Until now, most of the industry’s focus has been on the technologies of long-term evolution (LTE); however, technology itself does not generate profits. Understanding the impact of LTE on your business and selecting a way forward that matches your business model is critical to ensuring your success in the future market.
There are a number of drivers for operators that shift them toward LTE, but they mainly break down into two categories: market demand and costs.
Over the past 12 months the use of mobile broadband has led to very high growth in mobile data traffic, and this level of demand further drives the need for more bandwidth. The surge in bandwidth consumption will provide operators with a huge revenue opportunity for mobile data services, with some regions seeing massive increases in mobile data ARPU. A major challenge for operators will be ensuring they capture all of the demand and turn it into revenue.
One of the main issues is that today’s mobile networks were designed to carry more voice than data. If existing technologies were used to support the level of projected demand long term, the amount of additional equipment both in the numbers of cell sites and backhaul network devices would make the service uneconomical. Therefore LTE technology aims to address this through the combination of simplifying the backhaul network, removing the need for complex and expensive control functions, and the use of cheaper transport technology (IP and Ethernet) that reduce the price-per-port for connections from the cell sites to the core.
The move to LTE will be a fine balance between the cost of an additional new network against the ability to deliver more capacity and satisfy the demand of users.
LTE will provide operators with methods to deliver a new level of tailored services to their customers, with quality of service (QoS) and application-based performance. However, being able to deliver this will require a finer level of control within the access data network, not currently in place.
In addition, customers will move a step closer to full Internet on their phone with the ability to turn the handset from a terminal to an active component. It will no longer just be a way to view content hosted online, but will provide direct peer-to-peer capabilities and enable a new wave of social networking between people.
With such promise, operators will need to take a holistic view of the technological impacts LTE will have on their business process and their support s systems. This analysis allows operators to identify what parts of their business will be affected and build a unique plan to address these changes.
One area of focus for LTE will be the management of cell-to-cell communications. The optional X1 interface of the standard could change the topology of the access network, requiring all the leaves of the tree to have logical connections between them. This further complicates the management of the access network.
The use of policy servers to control customer quality, although not restricted to just LTE networks, becomes a main feature in the future. Bringing these functions in early alongside existing control methods will ensure better transition for the customer experience and can be used to generate additional revenue for the struggling “all-you-can-eat” data services.
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As executive director of innovation and solutions in Telcordia’s strategy office, Peter Briscoe directs new programs aimed at addressing evolving priorities in telecom operations support. Briscoe has spent more than 17 years working in telecom operations support with experience in consulting and software creation spanning fault management, service fulfillment and planning. He has worked on a number of large deployments around the world and has built specialization within new network technologies and working with network partners.
