By Marc Lippe, Director, Worldwide Field and Corporate Marketing, Infovista
In this month's roundup of industry news, issues and updates, we feature articles about small cells, Carrier Ethernet's role in mobile networks and LTE. Enjoy!
FierceWireless: Tier 1 Carriers Expect 75% of their Small Cells to Include Wi-Fi by 2018 — November 20th
A recent survey about Wi-Fi offloading and wireless trends found that many mobile operators will see a shift in data traffic from their cellular networks to Wi-Fi networks within the next five years. 44 percent of respondents are skeptical of the ROI on Wi-Fi initiatives, even though the Wireless Broadband Alliance's (WBA) new hotspot initiative, Next Generation Hotspot (NGH), has respondents more hopeful than last year about their investments in Wi-Fi. Increasing data offloading is the most pressing driver to invest in NGH, followed by increasing customer satisfaction, increasing revenues and facilitating seamless roaming.
Carrier Ethernet News: Take 5 with Patrick Donegan — November 26th
According to Heavy Reading Senior Analyst Patrick Donegan, the mobile backhaul market is changing in order to satisfy growing data consumption. Patrick believes that the role of Carrier Ethernet will continue to evolve based on future models of mobile networks, rather than be replaced. Despite the prevalence of fiber for small cell roll-outs, the small cells market will start to increase by 2015, giving radio-based backhaul products a market in which to gain momentum. Though Carrier Ethernet as it is may be surpassed by backhaul technology for small cell implementation in the near future, it will remain a crucial part of the developing mobile industry and will continue to evolve.
Light Reading: LTE to Cover Half the Globe by 2017 — GSMA — November 26th
Prediction season is among us, and the GSMA is forecasting that LTE will reach 1 billion connections by 2017 — a 30 percent increase from the number of connections in 2013 — to cover roughly have the world. We're already seeing signs of that growth, including among current LTE users, who consume 1.5 gigabytes of data more than non-LTE users per month. With more connections to LTE around the world, a greater percentage of people will be able to consume data with more ease, especially individuals in Asia, resulting in a 37 percent jump in LTE connections in that region by 2017.
If you're interested in learning more about these topics, I invite you to visit Infovista's website to see how we empower communications service providers, mobile operators and IT-intensive enterprises to deliver high-performing and differentiated services, while cost-effectively planning, operating, optimizing and monetizing their networks. And, to those of you in the U.S., I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving!
