Our usage of wireless data increases about 10% every month. Thankfully, our bills don’t increase 10% every month. Good for us – bad for the wireless network operators.

So what are the operators doing about it? Remember the unlimited ‘all-you-can-eat’ data plans offered by virtually every carrier? Well…read the fine print. There is an upper limit to the ‘unlimited’ data that you can consume. Some operators would completely block your data access once you had reached the cap. Others would simply charge an outrageous amount for the excess data over the cap that you had consumed. Still others would apply technology - such as rate-shaping of traffic - to degrade your quality of service and make your experience so unbearable that you’d stop downloading all those YouTube videos. These techniques are designed to decrease the total traffic in the network so that operators can serve existing users cost-effectively and pursue new data subscriptions – both of which are mandatory to sustain profitability.

Clearly, these ‘solutions’ are not ideal because of their negative impact on the user experience. Consumers become confused and frustrated, which defeats the original purpose of increasing the operator’s profitability. Consequently, operators are looking for other ways to lower the cost per bit transmitted over the wireless network in order to profitably serve the growing demand for mobile data. For example, many operators are experimenting with femtocells - little base stations that sit next to your Wi-Fi access point at home – or even Wi-Fi radio, which is supported right in the phone. Both solutions are designed to offload wireless data (and voice) onto existing (i.e., cheaper) fixed-line networks to serve users while they are at home or work, thereby reducing traffic on the wireless network. The bad news is that both solutions are complex – and require a change in user behavior.

That leaves us with the most obvious solution – make the wireless network less expensive to operate – which is why operators are planning to roll out LTE (Long-Term Evolution) networks. LTE is a great solution. Its spectral efficiency is roughly four times that of existing HSDPA technology. This means that for every bit transmitted over an existing network, LTE would allow four bits to be transmitted, thus reducing the cost per bit by a factor of four. Put another way, it would enable operators to serve four users at the current cost of serving a single user. Fantastic, right? What better reason for operators around the world to spend years in planning and billions in acquiring spectrum, radio infrastructure and cell towers - and even more years and billions in deploying and rolling out the technology. The savings on existing users’ traffic would be enormous, and the potential revenue from growth in data subscriptions would be even more substantial.

Of course, we can’t forget about the ‘years’ and ‘billions’ required before this is a reality. Did you know that the combined power of Bytemobile’s optimization solutions can reduce the cost per bit by as much as a factor of two? That’s 50% of the value of LTE - and it costs a fraction of LTE in terms of cash and management and deployment time. The principle is simple – rather than optimizing the way the radio uses the spectrum, Bytemobile solutions optimize users’ data. This means that they work on today’s network, require no changes in user behavior and actually improve the user experience – all the while reducing the cost per bit. No wonder Bytemobile has over 100 wireless operators worldwide as deployed customers.

Optimization is yet another solution available to operators in their attempt to increase utilization of available bandwidth and reduce the cost per bit. Operators will continue to invest in optimization for as long as they continue to invest in better radio technologies – and as long as users demand higher levels of service.

The relentless pressure to decrease costs, increase subscriptions and revenue, and improve the user experience not only demands optimization solutions today, but will also demand optimization solutions in the future LTE environment, and will further demand optimization solutions if and when 5G radio technology is invented. After all, the same forces that drive operators’ investment in radio technology also drive their investment in optimization.

-Joel Brand

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On May 27, we kicked off the 2009 series of Mobile Minute webinars with “Mobile Data Caps: Can Carriers Profitably Control Data Usage?” This event – led by FierceWireless as part of its FierceLive! webinar program – drew 365 registrations and 173 unique live visitors from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America, the U.S., and Canada.

Webinar panelists included (from left to right below) John Jackson, vice president of Research at CCS Insight and former vice president of the mobile and wireless practice at Yankee Group; Larry Socher, global lead for the Network Offering Group at Accenture; and Adrian Hall, chief marketing officer at Bytemobile.

FierceWireless Executive Editor Lynnette Luna moderated the panel.

John Jackson led off with the assertion that data pricing is a dire concern – ‘flat and getting flatter’. He argued that while dramatic growth in mobile data traffic will continue, network operators cannot profitably grow their data business with the current generation of network technologies. Although many consider Long-Term Evolution (LTE) the ‘default panacea’, it will not meet all of the complex and interdependent functional requirements for keeping up with data demand. According to Jackson, carriers have a ‘long-term identity crisis’ – value-added content provider versus bit pipe – that will require much more than network cost reduction to resolve.

