Access speed is a prime driver of Mobile Broadband adoption and as technology evolves to support faster and faster access, Operators can expect to see an increase in users coupled with an exponential demand for bandwidth.

As discussed before in these pages, the big question for network planners is who is going to use what application where and when – and how does this translate into an ongoing, efficient and high-performance network design?

To help create more efficient network designs, Operators need to improve the granularity and precision of their demand forecasts – by leveraging site-level network measurements back into the forecast, to create a more realistic view of what is happening in the real world and how this is expected to evolve over time.

When it comes to the detailed network design that is created from this input the rapid evolution of technology to support faster and faster access speeds, only introduces another layer of planning complexity. This is particularly applicable at the site-level, where HSDPA is stepping from (theoretical) throughput of 3.6Mb/sec to 7.2, 10.2 and later to14.4Mb/sec combined with 5.7Mb/sec HSUPA for example.

So when developing tools to do a better job of mobile broadband network planning the question arises – ‘How granular do I make my analysis and where to draw the line in terms of getting value out of deeper and deeper analysis?’

Also – ‘How do I address all of these network design and technology complexities and dynamics, without creating a tool that is too complicated for the people to use and/or that cannot be practically supported, once deployed in the field?’

Of course as theoretical bandwidth to end-user device increases it remains to be seen what impact signal-to-noise ratios will have on the actual throughput. Added to this there is a significant challenge on the device side, associated with minimizing power consumption and extending battery life – But no doubt all of these things will be overcome in time!

We have had some interesting discussions on the topic of simplifying engineering complexity this week and have identified some balanced trade-offs in our product that reduces the complexity of mobile broadband planning, while at the same time simplifying the process for the end user.

This is a great achievement, because in spite of increasing network complexity and dynamics, day-on-day we are helping to make the network planners life easier –Ultimately with the objective of delivering largely self-engineering mobile networks that will require very little intervention from the end-user.