The growth in mobile data consumption, driven by broadband networks, service enablers and innovation in user interface, devices and services present operators with a significantly better future than they appeared to have a year ago, according to O2 Telefonica's Director of Convergence Technology, Chris Fenton.
Speaking at Avren's Next Generation Network and Base Station technology in Bath, UK, Fenton said the he expected typical mobile broadband data use to reach 40Gb a month by 2012 per broadband connection. The proof that users are willing to pay £10-15 a month for mobile broadband data on top of existing spend has given operators a new lease of life, Fenton argued – as long as they can control costs and management.
This increase would be driven by new device capabilities, as well as service innovation driven by the web players and business models. As an example, Fenton said that after the introduction of the iPhone in December 2007, O2 saw data usage increase six times.
But although operators can benefit from this growth by providing the "enabling" services and technologies, it would also present operators with challenges in terms of dealing with the increased data coming from their access networks. Examples would either be in cost of backhaul, but also, for instance, in providing controls such as preventing underage access to adult sites. Fenton argued that there would be a place for operators to apply controls and management across the network in a distributed way.
These twin demands would necessitate the efficient use of the operator's core and fixed broadband access networks, re-using components if necessary and offloading the data as quickly as possible from the edge onto the core. But if operators could do that, and add quality of service and service control, then they could start to move across into the realm of the new internet business model, "providing the right feature sets to become a trusted provider for their customers".
Perhaps spooked by his own jargon, Fenton added as a proviso, "Okay – I don't really believe in all of that, but I do believe we have to embrace the services to take us forward."
But he was more forceful in rejecting the notion that operators are faced with being unable to extract value merely by providing that underlying service quality, especially faced with notions of net neutrality.
"Why shouldn't you charge for quality? We will see that, despite service innovation from other quarters, quality of service delivery will be down to the operator, and making that connectivity work will bring the two (service innovators and networks) together," Fenton concluded.
"It looks like a more successful future than it looked like a year ago – where we were facing increasing commoditisation and mergers and acquisitions and consolidation appeared to be the best way of solving the challenges," he concluded.