabling operators to optimize and deliver web and video content on all Internet-connected mobile devices.

Today, operators are building and launching 4G networks with policy controls to ensure both full monetization and fair use of next-generation data services. The intelligent application of policies enables operators to differentiate services by subscriber usage profile and enforce limits on excessive consumption of data.

In this environment, Bytemobile’s mobile internet gateway produces a cumulative network multiplier effect across the operator’s investments in wireless spectrum and multiple generations of radio, backhaul and core technologies. This multiplier effect serves to enhance the performance of all network elements by increasing efficiency and control.

The Unison™ Mobile Internet Platform provides operators with a comprehensive solution for managing mobile data services which combines web and media optimization with traffic analysis and policy enforcement. The result is a next-generation policy control and traffic delivery system for 4G networks.

-Tod Bottari         
 

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