Reality Check: Taking an optimized approach to mobile data

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column where C-level executives and advisory firms from across the mobile industry share unique insights and experiences.
It is no secret that mobile data consumption is continuing to reach new heights. According to Cisco, in 2013 alone, mobile data traffic across all sources grew 81% to 1.5 exabytes per month, and was nearly 18-times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000. The trend of connected devices – also known as machine-to-machine or the “Internet of things” – will continue to increase the need for mobile data, as more devices are being connected and putting strain on the network.
New connected devices are evolving on a daily basis with adoption of smart televisions, connected dog collars, glucose meters, utility meters and more. The average Wi-Fi network currently links seven devices to the Internet and this number is growing rapidly. By 2020, there will be 212 billion IoT devices that telecom providers – primarily mobile operators – will have to connect. No wonder that the battle for spectrum has been fierce, with operators spending billions of dollars at spectrum auctions or to acquire other mobile operators to expand their spectrum portfolio.
The infrastructure challenge and spectrum shortage
While building additional infrastructure and transitioning to advanced networks such as LTE and LTE-Advanced is an option for the largest operators, it is by no means cheap, easy or quick. Typically, this is a future consideration for smaller operators in developing countries that are stricken with the same bandwidth concerns. In addition, even if they were to buy and deploy the necessary infrastructure, the lack of available spectrum remains a challenge.
Spectrum is a scarce and finite resource that is often unavailable, and on the rare occasions that it is available, it typically costs billions. Regardless of how it’s acquired, spectrum is a double edged sword for operators, because the more they spend on it, the more difficult it is for them to price their services competitively yet profitably. Spectrum’s overhead costs also consumes capital that they otherwise could use to innovate.
The Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan recommends making an additional 300 megahertz available for use within the next five years and 500 megahertz within 10 years in the United States. Mobile operators currently have access to about 300 megahertz, so meeting just the FCC’s low-end target would require nearly doubling that amount inside of five years.
If limited spectrum and cost-prohibitive expansion of infrastructure is inevitable, then operators need to find additional ways to enhance their existing networks and make the most out of the capacity that they have.
Enter data optimization and bandwidth management techniques
While building advanced infrastructure or acquiring new spectrum are definitely critical components to helping fight the mobile data crunch, there are a variety of challenges with these approaches. Therefore, operators need a wide variety of solutions to combat this. One option is leveraging analysis mapping via byte-level caching techniques to reduce the amount of data traffic before it is transmitted over the network. This process uses “tokens” to replace repetitive streams of data. An analogy to this can be seen below with the popular phrase, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times,” where there are omitted repetitive bytes from the stream.

As seen in the analogy, the exact same content as the original is transmitted to the subscriber, only the bytes delivered along the way were optimized to remove repetitive streams. This means that consumers get the same experience on their devices with byte-level caching, and sometimes even improved network performance due to the prioritization and optimization of the data. In addition, the mobile operator benefits from having less data travel across the network.
According to a recent Yankee Group white paper, “The return on investment of byte-level caching,” “Byte-level caching is network-agnostic; it can yield capacity gains over TDM, VoIP, 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE and broadband transport and is completely transparent to the client and servers. It operates on the full spectrum of data traffic – Web, mobile apps, downloads or VoIP – but would not be used on traffic that had already been cached or optimized, such as video (e.g. Netflix) and audio (e.g. Pandora) traffic.”
Wi-Fi is in
Wi-Fi offers mobile operators another solution to manage the influx of mobile data by offloading the traffic. The more an operator can offload to Wi-Fi, the less financial pressure to buy more spectrum and infrastructure. As a result, it’s better positioned to cater to the entire market.
Wi-Fi is widely available in homes, businesses and public places such as airports, hotels, malls and downtowns, and more spectrum is being made available for Wi-Fi because those frequencies are easier to re-allocate. More spectrum, along with interference-mitigating technologies such as 802.11ac, enable Wi-Fi networks to deliver quality of service that’s close or comparable to the mobile network.
In addition, operators can offer tiered pricing for prioritized data or Wi-Fi only data packs, providing customers with tailored packages that fit their needs, while also reducing congestion on the network.
While there is not a fix-all solution for dealing with the copious strain mobile data places on the networks, a multi-pronged approach that includes byte-level caching, Wi-Fi offloading and the build out of new infrastructure can help mitigate these concerns while maintaining an optimal consumer experience.
Vaughan Emery is the founder and CEO. He works closely with technology partners to deliver the company’s mobile solutions to its customers. Throughout his career, Emery has developed key business relationships with mobile operators, phone manufacturers and technology partners within the United States, Asia and Europe. Previously, he founded a mobile security technology company, which developed an advanced malware security solution for mobile phones and embedded devices. He has over 20 years of leadership experience in commercial product development, technology services and business development.