Larry Socher of Accenture addressed future drivers of mobile revenue growth for operators – new data and entertainment applications, convergence and the ‘always connected’ lifestyle of consumers, and interconnectivity of mobile and fixed devices. He stressed the importance of integrated value-added services in customer retention and highlighted the emergence of vertical applications – e.g., on-board automotive – enabled by lower-cost mobile devices with ubiquitous connectivity.

Adrian Hall presented the Bytemobile perspective on the discussion, emphasizing the forces of convergence, personalization, openness, and cost control in moving mobile data forward. He cited a seminal finding of an October 2008 survey of industry senior executives conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit – that charging variable prices for bandwidth consumption at different times of day will be an important future source of revenue for operators – and industry research on the impact of uncontrolled data usage on operators’ profitability. Hall closed with a quick summary of the business benefits of the Bytemobile product portfolio, referencing specific points made earlier by Jackson and Socher.

Lynnette Luna referred to the webinar in an article in the May 28 edition of FierceBroadbandWireless and the June 1 edition of FierceWireless.

Following the panel presentations, Luna took selected questions from the online participants. In addition, the audience was polled on a multiple-choice question, which appears below with a chart of the answers selected by percentage of the total respondents.

The majority selection of differentiated service packaging and pricing provides further validation of the value proposition of Bytemobile applications such as OSN WebGate™ Service and Media Fidelity™ Suite Media Optimization in enabling operators to control and monetize data usage as traffic continues to grow.

Please note that our next webinar – “Making a Better Mobile Browser”, also led by FierceWireless – is scheduled for June 18. You can register here.

-Jaishree Subramania

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As we watch the battle that continues among the different operating systems – Symbian, Windows Mobile, RIM, Palm, Android, and now Apple – and we mull over the rivalry between WiMAX and LTE, are we are getting ready to see the most interesting competition of all – ‘The War of Mobile App Stores’?

The power of the mobile application is well understood. It’s no longer just a ringtone, a wallpaper or a game. Mobile apps have grabbed the attention of consumers and their dollars. A new study from In-Stat projects that the number of mobile app store users will quadruple in the next five years. Already, mobile apps have demonstrated their value as a catalyst for growth in  data services and revenue for carriers.

“The mobile Internet has finally taken off. Now we need to cope with the traffic,” said IDC analyst Scott Ellison.

With its early success, Apple currently leads the app store race. Research In Motion just launched its own app store this week. The handset brands are all building their app stores –Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, et al. Microsoft is expected to launch its applications marketplace later this year. Adobe Systems plans to build a similar marketplace for applications that run on mass-market devices.

However, let’s not forget the most important players of all – the carriers. Around the world, they are delivering value-added services with their app stores while adding value to off-portal traffic.

Everyone is lining up – carriers, handset makers and software companies. On the supply side, the application developers need to gamble and make a few choices. Will carriers ensure that consumers are the ultimate winners?

-Jaishree Subramania

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Today Blackberry officially announced the launch of the Blackberry Storm, positioning it as the first real challenger to the iPhone.  Haven’t we heard that claim at least a half dozen times in the last year? (Samsung’s F700 and Instinct and LG’s Vu and Voyager, for example.) Not surprisingly, the Blackberry Storm addresses user-identified weaknesses of the iPhone with a removable battery, a 3.2-megapixel camera with video capture, cut-and-paste editing features, and built-in picture messaging. The iPhone has yet to really penetrate the enterprise, so the key advantage of the Storm could be Blackberry’s strength with corporate email and security.

What people aren’t talking about with the launch of new high-end, touch-screen phones is the impact these devices have on mobile data consumption and network infrastructure. The Blackberry Storm and the iPhone are great for browsing the web and quickly consuming mobile content, resulting in traffic growth like we’ve never seen before in the mobile space. Research shows mobile data growing at a rate of 10-15% per month for tier-one operators. This rapidly escalating data consumption poses a serious challenge to their network infrastructure.

To cope with the increasing stress on their networks, operators are looking to data caps imposed on users and next-gen technologies such as LTE and WiMAX. These solutions are not entirely viable, as enforced data restrictions are likely to result in subscriber opposition and the deployment of 4G technologies is still years away. In the interim, operators should take steps to improve overall network efficiency and capacity, manage data traffic and ensure the scalability of their network, while continuing to deliver a superior user experience.

Bytemobile solutions offer operators high levels of scalability and traffic control, enabling them to protecting their existing infrastructure investment through smart, adaptive optimization.  Since data traffic expands to fill the bandwidth available for it, the value of optimization is perpetual.

- Stacey Infantino

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