The Mobile Networks that we know of today are currently under pressure. We all know that since the advent of the Blackberry that mobile email, data transmission, data capabilities and now mobile applications are becoming more and more prevalent.
Mobile Network Providers are now considering how to move from an infrastructure engineered for Voice traffic to one engineered for heavy data usage. Since 99% of this data is produced by smart-phones with data-hungry IP applications, it only makes sense that Ethernet is the transport medium of choice.
So what is the issue??
Up until 2000/2001 Mobile networks had wireless base stations back-ended with discrete T1/E1 circuits, more recently those discrete T1/E1 circuits have become ATM based bonded T1/E1 in order to keep up with the demand of more and more Voice traffic (and a bit of email for the Blackberry). The commonality here being that all of these services were run on Synchronous Media. Synchronous Media affords a number of very effective troubleshooting tools because of the built in timing mechanisms.
Not so with Ethernet….
Ethernet is, practically by definition, an Asynchronous transport Medium. While it is the most efficient way to transport anything (and everything IP), the troubleshooting methods that Mobile network Operations departments have relied on for years to resolve issues are broken in an Ethernet based architecture.
In my talks with Mobile Carriers over the last few months there are a number of common themes:
- LTE is coming in 2011-2015 (Ethernet Based Backhaul Arcihtecture for those not in the know)
- There isn’t enough money in the budget to keep the old network and the new network running simultaneously
- Ethernet is Scary because we cannot manage it like we’re used to!
So we see that Ethernet is the basis for each of these themes and adds credibilty to the message we’re seeing all over that “Ethernet is the transport medium of choice”.
I’d like to know what you think, please comment below!
