Death by dongle?

by Lance Hiley, Cambridge Broadband Networks

Filed in mobile broadband

Hitting the headlines recently was the example of Janet, a UK lawyer holidaying in France who reportedly failed to read the small print about overseas use. She was landed a bill for £4,900 for using her dongle to download The Apprentice using the BBC’s iPlayer service. Serious consequences for Janet, but far more serious for us all is the potential impact on the core mobile network infrastructure. Mobile traffic (both data and voice) is collected at ‘cell sites’ and from those sites it is then ‘backhauled’, via fibre optic cable, leased copper cable or microwave, to the operator’s core network. ABI Research estimates that the costs associated with backhaul infrastructure already represent 30% of operators’ capital and operational expenditure.

Unfortunately, particularly in mature mobile markets like the UK, that infrastructure simply doesn’t have the capacity to cope with the sort of growth we are now seeing in mobile broadband. In London, for instance, it won’t take many Janets simultaneously downloading The Apprentice via the same cell site to overwhelm the allocated backhaul capacity and cripple the service. In those circumstances operators would have to severely throttle the 3G service or risk compromising all services – data and voice calls.

If the promise of mobile broadband is to be realised, operators around the world will have to think carefully about how they upgrade their backhaul infrastructure but fixed lines, both fibre optic and copper are expensive, disruptive to install and prone to damage from street works. The viable alternative is microwave which is now available in sophisticated ‘point-to-multipoint’ variants which dramatically improve network efficiency and carry low operational overheads. Mature mobile networks are now dealing with the consequences of legacy backhaul technologies. New mobile networks that utilise point-to-multipoint microwave appropriately are inherently more efficient. It’s more than a little ironic that countries like Nigeria and Malaysia are actually much better placed to take advantage of the growing demand for mobile broadband than most European countries.