By Jamie Sturgeon | Canada.com | July 10, 2010
Ever heard of an exabyte? Probably not since it is a unit of measurement so vast that there hasn’t been a need to think about it until recently. The term is a metric, like the much smaller giga or megabyte, that is used to quantify digital data.
By some estimates an exabyte, or EB, is equal to about 50,000 years of high-quality DVD video. Times that by five, and that is how much data is being consumed across global wireless networks annually as ever more BlackBerries, iPhones, mobile modems and now tablet computers attach themselves to the World Wide Web.
And it has only just begun.
From five EBs currently consumed a year, that figure is expected to surge to 50 within four years, according to European network maker Ericsson AB.
“It’s a challenge for carriers,” said Mark Henderson, chief executive of Ericsson Canada at the Canadian Telecom Summit, an annual spring gathering of the industry’s top minds.
Will networks — including Canada’s — be able to cope?
Some do not think so. Jennifer Pigg, vice-president of research for Yankee Group, says “carriers haven’t prepared” for what she calls a data “tsunami” that has already started to clog up networks.
And mobile broadband hasn’t even hit the mainstream. Although accelerated by Apple’s iPhone launch a few years ago, the spectre of a tidal wave of wireless data has only come to the fore in the last 12 months.
AT&T and other major carriers in the United States are already experiencing network congestion resulting in dropped calls, sluggish transfer speeds and other periodic disruptions in certain high-use zones like New York and San Francisco.
“The few, the proud — the AT&Ts — have been the first out of the bunker if you will, and have taken some unexpected shock. Clearly, carriers didn’t realize [the data explosion] would have such a huge impact,” Ms. Pigg says.
Yankee Group suggests that wireless data traffic will increase 10 to 30 times over and above today’s usage within three to five years. Global wireless capacity, on the other hand, will grow to only four times the current bandwidth availability — nowhere near what’s required.
Canada may be more prepared than other nations. From national incumbents Rogers Communications Inc., Bell Canada and Telus Corp., to new startups like Wind Mobile and Mobilicity, Canadian carriers have poured a combined $6-billion since 2008 into building out modern data-centric networks and ballooning the country’s bandwidth capacity.
The majority of Canadian carriers possess advanced high-speed packet access “plus” (HSPA+) systems — the gold standard of modern wireless networks, capable of delivering data transfer speeds of between seven and 21 megabytes per second. That’s on par with fixed-line broadband connections. Moreover, these networks can readily be upgraded to next-generation 4G standards specifically designed to handle massive data loads.
“I think Canadian carriers have done a great job of keeping up with some of the most advanced data networks you see today,” said Ericsson’s Mr. Henderson. “We’re world-class at this point.”
The crowning achievement came last November when Bell and Telus turned on their joint HSPA+ network blanketing 93% of the population. Far more than just providing cellphone services to new areas, the billion-dollar undertaking introduced high-speed Internet to thousands of communities for the first time, bridging the digital divide for untold numbers of rural Canadians.
“The reality is, in Canada we have good service in broadband despite what some studies say,” says Greg MacDonald, telecom analyst at National Bank Financial. “We have high penetration of data at attractive rates. And for a country of this size, the coverage we have is phenomenal.”
Rates are debatable, with Canadian consumers paying higher prices than most other places. But what is certain is that Canada has world-class 3G coverage. Of about 20 large-scale HSPA+ networks operating throughout the world, Canada boasts three, according to the GSM Association, which tracks global deployment.
But even the industry admits demand is soaring and the clock is ticking.
“They are extremely well-prepared, there’s been massive investment. But that’s for now,” said Bernard Lord, president of the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, of the state of Canada’s networks. “To keep up with demand, there will be much more investment required.”
Signs that demand threatens to overwhelm supply have already appeared. Bell has twice flirted with a capacity crunch. At the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games, Sidney Crosby’s gold medal-clinching goal in overtime saw a torrent of texts, streaming video and other data requests flood the network in a single, historic burst of wireless activity.
