The dire straits the some operators have gotten themselves into is well-known. The flood of mobile data services has caused networks to creak alarmingly. In an interview with GoMo News, the CMO of Smith Micro, Robert Elliot, asserted that LTE would roll out in time to carry the burden that 3G services are suffering under. But just in case it’s not quite soon enough, Alcatel Lucent has announced new “mobile packet core” services – which it claims will solve the problems caused by the explosion in mobile data services.
What’s mobile packet core?
Let’s break this down really simply: Alcatel-Lucent wants to upgrade the core functions of mobile networks to run on data packets. In other words, it wants to make all network functions run on Internet Protocols. The mobile packet core upgrade would solve the “data problem” by effectively upgrading the network core to the point where all services can be handled smoothly through data.
Isn’t that a fairly old idea by now?
Yeah. The concept of All IP networks has been around for ages now – they’re often called Next Generation Networks (NGN). It’s just that up until quite recently, they were heralded as a POSSIBLE solution to data problems. But this week in the States, the FCC clearly put its support behind mobile broadband as the saviour of mobile networks in the future. So now absolutely everyone is paying attention to the concept of fully data based mobile networks. So now is a good time, marketing-wise, for Alcatel-Lucent to announce it has the ultimate IP solution up its sleeve.
