The new telecom era has unleashed a tide of IP that is advancing across the world through mobile networks. Numerous operators have already started implementing their IP-based network strategies as part of the inevitable trend. Europe represents a region replete with both GSM and WCDMA technologies. It boasts the world's most developed mobile communications' market with a handset penetration rate approaching 110%, and is home to many leading operators including Vodafone, Orange, and Telecom Italia. What decisions, plans and choices have these operators made with the mobile IP wave surging across Europe?

Data services are forming a greater proportion of operators' overall income in the rapidly expanding mobile communications market. However, demands on mobile networks are increasingly stringent due to the evolving diversity and complexity that characterizes services such as mobile video, voice, music, broadband Internet, video conferencing and interactive gaming. Operators must effectively respond to a range of key issues that include identifying how to successfully decrease network construction costs and deployment times while increasing revenue and enhancing network performance.

Richard Deasington, Director of the UK consultancy Network Effect, agrees that as mobile operators mature as enterprises, serving highly penetrated markets, they also become more concerned than they used to be with finding ways to reduce costs. "Mobile operators (in Western Europe) are out of start-up mode and into the business-as-usual phase. They need to show investors ongoing profit growth. To do that, they need to chip away at the cost side of the equation. Another trend pushing them in that direction is the fact that tariffs are falling, too," he says.

Mobile network IP transformation describes an extremely complex and systematic project that not only demands a decrease in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and the construction of end-to-end IP capabilities, but also focuses on service innovations, Quality of Service (QoS) improvements, future-oriented long-term investment protection and cohesive development. The context of these challenges has galvanized Vodafone, Orange and Telecom Italia to orient their practices to promote IP transformation in world mobile networks.