NSN CEO: “Finding ways to support the 10,000% increase in smartphone generated data traffic by 2015 is vital for operators worldwide”

 

Rajeev Suri, CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks announced yesterday the creation of a “Smartphone Experience Lab” based in Telefónica premises in Madrid.

See "Future lies in “smart networks for smart devices” - here.

“Smartphones are taking off everywhere, and Spain happens to be one of the fastest growing markets, outpacing Germany, Sweden, the UK and US Networks need to transform - now - to cope with the huge amounts of signalling and data traffic smart devices generate. Our approach is the only one that can cope with this explosion, while preparing operators for the fast-approaching roll-out of Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks.”

Most consider the amount of data traffic generated by smartphones as the main issue for mobile operators (here). However, smartphones also generate non-productive traffic - "keep alive" signaling packets which consume network equipment resources (such as IP addresses and PDP contexts) with little value to the user and almost no revenues to the operator (and it also drains the smartphone battery)

"Many always-on smartphone apps generate eight times as much signalling traffic as laptops with mobile connections. This can overload network elements so that they no longer support additional data or voice calls, degrading network quality. This phenomenon can be seen in many smartphone-heavy networks around the world and, unless addressed, could become increasingly common."

"The Smartphone Experience Lab was recently started in Telefónica premises in Madrid with its objective to find the ideal configuration between mobile handsets, applications and networks to minimize any negative network impact from smart devices, improve resource consumption as well as better handset and application performance, and to ultimately provide people with the best possible user experience. The outcomes from the Lab’s activities will include guidelines on the optimum network and handset configurations and application development."