Today's mobile phones are multi-functional devices capable of hosting a broad range of applications for both business and consumer use. Although the networks were initially dimensioned for voice, there has been a substantial change with the rapid adoption of data-oriented devices and the diversity of services, applications and usage of devices.
Unlike voice, which has a predictable usage and resource consumption profile, data applications are generally unpredictable and unbounded in their usage. These diverse applications also have unique characteristics in their utilization of signaling and user plane resources, which has put enormous demand on the mobile networks and this demand is growing at a much faster rate than the network capacity.
This white paper outlines the mobile industry's challenges in handling the increasing demand of data traffic and identifies some potential strategies to enable ways to support and manage this traffic growth. It is organized to provide the reader with the technical description of the critical components of the mobile Internet ecosystem.
This white paper originally appeared on 4G Americas