4G to the Rescue for Mobile Broadband Congestion?
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010Much has been said about how 4G will help overcome mobile broadband capacity issues. It will help, but will it be enough? That’s the question.
Web usage on mobile devices is on pace to double this year due to drivers such as “always on” social networking and bandwidth hungry video, the increased capabilities of phones and unlimited data plans. 4G network capacity may not be enough. Remember when 3G was set to solve the capacity problems of 2G? We can see from AT&T with the iPhone in the US and O2 in the UK, just to name a couple, that 3G capacity only goes so far. Besides the fact that we must service current 3G challenges, it will be only a matter of time before demand outstrips 4G capacity. Operators can reduce payload and make better use of network capacity through additional methods. One option is by taking advantage of in-network intelligence (as with Novarra’s Vision platform) to provide a quality web user experience while reducing over the air data transfer, in some cases as much as 90%. Also, by adding a network proxy, an operator can update or add services that are immediately available to the entire subscriber base by taking advantage of cloud-based computing.
More about this topic in an article for RCR by Novarra’s Randy Cavaiani:
Novarra on Digital Media Forum panel @ SuperComm
Monday, October 26th, 2009
This SuperComm Digital Media Forum panel focused on mobile apps and internet services. Randy Cavaiani of Novarra, along with representatives from Alcatel-Lucent and comScore discussed how mobile applications provide new opportunities to drive B-to-C communications, advertising, marketing and customer interaction.
Cavaiani shared Novarra industry experience relating to the fragmentation challenges faced by mobile developers as they struggle to address the “mass market” when there are so many different handset platforms, each with its own unique capabilities and shortcomings, limit the ability of advertisers to have broad reach for mobile campaigns. Other topics of discussion included mobile advertising hurdles such as richness of constrained creative due to lack of rich media and inability to effectively execute below the line campaigns since mobile internet transactions cannot consistently work on all handsets. Of course, Novarra can help address these hurdles with solutions for contextual mobile advertising and mobile video streaming and multimedia.