There is near universal agreement that mobile operators are heading for a capacity crunch – driven there by year on year increases in mobile data traffic. Yet there are just beginning to be voices that perhaps data growth may not be as strong as the x2 every year standard that has become the orthodox.
The strongest of these voices to date that we have found came from AnalysysMason’s Rupert Wood, who has called the “mobile data will double every year to 2014” view “a myth”.
Wood says that actual measured numbers from operators and regulators show that mobile data traffic in Europe will have grown by just 35% in 2010. And yet Vodafone today, in its results briefing, said that its data grew 88% year on year in the first quarter of its 2010-2011 reporting period.
There are clearly going to be more people lining up behind the “capacity crunch” view than not – there’s too much resting on it. Wood’s numbers may be too much of an outlier, but at the very least they serve as a useful reminder that it always pays to check when a statistic becomes too much of an orthodoxy – especially when it is a forecast.
One company that is of the “capacity crunch is real” view is Amdocs, which has commissioned Telesperience to come up with a survey based on what mobile operators are doing about it. Telesperience spoke to 30 radio network planners, asking them if they are meeting significant capacity constraints, and what they are doing about the capacity crunch.
20% of those questioned (so around 6 operators of the 30 questioned) said they are experiencing “severe overload” at certain times, with a further 43% saying they experience “congestion” in certain areas. 37% said their network is performing OK.
Interestingly, these planners rated “extra capacity” as the best solution to the capacity crunch. Not data optimisation, not policy, not QoS-based tariffs and customer experience tools. Of course, ask a network planner what the best solution is, and he’d likely to reach for the “more network” button. Although there was some regional variation here – you European operators were more likely to rate pricing as an effective tool, and least likely to rate data optimisation as a strategy. The Americans liked data offload the best. Overall, though, “expanding capacity” was the most popular option.
We’ll have a fuller report on this data, including reaction from commissioning party, Amdocs, later this week.
Of course, if you believe in the capacity crunch, then one answer could be femto – especially deployed as Class 3 femto, or metro femto, or whatever you want to call a larger-sized small cell used to get extra capacity into a given location. One sign of the expanding ecosystem was an announcement between Ubiquisys and Nokia Siemens Networks that the two companies will have a standards-compliant femto cell solution (access point + gateway) ready by early 2011. Both parties described this as a “milestone”, and made the point that standards compliant elements will enable operators to be much more flexible in how they deploy these small cells – whether that be as indoor residential units, or as outdoor capacity relievers.
Finally, speaking of forecasts (as we were a little earlier), here’s a reminder that our “What’s going to happen in 2011” survey is still live. If you would like to have your say on what mobile topics will be hot in 2011 then you can access it, and I really would urge you to, here. (SURVEY LINK)
Keith Dyer
Editor
Mobile Europe
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