Telecom Lead India: The mobile broadband outburst today
is a cliche that complements almost every industry conversation. The explosion
of browsing-friendly smartphones and tablets allied to a host of
other Internet-capable devices, dirt-cheap data plans and vast application
developer communities buoys this outburst. According to a recent report
by Cisco, mobile data traffic worldwide will grow 18-fold by 2016, reaching an
annual run rate of 130 exabytes. In India specifically,
mobile data traffic is expected to increase 114-fold by 2015. In 2015, users
from India are estimated to generate data that will be equivalent to 15 times
the volume of the entire Indian Internet in 2005.
Looking into the future, the mobile industry has availed
new radio spectrum resources and developed higher performance technologies such
as LTE, both of which will support a two-to-four-fold increase in existing
network capacity. This capacity development, while significant, falls well
short of what is needed to meet future mobile broadband demands. To address
this exponential data growth, service providers are coming under increasing
pressure to embrace -Cellular Offload using Wi-Fi Networks’,which in the
current scenario is the most viable solution for operators to alleviate network
congestion quickly and adequately meet the capacity needs of their mobile
broadband customers.
Wi-Fi is clearly at the top of the list for service
providers around the world looking for new ways to increase cellular capacity.
These service providers are taking a truly innovative approach to building a
heterogeneous network by combining macro cellular technology, femtocells, WiMAX
and Wi-Fi to address the exponential growth of wireless data traffic.
By offloading users from the 3G network to Wi-Fi networks
with local break-out to the Internet, mobile operators can add more capacity in
an affordable and flexible way. Most Wi-Fi-enabled devices try to establish a
Wi-Fi connection as the first choice whenever available, and
popularapplications such as Apple’s FaceTime and iCloud can only be used on
Wi-Fi. It is no surprise that carrier-class Wi-Fi has rapidly gained interest
and priority among mobile operators globally.
In line with the global trend, Indian operators should
also look at using public Wi-Fi access points to offload mobile data traffic.
Each 3G spectrum license-holder in India only has 5MHz of spectrum compared
with 20MHz in many other markets, which will lead to increasing network
congestion as customers sign up for what should be an enhanced data service
experience. Poor 3G network quality is already emerging as a headache for
India’s operators and, as a result, is fuelling demand for Wi-Fi connectivity.
Operators are already experiencing signal penetration trouble with 3G. They
would need Wi-Fi to counter this problem.
Some operators in India are starting to include Wi-Fi in
their data offload strategies. Aircel, for example, recently launched 50,000
Wi-Fi hotspots around India and has brokered partnerships with Wi-Fi
specialists to offer public Wi-Fi services to its subscribers. Other leading
operators like BhartiAirtel, Vodafone India, Idea Cellular and Reliance
Communications are also believed to be in discussions with Wi-Fi service
providers.
However, the business and technical requirements of
cellular offload are completely juxtaposed to those of traditional Wi-Fi.
Traditionally, Wi-Fi access was a nice-to-have and the network typically
received relatively light use. Under those conditions, it was good to optimize
the network for coverage rather than capacity. In modern offload networks,
congregations of people carrying Wi-Fi-enabled smart phones define the Wi-Fi
usage scenario. The requirements to serve these customers demand that the
network delivers a satisfactory experience to many concurrent users in a high
density, heavily used location. Wi-Fi access network in this scenario is a
critical infrastructure element of the cellular network.
In large public venues such as stadiums, concerts, and
conferences, the number of smartphones packed into a given area is dense,
creating some of the most demanding scenarios for Wi-Fi deployments. With more
and more people carrying and using smartphones and tablets these networks need
more efficiency and capacity to cater to consumer demand. The challenge with a
network designed primarily for coverage is that it uses relatively few Access
Points to service large areas and will therefore have a large number of clients
attempting to share any given Access Point. In these environments, these
networks quickly become congested and result in frequent user complaints that
they see the network fine, but that it just doesn’t work.
Also, when the network is fully loaded and people are
simultaneously trying to upload pictures, download web pages, stream video or
Skype with friends, the aggregate customer experience at scale is often very
different from the user experience of downloading a web page in an unloaded
network.
Cellular offload onto Wi-Fi requires a new approach to
deployments, which focuses on pre-deployment testing to ensure customer
satisfaction with their applications in a realistically loaded environment.
Adopting best test practices will allow service providers to dramatically
improve the quality of their new deployments. These include use of application
traffic in addition to simple measurements of signal strength, measuring key
performance indicators that reflect customer satisfaction, use of typical
client devices (PCs, tablets, smartphones), and testing network scalability
prior to heavy usage at events. This will enable them to provision Wi-Fi
networks more efficiently that will carry more data, provide a better customer
experience and created increased opportunities for revenue and profit
Ultimately, improved Wi-Fi will also open up other
innovative revenue generating opportunities for service providers. Mobile data
offload, wholesaling access and bundling public Wi-Fi with other services for
example will be the biggest sources of immediate value, and importantly, there
will be increased customer access to next-generation communication technologies
and service providers will create a happy customer bunch as a result.
Dave Schneider, principal technologist, Ixia
editor@telecomlead.com
