* Open-access network operators face resource challenges, get new tool
Apple’s formal entry into the enterprise-class mobile device market last week with its iPhone 2.0 initiative introduced a model that’s wide open for developers but fairly closed in terms of network service choice. On the one hand, having a single carrier and device platform maker in control of application development specs and network interoperability bodes well for user service levels. But it also reverts to network monopoly days of yore.
When asked about plans for additional network connections, such as iPhone support for forthcoming WiMAX services, non-AT&T cellular services, or even just plain faster AT&T services than the carrier’s EDGE network at last week’s launch, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said simply that “we’re here today to talk about software, not hardware.”
So the mobile WAN future of the iPhone currently remains a question mark.
Meantime, open-access initiatives such as the Google-spearheaded Android mobile operating system intend to create a common mobile development environment for many device platforms. The 30-company strong Open Handset Alliance behind Android aims to keep the Android operating system pure, without allowing derivatives to emerge that render Android development akin to building apps for multiple operating systems. That’s a noble goal, albeit one for which the process to achieve it is not yet quite clear. Still, Android handsets and services are scheduled to come out the second half of this year.
Meantime, a slew of services – Sprint’s WiMAX service, due to launch next month; forthcoming services in part of the C block of the 700MHz spectrum; and an “open” cellular option by Verizon – aim to allow any compatible device and application onto those networks.
The question is how these “open” operators can ensure that mixed-media applications, all sharing a bandwidth-limited radio access network and developed by virtually anyone, will work together in harmony across a bandwidth-constrained, shared radio access network.
“This is a confused area,” acknowledges Peter Rysavy, president of Rysavy Research. “No one has any answers because there is no frame of reference.”
However, new tools are emerging for the operators. Alcatel-Lucent, for example, this week announced the 9900 Wireless Network Guardian (WNG), aimed to let operators quickly identify applications on their networks and then determine what impact each is having on airtime and signaling resources.
Bell Mobility in Canada is trialing the tool in the production network in one of its markets and explains that different applications have different degrees of chattiness that affect the performance of radio access networks (RAN) differently than they do wired networks, which generally dedicate bandwidth to a user resource.
“Poorly behaved applications that require volumes of signaling messages to be sent back and forth could theoretically “tie up an air channel for an hour and only send a few hundred kilobytes of data,” explains Tony McCarthy, director of wireless technology networks at Bell Mobility.
“A tool like WNG enables us to see, when qualifying a new application, how the third party has developed their protocol for signaling between the device, application, and our network,” he says. If it is too consumptive of RAN airtime or signaling resources, Bell Mobility can work with its partner to tweak the application or elect to add more signaling resources or capacity to accommodate it, he explains.
