Digital Lifescapes

The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) published findings from a survey on the Wi-Fi hotspot market, conducted by Maravedis-Rethink. The global market study revealed that mobile network operators expect 22 percenet of all additional data capacity added during 2013-2014 to come from Wi-Fi offload. By 2018, Wi-Fi offload is predicted to contribute 20 percent of additional mobile data capacity -- plus a further 21 percent will come from small cells with integrated Wi-Fi. Data offload is deemed to be very important to mobile service providers -- accounting for an average of 20 percent of data traffic, up to 80 percent in densely populated areas such as transport hubs and cafes. Within homes and businesses offload levels are 50 to 60 percent. The survey also highlighted that 51 percent of respondents -- 56 percent of network operators -- are more confident about investing in Wi-Fi to supplement cellular than they had been a year earlier. Renewed confidence can be attributed to increa...

Seamless Wi-Fi access in public locations has heightened fixed and mobile network operators' interest in Next Generation Hotspot (NGH) Wi-Fi service offerings. The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) announced the findings of a market study conducted with research firm Senza Fili . Interest in this technology has been fueled by the world’s largest operators and vendors recently completing a number of advanced trials of NGH which led to the introduction of critical features such as seamless authentication; automatic network detection selection, adoption and secure access. This will ultimately give mobile device users easier access to a far greater number of public Wi-Fi access points around the world -- without the need for usernames and passwords. With an increasing number of sophisticated and data hungry mobile devices now available on the market, mobile network operators have been forced to address the capacity conundrum and Wi-Fi has proven to be a viable solution. However...

4G LTE has been the focus of yet another comprehensive global market study. ABI Research has been actively tracking the LTE market, assessing operator commitments -- both current and future. Out of 470 LTE commitments tracked, 193 have gone commercial. Over the next 2 years, ABI anticipates another 123 network commitments to go commercial. Additionally, ABI is currently tracking 69 LTE-TDD commitments. “By 2018, LTE deployments should deliver population coverage of 57 percent (4.2 billion) and 31 percent (2.3 billion) in legacy WCDMA and CDMA2000 markets respectively" said Jake Saunders, vice president at ABI Research . Significantly, LTE-TDD coverage should achieve 49 percent population coverage by the end of the five year period. These coverage targets will be driven by macro-cells and small cells. By 2018, the number of LTE macro-cell base stations will reach 2.43 million -- to achieve the population coverage targets. Small cells are an integral part of the LTE operat...

Juniper Research forecasts that the amount of mobile data traffic generated by smartphones, featurephones and tablets will exceed 90,000 petabytes by 2017 -- that's the equivalent to almost 42 quadrillion tweets or approximately 7 billion blu-ray HD movies. However, the latest market study from Juniper also finds that only 40 percent of the data generated by these devices will reach the cellular network by 2017. It's now anticipated that the majority of the mobile data traffic will be carried via a Wi-Fi broadband network connection. Juniper's new report finds that despite 2012 being a breakthrough year for 4G LTE networks, mobile service providers will still need traffic off-loading technologies -- such as Wi-Fi and small cells -- to augment 4G networks. "The trend will continue and operators will make use of more integrated units of Wi-Fi and small cells," said Nitin Bhas,senior analyst at Juniper Research . In the case of indoor cells, where most ...

Infonetics Research released excerpts of the findings from its latest global market study of mobile broadband service providers, which provides insights into network operator's current and future plans for outdoor small cells and backhaul. "The challenge is on for small cell operators. They've been scrambling to test and trial a large number of technologies, products, and topologies for outdoor small cells, and they're under growing pressure to make the rubber meet the road -- not only from their technology and operations people, but even their business planners," said Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst for carrier networks at Infonetics Research . But, according to the current Infonetics' assessment, it won't be easy. These operators face some daunting challenges: outdoor small cell gear isn't small enough or cheap enough yet, and there are problems backhauling in dense urban areas -- includiing municipal regulations regarding the ...

Small cells and Wi-Fi off-load are proven to be the most powerful tools that mobile network operators have to increase data communication capacity for their subscribers. These technologies enable them to meet the demand from a growing number of customers who use smartphones and tablets that are generating rapidly increasing mobile network traffic loads -- due largely to video content consumption. According to the latest market study by Senza Fili, mobile network operators that deploy small cells and Wi-Fi concurrently can reduce their wireless data per-bit costs up to two-thirds -- when compared with legacy macro-cell costs. Most mobile service providers don't get to choose whether to use small cells or Wi-Fi. To meet their capacity density targets in the high-traffic locations where subscribers gather, they need to deploy both small cells and Wi-Fi, side by side. And subscribers demand both: Wi-Fi for fast and inexpensive wireless access, and cellular for mobility and cove...

As more mobile service providers plan to increase their 4G mobile network coverage, the small-cell phenomenon is gaining momentum. According to the latest market study by Informa Telecoms & Media, an important new milestone has been reached -- the global number of small cells now exceeds the total number of traditional mobile base stations. Their latest market study shows that between October and November 2012, the number of small cells has surpassed 6 million (6,069,224) with macrocells worldwide totaling 5,925,974. Although the bulk of these numbers (over 80 percent) are made up of residential femtocells, which will alone overtake the total number of macrocells early next year, they also include enterprise and public-access small cells. There are now 45 small-cell network deployments -- including nine of the top 10 mobile network operators (ranked by revenue) globally. This milestone was made possible as mature femtocell deployments start to scale and was best illustrated...