Fueled by the Internet of Things, 5G and the cloud, service providers will see a growing number of diverse network uses, which will bring new value chains, financial models and business opportunities. To capture the opportunities ahead, service providers will have to continuously transform and adopt new ways to create value for consumers.
Along with this development, network performance is becoming increasingly important and an increasingly challenging task. A new study, which will be published in the MWC edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report, reveals that a poor video streaming experience can actually have a “double whammy” effect, since it not only leads to lower service provider brand equity, but actually helps competing brands to gain brand equity.
The latest Ericsson Mobility Report forecasts that 90 per cent of the world´s population will be covered by WCDMA/HSPA mobile broadband networks by 2021. At the same time, more than 50 per cent of the world’s population today still lacks Internet access, especially in developing countries. This provides a great opportunity for mobile operators.
In support of the vision of making mobile Internet access available to everyone, Ericsson is addressing three different challenges: enhancing network performance, improving operations efficiency and lowering cost for mobile broadband coverage.
Ericsson’s WCDMA Flow of Users doubles network performance on existing site infrastructure, Zero Touch WCDMA increases network operational efficiency by a factor of three and Mobile Broadband Expander drastically lowers TCO by up to 60 per cent while simplifying deployments of all the hundreds of thousands 2G-only sites that already exist.
As part of the evolution toward 5G, and to improve the performance and efficiency of today’s LTE technology while meeting the network demands created by growing data traffic, Ericsson is launching new Ericsson Radio System software and hardware.
The launches support the world’s first commercial offering of LTE 1Gbps peak data rates, in addition to hyper-scalable radio access network architecture for Cloud RAN.
The Ericsson Radio System is also being complemented with three new radio access products supporting 4×4 MIMO, and new spectrum bands. Efficiently addressing user demands for extreme app coverage will also drive requirements for multi-gigabit capacities and multi-band solutions in the backhaul, which Ericsson is addressing with new microwave additions to the Ericsson Radio System.
