The cost savings and reduced complexity from enterprises moving to an all-wireless communications network is a seductive one. However, worries still exist among many enterprise IT managers that Wi-Fi is not up to snuff. Indeed, there are still concerns about scalability, quality, and security issues.
A recent TechZine article by Subramania Vasudevan, Director, Advanced Performance in WCTO, Alcatel-Lucent, All-wireless enterprise with LTE and Wi-Fi, notes that enterprise IT managers have a particular lack of confidence in the quality of the wireless link provided by an all Wi-Fi infrastructure.
“There’s the limited ability of the Wi-Fi network to scale with increasing data rate needs,” Vasudevan noted. “In fact, we’ve seen aggregate capacities barely increase — even as Wi-Fi networks densify.”
LTE small cells can help. Small cells help provide in-building LTE on a cost-effective, as-needed basis.
Many mobile operators are considering unlicensed spectrum to bring greater bandwidth into the enterprise, he added. This can help meet the scalability demands. In fact, operators are looking to aggregate LTE in licensed bands along with LTE in the 5GHz unlicensed bands, which are known together as Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) or LTE unlicensed (LTE-U).
The limitations of Wi-Fi often come from the sharing mechanism between the uplink and the downlink. By using an LTE-based system, enterprises can resolve the problem of contentious uplink by means of scheduled access. This frees up the enterprise’s existing Wi-Fi for downlink, according to Vasudevan.
“By offloading the Wi-Fi uplink to cellular, LTE small cells improve enterprise services,” he wrote. “In addition, in-building enterprise traffic, such as Lync application data, can be shunted across the enterprise LAN (i.e., local breakout is enabled).”
At the same time, the combination relies on pre-existing Wi-Fi APs and user equipment, so the sum total is that the LTE downlink capacity can be aggregated with the Wi-Fi APs downlink capacity. This can lead to users everywhere seeing higher throughput in more locations because they benefit from LTE Wi-Fi aggregation and LTE-only for uplink.
The all-wireless enterprise network might be closer than many enterprise IT managers realize. This is a good thing since so many of us use our smartphones as our primary communications device and a significant number of interactions on those devices originate or terminate in-building where coverage and quality of service are a challenge.
If you spend any time in a developing country, you quickly discover that the majority of Internet connectivity comes via cellular connections. For many in developing countries, a smartphone effectively is their first regular connection to the Internet.
Roughly 87 percent of all broadband connections in emerging markets will be by way of cellular by 2017, according to Alcatel-Lucent forecasts. This is especially true in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the GSMA estimates that Latin America will have the second highest installed base of smartphones in the world behind only Asia Pacific by 2020.
The latest 4G Americas report shows that Latin America added 17 million LTE connections over the past twelve months, a 324 percent connection growth rate and the highest in the world.
Small cells technology is helping operators in Latin America and the Caribbean keep up with mobile broadband demand. Small cells are inexpensive to deploy, and they enable operators to add coverage and density as subscriber demand warrants.
“As mobile data usage escalates, adding small cells has become the popular solution,” noted a recent Alcatel-Lucent blog post on the topic, Latin America’s path to broadband increasingly made possible by small cells. The post noted that small cells are increasingly being used as the primary means for servicing cellular connections in Latin America and the Caribbean, with macro cells adding density in areas of particularly high use.
Alcatel-Lucent should know. The company leads the market in Latin America for small cell use according to Frost & Sullivan. In fact, Alcatel-Lucent has more than 50 percent of the market, and has secured 18 contracts in 13 countries since 2013.
“Small cells are the key to bringing mobile broadband to their citizens,” noted the Alcatel-Lucent blog post. “And as operators move from 3G to 4G/LTE networks, small cells play an even more important role in providing increased bandwidth and capacity needed to support advanced communications applications.”
Leading the way in Latin America and the Caribbean are Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia, with the highest small cells usage. But small cells make so much sense that countries in all parts of Latin America are jumping on the bandwagon.
]]>For large enterprises, small cells make a lot of sense.
Upwards of 80 percent of all mobile usage now occurs indoors, according to Alcatel-Lucent, and enterprise small cells deliver a flexible and economical way for reliable mobile connectivity in-building.
Recently a field trial held at a large financial institution in Mumbai showed the potential of enterprise small cells. Small cells bathed a 45,000-square-foot, all-glass office space with cellular connectivity that replaced an existing DAS and delivered a call drop rate of only 0.87 percent, an increase in average throughput of 42 percent, and a boost in peak throughput of 82 percent, according to a recent TechZine posting, Field insights: Deploying enterprise small cells, that went into detail on the deployment.
Impressively, this was done with the use of only nine small cells.
There were five key takeaways from the field trial that large enterprises should note.
First, don’t forget about macro cell connectivity. It is easy to focus on femto-to-femto handovers and overlook macro cells, but ignoring macro cell connectivity can greatly reduce the effectiveness of enterprise small cells deployment.
Second, the field trial found that IP/backhaul expertise helped the small cells deployment meet all key performance indicators despite the fact that the core network the financial center was connecting with was more than 1,440 km away in Delhi.
Third, the trial found that proper advance planning made a huge difference.
“In the Mumbai enterprise, an early solution design called for using 12 cells across the 45,000-square-foot office space. But the initial design was then optimized upfront, based on network expertise and Bell Labs tools, which eliminated 3 small cells,” noted the Alcatel-Lucent blog post. That’s significant.
Fourth, scalability needs to be kept in mind when it comes to enterprise small cells. Enterprises often need to expand capacity, and not all small cells configurations can scale to meet extra demand later on. But proper small cells architecture can enable scalability as needed.
