In the next five years, data will be the main thrust in India, riding on the waves of 3G or 4G technologies – but quality of services (QoS) will face severe challenges.
As per industry estimates, mobile data traffic in the country will increase nearly 100-fold by 2015 and consumers will stream nearly 600 hours of video content – every second, thus paving way for the ensuing data revolution.
Telecom industry body GSMA says 4G LTE subscriber base will pass one billion by 2017 driven by India and China. LTE will account for about one in eight of the more than eight billion total mobile connections by 2017 against 176 million LTE connections at the end of 2013. In addition, Nearly 500 LTE networks are forecast to be in service across 128 countries, roughly double the number of live LTE networks today.
LTE provides ultra high speed data access, in conjunction with 3G, this will lead the data revolution and drive fundamental changes in individual lifestyles, businesses and the society at large. CSPs would look forward to the advent of 4G technology which will be launched in India at the same time, as the rest of the world, according to CA Technologies.
Mobile broadband QoS
With data traffic growing dramatically, networks can become congested at peak times, affecting mobile customers’ experience. In order to facilitate personalized user experiences, improve QoS (quality of services) and greater customer choice and an optimum use of valuable network resources, some of the leading Indian telecom equipment vendors have shared their recommendations.
To offer smartphone users a high quality experience, networks must have a low number of devices per cell. It would also be effective to ensure a close proximity between users and the base station.
“The best way to meet these differing requirements is the Heterogeneous Network (HetNet) solution, which deploys a mix of technologies, frequencies, cell sizes and network architectures to respond optimally to shifting customer scales and preferences,” said Amit Marwah, head, Technology, India Region, NSN.
Network complexity continues to grow with the rollout of multiple technologies, sophisticated services and vast numbers of small cells. In the context of this scenario, extensive automation is becoming essential to enable Network Operations Centers to work effectively. The prospect of deploying small cells to provide extra coverage and capacity, is becoming increasingly attractive to many operators these days.
Increasing network visibility
Expanding visibility of network managers into the network beyond the mobile core will help telecom operators sustain the performance of the present-day mobile broadband network. To offer enough coverage, it is important to ensure that there is sufficient capacity to provide solutions that bring the content with the handset together.
An optimal use of resources starts with an integrated and industry-certified Customer Experience Management (CEM) system. Other areas of focus would include improvements in process efficiency by streamling problem management, dividing troubleshooting responsibilities judiciously among operations teams and allocating the available bandwidth to customers in such a way that it is fair to all users.
In 2012, global mobile industry revenue neared $1.5 trillion, essentially tripling over the last 10 years. By 2020, industry experts predict there will be 50 billion devices in the market and 40 times the volume of data transacting through service-provider networks.
Earlier inflection points in the market have largely been driven by one technology or one business change, but today’s context is driven by a confluence of disruptive new technologies that dramatically affect how, when, and where business gets done.
“The future success of today’s organizations lies in the ability to harness new technology to stay nimble and agile, to be able to continually redefine the way they work, compete, and win in the marketplace. That’s today’s global managed services value proposition,” said Alam Gill, senior vice president of global managed services, CSG International.
According to CA Technologies, industry leaders believe that there is spectrum availability crunch. As a result, operators are finding ways to gain more spectrums for mobile broadband services. Also, a large of chunk of mobile users is yet to subscribe the mobile broadband. Therefore, Quality of Service will be very crucial competing factor. Leading service providers in India are devoting hefty investments and resources to deliver better mobile broadband network quality.
Telecom operators should improve and densify their existing mobile broadband networks and add small cells in an optimal way. To provide the right broadband speed and quality, operators need to deploy heterogeneous networks, according to CA Technologies.
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