3G Mobile Broadband to Stifle 3G Networks
3G Mobile Broadband to Stifle 3G Networks
2nd October , 2009
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Europe : 3G mobile broadband to-date has been a huge success yet many industry experts foresee that the continued uptake of 3G mobile broadband is itself creating issues.
A new report from Unwired Insight describes how forecasting models were developed to predict 3G voice and data levels to see how 3G networks would handle the growth of 3G mobile services.
The result from the research undertaken clearly demonstrates that 3G networks will become overridden with the demands. It was predicted that 3G networks will be required to deliver 1 Gigabyte of 3G mobile traffic per month per subscriber.
This level of demand is okay for a fixed mobile connection but most of the current 3G networks will suffer. An interesting point is that a high number of mobile users are still on 2G networks and as these migrate from 2G to 3G there will be a double whammy effect ( 3G mobile broadband uptake and migration from 2G ).
By 2014, 3G will be used by over 90% of mobile device users. Mobile broadband services will account for the largest proportion of 3G traffic volumes, and will be one of the biggest challenges for 3G operators. While USB modems and datacards will represent only 16% of 3G devices, they will contribute 73.5% of all 3G data usage by 2014.
Smartphones, such as the Apple iPhone, will continue to generate significantly higher data usage than more basic mobile phones. The attractive services enabled by smartphones will cause their proportion of the total number of 3G devices to increase from 8% at the end of 2008 to 36% at the end of 2014.
The overall mix of wireless network traffic will change significantly between 2009 and 2014, with traffic-intensive data services dominating the mix. By 2014, data services will account for 99.4% of all service usage. Video streaming and downloads will contribute the largest proportions of total data usage, at 56.4% in 2014. This is because video services will require a relatively high data rate and will be popular services, being adopted by many users and used for a significant period of time.
The new report 'Will 3G Networks Cope?' published by Unwired Insight addresses one of the biggest concerns within the mobile industry, as to whether 3G networks will be able to cope with future increases in 3G traffic volumes. The report gets to grips with this critical issue by quantifying how 3G network capacity and 3G traffic will evolve over the next five years.
A free white paper associated with the report can be downloaded
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