Finally, the field trial found that reliability should be a point of focus when designing enterprise small cells configurations.
“The most reliable enterprise small cell solutions avoid single points of failure,” noted the Alcatel-Lucent blog. “Each of the nine cells used in the Mumbai financial institution operates independently. That makes sure that any failure is isolated and does not affect the rest of the network.”
Enterprise small cells deployment makes a lot of sense. But the devil is in the details.
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Small cells are a boon for mobile network operators, as they easily and cheaply expand wireless network connectivity. However, they also can strain an operator’s evolved packet core (EPC).
“The EPC may be called upon to deliver a significant increase in scale, capacity, and performance beyond that which was required initially to support the macro-cellular network,” noted David Nowoswiat, Sr. Product and Solutions Marketing Manager, Alcatel-Lucent in a recent TechZine posting, Is your EPC ready for the small cells onslaught? He suggests that operators look at three areas when examining if their EPC is up for the challenge.
First, is the network architecture ready for numerous small cells. Two of the options involve the addition of a small cell gateway to aggregate control and/or user traffic from a group of small cells back to the EPC, while a third option brings direct connectivity from each small cell to the EPC.
Adding a small cell gateway reduces the scaling and capacity requirements of the EPC but increases the network and operations complexity, and connecting the EPC directly to each small cell significantly increases its scalability and performance requirements yet keeps the network flat. Each operator will need to assess what makes sense in their particular case.
Second, does the EPC support the scaling and performance of the additional small cells load.
“If it’s directly connected to the small cell network, the biggest impact is on the control plane and the mobility management entity (MME) -- with all of the additional signaling that’s required,” noted Nowoswiat. But the EPC also should support an integrated and operationally simple model.
Third, is the mobile operator to offload data to take some of the load off of the EPC. Local breakout options can be implemented in small cell networks to offload data traffic that brings little value to the mobile operator, thus saving the EPC from added load. In that case, though, the EPC must support the requirements necessary to redirect traffic to the appropriate gateway and packet data network.
Nowoswiat questions whether most EPCs are up to the challenge. Is a virtual EPC a better option and a way to handle the extra load from small cells? While the answer is “it depends,” to learn more about EPC and small cell network choices the whitepaper Evolved Packet Core for Small Cell Networks, which compares architecture options, is a great place to start.
Carriers’ mobile networks are extremely vulnerable to sudden changes in the signaling behavior of popular applications. In fact, Patrick McCabe, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Alcatel-Lucent, devolves into this subject in some detail in a recent blog, Google’s power to impact network signaling. In fact, while Google Cloud Messages provide an example in the blog, the companies recent Mobile Device Report goes into the topic regarding the impact of the top mobile apps on signaling in greater detail.
Google Cloud Messaging for Android, according to the search giant, is a service that allows data to be sent from the App Engine or other backends to users’ Android-powered devices. That could involve the transmission of a lightweight push notification telling an Android application that there is new data to be accessed from the server (like a movie uploaded by a friend) or a message containing up to 4kb of payload data (so apps like IM can consume the message directly).
Such apps and interactions, however, can have a notable and negative impact on both mobile networks and the endpoints connected to them, according to McCabe. And, in the case of Google Cloud Messaging for Android there is ample evidence it already has.
The study by Alcatel-Lucent indicated there was a dramatic increase in signaling traffic from Jan. 12 to Feb. 19 due to the Google Cloud Messaging application. That involved a Jan. 12 signaling increase from 17 percent to 20 percent. Then, on Feb. 4, such signaling went from 21 percent to a peak 23 percent. Signaling relative to this Google application returned to expected levels on Feb. 19, according to Alcatel-Lucent, which added that these variations were not due to any increases in active subscribers.
The reason why Alcatel-Lucent is highlighting this is to increase awareness of the challenges for the signaling network and the mobile network at large, as well as a drain on related user endpoints (in this case Android smartphones) that the explosion in applications is causing.
“Although a rise in signaling share from 17 percent to 23 percent on a single application may appear rather innocuous at first, it does have a significant impact on mobile networks,” writes McCabe, based on information derived from Alcatel-Lucent’s the Motive Wireless Network Guardian for mobile network analysis. “During this period of signaling increase, an average erosion of 6 percent in overall signaling capacity was experienced across the networks that were analyzed. This is a costly loss that can place a large strain on radio resources, and it can even cause outages in locations that were already operating close to capacity — or where there was a dominant proportion of Android users.”
Concentration of the impact of the increasingly app-centric use of the network tends to look almost exclusively at traffic in general. However, in order for all of those apps to work with a high quality of service (QoS) the signaling network needs to be able to understand accommodate the spikes the various types of apps can cause. It is why having network visibility into app impact on signaling is so important.
]]>There a few things more confounding to mobile service providers in hotly contested markets than missing out on opportunities to generate more revenues and profits from what have been lightly used services. This is particularly the case in the United States where unlike much of the world where prepaid services are the norm, it is estimated that roughly 19 percent of U.S. subscribers avail themselves of these services.
That said, and despite some cultural and addressable market challenges, U.S. mobile services providers can change the game in their favor as prepaid is already experiencing significant growth due to a variety of factors, and if done correctly is poised according to research firm Yankee Group is to grow over the next few years faster than the overall telecommunications.Source: Yankee Group North America Mobile Forecast, December 2012
As Barbara Sampson, Senior Market Manager, Policy & Charging (P&C) Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent highlighted in a recent TechZine posting, Make the most of prepaid mobile plan growth, based on extensive research by Alcatel-Lucent found that prepaid suffers from:
To help U.S. operators fulfill and hopefully exceed the forecasts, SurePay® is Alcatel-Lucent’s solution that ensures there is a prepaid charging system in place that is flexible, scalable, and exceeds service provider and their customers’ expectations.
