People strongly felt the global trend towards mobile broadband at the 2008 3GSM Mobile World Congress held earlier this year in Barcelona, Spain. Evolving from 2G to 3G, HSPA, and LTE at an unprecedented speed, new mobile communication technologies are becoming widely available all over the world. With a rich variety of mobile applications and a wide range of mobile terminals, mobile communications have a far-reaching impact on society, and are now an integral part of people's daily lives.

Currently, ALL IP is the development trend of mobile networks and mobile broadband has become the focus in the industry. Mobile content, basic networks, terminals and the like are gradually maturing. Yet, operators are facing a variety of challenges, one of which is from the transport network supporting the development of mobile services.

The rapid development of mobile broadband services has brought explosive growth of bandwidth requirements, which forces operators to continuously expand their networks. The growth of bandwidth has not brought positive linear growth in their revenues; on the contrary, the revenue per bandwidth unit has a tendency to drop.

Traditional TDM-based transport networks feature low bandwidth utilization rates, and the rising need for bandwidth has put operators under great pressure in regard to transport costs. Consequently, the traditional transport network no longer suits the development of today's mobile broadband services. IP technology with features such as statistical multiplexing and bandwidth compression can help operators to greatly improve transport efficiency. Introducing IP technology into transport networks is the only viable solution in the era of mobile broadband.

Traditional IP technologies, however, have disadvantages in reliability, manageability, network synchronization. To realize carrier-class service transport, it's necessary to optimize the traditional IP technology into transport technology. Traditional TDM-based transport networks have managed to provide carrier-class assurance for mobile service transport by using connection-based SDH technology. After IP technologies are introduced in transport networks, operators have to consider how to realize carrier-class IP transport networks.

We have invited some industry experts to explore IP transport networks, and share their experiences and opinions to keep you informed of the latest solutions and developments. A discussion of various methods for the successful transformation of transport networks towards ALL IP is also on the agenda. As a global leader in mobile broadband and transport networks, Huawei has successfully launched the IP Transport Infrastructure for Mobile Evolution (IPTime). The era of IP transport networks has finally arrived! It's IPTime! Together, we will lead mobile transport to ALL IP.