The adoption of mobile devices is seeing phenomenal growth. By some estimates, there are approximately seven billion mobile devices, one for every man, woman and child on Earth, and that number could grow to 10 billion by the year 2016.
From the mobile operator’s perspective, the number of mobile-device users is plateauing (at least in developed countries), even while the overall number of devices continues to grow. That means most users are adding second and third devices. So as mobile operators look to support their customers’ demands for anywhere-access on any device, they have also begun rolling out shared data plans. For a flat monthly rate (usually tied to bandwidth needs), you can use the carriers’ service on any device as well as share it with family members.
This has obvious appeal for consumers, but presents both challenge and opportunity for the mobile operator. The challenge is supporting the growing number of user sessions alongside 50 percent annual data-bandwidth growth. This requires a network that can scale in multiple dimensions – throughput, sessions, services – and one that can flexibly handle the rich media traffic that is becoming pervasive.
The opportunity for mobile operators in this emerging on-the-go world is to generate additional revenue from these enhanced network services. The shared data plans are a way for mobile operators to hook users into an experience and step into the user’s life – whether they’re on the couch, at work, at an airport or coffee shop. The winners will be those who put a premium not just on content but on delivering a personalized high-quality, cloud-served experience quickly.
These emerging consumer demands and behaviors have created a mini-revolution in the networking industry called SDN (Software-Defined Networking). While SDN will certainly help networks run better, I think the more exciting potential is that it can enable mobile operators to deploy new services in weeks rather than years. And even better, they can make sure those services are exactly what each user wants by leveraging high performance hardware and virtualized application delivery allowing services to be “chained.” A data stream (movie, song or webpage, for instance) can step through multiple network processes to bring it to the right user, link it to their preferences, ensure the highest quality of service through load balancing, caching, and traffic steering while simultaneously taking care of billing and security.
When I see how powerful and integral mobile devices have become to our lives – from healthcare to education to national security – I am excited to be a part of the networking industry to further enhance the end-user experience.
