With the announcement of Google’s Nexus One today, another Smartphone joins the ranks. Most people are familiar with the explosion in mobile bandwidth consumption, being primarily caused by the rapid adoption of the latest generation of PDA's. Whether the iPhone, Blackberry, Pre, Nexus One, etc, PDA applications are consuming precious mobile spectrum previously reserved for phone calls. There is a widely held belief that this is a short term problem caused by bandwidth providers being caught off guard, and they will eventually catch up to demand. However, I'm not so sure that this problem is going away, and it might actually get much worse before it gets better.
I see several factors that will play heavily in future growth in mobile bandwidth consumption. First, there is an upcoming onslaught of mobile devices. In addition to Smartphones, eBook readers, tablets, and Smartbooks will be joining the fray over the next year, with most of them 3G enabled. The iPhone was just the beginning. Second, we are in the midst of mobile devices transitioning from connecting only when needed to always-connected. For example, Lenovo just announced the Skyline, an always-connected Smartbook based on an ARM architecture. What will happen to mobile networks when every device is “always-connected”? Third, increasingly people are consuming mobile bandwidth while not actually being mobile! How many people have actually taken the time to connect their Smartphone to their home Wi-Fi network, when it basically functions as needed without the fuss of entering arcane key codes? And finally, this trend of stationary mobile users is actually getting worse due to new frequencies being brought online. Current PCS frequencies are around 2GHz, which does not penetrate buildings very well. As these frequencies have filled up, they are being overlaid with converted 850MHz frequencies, which penetrate structures better, tempting users to finger surf on their couches and at their desks while still connected to the mobile network.
These aforementioned factors are just a few of the many reasons mobile bandwidth consumption will continue to climb skyward, not only filling up available spectrum, but also stressing the long, sometimes convoluted physical link between the antenna and core network. If there is a weak link in the path a packet takes from mobile browser to mega-datacenter, it is perhaps the legacy SDH connection between the antenna site and edge of the mobile network. It is enigmatic that 3/4G wireless sites and 10/40G core GMPLS networks, the pinnacle of today’s technology, are still being interconnected with legacy twisted copper pairs. Bonding additional T1's together, or erecting a microwave point-to-point link is just a near-term band-aid to a longer term problem. The only way to achieve longer term success, and deliver the amount of bandwidth that will be needed, at prices-per-bit low enough to remain profitable, is through Ethernet backhaul.
To learn more about Ethernet backhaul of mobile traffic, and how it resolves the mobile bandwidth crunch, you can download a white paper at the following links:
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