2015 Trends

Cobham Wireless Asia Pacific: Stephen Hire's 2015 Trends

During 2015 we expect to see further evolution in the LTE radio access network, with a number of LTE-Advanced technologies moving from the lab into commercial deployment.

An increasing number of operators are already deploying carrier aggregation - both two-carrier and three-carrier (3CC) - while the pressure on spectrum is driving the adoption of new technology combinations and handoffs. Until now TDD and FDD have generally been used in separate networks, but increasingly operators are looking at combining their individual advantages by using them in mixed-mode networks to maximise data load capacity. Handover between the two technologies will be crucial for optimising spectrum usage.

Nevertheless we still expect GSM to be around for a few years yet. Its robustness and efficiency for voice traffic, as well as wide coverage and cheap handsets, will help maintain its importance in many developing markets, although increasing availability of low-cost handsets is attracting subscribers to 3G and even 4G.

WiFi offload has been talked about for some time, but it is now set to move from being an interesting business case to deployment in selected markets. True integration of the LTE and WiFi networks - with seamless handoff - may however be a little further away for many markets.

Apart from the radio access network, we expect to see a lot of developments in the higher layers too. Operators are increasingly interested in the benefits that virtualisation of network functions can offer them. Instead of relying on proprietary hardware that requires expensive upgrades and can be hard to maintain, operators will strategically place a number of networking elements such as firewalls and load balancers into cloud-managed platforms running on industry standard servers. As 2015 advances, there will be a greater adoption of virtualisation techniques and standards, which will encourage network equipment manufacturers (NEM) to deliver more network products as virtual appliances.

In 2015 operators seeking to deliver cost savings will announce their next generation of projects with emphasis on virtualisation. Virtual network functions will deliver the necessary business benefits from the moment of adoption, as a far greater proportion of network functionality will simply be rolled out as software.

Stephen Hire is the General Manager at Cobham Wireless Asia Pacific.



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