Most people are aware of the ongoing surge in market demand for mobility. Over 60% of the world population had access to a wireless connection in 2008. ITU forecasts mobile penetration in emerging markets will grow from 46% last year to 96% in 2013.
While this growth is impressive, what people often overlook is that in parallel to a rapid rise in subscriptions, there is even greater growth in the adoption of new mobile internet devices that allow operators to extract more value from their networks than traditional mobile phones.
Apple's iPhone, Nokia's N97, Blackberry's Storm, together with laptops armed with mobile internet access cards, are just the tip of an iceberg. The adoption and deployment of new mobile IP devices fuels demand for powerful mobile internet applications and has ignited a mobile internet revolution.
Many carriers, Infonetics reported in December, are considering a transformation away from circuit-switched networks to all IP networks to scale and meet demand fueled by this revolution. But to date most carriers have not kept pace, and as such could face significant challenges in the next few years as more and more of their subscribers get hold of mobile IP devices with expectations to access an increasing number of applications.
Consider that one mobile IP device can consume 1,000 times the network bandwidth used by a traditional mobile phone and that 1% of an operator's existing subscriber base armed with mobile IP devices can consume 100% of the legacy mobile phone network resources. In addition, the adoption rate of mobile devices is forecast to quadruple in 2009
Mobile data traffic grew between 300% and 800% (depending on the location) in 2008. Recent forecasts by In-Stat have mobile data growing at 160% year-on-year for the next four years. Other forecasts point to even higher growth rates, with most that traffic headed for the internet. Bottom line: the industry needs to plan for at least a 50 to 100 times increase in mobile data traffic by 2013.
This tremendous wave of traffic requires a revolutionary approach to building mobile networks. The industry will need to deliver orders of magnitude more traffic for orders of magnitude lower cost per bit to withstand the predicted surge and profit from the mobile internet revolution. Using traditional radio network evolution and expansion models - an approach suitable to accommodate modest mobile subscription growth for voice traffic alone - will fall far short of meeting expectations for mobile internet applications delivered with compelling mobility quality of experience.
The good news is that the mobile industry doesn't need to face this revolution in isolation. The wealth of experience used to scale, secure and monetize the internet has a direct role to play in setting the course for mobile operators to successfully build their networks. Vendors, developers and investors that have risen as leaders for the internet are stepping in to offer support for meeting the challenges associated with the mobile internet revolution.
Operators that break tradition and call upon leaders of the internet to assist in meeting the challenges of the mobile internet stand to survive and thrive in setting a high quality of experience for their customers. Operators that remain anchored to the evolutionary approach of radio network evolution, restrict their vendor and partner engagement to a closed list of traditional radio network integrators, or restrict their offers to voice services augmented with only a light list of proprietary operator applications, are likely to see history repeat itself, suffering the fate of countless others that failed to adjust or embrace mass-market demands of a revolution.
Robert Synnestvedt is Cisco's manager for mobile and broadband applications marketing