Increasingly enriched services, exponentially and ineluctably expanding volumes of complex content, and billions of access demands create mounting challenges for computing capacity provided by telecommunications infrastructure.

Users Dictate Higher Capacity and Optimal Architecture

In 2009, Apple announced that App Store applications had been downloaded 800 million times on a cumulative basis. Entering the market in the footsteps of iPhone 3G, Google G1 provides an application environment that more closely resembles the real environment. Google G1, which transforms Google Maps into e-maps, is equipped with a brand new panoramic view and is capable of transmitting images in real-time. Clear evidence that only by providing a superior user experience can an operator expect to retain and acquire customer loyalty and added revenue streams.

In a world of social networking, terminal users are responsible for endless streams of content and ideas and have themselves become highly active network nodes. UGC, therefore, represents the collective wisdom of many users, including both individual and third-party developers, creating extensive services that have become the driving force for business creation. Driven by HD, 3D, and UGC, well over 1000 EBs (exabytes) of digital content will be generated each year. Correspondingly, telecommunications backbone network flow will accelerate by 50-80%. Access network flow will accelerate tens or hundreds of times faster, requiring ever higher network capacity from the operator.

As the life cycle of new technologies accelerates, new technologies quickly replace older versions, sometimes leap-frogging over them in the race to evolution. To merely maintain status quo, many operators have no alternative but to adopt new technologies; requiring significant investment, often reaping only meager benefits and even incurring considerable risk. Operators everywhere urgently need a Mobile Broadband solution to help them build a broadband network capable of smooth evolution and investment protection.

Revenue and Broadband do not Advance Together

Informa Telecoms & Media predicts global mobile data network traffic will grow by 1587% between 2008 and 2013, while revenue will grow by only 83% during the same period. Any increase in broadband will evidently not result in a proportionate increase in revenue. This imbalanced equation places many operators on the down-side of a dominant trend. To offset and correct the balance, operators have to adopt advanced technology capable of decreasing the cost per megabit.

According to Huawei's analysis of current networks, IP network traffic is in a state of uneven distribution. On the one hand, a few bandwidth-hungry services, mainly P2P, occupy 50-80% of the traffic, while a small proportion of users, between 5-20%, consume 70-80% of the bandwidth. Operators receive no additional revenue from the monopolization of available bandwidth by this minority group.

The Impact of New Business Models

Use of mobile devices as data terminals has become increasingly commonplace. While initial use of data was for low-speed downloads of music ringtones and multi-media messages, today's higher speed 3G data channels now support speeds equal to earlier hard-wired PC connections. Tomorrow's 4G speeds will rival the fastest in-home speeds available to consumers today. As data speeds become higher and handsets smarter, mobile data connections will provide the primary means of accessing the Internet. These speeds can support streaming, real-time video services like movies-on-demand and complex data applications for full PC emulation. This brings about a collision between the business models of the traditional telecommunications industry, that is, pay for time or bits used, and the Internet, where much of the popular content is free, supported by advertising.

As a result, the focus has moved to services. Mobile video services, based on established Internet offerings like Hulu and YouTube, are becoming common. The provision of value-added applications and content for smart phones, highlighted by the success of Apple's iTunes store, has spawned a new wave of applications stores and caused operators to look in new directions. Rather than simply supplying a data pipe to these Internet services, today's telecommunications operators would like to become service providers to their subscribers; adding value, increasing ARPU, and building customer loyalty. In order to have the flexibility to offer new services and expand into new types of business models, operators must have an infrastructure capable of supporting new modes of operation.