As the adoption of mobile broadband gathers momentum, Mobile Operators must do everything they can to differentiate themselves based on tariff, the speed of their networks, quality of service and the coverage footprint that they offer their data users.

To maintain a market lead they need to optimize the balance between all of these factors while at the same time minimizing costs that help maximize the return for their shareholders.

So I expect to see a lot more infrastructure sharing as well as a lot more outsourcing of operations to the main vendors, who can bring significant efficiency improvements by consolidating the operations of multiple carriers into a single centralized service. I also expect to see companies like Huawei and ZTC continue to increase market share, principally because I do not believe that companies in the west have a sustainable solution for competing on price.

Regardless of whether operators opt for network or operational sharing or not and also regardless of the vendors they use in their network – There is still a need to create market differential based on the speed, availability and quality of the service they offer their customers, and all at minimum cost.

To maximize efficiency while addressing all of these things in the face of highly unpredictable mobile broadband demand, mobile operators must adopt a radical new approach to network planning that will enable them to step towards self-engineering networks.

As an initial step in this direction, they must abandon traditional “silo-based” approaches to planning and instead adopt an integrated, holistic and automated planning process that is able to cope with the dynamics and complexity associated with mobile broadband.

Traditionally, network planning for voice has been undertaken in “silos” by RF Engineering, BSC/Core Engineering and Transport Engineering – Mobile broadband dynamics, combined with network complexity and the need to deliver requisite bandwidth and quality of service to all users, mean this is no longer a viable solution however.

Silo-based planning for mobile broadband can be completely disastrous, because it is far too fragmented, introduces too many planning dependencies and is far too inefficient to fulfill the real time demands of customers – Resulting in insufficient capacity, poor quality of service and a loss of revenues – Not to mention skyrocketing costs.

While in truth it may be a long time before operators have the confidence to adopt truly self-engineering networks– It is a fact that unless they start heading in this direction they will face significant network challenges and related business risks.