Those signals got through, but Stephen Howe, Bell’s chief technology officer, said the burst came close to exceeding what the carrier provisioned for. “With Sidney’s goal, we nearly hit capacity,” he said.
It happened again in April, during Game 7 of Montreal’s epic series with Washington during the National Hockey League playoffs. “Even though we added further capacity from the Olympics, in that short period of time we were already experiencing yet again huge growth in volume,” he said.
Every Canadian carrier is closely watching how others are managing.
“It’s not that bad things will happen if we continue on the same path — bad things are happening,” Mr. MacDonald said. “So you start questioning what the solutions are.”
Fortunately, fixes are emerging. “What AT&T — and Rogers and Bell and everybody — is doing, once they realize there is this stress on the network, is to make it as efficient as possible,” said Amit Kaminer, analyst at SeaBoard Group in Toronto.
In May, AT&T eliminated its flat-rate, unlimited data plan in favour of a tiered pricing system based on capped usage. The move limits usage to 2 gigabytes, and charges overage fees to users that exceed that. A second, less-expensive plan gives customers 200 megabytes, or enough to check emails and browse the Web. Analysts say the move better reflects current customer habits while mitigating network stress.
AT&T is also leading the charge in channeling traffic into manageable pools. In late May, it announced that it would set up a local Wi-Fi zone over Times Square in an effort to ease the load on the parent network.
“We’re just starting to find out the consumption patterns and usage on mobile data devices. It took us a couple of years to understand [cellular] voice. It took us a couple years to understand SMS [text flows]. It will take us a couple years to understand data,” Mr. Kaminer said.
Most of the ingredients are in place now to avoid the crunch. Leading microwave “backhaul” technology made by Ottawa-based DragonWave Inc. and others is available to efficiently beam huge amounts of traffic from cell towers into core networks and out to end users.
Other 4G technologies, like more efficient tower cells and data management software systems — collectively known as long-term evolution, or LTE — are already being deployed in the United States and will likely be introduced by Canadian carriers starting in 2012, said Mr. Howe at Bell.
But more efficient networks are only one side of solving the data equation. “The other thing that is fundamental to all this is the availability of spectrum. That’s the real estate we need to be able to deliver services,” said Mr. Lord, a former premier of New Brunswick who joined the wireless lobby association in October 2008.
Spectrum refers to the radio frequency bands wireless traffic flows over. It is a finite resource, which communications providers must share with others, like radio and television companies as well as government.
And more spectrum will be required by carriers.
Adrian Foster, a partner at Ottawa telecom consultants Mclean Foster & Co., and co-author of a recent policy paper released by think-tank C.D. Howe Institute, said that only about half of the spectrum that will be required in the next several years has been allotted.
If supply is to keep up, regulators and Industry Canada must speed up the process of parceling off more airwaves for communications companies. Ottawa is dragging its feet while countries in Europe and the United States are quickly advancing into 4G standards.
“What we’re primarily suggesting is we have gridlock,” Mr. Foster said of the regulatory environment. Waiting too long to free up more spectrum, specifically the 700-megahertz band now occupied by television broadcasters, will mean Canada will fall behind.
A new auction is expected to take place either next year or in 2012, but Ottawa has given no public indication of a concrete timeframe.
“The government has to make decisions,” Mr. Lord said.
On top of the 700MHz bands, another swath of spectrum in the 2.5GHz range is also being eyed for auction. Together, both would go a long way in ensuring Canadian wireless users are not faced with a capacity crunch.
To be sure, Bell and others have room to spare today — Bell has not yet needed to tap spectrum it acquired during Industry Canada’s last auction in 2008 — but demand is climbing fast. In some cases, it is a full year ahead of estimates, Mr. Howe said.
“There is a need for more spectrum, more backhaul — there are challenges,” Mr. Kaminer said, yet he quickly adds: “But we’re not working in a vacuum. There are a lot of companies and people working on this.”
jasturgeon@nationalpost.com
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