Signals Research

Hopefully, the Mobile World Congress conference, which will be held Feb. 15 - 18 in Barcelona, will yield some fresh ideas about how the mobile operators can alleviate the current cellular capacity crunch. Wireless bandwidth bottlenecks are being fueled, in large part, by chatty multimedia smartphones, such as the Apple iPhone, and social media applications, according to recent reports.

While undoubtedly another barrage of clever smartphones will be front and center -- including possibly a Windows Mobile 7 handset from Microsoft, a new mobile operating system from Samsung and new Android devices from Motorola and HTC – the industry would do well to focus on all aspects of the mobile ecosystem, not just the access devices.

There is some speculation that excessive mobile signaling traffic is taking as big a bite out of cellular network capacity as are mobile gamers and others running hefty peer-to-peer applications. For example, in a report last month, "The Trouble with Twitters," Michael Thelander of Signals Research Group asserted that the amount of signaling traffic being generated on 3G networks is often actually outpacing mobile data traffic by 30% to 50%.

Operators have a few options for accommodating the tidal wave of traffic hitting their mobile networks. Among them: build new, higher-capacity radio access networks; add capacity to their backhaul networks connecting cell towers to their core networks; and offload user traffic to an overlay or adjunct network, such as Wi-Fi, where available.

AT&T Mobility is already doing the last option. Last June, the company announced support for auto-authentication for iPhone OS 3.0 users connecting to its 20,000 U.S. Wi-Fi hotspots, which it acquired with its 2008 purchase of Wayport. Auto-authentication allows iPhone users to seamlessly switch from AT&T's 3G network to an AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot without being prompted.

Using Wi-Fi for data offload is a natural and inexpensive solution to unclogging wireless pipes. But one telecom manager I chatted with at a recent conference was horrified when he discovered that mobile data traffic might traverse AT&T's 3G and Wi-Fi networks interchangeably, without the user necessarily the wiser. His worry: Wi-Fi hotspots are notoriously insecure.

It's true that IPSec VPNs commonly found on laptops and used with Wi-Fi are not prominent on smaller, more battery-sensitive smartphones. However, some smartphones, such the iPhone 3GS and BlackBerry models, do support over-the-air encryption and hard drive encryption.