Mobile broadband set to overtake fixed line by 2011

Stan Beer
Friday, 16 January 2009 10:06

IT Industry - Market

Mobile broadband is set to overtake fixed line broadband in terms of subscriber numbers by 2011 as the wireless broadband market gathers steam according to a new report. According to the report, the mobile Internet is at the beginning of explosive growth that threatens to overwhelm the infrastructure of mobile operators if they don't adapt.

The white paper, The Mobile Internet Transformation, published by communications market research firm Infonetics Research examines 4 mobile broadband trends that are building up to a “perfect storm” in the mobile world. The paper identifies a dramatic acceleration in mobile data services, including 400% to 800% year-over-year traffic increases in some geographies, as being driven by 4 major trends:

• Rapid growth in high speed mobile broadband services based on HSPA, EV-DO, and WiMAX

• The proliferation of devices that consume enormous amounts of bandwidth, including dongles on laptops and a new generation of smartphones (most notably the iPhone but increasingly other devices such as those from from RIM as well as Symbian phones)

• Web 2.0 applications, many of which have made the transition from the wired world to the mobile world (e.g., Google Maps, YouTube)

• Flat rate all-you-can-eat data plans offered by mobile operators that have accelerated consumption of and revenue for mobile data services, but that have spurred the need for solutions that help operators deploy and monetize differentiated, premium services

The report identifies a challenge facing operators as mobile data traffic builds by orders of magnitude.

“With the growth of the mobile Internet, users expect an ‘Internet everywhere’ experience, whether using their laptops, handsets, or other mobile devices. This puts tremendous pressure on mobile operators to move orders of magnitude more traffic for an order of magnitude lower cost per bit. Our The Mobile Internet Transformationwhitepaper offers some strategies to help mobile operators rise to the challenge,” says Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile and FMC infrastructure at Infonetics Research and lead author of the whitepaper.

Sample strategies offered in the white paper to help mobile operators cost-effectively scale their networks to handle exploding data traffic:

• Deploy mobile packet gateways that can scale up into the tens of gigabits in performance (some provide content inspection, policy enforcement, and other features as well)

• Employ carrier Ethernet to backhaul data traffic from base stations

• In the radio domain (the toughest area to scale cost effectively), leverage additional technologies like femtocells, which offer terrific spectral reuse, and WiFi, which is inexpensive, widely deployed, and has lots of (unlicensed) spectrum

• Enhance the user experience, and provide intelligent value-added IP services and features such as QoS, anti-virus, parental controls, security, tiered service bundles, flexible billing, targeted advertising, and personalization

The white paper can be downloaded for free from the Infonetics site.