The mobile industry today is at a cross road. While on one hand, the network operators are reveling in the increased subscriber growth, on the other hand they are struggling with the sudden explosion in data consumption driven primarily by video centric applications on high end portable devices like smartphones and tablets. Networks are choked like never before, leading to embarrassing network outages at some of the tier 1 operators such as AT&T (U.S.) and O2 (UK). “Data offloading” is one of the most promising technological innovations today that addresses this problem. It is this unconventional solution that IntelliNet Technologies offers.

Anjan Ghosal founded, Melbourne, Florida headquartered IntelliNet Technologies, a provider of network convergence and mobile data offload solutions that accelerate the deployment of next generation data applications and services. With its patented technology and wide product portfolio, IntelliNet helps network operators to direct and offload their data traffic over a Wi-Fi instead of 3G spectrum, thereby keeping the network uncongested. In a very short span of five years, the company has forged strong partnerships with the telecom industry's leading network operators and suppliers of network equipment, application software, and hosted services.

“Mobile data continues to grow at a phenomenal rate in countries that have already deployed data centric 3G networks. AT&T for example has noted a data growth of over 5000 percent in just three years. Most of this growth is attributed to high bandwidth video related services like video chat, IP TV and access to video content over internet sites such as YouTube and Netflix. . The continued price pressure on data rates together with an unprecedented growth in demand has created a major challenge for operators around the world,” explains Ghosal, Founder and CEO, IntelliNet Technologies.

From Spectrum to Wi-Fi: The changing scenario

The past decade was quite tumultuous for the telecom operators. In early 2000, wireless data services were non-existent and telecom operators focused entirely on voice capability. Data made its foray into cellular networks around 2002 with 2.5G networks. While there was an abundance of data applications on the internet the lack of “user friendly” devices continued to thwart its growth. The initial uptake of these GPRS and CDMA-1xRTT networks was slow which lead to the untimely demise of a number of promising startups focusing on wireless data services. However, all that changed in 2005 with the appearance of the iPhone which allowed the consumer access to a trove of video and data services already available via the internet. Over the next three years data usage on wireless networks exploded as OEMs bombarded the market with smart devices, leaving operators scrambling to expand their 3G networks to support this unprecedented growth. Yet this was only the start of the data deluge where the infrastructure is finding it hard to keep up.