Is XO's time finally coming?
telephonyonline.com
MOBILE BACKHAUL'S TRUE BOTTOLNECK
Apr 10, 2008 12:45 PM, By Sarah Reedy
Flat-rate price plans pose serious network challenges for operators, study says
Increased utilization of 3G networks, more so than the impending 4G requirements, is driving the need for higher capacity backhaul, according to a report released this week by ABI Research. Sprint changed the backhaul landscape when it followed Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile in offering a flat-rate, all-you-can-eat service-pricing plan. Instead of just voice -- or voice and text messaging in the case of T-Mobile -- Sprint also threw in data, a “simply everything” wireless plan. The struggling carrier hopes to reduce its customer churn and attract new subscribers with the new offering, yet if successful, ABI warns, the net effect may prove taxing on Sprint’s backhaul.
Flat-rate plans essentially encourage unlimited use of SMS, MMS, email, Web browsing, as well as mobile TV, GPS services and anything else a handset has to offer. It is a known fact that increased use can flood the network, yet commonly held perception was that this would never happen. With the onslaught of unlimited pricing plans, ABI senior analyst Nadine Manjaro is no longer convinced.
“As the network increases, the utilization increases, and it will drive the backhaul demand,” Manjaro said. "It typically takes a few months to get the T1s installed and upload the service. If the operator didn’t plan for a specific area or specific market, then they might not be able to address the issue right away. Even if they are aware of it, it might take time to get the circuits ordered and turned up.”
As use of sites like YouTube, now available on all Web-enabled handsets, and other Internet sites continues to increase, this will have a growing impact on the network. Video applications – streaming, downloading and uploading – pose the biggest challenge by significantly increasing network utilization and reducing per-subscriber data rates and the number of subscribers able to access the network, the study said.
Carriers have long been addressing the backhaul burden issue – Manjaro is not denying that. Yet market dynamics are changing. More consumers, especially the younger generation, are buying smartphones and using them as PC replacements. This, coupled with the flat-rate option, might not be something carriers are prepared for. It is common practice for operators to oversubscribe the network, Manjaro said, with the expectation that average people will not use the full capacity of the backhaul. That may have been true in the past, but operators also are not experienced with offering unlimited data usage over their cellular networks.
“As users now become more savvy and start using more of these services, you can run into issues where they start saturating the network in terms of the capacity,” Manjaro said. “If the operator isn’t careful in planning for it and then they have a surge of users downloading videos and content from YouTube, that could create a problem for them and lead to degradation of other services.”
Outside of North America, carriers have been selling unlimited-access 3G data plans for years, yet the situation there is not much better. Reports indicate that two major Korean operators, SKT and KTF, are experiencing degraded voice quality offering video calls and global roaming on WCDMA networks. Due to email usage alone, whole networks in Europe have been known to go down for hours – often days when the usage became too taxing.
Continue --- |
