The Golden Age of the Mobile Network

In the wake of both Mobile World Congress and CTIA — the Fred and Ginger of the mobile exhibition show circuit — operators of fixed networks and their equipment suppliers are likely experiencing a serious bout of low self-esteem.

Post-show headlines and press releases painted a picture of mobile networks occupying the center of the universe — the telecom industry’s next and best hope to retain its position of prominence in the overall communications universe, which is not so slowly expanding toward an Internet-based service delivery and business model. If fixed networks are mentioned at all, it is most often in the context of serving as a compliment to their wireless companion — a behind-the-scenes data pipe to be utilized for offloading all that mobile traffic.

It’s to be expected if companies and workers who primarily identify with fixed networks are feeling a bit like sidekicks to their mobile equivalents’ superheroes these days.

The reality of the situation, of course, is that fixed networks have not been reduced to an afterthought. While it’s true that copper connections will go the way of the dinosaur before too long, businesses and consumers for some time will require a terrestrial pipe big enough to carry all the data and HD video that will remain too much of a load for wireless connections through several more generations of technological developments.

What’s going on is that mobile networks are now taking their turn in the limelight, generating the same sort of buzz and entrepreneurial lip smacking that fixed networks did at the beginning of the previous decade — or the end of the prior one — when earth-bound pipes were getting their first serious broadband treatment. The shifting of attention to all things mobile is far from a tragedy for most equipment providers, which in most cases see the mobile broadband movement as a second coming and an even bigger opportunity than the build out of fixed networks.

If there is a category of network equipment that is emblematic of the maturity disparity between fixed and mobile broadband networks, however, it is softswitching. While fixed softswitch sales are still healthy, the buzz around the product category has trailed off to a steady hum. On the mobile side, the opposite situation exists. Equipment-makers are banging away like never before, shattering capacity and performance benchmarks with each revision of their respective products.

In the softswitch category, it’s not hard to find reasons to explain why the mobile segment is dynamic and intense, while the fixed segment is relatively static and not so intense. For starters, fixed softswitches have been around for several more years than their mobile counterparts. Though equipment-makers will introduce new features, capacity increases or new hardware platforms from time to time, the competitive landscape is relatively stable. If competitors have not added critical support for protocols, interfaces or codecs by this point, it’s doubtful they ever will.

The predominant and obvious factor casting a shadow over the future of fixed softswitching, however, is that operators, especially on the access side, now have an alternative. Now that IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) is clearly the signaling architecture of the future for all operators — both fixed and mobile — the purchase of a fixed Class 5 softswitch is an intermediate step that is increasingly seen as unnecessary. With most large carriers moving subscribers to broadband data pipes, rather than replacing circuit-based Class 5 switches with IP session control, and IMS now capable of controlling narrow-band connections as well as broadband, it makes more and more sense for operators to start adopting IMS instead of continuing or starting softswitch-based service migrations.

When considering that IMS is an access-agnostic architecture, the obvious question that market trends in the fixed softswitch space raises is “Don’t mobile softswitches face the same fate as their fixed counterparts?” The answer to that question is a simple yes. Mobile softswitches are a mobile operator’s intermediate step toward IMS. The mitigating circumstance is that it’s going to be several years before enough mobile subscribers have direct access to a data pipe that is big enough to handle voice over IP, an event that will then justify the transition of voice services to IMS.

In the meantime, mobile operators and the companies that supply them with equipment will continue to party like it’s 1999 — which is about the last time fixed operators were the life of the party.