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The mobile explosion has meant an exponential growth in data use – and punishing traffic to our cellular networks. In the eyes of VCs, that mobile misfortune spells opportunity.
Globally the average mobile user consumed 201 MB a month in 2012. In North America, we binged on more than triple that amount. By 2017, Cisco says, those numbers will increase by a factor of 10.
Ericsson networks boss Hans Wibergh says the age of dense small networks is about to begin. After years of sorting out the kinks, Ericsson is ready to start shipping its first commercial small cells this summer.
A consortium of European technology companies and universities wants to identify the technologies beyond 4G. Given a broad mandate, METIS is investigating everything from super-dense small cell deployments to virtualizing the radio network in the cloud. In 30 months we'll see its first recommendations.
Nokia Siemens Network just turned a big quarterly profit, all thanks to its recent LTE momentum. The infrastructure vendor is trying to build on that momentum by pushing into future LTE technologies like small cells and HetNet, which it claims will increase network capacity 1,000-fold.