This is part of a series of postings (see below) relating to what options SurePay provides that U.S. mobile service providers can employ to maximize the prepaid opportunities. However, as a introduction to the detail in those postings it is instructive to look at what SurePay is and does.
Prepaid market realities and the role of SurePay
What research has confirmed is that mobile subscribers want to build their own price plans based on their demographics and usage behavior. Subscribers want to control all elements within a “custom” package, such as fixed minute increments, SMS, and data volumes. They are also demanding control over what applications they subscribe to and how much they pay. Legacy charging infrastructures are limited. However, with SurePay, operators can create and deploy marketing, user, and operation interfaces that define and modify price plans and promotions. It effectively guides and supports operators as they create, provision, and update SurePay tariff data, including bundles, tariff plans, and discounts.
Additionally, SurePay lets operators:
With SurePay, mobile operators can simultaneously offer a variety of charging options for a wide range of content types. And, SurePay’s flexibility and scalability for prepaid payment support can also be effectively expanded to real-time postpaid customers.
SurePay allows unified management of prepaid and postpaid subscribers with one system that handles convergent rating and charging. This also includes hybrid systems, which are defined as a combination of both prepaid and postpaid services over a single device. For example, it can accommodate a single handset where business calls are on a postpaid plan and personal calls are on a prepaid plan.
By supporting multiple payment modes across a single converged charging and rating engine, there is no need for separate rate support infrastructures. This results in reduced operational, service delivery, integration, and maintenance costs. SurePay also configures new tariff plans only once for both prepaid and postpaid subscribers.
A big benefit here is that SurePay supports shared data plans for consumer and enterprise subscribers. This lets multiple devices share a pool of data allowances and stimulates mobile data usage, thereby expanding the operator’s target base beyond prepaid customers.
Source: Alcatel-Lucent
SurePay’s high reliability, flexibility, and scalability encourage innovation. Faster setup of new prepaid mobile business plans and models help meet changing customer requirements and new market trends/drivers. SurePay service bundles and packages can also help mobile operators control costs, ensure customer stickiness, and generate additional revenues.
An example of this is SurePay’s Tariff Admin Tool. This service bundle provides marketing and operations interfaces to define and modify price plans and promotions, as well as test and verify a tariff plan offline prior to market rollout. It also provides the user interface to easily define and modify price plans and promotions. And it guides and supports mobile operators in the quick creation and provisioning of SurePay tariff data, including bundles, tariff plans, and discounts.
Finally, as with all prepaid plans, the customer knows how much they are paying and how close they are to reaching their limits. For those trying to watch carefully the amount of discretionary income they can allocate to mobile services, which for most households have become the real-time platform of choice for interacting, this is a real differentiated value, particularly for parental controls in limiting the use of children.
In short, prepaid is not just become an option, but its attraction can be enhanced if service providers have a platform that gives the customer several options that fit their unique requirements. After all, one size does not fit all, and customer choice translates into customer satisfaction and loyalty.
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The mining industry is booming thanks not only to natural resource demands in China, but also because every electronic device, including smartphones a lot of the precious materials that miners pull from the earth. For example, an iPhone contains gold, silver, platinum, copper and many rare earth elements like Yttrium, Lanthanum, Neodymium, Gadolinium and Europium.
Keeping these bustling mines efficient requires a highly reliable, accessible, secure and high-performance communications network. The reason is the mines tend to be operational 24/7/365. It is a major factor in why many mines are in the process of or evaluating upgrading their communications networks, since the existing Wi-Fi, 2G, 3G, proprietary VHF and PMR options are not keeping pace with mining information interchange demands of all types.
One solution is private, ultra-broadband, as described in a recent TrackTalk posting, LTE for mining: delivering ultra broadband in the middle of nowhere, by Thierry Sens, Marketing Director Transportation Segment, Alcatel-Lucent (ALU). Indeed, the reason for the title is somewhat obvious in that mines tend to be in not just remote but very remote locations.
For example, the Rio Tinto West Angelas mine in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, the solution for better connectivity has been a private single and converged ultra-broadband 4G LTE network for its pit fields, railways and ports.
The network, installed in 2013 by Alcatel-Lucent, helps with mission-critical communications for things like in-pit autonomous haulage systems (AHS), autonomous drilling systems (ADS), driverless freight train control, anti-collision systems, in-pit proximity detection, in-pit CCTV, high-precision GPS and an array of telemetry systems and sensors are now integral components of successful mine sites around the world, according to Sens.
Alcatel-Lucent has provided an illustration of a private broadband for mining. While a bit of an eye chart, what stands out is the extent of the IP/MPLS infrastructure along with the wireless links from the mines to the backbone network.Source: Alcatel-Lucent
For Rio Tinto, the performance of its LTE network has led some observers to comment that they have a better mobile signal in the middle of the mine, hundreds of miles from the nearest city, than in their office.
“An LTE network is also contributing to reduced operating costs by using an IP protocol to support all applications on a single converged radio network, and improvements in operational efficiency,” notes Sens.
Private LTE networks and mining are a good fit, as Rio Tinto has demonstrated.
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But there are some options mobile carriers might want to consider to help keep their subscribers’ data plan bills more manageable, and keep their customers happier. One way to allow for that is by introducing sponsored data charging programs.
