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Introduction Hello, I’m Tony Crabtree, and today we are
discussing the issue of Mobile data traffic growth and what strategies operators are adopting
to cope with this growing issue.
I’m talking with Nitin Bhas, Research Analyst and author of Juniper’s report on data offloading
and onloading.
First of all Nitin, how big is the issue faced by the network operators?
Tony, mobile data traffic has been growing at an unprecedented pace and increasingly
outstripping the network capacity. This rapid growth of data traffic from smartphones and
tablets emphasises the need to offload traffic via WiFi and Femtocells.
So what is Data Offloading and Onloading? We have considered two different aspects of
data migration from Mobile to Fixed – which is essentially Data Offload, and also data
migration from Fixed to Mobile – which we have termed Data Onload.
So how is the data growth over the operator’s cellular network set to look like?
Well, there is industry consensus about the explosive growth of mobile data traffic and
this trend has been well publicized. But we are forecasting that the data growth over
the cellular network will be substantial but it will not be the “data explosion” that
some have anticipated. However, despite the implementation of offloading measures, migration
of data traffic from fixed to mobile will exacerbate the strains on the cellular network.
How effective is data offloading in terms of capacity relief?
It is important for everyone to realise the net impact that both offload and onload have
on the total data traffic through the network. Even though data offload alleviates some of
the operator’s network congestion, a significant proportion of the offload could itself be
offset by fixed to mobile migration of data. So operators need to view offloading solutions
as complementary to their network, providing more strategic opportunities.
How much data is forecast to be offloaded over the next 5 years?
The volume of offloaded traffic will continue to grow strongly throughout the forecast period
as the total volume of data traffic delivered to mobile devices accelerates. Juniper estimates
that by 2015, 63% of the mobile data traffic nearly 9,000 Petabytes generated by Smartphones,
Featurephones and Tablets will move across to Wi-Fi and Femtocell networks. And the data
traffic generated by them will exceed 14,000 Petabytes by the end of the forecast period.
With increased adoption of data offloading, how is the data offloaded via wifi and femtocell
going to be? Although currently WiFi accounts for over
90% of the traffic offloaded, Femtocells will account for a steadily increasing proportion
over the forecast period