LTE, today, tomorrow, when should operators commit?
4G mobile networks supported by the LTE standard will become more pervasive over the next decade, but they won’t all come at once. There’s no doubt that demand for data is driving the market in general, but individual carriers in distinct markets have entirely different operating environments. The shift in the market has already begun, and a recent forecast from Juniper Research estimates that the number of LTE subscribers will reach 428 million by 2016 with a surge in growth taking place in 2012. This year promises to be a watershed for LTE, as some wireless operators take stock of the economic and competitive environment in their respective markets; and consider their rollout options. It may no longer be a case of ‘if’ an operator will launch an LTE network, but the ‘when’ is a different story.
This is the view of Mr Lyn Cantor, president of Tektronix Communications, a provider of service assurance solutions to global communication service providers. He believes that the development of the LTE industry in global markets will vary according to the competitive environment in addition to an operator’s ability to deliver data efficiently; and that operators will make their move when there is a firm business case to do so, prompted by one of at least three possible scenarios:
· A situation in which the operator’s ability to grow is crippled by the existing networks’ ability to cope with traffic demands
· Another operator in the market takes an early decision to adopt LTE and quickly creates the perception that they are the market leader
· An existing operator, or new market entrant, decides to adopt an entirely new ‘data driven’ business model
According to Cantor, operators now recognise the economic realities of LTE and as a result their mind-set has switched from being a traditional provider of voice and messaging to that of a mobile broadband supplier, providing, voice, messaging and data services. They now appreciate the challenge they face in monitoring the volume of traffic flowing across their networks; in order to monetise that data as bandwidth increases. This will allow operators to cut their cloth accordingly, distinguishing between heavy users and more mainstream traffic; to expand their businesses to meet market demand and sustain it going forward.
Mr Cantor speaks from experience as Tektronix Communications service assurance tools and customer experience applications, are entrenched in over a hundred 3G networks worldwide, which has led to Tektronix Communications becoming the preferred partner to the mobile carriers as they migrate to LTE.
