CTIA: Somebody save my network!

After years of running 3G as glorified messaging networks, carriers have gotten the mobile data boom they have been longing for since the turn of millennium. Now suddenly faced with millions of constantly pinging smartphones, video and audio streams crisscrossing the airwaves and the emergence of a new types of ever-hungrier mobile data devices, operators have gotten more than they bargained for. I think Allot Communications’ (NASDAQ:ALLT) Jonathan Gordon sums it up nicely. Recalling a recent conversation with a carrier customer, Gordon said “He told me ‘We always thought the more traffic you have the more money you make. Then we met the Internet.’”

Previous iterations of CTIA Wireless have focused on new network technologies and applications, and while there will be plenty of long-term evolution, WiMax, app stores and over-the-top services to keep everyone busy at this year’s show next week, one of the biggest undercurrents of the show will be about dealing with the massive traffic load inundating operators’ 3G networks. You can see it in the tone of the invites and pitches exhibitors are sending out to lure customers to their booths: ‘Combating the data tsunami,’ ‘mitigating the impact of the mobile app’, ‘managing the explosion in video.”

Everyone seems to have their own answer to the data growth problem. Policy control and enforcement vendors are promoting the creation of dynamically tiered data plans. Deep packet inspection vendors vouch for cell-by-cell traffic management. Femtocell makers are talking less about femto apps and coverage and more about offload data from the crowded wide area network, while their Wi-Fi dual-mode counterparts are hailing themselves as mobility’s saviors, alleviating the cellular network of the most egregious apps. Core vendors are talking up not just their big honking IP throughput but also their ability to dump traffic off of the core onto the Internet. Whether they’re talking mobile browser optimization, video transcoding, or SIP signaling; everyone has an angle on how their product can boost the efficiency of the network.

Ultimately, which method wins out is up in the air, but most likely it will be combination of many or all of them. But even if carrier adopted every optimization, policy and management technology on the show floor, it doesn’t change the fundamental fact that wireless consumers will continue to consume ever increasing amounts of data, making the current business models on 3G untenable. 4G will provide some relief, but I doubt any carrier in the industry is under the illusion that throwing more red meat at the data monster will calm him down. He’ll just grow hungrier. Something fundamental about the way we consume data on the mobile network has to change.