Smartphone uptake reveals lack of industry preparation?

DEREK McManus O2 CTO today claimed that the growth in smartphone uptake and the accompanying data-heavy applications has caused the operator to re-dimension parts of its network to cope with the additional demands being placed on it.

Yesterday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt stated he was “struck by the explosion of mobile computing”.

The industry has been waiting for the explosion of the mobile internet for a decade and yet both statements indicate a lack of preparedness to deal with increased content consumption from mobile devices. While many are holding out hope that 4G technologies will largely solve this data congestion,

Novarra’s Senior Director of Marketing Scott Cotter, has now joined the debate by arguing that infrastructure upgrades and investments are not the only route for mobile operators looking to capitalise on revenue opportunities and ensure consistent service delivery to a growing number of subscribers.

“The growth in mobile data traffic is a great opportunity for mobile operators to generate increased revenues and introduce new and compelling services. However, managing the exploding growth in data traffic in a financially sustainable way has become a challenge that cannot be addressed simply by adding new cell sites or waiting for the next network technology upgrade.

“Mobile data optimisation solutions such as Novarra’s which use content transformation, compression and network layer efficiency improvements can enable operators to increase the volume of content transported over their radio access network (RAN) and backhaul network by approximately 50 to 60 per cent, leveraging the existing infrastructure and significantly reducing the need for new and costly technology investments.”

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