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According to the results of the “IDC Latin America Mobile Phone Tracker” study covering the first quarter of 2011, the Latin American smartphone market continues to grow, with six million smartphones sold in the region. This accounts for 15% of the total mobile phone market, which has recorded a year-on-year increase of 28% in countries like Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, and Brazil over the same period last year. Sales of smartphones are up 66% year-on-year compared with Q1 2010, with a total growth of 83% expected for 2011 vs. all of 2010. That means 65 smartphones per minute will be sold in Latin America, according to IDC.
These new devices create much greater demands for capacity from operators’ networks than traditional mobile phones. If the market continues to grow at this pace, network operators will have to face the consequences of the higher traffic generated by the new users on their mobile backhaul network, which transports the traffic between the cell towers and the operators’ mobile switching centers. In addition, the popularity of prepaid plans and low-end devices makes it difficult to predict or measure the true magnitude of the growth in demand. Carrier Ethernet solutions are ideal to address these challenges, offering key network benefits, such as higher scalability; better service management and control, resulting in higher availability; and bandwidth reliability.
Other studies have also pointed to the explosion of mobile traffic generated by smartphones; an increase that is yet to be matched by the revenues made by operators. The huge demand from users, who require more and more bandwidth to access their favorite applications, is forcing operators to rethink their network strategies and seek more effective ways to meet the demand. This is a key transition period for operators.
Sales of smartphones grow exponentially each year, resulting in a significant increase in mobile traffic, forcing operators to invest in next-generation network structures to deliver the bandwidth users demand while remaining profitable.
Mobile bandwidth is expected to become a key income source for operators. However, this expectation will become a reality only if operators are able to tackle the traffic issues and ensure that their network will be able to handle the increase in demand.
The mobile backhaul network can become the basis for a successful mobile network strategy. Telecommunication service operators have always faced the risk of having unexpected changes made to the network. For voice services, the damage was limited to the phone call being interrupted and a relatively minor inconvenience for the end user. However, it’s a different story for mobile bandwidth and a small change can cause bigger problems for the user: not being able to use e-mail, social network tools and video downloads can be a bigger nuisance than a dropped phone call.
All this can be avoided by building a solid carrier Ethernet network infrastructure, providing end users with the next-generation experience they desperately want and demand. Mobile phone systems using Ethernet backhaul technology are developed to help operators face this growing demand for bandwidth, offering a profitable, flexible, and scalable architecture that can be adapted to meet individual customer demands.
Combining sturdiness and protection methods with performance control and error segmentation in metro networks helps increase mobile backhaul network availability, thus ensuring seamless service for end users. Building a carrier Ethernet network infrastructure provides operators with a long-term low-cost strategy to replace their existing infrastructure while keeping carrier-class reliability.
This means operators are able to control bandwidth growth costs while supporting next-generation services, such as social networks, mobile Internet and video streaming, allowing service providers to enhance their revenues and provide consumers with the experience they demand. Sales of smartphones (also according to IDC) are expected to increase to 100 million smartphones/year in Latin America by 2014, which makes it unlikely we will see a decrease in demand for additional capacity any time soon.
[1] “IDC Latin America Mobile Phone Tracker”, June 16, 2011 http://www.idclatin.com/news.asp?ctr=mia&year=2011&id_release=2041
Fabio Medina is general manager and vice president, sales for Latin America at Ciena