Sponsored data charging programs are an effective way mobile carriers can help their subscribers justify the cost of connectivity, while growing their own user bases and expanding their ecosystems to include more application providers and marketers. That’s the word from Barbara Sampson, senior marketing manager for policy and charging PLM marketing, and Thomas King, manager of the policy and charging portfolio, at Alcatel-Lucent. The two wrote a recent TechZine posting, Operators benefit from sponsored data charging, that details how mobile operators can prosper with these types of programs.
Such programs, Alcatel-Lucent calls them Smart Plans, enable mobile subscribers to enjoy connectivity without being charged for it on their monthly plan.
There are various models of sponsored data charging. The zero rating model, for example, has an application provider or other third-party pay for subscriber data consumed by the specific app or service. A second example would involve a marketer providing a subscriber with a data reward for making a mobile purchase or trying a new service.
However, introducing these kinds of new options involves a bit of work on the billing front. That’s why Alcatel-Lucent and Aquto have joined forces to address sponsored data charging. The partnership involves Aquto leveraging Alcatel-Lucent’s SurePay platform with its own monetization platform to enable mobile carriers to support sponsored data models.
Aquto offers both cloud-based sponsorships to enable data rewards and zero rating, and a service provider user-engagement application option, which provides a destination at which subscribers can discover apps and services and get advertiser offers for data rewards and/or zero rating.
A huge benefit here is that operators can build service plans that give customers visibility over all of the devices that us data plans which enable them keep track of usage and let them top off their accounts wherever they may be. Mobile service providers can thus not only obtain news revenues from sponsors but are positioned to provide customers a more compelling and understandable user experience.
]]>There tends to be a prejudice in the press for covering the latest and greatest technology and how it is being used in the developed world. The reality is that especially when it comes to wireless, the impact of having ubiquitous and affordable access to communications, not just for voice but for data (aka the Internet), is busy transforming the developed world in ways that may be even more profound.
In fact, in the developing world, connectivity is the lifeblood of economic progress improving not just commerce itself but also the delivery of healthcare and as a tool for rapidly improving the education of young and old alike. Data is where it is at, and 4G has become as important in the developing world as in the developed.
A great example of this is in the work Alcatel-Lucent has done with aggressive mobile services provider Smile in Tanzania and the Ivory Coast. One interesting factoid is that in Tanzania, for every 1 landline subscriber there are 166 mobile phone subscribers. In short, the age old problem of increasing tele-density in the developing world as the engine for progress is being conquered and with impressive speed that has opened the eyes of many to the vast potential of all of Africa and other parts of the developing world.
The short video embedded below tells the story.
“What we are doing is much more than just installing a mast or selling a cable. It has an impact on the people in this country. It gets a different kind of meaning, “notes Daniel Jaeger, Vice-President for Africa, Alcatel-Lucent.
Indeed, wireless access has demonstrable impact. A study of the World Bank claims that a 10 percent growth in the number of Internet users in sub-Saharan Africa will generate a GDP increase of more than 1.3 percent. This leads to an observation of what happens when the percentage of users grows a lot more than 10 percent which is what the aforementioned landline to mobile comparison highlights.
And, it is not just Africa where this phenomenon is occurring. In the not too distant future there are forecasts that upwards of 70 percent of the world’s population of 7 billion people will have wireless personal communications capabilities. In some countries the number of devices already exceeds the number of citizens.
What the Smile deployment also illustrates is that the point that giving the most modern infrastructure nationwide is good business. Enabling people to use their phones for broadband data interactions as Smile’s competitive inroads indicate opens up significant revenue opportunities including the fact that as people become more device-centric they increase their usage as economic development enables them to have more money to spend. Where they are spending it is on wireless services. The reasons are obvious, e.g., in a connected world the value of ubiquitous access is as important, and in many ways more important, than other utility services like electricity.
As outgoing Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes explains in discussing what’s next for Africa now that 4G LTE and Ultra-Broadband networks have enabled a positive political, economic and social change: “For me Africa is at the heart of tomorrow…Becoming digital is an important catalyst for change. The focus of development will continue to bring connectivity to users by working with local, regional and international partners to literally help ‘connect’ the African people."
]]>“We know that there’s a new market and new problem here to solve,” said Mike Schabel, senior vice-president of small cells for the wireless division at Alcatel-Lucent. “To handle the expected volume, we would need to significantly increase the number of cell towers used in the network. So we made [base stations] smaller.”
Small cells represent the future of the network for operators. They are cheap, easy to deploy, and can be adapted to deliver the right amount of coverage for an area of heavy use.
Each outdoor version of Alcatel-Lucent’s small cells can cover up to 600 meters and be integrated into bus shelters, sign holdings and other existing street furniture with minimal visual impact. Each small cell delivers up to 150 Mbps downlink per user, and supports roughly 200 simultaneous users.
Small cells interoperate with existing macro tower infrastructure, too, enabling mobile operators to mix the technology with their existing tower setup.
One challenge when it comes to small cells, however, is securing sites to install the necessary small cells.
Alcatel-Lucent has partnered with the world’s largest outdoor advertising firm, JCDecaux, to help make this part of the equation easier. JCDecaux has more than a million assets at more than 3,700 cities and 63 countries, including billboards bus shelters and other outdoor spaces where small cells can be placed.
We’ve been working with companies like JCDecaux to ensure a smooth, simple delivery in new spaces for the wireless industry, by retrofitting into existing street scapes,” noted Schabel.
Amsterdam is one example of the partnership put into practice. Vodaphone used the Alcatel-Lucent solution to dramatically improve coverage in the city of 2.5 million people.
