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Smart mobile broadband: Manage your bit business

Smart Mobile Broadband

Manage Your Bit Business

Going SMART would be the way for most operators because it plays a major balancing role between providing cutting-edge broadband services and sustaining profit.
By Cai Liqun

t is believed that mobile broadband (MBB) will replace voice as the main source of revenue for operators. However, some are worried that MBB will lead to a price war in the same way voice did. Operators are busy expanding capacity instead of enhancing MBB user experience, which will cause users to demand lower price data packages. They switch between operators, causing a rapid decline in operator profits. Unfortunately, these things are inevitable. Some European tier-1 operators have seen the MBB ARPU of contracted users drop by 10% in just one year and their churn rate increase by 5%. Some operators have even experienced a churn rate of up to 50%. It is clear that operators investing in increased bandwidth need to find a balance between providing quality services and sustaining profit. There is a significant pressure to expand due to the growth of MBB. We see that network congestion is often limited to five to ten percent of cells at any given time. However, regular bandwidth management solutions are unable to improve bandwidth performance because they simply restrict traffic instead of utilizing available idle cells. The truth is that operators are able to control high traffic during peak hours by using SMART MBB. This is because SMART MBB can be implemented in specific locations by integrating current network usage, service and customer
MAR 2011 . ISSUE 59

Cai Liqun, President of Core Network Product Line, Huawei

Huawei Communicate

categories, and analyzing the time factor. SMART MBB also implements the policy across the whole network. For example, while core network limits some traffic in one congested cell, in where GSM radio capacity will be used for UMTS because more UMTS traffic happened. In one commercial case, bandwidth consumption was reduced by 37.5% during peak hours by deploying SMART MBB. With SMART MBB, operators will have smarter, more precise and effective ways of optimizing hotspots and overall throughput, and thus be able to guarantee a satisfactory user experience. The rapid penetration of iPhones and other smartphones is greatly affecting networks far beyond our imagination. On some networks, signaling has increased five-fold in just one year, creating a big burden for operators. According to statistics, smartphones make up only 8% of the total amount of terminals, but contribute to 55% of total signaling. Many always-on applications and push services are the main causes signaling storms. With optimized signaling flow and resource allocation, Smartphone solution can reduce mobile phone signal loading by more than 20% and extend standby time of terminals by 40%. At the same time Smartphone solution will prioritize voice signaling prior to data signaling because voice still brings the larger share of revenue to operators. This allows operators to reduce investment costs and improve user experience. Video is also one of the main drivers of MBBs growth. In many networks, throughput of video conferencing contributes to more than half of total data usage and increases CAGR by 150%. But there is a dilemma. Video is not a greatly profitable service compared with others. Its revenue per bit is as low as 2.5% that of web browsing. There are two alternative solutions video speedup and offload. These solutions can offload video throughput directly onto the Internet. They can also cache popular content at different levels within the network and improve user experience, saving operators millions in settlement fees, investment and resources. With the SMART MBB network, operators no longer need to constantly expand their network and overcome high churn rates. This is because the SMART MBB network offers two key advantages: Maximize value per bit: build a value-oriented bandwidth investment model, expand network and manage bandwidth with intelligence and provide

attractive packages and business models. Improve user experience and loyalty: especially amongst VIP users with the aid of tiered user management. Operators are able to both meet user expectations and maximize bandwidth efficiency and usage. Research done on live networks has also proved that SMART network can improve network efficiency by more than 20% while keeping user satisfaction levels constant. End-to-end visibility is the foundation of the whole SMART network. Operators can accurately determine actual user experiences, the usage of different kinds of services, and the usage of network resources in the wireless network, bearer network and core network. It allows operators to effectively explore the value of, and locate bottlenecks within the entire MBB business. A policy center will examine and analyze reports produced by SMART. It will also implement SMART solutions based on information gathered about network resources, location, users and services. Presently, many of these tasks are conducted manually. In the future, such tasks will be carried out routinely by a dynamic policy center which is the core value of the SMART MBB network. It is a continuous process. The helical procedure begins from view to analysis and strategy generation and is followed by strategy execution and network optimization. Then it goes back to review, analysis and network optimization. To sum it up, the SMART MBB network makes it possible for operators to optimize network efficiency and improve user experience. SMART MBB is composed of a suite of solutions based on practical requirements such as: the Smartphone solution to deal with signaling storms; the E2E QoS solution to improve user experience; the SMART content delivery solution to improve video experience and increase revenue; and the SMART offload solution to offload lowvalue throughput. These solutions will evolve as network requirements and services change. Going SMART would be the way for most operators because it plays a major balancing role between providing cutting-edge broadband services and sustaining profit. Editor: Fan Ruijuan joyce_fan@huawei.com
Thanks for your reading, the electronic version and subscription information are available at www.huawei.com/communicate. Questions and suggestions may be directed to the editor concerned.

MAR 2011 . ISSUE 59