Preparing your Mobile Backhaul for IoT, LTE-Advanced, and beyond.
The mobile industry has enjoyed huge growth over the last ten years with over 4.5 billion unique subscribers globally. Yet smartphone penetration is still less than 25%, representing a vast untapped market for operators to explore.
When addressing these new opportunities mobile operators face a number of challenges:
Rapid growth in data demands and technology expansion – as mobile communications have become more focussed on data-based applications so the growth in data that an operator must carry has grown exponentially. Exacerbating this is the development of new technologies such as 4G (LTE) that provide for near broadband levels of data throughput to end users, requiring operators to roll out new equipment before existing equipment costs have necessarily been negated.
Consumer service expectations – gone are the days when consumers were happy to redial several times during a call or wait for a website to download. In a recent study over 40% of subscribers indicated they would change operator due to a poor Quality of Experience (QoE).
Internet of Things (IoT) – as well as serving increasingly data hungry consumers, mobile operators must now cater for the plethora of devices that can be connected to the Internet via a SIM card. This includes both consumer and industrial devices. Given recent exploits in consumer devices there is a need to provide high levels of security as well as high availability for industrial systems that rely on connectivity.
Multiple technology support – while we see a move to Ethernet provisioning (especially with LTE deployments) there is still a need to provide time-division multiplexing (TDM) services, sometimes at the same location.
Our mobile backhaul solutions
Nomios Group works with leading vendors to provide a range of technologies that can be used to provide an agile and bespoke Mobile Backhaul solution for our customers, these include:
Accurate Timing – Precise timing is a requirement for high performance mobile networks and while mobile operators must ensure frequency and phase synchronisation they must also address the continuing pressures on footprint and power consumption. In addition to this operators are having to evolve their timing technologies from older stratum PRC standards to IEEE 1588v2 PTP and Sync E standards. Nomios Group can supply a range of timing devices to meet these requirements including SFP based PTP timing and Stratum 1 PRC nodes.
Cell Site Routing – As data and service demands increase there is a need to provide routing and MPLS functionality close to the customer, often on small and macro cell sites. Nomios Group work with leading vendors to provide a range of solutions that include both TDM and Ethernet interfaces with advanced Quality of Service (QoS) and MPLS feature sets to meet the needs of mobile operators.
Aggregation Routing – highly capable routers are required to deliver a range of services to mobile traffic as it is aggregated, such as performing queuing and deep packet inspection. In addition, these routers may be required to support tunnelling protocols such as IPSec. Nomios Group uses industry leading routers from Juniper Networks to deliver these capabilities.
Advanced Firewalling – In order to maintain the availability and integrity of the mobile network it is essential that the network utilises security gateways to segregate user traffic from control traffic. A series of proxies is also used to ensure signalling storms or rogue signals from external sources do not flood or misdirect the mobile network. Nomios Group provide GPRS Tunnelling Protocol (GTP) Firewalls, Stream Control Tunnelling Protocol (SCTP) firewalls, and Gi/SGi Firewalls from leading vendors such as Juniper Networks, Fortinet and F5 Networks.
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