Have We Learned from the iPhone?

By Marc Lippe, Director, Worldwide Field and Corporate Marketing, InfoVista

With the constant evolution of mobile data services and continuing explosion of data traffic, managed service providers (MSPs) are faced with a number of challenges when it comes to ensuring consistent performance that meets rising subscriber expectations.

A good example? The iPhone. Taking on the iPhone as a service provider offered significant benefits due to its rapid adoption. What was unexpected was the massive amount of network capacity that would be required   for the influx of application-based traffic. I recently had a conversation with a network engineer who verified that exact sentiment— the additional network capacity planning and re-engineering necessary for taking the iPhone onto their network had been tremendous.

What’s next? The iPad. Will this be a blessing or a curse to operators? If we’ve learned anything from the iPhone, we’ll need to anticipate the additional load the iPad may put on the network and its resources. And with the iPad, you’re not only talking about the great applications available on the iPhone, but also the potential for multimedia and an increase in streaming services. 

This increase could either bring 3G networks to a point of saturation, or at the very least help to justify accelerated deployment of LTE and 4G services.

So will operators be hesitant in taking on the iPad or welcome it as a real opportunity to grow? I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Also, stay tuned as I continue to explore this mobile data traffic explosion with tips on how MSPs can handle the rise in both data traffic and customer expectations, and also some thoughts on achieving a holistic approach to assuring mobile data quality.