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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In the days when voice dominated and traffic loads were easily manageable, mobile backhaul was a boring business. But the massive growth in data traffic driven by smartphone adoption and usage, coupled with more spectrally efficient air interfaces such as HSPA+ or LTE, have added increased pressure on backhaul requirements.

As a result, the backhaul market has become a much more exciting place, with better growth prospects, more innovation driven by more exacting requirements and greater competition. These factors are driving prices to a point that even U.S. operators have taken notice and begun to question their own commitment to optical fiber.

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New report available at GigaOM Pro

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I have argued for a long time that unlimited data plans are unsustainable – or basically that they are marketing fiction, because available wireless capacity is unfailingly limited, and subscribers cannot escape that fact no matter what operators tell them.

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What are the main drivers that are pushing mobile data traffic indoors, and what does that mean for mobile operators?

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Finally Clearwire has publicly announced its commitment to move to LTE. The decision to adopt LTE was a widely expected, and probably an unavoidable one, but there were (and still are) many open questions on how the transition will take place, in terms of timeline, technology, the relationship with Sprint, and, perhaps more crucially, of funding.

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For mobile operators fighting network congestion, Wi-Fi offloading has been an unqualified success. In some high-traffic locations in Hong Kong, up to 80 percent of the cellular data traffic is offloaded.

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