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.

-Ronny Haraldsvik
 

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The accelerated growth of multimedia usage on mobile devices is changing the traffic profile of wireless networks. Traditional traffic management technologies have been ineffective in handling mobile video. Network operators require new strategies and tools to maintain high quality of service and manage traffic growth within their capital budgets.

Please join senior executives from Vodafone D2, Informa Telecoms & Media, and Bytemobile at 4:00 p.m. UK GMT on Tuesday, September 28, as they tackle the challenges and opportunities of mobile multimedia.

The September 28 webinar – “The Impact of Video Traffic Growth on Mobile Networks,” as advertised on Informa’s telecoms.com – will feature panelists Dr. Volker Sebastian, head of Multimedia Engineering, TMH, at Vodafone D2 (Germany); Mike Hibberd, editorial director of Telecoms.com; and Jeff Sanderson, head of Pre-Sales for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Latin America at Bytemobile.

Please register for the webinar here. The webinar is free and will be accessible on demand for interested participants across the globe.

-Tod Bottari  
 

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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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On June 18, we conducted the second webinar of the 2009 Mobile Minute series – “Making a Better Mobile Browser”. Led by FierceWireless as part of its FierceLive! webinar program, the event attracted 317 registrations and 126 unique live visitors from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America, the U.S., and Canada. You can access a full replay of the webinar on the Mobile Minute page of Bytemobile’s website.

FierceWireless Editor-in-Chief Sue Marek moderated a panel consisting of (from left to right below) Mark Donovan, senior vice president of Mobile and senior analyst at comScore; Phil Parry, mobile browser interaction manager in the Design and Usability unit at Orange Group; and Adrian Hall, chief marketing officer at Bytemobile.

Mark Donovan began the discussion with a profile of the mobile market segments today, indicating that mobile media users – defined as browsers, application users and downloaders – had grown 24% from last year and now constituted the largest segment at 35%. The key drivers include device technology, network speed and adoption of unlimited data plans. Donovan noted that the U.S. had surpassed Europe in data plan penetration and that growth will accelerate as networks become faster and data costs stabilize. He cited browsing and social networking as the fastest growing mobile data activities, with the latter increasing 170% from last year, followed by applications at 111%. In the U.S., daily news and information access on mobile devices is overtaking the circulation of daily newspapers. Donovan concluded with a review of the leading smartphone domains, which are dominated by social networking and community services, news and information, and entertainment. Excluding social networking, web search, weather and news are the leading mobile browsing genres.

Phil Parry of Orange followed with the operator’s perspective on the mobile browsing platform and business model, noting the fragmentation of the market and the pros and cons of the PC internet experience and the mobile internet experience. Parry categorized the challenges to be addressed in closing this gap as user, economic (operator) and developer issues. He echoed Donovan’s point about smartphone penetration as a major factor in the evolution of web browsing technologies and then focused on the competitive landscape for web runtime platforms, which is moving toward service discovery and personalization. Within this context, Parry noted that today 58% of Orange subscribers search the Web through Orange World, the operator’s portal, while 78% circumvent the portal for direct access. He summarized the mobile platform and web-based application development environments and the balance between portability and performance. In conclusion, Parry stated that Orange would support the development of best-of-breed mobile web services with a unique operator-based platform and continued focus on the design of the user experience.

Adrian Hall’s segment of the panel played off of Donovan’s and Parry’s segments and shared Bytemobile’s experience in working with more than 100 operators worldwide on the evolution of their networks and data services. Hall underscored the importance of personalization to the success of the mobile Internet, highlighting Bytemobile’s Widget Bar as an example of a smart browsing tool that enables customization of the user experience from within the network and supports the implementation of new business models. He also reminded the audience that content adaptation has valid uses cases for all mobile devices – including even the highest-end smartphones, such as the iPhone and the new Android devices. Hall closed with a quick summary of Bytemobile’s product portfolio, again relating key points back to the comments of the other two speakers.

Following the individual presentations, Sue Marek took selected questions from the webinar participants. These questions ranged from the match-up between application requirements and browser capabilities to battery life, from the fragmentation of the mobile space to social networking opportunities and the impact of bandwidth constraints on application developers.

In addition, the audience was polled on the multiple-choice question heading the chart below:

The response emphasizes the fact that improving the mobile browsing experience is a multi-point solution – diversity of opinion notwithstanding, there is no single answer. Moreover, the Bytemobile product portfolio supports either directly or indirectly the key components of the solution.

Please note that the next webinar on mobile multimedia and the changing wireless traffic mix – also to be led by FierceWireless – is scheduled for July 15. You can register here.

-Jaishree Subramania

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