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Finding Space: Solutions for the Wireless Data Capacity Crunch

By: Tim Young

We all know the challenges of wireless data capacity in an era of exploding demand. A report just out from Amdocs indicates that 94 percent of service providers are planning for a 20-fold increase (or more) in the next five years. IP traffic is up everywhere, and even if the hyper-explosive growth rates of the past few years are cooling slightly, the growth that remains is still exponential.  What’s more, the data glut is coming from everywhere. Gone are the days when a few bandwidth hogs gobbled up most of the network capacity with P2P applications and other such niche activity…

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Diameter Signalling Control to the Rescue

By: Douglas A. Suriano

As operators move toward service-oriented, all-IP networks, they must expand their focus beyond data traffic and RAN signaling to also now include Diameter signaling. In other words, Diameter communicates, “Every who, what, where, when and why question in the network,” as stated by Yankee Group’s Brian Partridge in his report, “Policy Exchange Controllers: Enriching Diameter Signaling for LTE and IMS.” This represents a different mindset for operators, in that an increase in Diameter messages correlates with an increase in revenue-generating applications…

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Embracing the Wi-Fi Revolution

By: Jesse Cryderman

If you are reading this story over a wireless connection, chances are it is being delivered by Wi-Fi. Whether by tablet, smartphone, laptop, PC, or connected television, when users are stationary, which is 65 to 80 percent on average, Wi-Fi is king. These days, if you're anywhere near civilization, you are likely under the umbrella of Wi-Fi coverage. From small town America to the Tube in London, to flights in between, communications service providers (CSPs) are beginning to cash in on the Wi-Fi revolution, and for many good reasons: Ubiquity: While 2G, 3G, and 4G networks around the world operate on varying standards, Wi-Fi is the same in Santorini, Greece as it is in Seoul, Korea…

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Where is the All-IP Network?

By: Jesse Cryderman

For many years now, telecom industry pundits have heralded the all-IP network of the future with messianic fervor. The one-network-to-rule-all-networks promises to flatten all competing transfer protocols and standards into a single, packet-based passageway that is separate from the access technology. Its foretold gifts will eviscerate expenses and create ubiquitous service experiences across all platforms. There's only one problem: it's still not here. Are we waiting for a fairy tale, or is the Next-Generation Network (NGN) any closer today than it has been in the past? With the rapid rollout of LTE networks, the promise of VoLTE, and the move to DOCSIS 3…

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Why Operators Must Simplify Network Configuration

By: Renee Stromberg

Communications service providers (CSPs) need to continually provision, de-provision and reconfigure both services and network elements to optimize network performance, reliability and security as well as sell business services to their customers. For those who manage this process the job is demanding, time-sensitive and prone to human error. Their ability to perform these continual and often manual configuration tasks affects both revenue and expenses. What CSPs need is a way to automate the process in a way that optimizes speed, accuracy and reliability for all services and network elements…

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Self-organizing Networks and the Shifting MNO Battleground

By: Cyril Doussau, Vikas Trehan

Mobile network operators (MNOs) have recently seen a significant increase in network traffic as a result of subscribers’ dependence on mobile data services, presenting a considerable barrier to sustaining MNOs’ bottom lines. In fact, according to Nielsen, 2011 saw an 89 percent increase in mobile data consumption. Mobile traffic is expected to grow even more over the next year, further expanding the amount of network congestion that MNOs must proactively manage. Although not a recent development, this growth has forced MNOs to increase their network capacity by migrating their TDM backhaul to Ethernet…

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Common Ground: Smarter Grids, Public Networks

By: Sam Sciacca

As utilities build more sophisticated power grids, they will require new, improved data networks for a variety of roles, many of which could be served by telecom providers. Because these two industries have different market drivers and technology paths, they have had an uneasy history of collaboration. But developments on both sides have produced new opportunities. Having worked with both sides, I can offer a sense of power utilities’ technical requirements, as well as insights on utility culture and a thumbnail history of how the power and telecom industries have interacted over the years…

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Inside the NGN Toolbox: Power Tools for Service Providers

By: Sunil Diaz

Consumers and carriers alike are excited at the pace of advancement of the Next Generation Network (NGN), but the buzz surrounding the evolution has far outshined the challenges with migration from legacy networks to offering next generation network based services. Convergence in the telecom industry has also left many service providers scrambling to handle the increased complexity of their own operations. However, help is on the way. There are enterprise solutions paving the way for service providers to more efficiently roll out services and become industry leaders – or Next Generation Service Providers (NGSPs)…

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Driving Down the Cost of Fiber

By: Becky Bracken

Fiber is the future, but it's a major hassle. Fiber is expensive, fragile, requires real estate, permits and takes time to deploy. But fiber is more important than ever. The delivery of LTE wireless services will require fiber-fed towers. And as demand for data and the next generation of Communications and Entertainment (COMET) services continues to explode, wireless networks will have trouble keeping pace. “Fiber is the only medium that truly future proofs a network,” fiber management company Clearfield, Inc…

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The Cost of Net Neutrality

By: Becky Bracken

Net Neutrality asks a lot of networks. Tier 1 Internet backbone providers hold the digital age in the palm of their hand. Heavy stuff when you think about it. Each second, more of everyday modern life is lived and recorded online. And just a few very powerful companies control it all--from world's economy to vacation snapshots. The internet, with its punk-rock, intellectual-anarchist roots, is intended to provide every user with equal access to the world. It's that equal access that built the fortune of Ebay, which offered people in all corners of the world a global storefront…

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The Key Role of Business Management Systems: Business Awareness

By: Christopher Smith

This should be a golden time for telecoms service providers. Traffic volumes are rising inexorably, while ever-larger numbers of ever-more diverse types of device from smartphones to connected TVs are being adopted around the globe. While things might seem rosy on the surface, the individual reality for many service providers is that they’re now confronting a world where profit margins are being increasingly eroded, competition from all directions is getting continuously fiercer and maintaining customer satisfaction is getting harder by the day…

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Letter from the Editor

By: Tim Young

“Hello ma baby, hello ma honey, hello ma ragtime gal. Send me a kiss by wire.  Baby ma heart’s on fire. If you refuse me, honey you’ll lose me, and you’ll be left alone. Oh baby telephone, and tell me I’m your own.”  - “Hello! Ma Baby”, a Tin Pan Alley song written in 1899 (and probably most familiar to modern audiences as sung by Michigan J. Frog).For well over a century now, the telecommunications network has been growing and evolving. As the network changes, subscriber behavior changes, and as that behavior changes, networks change further in response…

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Communications IT News

By: Jesse Cryderman

Industry in flux Earning and subscriber reports from major communications service providers (CSPs), vendors, and over-the-top (OTT) challengers illustrated a highly competitive industry that is in flux. While the lead dogs in the US wireless market--Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint--all performed well in the second quarter and added new contract subscribers, smaller wireless service providers did not fare so well. MetroPCS, Cricket (Leap Wireless), and US Cellular and T-Mobile reported a decline in subscriptions…

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