Trends 2016: LTE to gain traction

By Amit Marwah

With LTE gaining ground in India, and with the availability of iPhone6s which supports VoLTE, operators are moving to support Voice on LTE for their existing 2G/3G subscribers.

2015 definitely saw the birth of futuristic and cutting-edge global technologies in the mobile data and broadband segment.

Looking towards 2016, the underlying telecom market trends of mobile broadband, Telco Cloud (VoLTE/ VoWiFi), 5G, security solutions, Internet of things, etc, will continue to empower the operators in their journey of evolution in order to effectively manage and monetize the surging mobile broadband growth.

The solutions like Ultra Dense Networks, Telco Cloud, Big Data Analytics and Smart Location Experiences will enable operators to serve huge data demands and optimize spectrum investments.

The mobile broadband data continues to surge and will keep on doubling every year especially in megacities and the places where people are gathering.

These high density areas are typically considered the seamless multi–layer technology networks carrying huge capacity and coverage enabling good quality for operators’ customers.

To satisfy ever increasing data demand, operators will be required to evolve with flexible and scalable network architecture to modernize, re-farm and add more capacity into their macro layer and building new small cells.

In 2016, LTE will become main-stream in India as more Indian players will launch 4G on a more efficient spectrum. This will result in massive growth in mobile data with more applications being demanded and smartphones being penetrated further into India’s telecom subscriber base.

With a massive increase in affordable smartphones, the usage of mobile data is likely to at least double yearly for the next few years.

 5G and Beyond

Moreover, 5G technologies and IOT are now under development, however, the early players are testing their own versions of the 5G technology which will give us an idea as to what advancements in wireless technologies we can expect.

Needless to say, the path to 5G will not be a single technology but a consistent set of technologies that supports wireless communication for mobile networks, which can be extended to support various industry verticals as well.

Another trend expected is VoLTE/ VoWi-Fi which allows users to speak over high-speed networks. With LTE gaining ground in India, and with the availability of iPhone6s which supports VoLTE, operators are moving to support Voice on LTE for their existing 2G/3G subscribers.

With VoWiFi, an operator will be able to provide operator controlled voice over Wi-Fi networks which is especially useful to provide the indoor coverage when LTE/2G/3G is not in place.

We foresee that there will be a strong demand for VoLTE and all handset vendors will introduce new devices with VoLTE capability.

Security solutions

With IOT connected devices on the horizon, security is paramount for the safe and reliable operation. The need is to bring in tighter rules to secure the data and prevent privacy lapses.

Moreover, the need for an advanced security solutions which can benefit the operators to ensure an efficient and clean network with 24*7 real time monitoring and automated actions in the advent of fraud by providing protection for all subscribers, independent of device type and antivirus installed or not will come into play.

Moreover, as the demand from customers and consumers is ever-increasing, we expect ‘Predictive Services’ to grow which helps operators meet the increasing demand for excellent service quality.

These services expand the use of big data insights to deep network element level which detects and resolves issues before they impact customers, even weeks ahead using in-house Automated Health Check and Predictive Troubleshooting engines with expert Care services.

As traffic continues to grow exponentially, telcos will continue to remain focussed on providing advanced high-speed network experience and consumers will therefore choose accordingly.

We expect that a smooth network experience will prevail over differentiated customer service experience for operator selection by consumers.

In a nutshell, 2016 will witness all these technological progress further and we expect customers’ expectations to rise and consumers will continue to demand a personalized network - whether its quality of network, quality of service and quality of experience.

The author, Amit Marwah, is Head of Technology, India Market, Nokia Networks)