Increase in capacity - and especially capacity density, i.e., capacity per sqmile - is the main driver to LTE rollouts. But to fully benefit from LTE performance (and ability to use a frequency reuse of 1), operators need to carefully manage interference to minimize its impact.

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Could mobile operators planning to move to fiber backhaul meet their backhaul requirements in the short term and save money, by deploying wireless backhaul first and move to fiber later? Our model shows that over 10 years, operators can save up to 27% when deploying wireless first, and building a fiber network later.

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We all love a fight, and for a long time small cells and Wi-Fi offload have been presented as competing approaches, mostly with Wi-Fi as the initial, cheap-and-cheerful solution to be eventually by carrier-grade small cells. But this is not what is happening.

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The article in the Mobile World Daily at MWC covers the results. of the mobile operators survey. Here are the numbers, global and by region, showing some interesting variation.

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Backhaul is one, if not the biggest, challenge to small cell deployments, both in terms of performance and business plan. Many solutions are available, but operators are still debating. What are your views?

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What will drive disruption in the wireless industry over the next three years? In a survey sponsored by Radisys, we posed this question to decision makers and thought leaders at mobile operators worldwide to get their personal insights. This is what we found...

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LTE does not only deliver more capacity to mobile operators overwhelmed by traffic growth. It is also brings innovation in the RAN, where operators have started to experiment with new topologies, new ways to leverage existing equipment in new deployments, and more flexible network planning and managing tools and interference.

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The wireless industry has settled on a single interface for 4G networks, LTE. Gone are the holy wars, first pitting GSM against CDMA; then W-CDMA against EV-DO; and finally HSPA/LTE against WiMAX. Operators can now focus their resources on new network topologies, and how to increase spectral efficiency and capacity.

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In a recent report, I argued that data caps are not effective as a traffic management tool as they may encourage peak traffic, and thus increase congestion, instead of containing it. Fairly enough, one question that I often get is what works then, if data caps don't. Mobile operators have different tools--Wi-Fi and small-cell offload, policy, content optimization, QoS-based tiering to name a few--and they will have to employ many of them to manage traffic effectively.

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Mobile operators have finally come to accept that small cells will be an essential component of their strategy to increase network capacity. As they start planning for small cell deployments, mobile operators have to figure out the business case. And backhaul has become one of the top key issues – and one that is tricky to address.

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