Tuesday, March 09, 2010
The Mobile Data Deluge
Amidst a flurry of announcements from AT&T detailing their plans to further increase wireless network capacity, one statistic really stands out. Over the course of the last 3 years alone, wireless data traffic on AT&T’s network has increased more than 5000%. The driver behind this explosion of traffic is - of course - the smartphone and all of those handy applications we love to use so much and cannot live without.
Now combine that information with the results of a recent Cisco survey, which predicts that by 2014 the average mobile broadband connection will generate the equivalent of 3,500 MP3 music files per month, and it doesn’t take long to figure out what keeps carriers awake a night. Today, incidentally, the average mobile connection generates the equivalent of about 650 MP3 music files a month. If you think network infrastructure is churning at a high rate today, sit tight – you haven’t seen anything yet.
The mobile data explosion not only puts pressure on carriers from the perspective of service delivery requirements, but raises the stakes when it comes to recouping value from infrastructure investments. When the pace of change is this fast, it’s next to impossible for assets to fully depreciate in value. So, if a carrier doesn’t have visibility into those assets, and therefore the ability to either put them to use elsewhere, they are simply leaving money on the table. A proactive approach to ensuring consolidated visibility, picking up where OSS systems leave off, can fix that.
