Perhaps unintentionally, mobile network providers are fanning subscriber demand for video services over wireless, generating an opportunity and a problem for second- and third-generation networks built primarily for voice traffic.
Mobile video is already here in a variety of forms: unicast, multicast, network provider-generated and user-generated. Future questions revolve around what type of video will be delivered--long-form content or high definition?--and what type of quality of service (QoS) subscribers will demand. One thing is clear: 2G and 3G networks don't have enough bandwidth to handle substantial subscriber demand.
"The crisis in bandwidth that video presents is a good thing because it forces operators to deal with it ... makes them think about these business models," said Peter Jarich, principal analyst of wireless infrastructure at Current Analysis. "Let's face it, when 4G comes along it's not going to be a panacea because network providers have found as soon as you provide more bandwidth somebody's going to take it up."
When it comes to any reasonable quality video of any length, 4G is the only real answer. The big difference is IP: 4G has it, 3G doesn't.
"You effectively need an end-to-end IP network with the right type of capabilities in the platforms and particularly the EPC (Evolved Packet Core) to do quality of service," said Doug Wolff, vice president of end-to-end LTE solutions marketing at Alcatel-Lucent.
First, the network provider should separate the old from the new, saving 4G for IP-type services such as video.
"Almost everyone is building an overlay network and using LTE EPC for data only, leaving the 2G, 3G networks in place for the time being," said Gary Leonard, director of mobile solutions marketing with Alcatel-Lucent. "The whole LTE voice thing is still unknown and they have equipment out there for 2G and 3G."
Mobile network providers also are studying the past to plot the future. Wireline broadband services had to evolve when subscribers demanded better-than-average quality and reliability. That evolution is a roadmap wireless providers can use as they start to offer, as Wolff put it, "anything you can do on the wired Internet today."
"When you look at the specifications, you can say they have learned because they've borrowed verbatim from wireline," Leonard said. "We're going to have an end-to-end, connection-oriented IP Ethernet model where everything will have its own dedicated circuit with its own dedicated QoS."
LTE EPC's biggest differentiator is the IP bearer, a software protocol circuit that provides a virtual connection.
"When you turn on a device in LTE, it's an IP device ... and it establishes a connection all the way back through the network as a dedicated bearer with best effort class of service. After that, every application can have up to nine classes of services defined in a dedicated bearer" to provide different levels of priority and QoS, Leonard said.
"With LTE you're going to get significantly more capacity available on the interface plus the different type of quality of service to manage it end-to-end and allow you to mix voice and high bandwidth and video services together appropriately," said Wolff. "That's not realized in the current networks."
The change to accommodate video and other bandwidth-consumptive data services won't come without a cost, though--but carriers are forcing the issue with the applications they're providing or supporting. The consumer appetite for an all-wireless world has been whetted.
"Definitely in the long run the quality is going to have to be there, especially as people move away from the landlines and the mobile Internet becomes more of their lives," said Current Analysis' Jarich.