Can WiFi relieve the pressure on mobile networks?

Can WiFi relieve the pressure on mobile networks? The data mountain
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Google Chairman Eric Schmidt says that “we create as much information every two days as we did from the dawn of civilisation up to 2003”. Schmidt also comments that the real issue contributing to the data mountain is the amount of user-generated content due to social media websites.

Developing, sharing and consuming content has become an integral part of today’s society. Information is easily accessed at the touch of button and we now automatically share almost every part of our lives online.

Pressure on the network

Our determination to access information on the move, as well at home and at work, has increased exponentially in recent years. We want to be connected 24/7 and often on more than one device. All of this adds pressure to the mobile network and there’s only one way to support the demand for this level of content access – we need to move large amounts of data over a network that’s already running at full capacity.

When it comes to connectivity, people want unlimited capacity, speed and opportunity. However, the reality of this situation is a huge data mountain, bigger than anything mankind has experienced before.

How does WiFi help?

Consumers are keen to avoid exceeding their data limits and extra costs associated with doing this. They have rated the multimedia experience provided over WiFi as more rewarding.

When considering capacity management for a network, WiFi has an important role to play. Its scope to build capacity quickly and provide significant economic advantages over cellular data should not be overlooked. In fact, the ability to secure small cell capacity (and therefore give additional coverage at the same venues) makes WiFi a strong investment. A report published by Juniper Research in 2013 found that half of all mobile data traffic was offloaded to WiFi and other local networks. The report also stated that mobile data traffic will increase ten-fold to over 90,000PB (petabytes) and that around 60% of that data will be offloaded.

Gavin Wheeldon, our CEO says:

“The enterprise WiFi market is well catered for and there are options to enable both the business and the user to maximise connectivity opportunities. The challenge, or opportunity depending on your frame of reference, is the small to medium sized businesses. These businesses need to be connected and their customers expect it, but in the past they have not been well catered for, simply because the margin isn’t there for the traditional providers.

At Purple WiFi, we support virtually any hardware and our service is managed through a single window in our cloud environment. This lowers the total cost of ownership considerably and guarantees that technical support is delivered in a timely and cost-effective manner”.

Summary

There are many options for offloading Carrier data, but WiFi is one of the most flexible and robust solutions available. As demand for capacity and data requirements increase, we believe that WiFi will form an essential part of Carrier offload strategies.

Using a WiFi data offload solution means that Carriers can maximise cloud-based options which can support any hardware, manage the network and deliver a great service for consumers, all whilst generating new revenue opportunities.

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