“With Alcatel-Lucent and JDCecaux, we have successfully deployed the small cell technology in Amsterdam, enhancing the network quality of our infrastructure,” said Kevin Salvadori, Vodafone group technology strategy and operations director.
Mobile broadband use will keep growing for years to come. Operators need to ensure that they have the infrastructure to support the growth in demand, and small cells are one way to meet that need.
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Large office buildings sometimes encounter a troubling problem in the form of poor cellular reception for employees. With atriums, business space in basements, internal walls and glass windows, more than one “modern architectural masterpiece” has discovered that workers lose cell coverage when they enter the building.
Of course, there are steps that can fix such problems even after a building is constructed. One of the best options is small cells technology for good in-building cellular coverage.
Small cells enable mobile operators to easily and cheaply add coverage where needed. A single enterprise-grade small cell (100 mW) can cover about 1000 square meters depending on the particular topology of the space, and several can be combined for complete coverage.
In building environments, though, it can sometimes take great expertise to identify exactly where and how many small cells to place for effective coverage. And obviously unnecessary small cells add unwanted capital expense.
When determining small cells setup, three keys should be taken into account.
First, collaborate with the IT department. When operators work with a corporation’s IT department, they can save time and hassle by leveraging the firm’s on-site knowledge, including location, existing power and backhaul facilities.
Second, Determine coverage requirements. Start with an on-site survey to glean a full understanding of the critical areas that require small cells coverage. These can include such places as executive offices, the company restaurant, and spots where workers often congregate. It helps then to estimate the number of users expected to use cellular in each area, and plan for growth.
Third, calculate placement requirements. Operators should optimally balance two aspects of small cell overlap. A good propagation estimate helps avoid overlapping cells, which can cause interference.
When these keys are taken into account, though, small cells technology makes a world of difference for buildings that challenge existing cellular access.
]]>Alcatel-Lucent recently compiled the result of actual data collected by its Motive® Wireless Network Guardian. The data, from over 30 million subscribers, is aggregated from live 3G customer networks across most regions of the world, and represents total daily data usage of over 1 petabyte.
Figure 1 shows that Android and iPhone devices make up more than 86% of the total connected devices in the global composite network that was analyzed – a testament to how pervasive smartphones have become. This is consistent with the findings from other industry reports. This may be a harbinger of things to come with respect to consumers’ voracious appetite for more and more features, capabilities and personalized experiences.
To accurately measure the overall impact on the network, it is important to consider just how much data is being used and overall signaling activity. Data usage drives the service provider’s bandwidth-related capital expenditures and the consumer’s data usage fees. Signaling activity measures the amount of network-to-device bi-directional exchanges needed to manage a radio connection to a mobile device. Signaling uses spectral, hardware, and processing resources in the service provider’s network and is a significant cause of battery depletion on a mobile device.
Figure 2 shows the percentage share of both data usage and signaling activity for each device category in the network.
Androids consume almost 50% of the total network data usage and, combined with the iPhone category, account for more than 80% of the total network data usage. When looking at signaling activity, Androids and iPhones also dominate with Androids representing an incredible 59.7% percentage share of signaling activity. Combined with the iPhone category, they account for almost 90% of the total signaling activity. It is also clear that Androids have a larger impact on the network than iPhones do as its share of signaling and data usage are 59.7% and 47.9%, respectively, when compared to 28% and 34%, respectively for iPhones. This difference represents a 31.7% higher share of signaling and a 13.9% higher share of data usage for the Android category over the iPhone category. This is due in large part to the fact that worldwide Androids are more popular than iPhones, but also because, individually and on average, Androids signal more than iPhones.
Despite only a 2% subscriber share, the Dongle/Datacard category shows a 9.4% share of data usage. This may be explained by understanding that these devices are typically attached to a PC or laptop which has a larger screen and is not as prone to mobility as are smartphones. As such, these devices may be consuming a proportionally larger amount of data usage than other categories by streaming video, downloading various videos, playing online video games, downloading/uploading high-res pictures, etc.
The Mobile Wi-Fi category shows a similar trend. With only 0.5% of the subscriber share, this category still manages to consume 4.1% share of data usage. This represents the largest data usage-to-subscriber share ratio across all device categories due to each Mobile Wi-Fi device having many mobile Wi-Fi devices aggregated behind it, collectively generating a large amount of data for a relatively small percentage of subscriber share.
The Machine to Machine (M2M) category represents non-personal devices that fall under commercial use for monitoring and control purposes. M2M devices signal much more actively when compared to their data usage. In this global composite network, M2M consumes 0.2% share of data usage while generating 1.4% share of signaling activity. Although tiny in terms of overall popularity, the M2M category represents the largest ratio between signaling and data usage, which means these devices are signaling a lot more than they are sending data. Some M2M applications, such as a home smartmeter, frequently establish mobile connections generating multiple signaling messages to establish network connectivity, yet have small amounts of data to send each time.
The growth rate of mobile data is staggering and continues to increase at an incredible rate as mobile devices have evolved from being tools for personal communication into being high performing, multi-media platforms. Live-streaming high-definition (HD) video, surfing the web, engaging in social media, on-line gaming and secure banking are just a few of the types of applications used daily on an ever-growing number of connected devices worldwide.
Given that the total number of active wireless connected devices is expected to grow from 13 billion in 2013 to more than 40.9 billion in 2020, it’s critical that mobile service providers, as well as mobile device manufacturers, understand the impact on the mobile network. Which devices consume the most signaling resources? Which use the most data? Answers to questions such as these are essential if service providers are to plan and grow their network efficiently, and for device manufacturers to enhance their designs.
