Comments on: Are Mobile Networks Melting? Growth Puts Massive Pressure on Carriers

By: SiliconANGLE — Blog — Mobile US Marketshare For December - Numbers Released by Comscore

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:09:06 +0000

[...] the mobile smartphone area. Rich media and full web access is putting strain on mobile networks – they might just be melting under the pressure. This is why what Juniper Networks, Cisco Systems, and others do and launch as products is very [...]

By: SiliconANGLE — Blog — Mobile News: Juniper Getting Stronger In Mobile - Research Validates The Market

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:20:07 +0000

[...] now looks like mobile continues to be hot! Just this past weekend I wrote a story about the Mobile Meltdown. This market is so hot that I believe that we might just be heading for a [...]

By: alan W.

alan W. — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:27:29 +0000

It would be disservice to the readership to place myself in the expert’s chair. In other words, I can criticize you, John, but I cant write an authoritative article. My time in the RF SMR business was in 89-92, but I still attend some professional training and read up.

How about it wireless engineers? Where is the weak link? RF Site survey’s? Channel overloading?, Multipath? Improper Band Plan for the terrain? Step us guys! It cant all be back haul.

By: Erik Schwartz

Erik Schwartz — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:49:49 +0000

The inevitable corollary is that flat rate unlimited mobile data is doomed.

By: John Furrier

John Furrier — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:39:13 +0000

I am not an expert on the issues of how data and voice allocation happens on the RF architecture – I was told by a friend who is so I’m oversimplifying that tech aspect and probably getting it wrong – that being said I am correct on the high level issue of tower capacity – and you are correct in that it’s very complex.

Alan: i’d love to get your perspective and see if we can get a breakdown on the thesis of “Are Mobile Networks Melting” and look at the entire value chain – antenna, backhaul, network, server ..etc

I a writing this post to understand deeper the issues. I am well versed on RF coverae and networking and server but this entire equatioon is complex. Can you expand on a post? Do you think the mobile nets are melting?

By: alan W.

alan W. — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:27:40 +0000

John, you are conflating the allocation of RF channels, backhaul, server capacity, and a million other issues. They are not the same. within any slice of spectrum the number of channels is fixed, and the cell re-use is via topographical and RF field surveys. The ratio of voice to data, is I think, flexible in CDMA and not in GSM systems, perhaps a real engineer can weigh in here. I was a cell system tower engineer in the early 90′s, testing and POP was my game. In some systems you can choke down voice QOS to grant more data throughput. Some systems use statistical techniques to re-use silence in the conversations to create more channel capacity.

Dropped calls are an RF and control problem, due to multi path, S/N, dead spots, etc. The lower frequencies are more robust than the 2+ GHz frequencies in non LOS situations. ETC .

We all want better service, but the tech press and blogs are going to need a tutorial.