Smartphones blow 8x more cellular capacity than laptops
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 15 October 2009, 14:48 IST   |    7 Comments
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Smartphones blow 8x more cellular capacity than laptops
Helsinki: In the comparison of a laptop equipped with a USB modem, a smartphone generates much less data traffic. But phones impose a load on the network which is much larger than anticipated, according to a study done by Airvana. Airvana helps operators to transform the mobile experience for users worldwide. The products of Airvana are deployed in 70 commercial networks on six continents. Although smartphones may only account for a minority percentage of all devices on operator networks today, they are always on, moving between cell sites and continually 'polling' the network. As a result, smartphones are already responsible for the majority - two to three times as much as laptops - of the total signaling activity. "Conventional wisdom has been the data traffic produced by laptops equipped with mobile broadband was the culprit when looking at the impact on the network. The industry is just now beginning to understand the real impact of smartphones on network performance and we're finding that their effect is distinctly out of proportion to the amount of data they transmit and receive. That approach, together with our mobile broadband-optimized base station software and advanced, high performance radio network controllers, provides operators with options for mitigating the impact of the smartphone load multiplier," said David Nowicki, Vice President, Marketing and Product Management, Airvana. Global annual shipments of smartphone handsets are projected to increase from nearly 200 million in 2009 to 450 million in 2013, according to market research firm iSuppli. In the U.S, AT&T recently reported that smartphone penetration in their postpaid subscriber base has doubled to 36 percent and Verizon reported that 40 percent of their handsets sold in Q2 2009 were smartphones. Similarly in Western Europe, industry analyst IDC recently reported 25 percent growth in sales of smartphones in Q2 2009 compared to Q2 2008. As smartphones also continue to grow in functionality and performance, coupled with growing acceptance of unlimited data plans, data usage on smartphones is poised to grow even faster than today's rates.

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