The mobile data explosion: myths and reality
An interesting commentary from member company Analysys Mason, industry analysts specialising in the communications sector.
“Rather than facing a capacity crunch, mobile network operators are at risk of creating a capacity surplus if they push ahead quickly with LTE roll-out.”
Back in the 1990s, the global IP carrier UUNET put forward and re-iterated the view that Internet traffic was doubling every 100 days. Its views were taken extremely seriously and disseminated widely. This – as it turned out wholly erroneous – prognosis probably did more than anything else to create the Internet backbone construction bubble that burst along with the dotcom bubble in the early part of last decade.1
We are now seeing some reasonably scary claims about an impending capacity crunch in wireless networks. These generally forecast annual growth rates in excess of 100%. For example, the Cisco Visual Networking Index – the basis of many a mobile data traffic model – indicates a 108% CAGR for worldwide mobile data traffic between 2009 and 2014, and 106% for Western Europe. This data is, in turn, used to justify substantial network investment and the introduction of tiered tariffing to control traffic.
On the evidence so far, rather than facing a capacity crunch, mobile network operators are at risk of creating a capacity surplus if they push ahead quickly with LTE roll-out. As in the period of fastest fibre backbone build-out, there is a further risk of asset overvaluation – especially concerning spectrum.
Good data about mobile traffic is hard to come by, but all the hard evidence we have seen so far from Europe indicates far slower growth than this – perhaps 35% growth in Europe – and points to a further slowing of the rate of growth over at least one more year.
Here we consider six common myths, and the reality behind them - read on at www.analysysmason.com
.JPG)
Commentary by Rupert Wood, Principal Analyst, Analysys Mason