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It’s no secret that the proliferation of smartphone and tablet devices – and the accompanying demand for mobile video – is continuing to drive the need for more bandwidth. Smartphone penetration has even crossed the 50% point in some countries, making optimizing the network from the radio access network to the core a top priority for mobile operators worldwide.
So how can operators get a “smarter network,” leveraging their current network infrastructure while meeting subscriber demands and growing revenue? Let’s take a look at three different approaches.
Data offloading with Wi-Fi
Sounds simple, right? Too much traffic on the network? Offload it elsewhere! Operators have begun doing just that as they turn to Wi-Fi offloading to complement their small cell strategy and move data traffic from their own carrier network to a Wi-Fi environment.
Wi-Fi offloading reduces operator costs. It enables operators to leverage existing Wi-Fi networks, adding radio access without the cost of building towers, leasing land, putting up fencing, purchasing equipment, maintaining the equipment and establishing a physical connection to the backhaul network. Instead, Wi-Fi infrastructure already exists in places subscribers go – such as coffee shops, shopping malls and airports, where they demand access to their data – and new Wi-Fi hotspots are being established around the world every day. In addition, today’s smartphones and tablets are already supporting Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi offloading provides a critical complement to small cells.
But with Wi-Fi, there are security issues that still need to be addressed. Operators can either build their own Wi-Fi network. The other alternative is to turn existing “untrusted networks” into trusted environments that will secure the massive amounts of data traveling over them. Security gateways, can enable security in the wireless infrastructure, securely backhauling voice, data and video traffic via IPsec tunnels over the public Internet.
At the end of the day with Wi-Fi offloading, users will benefit from faster data connections and enhanced experience, seamless and secured access via mobile and Wi-Fi networks and extended coverage. Operators will benefit from reduced network costs, better performance and coverage and increased customer satisfaction.
Don’t ignore the core
While Wi-Fi offloading combined with small cells can help operators reduce the traffic on their networks while meeting subscriber demand for bandwidth, operators can’t ignore the core. The increased data volume, combined with the spike in adoption of small cells and IP multimedia subsystems (IMS), is causing a significant rise in the signaling traffic in the 3G and LTE core network.
Core network optimization has always been a requirement for operators to create an efficient and growing network. One of today’s challenges is that core network optimization is more complex than ever due to the massive data growth and ever increasing range of applications. There are a number of tools that operators should consider when it comes to their core network, and a mixture of these solutions can help deliver greater efficiency, improved quality and revenue growth.
Core network optimization techniques include load balancing on the signaling plane as well as the gathering of network intelligence with network probes and policy enforcement solutions for planning purposes to reduce data capacity requirements. Operators should consider the specific challenge they face, their network’s maturity and its stage in the lifecycle, as well as market dynamics when selecting which tools to use. For example, traditionally network probes were often used in the early stages of a network deployment, but they are now increasingly being applied to mature 3G networks. The reason for this is operator need to closely monitor changes in network usage and subscriber habits. This data is used to improve network configuration and adjust busy hour parameters and policies.
Deep packet inspection and policy platforms are also becoming more sophisticated, evolving from serving as a protection mechanism to a revenue-driving tool. However, these will need to dramatically increase their capacity to keep pace with data traffic growth predictions. As mobile video will be the main driver behind this traffic growth, with projected increases of 7-times over the next four to five years, there are opportunities for operators to leverage stateful load balancing and DPI on a blade, thereby eliminating the need for video gateway vendors to use expensive external boxes to provide the traffic re-direct function.
This leads us to how do operators to take advantage of this growth while optimizing their core network?
Optimizing value-added services
So it’s clear that bandwidth-hungry applications such as mobile video and the rise in mobile devices have posed new challenges for mobile operators. An additional challenge is that revenue growth hasn’t kept up with this demand; subscribers just don’t want to pay more for the same service, despite their increased network usage. Operators must be able to upsell value-added services, delivering more than just basic calling services, in order to increase average revenue per user with higher margins.
Operators are turning to deploying efficient network architectures that can offer enhanced voice and video services to their subscribers, while decreasing cost-per-bit. And the accompanying increase in network bandwidth allows operators to deliver revenue-generating services such as voice over LTE, video conferencing, video ring back tones, mobile coupons, video security monitoring and more.
In LTE networks, the IMS has been specified as the service delivery mechanism to deliver and monetize these personalized communication services. Rolling out LTE network is the first step, and operators are making this investment. But operators should consider making the small additional investment to add a proper IMS core inside their LTE network, thereby ultimately generating proportionally much more revenue and ARPU.
Conclusion
By optimizing the network from the core to the edge, operators can improve their bandwidth capacity and coverage area, all while driving new revenue growth. The corresponding improvement in quality of service will enhance the end user experience and significantly reduce subscriber churn.