This blog touched on the overall network impact that mobile devices have in the network. In upcoming blogs, I’ll take a closer look at the role device behavior plays in the network. Questions such as how much average daily data usage and signaling activity is associated to each device independent of popularity? What is the most signaling efficient device in the market? How does LTE change the network impact and behavior of devices in the network? Are there regional variations to these findings? What are the top signaling applications behind Androids and iPhones?
Join us for a live webinar on June 17 where our experts will discuss the research results in detail.
Author
Patrick McCabe holds a senior marketing management role in Alcatel-Lucent and is currently responsible for promoting products and solutions for Network Intelligence and Analytics. Patrick has held a number of support, sales, and marketing roles during his 20 years in the telecommunications industry. He was educated at St Francis Xavier University and Technical University of Nova Scotia (DalTech), and holds Bachelor and Masters degrees in Engineering.
Indeed, it is being viewed strategically as a way for service providers to distinguish their services on the basis of Quality of Experience (QoE) from 3G and OTT voice apps. It is also seen as providing competitive advantage because of its ability to enable end users to seamlessly move from a voice call to a video call, or shift from one device to another in the midst of the conversation. It is why interest in accelerating VoLTE deployments is so high.
However, network transformations are not easy. VoLTE deployment and operations is an interesting case in point. It brings unique challenges for service providers related to policy control, charging and Diameter signaling control. Steffen Paulus, Director of Product Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent has some interesting insights worth sharing on the need for integrated policy, charging and Diameter signaling in a virtualized solution, as the path forward for VoLTE success. This is particularly relevant in light of Alcatel-Lucent’s recent launch of its End-to-End Voice over LTE (E2E VoLTE) solution that is an integral part of the Rapport multimedia real-time communications platform which has been architected specifically to me service provider and enterprise needs.
Paulus has a few tips and suggestions on how to get VoLTE rollouts optimized in those three critical and interrelated areas of policy, charging and signaling.
The first one concerns the value of network analytics and personalized offers as the means for service providers to achieve nice adoption rates when launching VoLTE. Network intelligence can be leveraged with the application of sophisticated analytics to understand which markets and customers will benefit most. This translates into the ability to offer self-service capabilities to customers and enables service providers to proactively target specific customer segments based on rich contextual information and be more responsive to changing market conditions.
In fact, the ability for the sharing of analytics across lines-of-business, assuming part of the network transformation includes the upgrading to a more flexible and adaptable underlying rating and charging capabilities, is critical for enabling rapid competitive responses. The reason is obvious but important, creative marketing can only work when new packages and business models are ready for prime time.
Second, when it comes to creating compelling VoLTE experiences is the getting the policy and signaling plumbing VoLTE-ready for ensuring the QoE. On this score Alcatel-Lucent with deep expertise in VoLTE implementations worldwide, knows that VoLTE can expose significant shortcomings of legacy Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) solutions. Plus, there be limitations in scalability and performance, this can include features such as full geo-redundancy, session binding and correlation.
The scalability issue is not just one for handling the data traffic expected from VoLTE adoption. A surge in VoLTE subscribers is also going to significantly increase in diameter–based IMS-related control plane traffic. As Paulus explained, with this surge will comes a need to properly manage that signaling traffic, offer load-balancing and enable interworking capabilities. He explained, “This area is often referred to as diameter signaling control (DSC), and in combination with the IMS and policy & charging solution is a critical piece of the puzzle. “
Last and not least are the challenges for VoLTE regarding cloud readiness along with the value of using network functions virtualization (NFV) as foundational for next generation service creation and delivery. Part of this is based on the value of moving to software defined networking (SDN) and NFV capabilities in general as the most cost effective and agile way to run a network going forward. As if not more important is the ability for service providers to me fast-to-market, fast-in-the-market and incredibly fast to accommodate changes in market conditions be they competitor or user driven.
As Alcatel-Lucent points out, and recent studies have confirmed, most operators have not upgraded their policy engines and moved to NFV to enable a scalable and high-speed data layer that can be used to quickly create and manage differentiated data plans based on real-time information about subscriber preferences, needs and lifestyles. This is critical in a world where demands will increase for the unpredictability associated with the ebb and flow networking and signaling flows caused by the introduction/need for more flexible data plans and such things as providing real-time subscriber notifications about data usage.
Where all of this leads in terms of VoLTE success is that each one of the tools for success needs to be well-orchestrated and integrated to achieve, scalability and agility to assure both service quality and speedy responsiveness. All of this places a premium on having an integrated solution that incorporates all of the tools necessary for the operational efficiency and effectiveness that achieving optimal VoLTE demands.
]]>From original Alcatel-Lucent TechZine posting
A Wi-Fi first strategy can help multi-system operators (MSOs) remain competitive in the evolving marketplace. Wi-Fi enabled devices default to using the cable operator’s Wi-Fi network for voice, and cellular equipped devices can switch to cellular when out of Wi-Fi range.
Although nuances in the business drivers for adopting such a strategy vary by region globally, this model turns the traditional cellular voice paradigm on its head.
Just like other communications or media industries, MSOs face a dynamic and extremely competitive market. As a result, in EMEA, they have evolved their end-user offerings to embrace market-leading fixed high speed internet access, Wi-Fi connectivity, and bundled mobile cellular services using mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) partnerships.
As the pace of change continues to accelerate, subscribers have made a widespread move to Wi-Fi enabled smartphones and tablets. A European commission study stated that 71% of all EU wireless data traffic in 2012 was delivered to smartphones and tablets using Wi-Fi. This is expected to rise to 78% by 2016.
