How to cater for a 1000x increase in mobile data traffic

Earlier this month speaking at a Communications Alliance Forum, Telstra CEO, Hugh Bradlow, fired the opening salvo in what is likely to ramp up to be major battle for spectrum presently allocated to Australian Defence Forces. 

He was probably right when he said that Defence did not need those large swathes of spectrum, and almost certainly right when he remarked that the ADF would be “very hard to go to war with” over its spectrum. However this is a battle that will certainly have to be fought, and soon.

Bradlow talked about mobile data volumes are doubling annually but did not give a specific forecast for expected demand for spectrum. Now 4G Americas, an organisation representing telecommunications service providers and manufacturers, has done just that with a 140 page white paper ‘Meeting the1000X Challenge: The Need for Spectrum, Technology and Policy Innovation’. 

It opens with the rather scary statement: Global mobile data traffic has been approximately doubling during each of the last few years, and this growth is projected to continue unabated. Thus, the mobile industry needs to prepare for the challenge to meet an increase in mobile data demand by a staggering 1000X over the next few years.

However, this prediction is not new. Back in 2011 Nokia Siemens Networks produced a white paper making exactly this prediction and giving 2020 as the target date. NSN was fairly optimistic that this goal could be met with 10x as many cells, 10x the carrying capacity of the spectrum through new technologies and 10x the spectrum. My immediate reaction to the latter was “in your dreams”.

The 4G Americas whitepaper sings from the same song sheet, but less precisely. “Technological innovation coupled with massive investment in networks is necessary, but not sufficient to reach the 1000x goal. The need for additional spectrum is vital to support mobile broadband growth. The industry needs a fast track access to as much premium spectrum as possible for mobile broadband use and therefore, innovation in spectrum regulation must occur.”

With 140 pages it is able to explore each of these avenues to meet that 1000x target at some length, but for now let’s just look at spectrum. The battle for which Telstra is gearing up: to wrest spectrum from other users is not one that can be fought in isolation. As 4G Americas makes clear, at the root of the phenomenal success and ubiquity of the global mobile communications services are the two basic elements of “globally harmonised spectrum” and “harmonised international standards”. These elements are the keys to reaping the economies of scale for global services, the manufacture of globally interoperable equipment and ensuring that all users can communicate with each other.

It continues:  “It is necessary not only that common bands be designated in the international frequency allocation table, but also that there be common technical specifications for channelling and radio frequency emissions as well as network protocol interactions.”

It notes that there are now over 30 different band plans defined for mobile standards and that it is rapidly becoming impractical to implement the necessary combinations in the small personal portable devices that users now expect.

It concludes: “New spectrum assignments, if they are to take advantage of global economies of scale, must adopt technical regulations that are harmonised across multiple regions. Without spectrum and technical harmonisation, such new bands risk becoming underutilised orphans.”

Unless something drastic is done to speed up the process by which spectrum assignments are agreed upon globally there seems little chance of these goals being achieved.

The main vehicle is the International Telecommunication Union’s World Radio Conference, held every three or four years. The next is in 2015 and, according to its web site, the general scope of the agenda of world radiocommunication conferences is established four to six years in advance, with the final agenda set by the ITU Council two years before the conference, with the concurrence of a majority of Member States.

Six years ago we did not have the iPhone, (and when it came it was not 3G so had a miserly appetite for data). Nor did not have Android and 4G. In other words projections for growth in mobile data demands were much more conservative.

The global mechanism for spectrum assignments faces huge challenges in delivering sufficient harmonised spectrum to meet the future demands of mobile broadband: incumbent users, incompatible current assignments, the difficulties inherent in any initiative to achieve a global consensus.

Don’t me surprised if the cost of mobile data rises to keep demand in check.