3G’s Impact on Communication

By Netscout Systems' Eileen Haggerty

Over the last month, there have been a number of mobile network-related events that made the prime time evening news programs and Internet news headlines. First, in late July, more than one million iPhones that needed to gain access to the AT&T mobile network were sold during the first three days of availability. And second, Barack Obama’s campaign chose to notify supporters of his vice presidential running mate selection via their mobile phones.

Both events made headlines – the former because as the new iPhones were initiating service, subscribers were left stranded when authentication servers were unable to handle the unexpected high traffic volumes. The latter situation made the news because of the unusual move to use a broadcast text message to make the initial announcement of Sen. Joe Biden’s selection as the Democratic vice presidential running mate, rather than a news conference, press release, or public rally.

These events mark a dramatic shift in how mobile communications are used and viewed by subscribers. Consider these statistics uncovered by M:Metrics: 85 percent of iPhone users surf the Web, 50 percent access social networking sites and 30 percent watch mobile TV. Blackberry is developing the “Thunder” and other handset manufacturers are introducing 3G smartphones to compete in the iPhone market. These devices are attractive to users for their ease of use and availability of advanced features. Operators see the opportunity for increased revenue per user potential given a plethora of additional high-usage services.

So with this unprecedented growth of 3G devices and traffic, are mobile networks ready?

Having an understanding of the challenges these networks face today, I personally couldn’t help but wonder if in fact the Obama campaign chose to distribute its text message at 3 a.m. EDT on a Saturday morning because they felt the time might best accommodate rapid, simultaneous, latency-free distribution of their most important announcement.

After seeing this creative use of text messaging, I envision product managers for many of the global mobile operators working overtime to quickly brainstorm other uses that campaigns, enterprises, and e-businesses can incorporate in their marketing strategies. After all, imagine the additional revenue this could represent. However, in a market defined by its fear of subscriber churn, ensuring a high-performance and reliable experience is critical to long-term customer satisfaction, not to mention the impression a hot campaign wants to create when using the trendiest method of supporter communications.

What does it take to ensure high performance and reliable experiences for subscribers of mobile networks? There isn’t a simple answer due to the variables – from where cell towers are located in relation to the caller, to the traffic volume at the time of the activity, to the very type of service the subscriber is trying to take advantage of. Certainly, traffic engineering will be involved, system redundancy is expected, and tools are necessary to enable visibility into all the services transported in today’s IP-based mobile operator network. This means ability to see enabling services like Radius, Diameter, LDAP, and DNS, as well as revenue impacting services like WAP, MMS, and SMS – the services that enable text messages, for instance.

According to Wikipedia, short message service (SMS) is the most widely used data application over mobile networks. Thus, it makes sense that visibility will be an essential element to employ performance-management solutions to monitor its activity and troubleshoot degradations as they occur to avoid subscriber affecting and revenue impacting problems.

From ensuring a smooth transmission of a CNN newscast to simply making sure voice mail notifications are delivered quickly and Web browsers connect reliably, the ability to see all the application traffic in real-time to manage overall performance and customer experience has escalated from an interesting IT project to a business imperative.

Major mobile operators worldwide are going to need to think differently about the tools they will need to deploy to provide the real-time visibility, analysis and management tools to ensure their mobile networks are living up to customers’ “unlimited” 3G expectations.

Eileen Haggerty is the director of product marketing for NetScout Systems Inc. Headquartered in Westford, Mass., the company offers network and application performance management solutions for global enterprises, government agencies and service providers.

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