European MSOs have already invested in Wi-Fi and offer data connectivity services in and out of the home. This not only is a customer retention strategy, but also lets MSOs build out further value added services (VAS) and can reduce data costs of their MVNO agreements. So if we now contemplate the delivery of voice to these Wi-Fi enabled devices, how do we get started?
Existing Mobility Assets
MSOs in EMEA already have different types of Wi-Fi hotspot locations:
These Wi-Fi hotspot networks have been mainly used to enhance customer experience by extending broadband access outside the home, and to help provide TV Everywhere services.
Some MSOs have also invested in 4G spectrum and tentatively contemplated this to extend fixed services outside of their hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network footprint. If MSOs decide to take a more traditional approach to 4G and deploy mobile coverage using small cells, their own networks can provide backhaul for this traffic.
In addition, most MSOs in EMEA have – or are building – a full MVNO (F-MVNO) network that enables them to deliver cellular-based mobile services to their customers. The costs of maintaining a mobile data and voice partnership with a mobile network operator (MNO) are high. In response, some MSOs use their own Wi-Fi investments to steer (also known as offload) data connections from the MNO cellular network to improve the MVNO business case as well as improve customer experience.
A new opportunity
Both Android OS and Apple iOS recently added native dialer capabilities to their phones’ operating systems. This development paves the way for MSOs to not only offer new voice over Wi-Fi services to tablet and smartphone users, but also steer their own MVNO voice smartphone traffic to use Wi-Fi. This directly impacts MSO´s bundled mobility offers and increases competitiveness, while also managing costs.
Most EMEA MSOs now have assets in place to build a sustainable mobility strategy. Some can combine Wi-Fi and 4G small cell networks with F-MVNO agreements to provide both entertainment and communication services to their subscribers at work, at home, and on the move throughout the day.Being able to control voice communications across multiple wireless assets allows MSOs to adopt a “Wi-Fi first” approach. Subscriber voice calls automatically use MSO Wi-Fi networks. Where the device also has cellular capabilities, calls connect to cellular only when Wi-Fi is unavailable. This concept is also important for converged MNO/MSO operators, who can use all their mobility assets to create a heterogeneous network (HetNet).
Necessary ingredients for a Wi-Fi first approach
1. Quality of Experience
MSOs are already familiar with voice. They deliver fixed services over their HFC networks. Voice, unlike most data services, is a real-time application that requires quality of service to avoid jitter and delay. For MSO Wi-Fi networks to be competitive, the subscribers’ quality of experience using MSO Wi-Fi based voice services must be on par with that of traditional mobile carriers.
Similarly, the end-user experience with the Wi-Fi service mustn’t be any more cumbersome than subscribers are accustomed to. People just want to be able to use their phone without hassles. They don’t want to have to worry about which access technology they are using or perform manual changes as they move in and out of different coverage zones. This means MSO platforms and systems have to be completely automated:
Figure 2 shows a possible high-level Wi-Fi first architecture, including:
Many MSOs are already thinking about deploying IMS capabilities as part of their overall voice renewal plans. Including voice over Wi-Fi and other value-added services such as video calling are a natural fit. Figure 2 also demonstrates that beyond Wi-Fi first schemes, IMS can eventually replace the MVNO operation (2G/3G) as well as the fixed access network.
2. Mobile device manager (MDM)
An MDM system can be used to provision both iOS as Android devices, allowing MSOs to offer cellular, Wi-Fi and hybrid service plans.
The concept can use embedded MDM clients on user devices that allow operator settings to be installed, including Wi-Fi settings, usernames and passwords, and SIP settings.
In addition, the MDM would enable the MSO´s service to assume control of (or replace) the subscriber devices’ native dialers. The dialer ultimately must be capable of both Wi-Fi and circuit-switched calling, along with handovers between Wi-Fi, LTE and 3G domains to create a seamless user experience.
3. IMS
IMS technology can be used as the call control solution for voice calls. In the Wi-Fi first approach described here, IMS will handle all calls originating from the user device while in the packet-switched domain (4G, Wi-Fi). IMS delivers SMS messages to the device while in the Wi-Fi/LTE/IMS network using an IP short message gateway. It can also allow other IP communication services, such as video calling, to be added easily. IMS is particularly helpful when services are delivered by other access technologies, including 2G/3G, 4G, and fixed access.
Next Steps for Wi-Fi first
Creating a sustainable MSO mobility strategy is complex, and building a Wi-Fi first scheme as part of this strategy will require planning for considerations such as:
Once these questions have been answered, MSOs are well placed to grasp the current market opportunity of offering voice services via Wi-Fi and leveraging a Wi-Fi first strategy to help remain competitive in the evolving marketplace.
To contact the author or request additional information, please send an email to techzine.editor@alcatel-lucent.com.
]]>From original Alcatel-Lucent TechZine posting
Increased number of security threats, demand for greater efficiency, and requirement for cross-agency coordination all point to the need to modernize public safety communications networks toward IP and broadband. And, backhauling is at the forefront of this evolution.
The rationale for the evolution of public safety backhaul networks is twofold:
By deploying a converged MPLS-based backhaul network now, public safety organizations can address current and future requirements for public safety IP communications while controlling costs. And when properly designed, mission-critical public safety transport networks also feature more efficient and more resilient support of legacy TDM-based applications.
Employ backhauling as a strategic asset
For backhauling mission-critical voice and sensor traffic, traditional public safety communications networks use PDH and/or SDH/SONET-based TDM technologies. But times have changed. Many new applications are media-rich and computing-resource-intensive, so they require larger, fluctuating amounts of bandwidth.
Consequently, public safety agencies are swapping dedicated TDM-based backhaul networks with converged packet based backhaul to deliver broadband-based multimedia applications. These MPLS-based networks can transport first responder traffic coming, for instance, from:
Further, this move to IP enables improved interoperability, superior performance, and economies of scale, as well as better integration with IT applications—much needed steps in the right direction.
Now let’s turn to some key considerations when building packet-based mobile backhaul for an upgraded LMR/PMR network.
Resiliency and fast recovery
Strong resiliency is indispensable for a public safety communications network carrying mission-critical voice, video, and data. High reliability and resiliency for uninterrupted operations is essential and platform protection is crucial.
Gone are the days of the 2-node architecture. State-of-the-art networks use fully redundant platform that supports hitless control/fabric protection—a dramatic improvement. Plus, the high-availability features provide for unparalleled availability and reliability—essential for aggregation sites, as they ensure that a control card failure has no service impact. All of this, combined with fast switching and fast fault detection, enable fault detection time to the very low 10s of milliseconds, and then the ability to reroute connections at SDH/SONET speeds.
The network should also support advanced topologies—multi-ring, necklace and hybrid— to improve robustness. In particular, when fully capitalized by dynamic IP/MPLS, multi-ring’s rich path diversity provides the highest redundancy protection even during a disaster.
Versatility and efficiency
A backhaul network often spans dense urban areas and remote environments. To do so efficiently, public safety organizations should be able to mix and match transmission media—microwave, fiber, copper, and even 3rd-party leased lines—when building a mission-critical network. Backhauling equipment that supports transmission layer integration is vital.
A consolidated and simplified network design and operations for all network sites is possible along with consistent commissioning and operations procedures—regardless of the medium.
The most common transmission medium is packet microwave complemented by optical fiber. For microwave, depending on geography and site constraints, either outdoor or indoor microwave radios can be deployed. And, to maximize bandwidth throughput of available microwave spectrum, the following advanced microwave capabilities are of utmost importance:
When fiber is available, public safety operators should use it. Highly economical, coarse WDM (CWDM) allows up to 8 times 1 Gbps and/or 10 Gbps wavelengths to be carried on the same strand of fiber.
Advanced traffic management and quality of service
To deliver service guarantee and differentiation on a packet-based backhaul, a strong QoS mechanism with advanced traffic management capabilities is a must. The backhaul network should incorporate an extensive set of traffic management tools, such as advanced hierarchical scheduling and prioritization mechanisms.
These techniques optimize uplink utilization while maintaining maximum isolation and fairness among application traffic flows. This allows the network to always meet critical application performance parameters, such as bandwidth, delay, and jitter. In particular fragmentation and interleaving are key techniques to keep jitter under control on lower speed links.
Robust security
To safeguard their critical infrastructure, networks must have extensive integrated security features. These defend against cybersecurity threats, ensure communications and data privacy, and help deliver uninterrupted services. Specifically, robust mechanisms are needed to protect the management, control, and data planes against security threats originating from outside or inside the agency.
For external threats, a host of security measures can be taken, such as access control lists, traffic rate controls, user authentication, authorization and accounting, encryption, or label switch paths.
But threats can also come from within the agency. Detailed event logging, and features such as user profiles that limit an employee’s scope of network access, can also mitigate risk.
Microwave links are inherently secure. However, for locations vulnerable to eavesdropping, layer 1 FIPS-197 compliant encryption can be applied.
Optimize investment
IP/MPLS-based networks are ideal for multiservice backhauling, delivering superior performance and economies of scale. Multiservice backhaul networks can be deployed in various topology and connectivity configurations as required by public safety applications.
The challenge, though, is that legacy[1]- and TDM-based traffic will continue to be used for the foreseeable future. Consequently, the resilience and performance of a new backhaul network should resemble that of a TDM-based network. This is achieved with pseudowire based circuit switched emulation that can be applied across a wide portfolio of legacy and T1/E1 TDM interfaces.
Support for these interfaces is required to migrate public safety applications gracefully. In addition, IP/MPLS based networks allow for improved interoperability and integration with IT applications.
Even now, a full range of MPLS-based VPN services have been deployed in numerous mission-critical networks and have been proven by commercial carriers in taxing environments.
Prepare for LTE
Future LTE deployments need to be built on a solid foundation—a network that is resilient, versatile, efficient, and that recovers rapidly.
IP/MPLS backhaul networks should scale seamlessly to accommodate different interface speeds and capacity requirements depending on the location in the network. They should also enable installation versatility for small enclosures and full outdoor environments.
At the same time, a single end-to-end network management platform—including the backhauling and the LTE radio and core access network—is needed. This simplifies operations (configuration, provisioning, supervision, fault detection, and management) and optimizes end-to-end network performance.
A service-aware network manager can maximize all these network management synergies while extending coverage to the microwave and optical transport domains, as well as the LTE domain.
The way forward
As cost-constraints take hold and demand and citizen expectations increase, public safety organizations will be drawn to evolutionary solutions that keep OPEX and CAPEX in check while meeting new performance requirements.
The way forward for these organizations is with IP/MPLS-based backhaul networks. This path allows public safety operators to modernize their mission-critical networks and paves the way for LTE.
Related Material
Footnote
[1] Legacy interfaces include: E&M, FSX/FSO, V.24/V.35/X.21 serial
To contact the authors or request additional information, please send an email to techzine.editor@alcatel-lucent.com .
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