When Trending Isn’t Trendy

This week Telephony wrote about some new figures Analysys Mason released on the cost of 4G, bringing in one of the firm’s analysts to weigh in on it.  The data concludes that an LTE network can deliver data 3 times as cheaply as some of today’s HSPA networks but Terry Norman, the analyst quoted, so wisely points out that at the rate consumer demand is continuing to climb, even a three-fold increase might not be enough to suffice.

Of particular interest to me, however, was that Terry said the purpose of this study was to give operators a planning tool on which to base their future networks; essentially, he’s suggesting carriers use trending.  While this approach is sufficient in theory, it’s been my and my colleagues’ experience that relying only on manual, trend-based planning is time-consuming, costly and prone to human error.  Moreover, carrier planning cycles are continually shrinking, moving toward the network planning holy grail of “just-in-time” planning, and carriers are increasingly looking only months ahead to anticipate network demands, knowing how much can and will change over the course of a year. 

While the information Terry and his colleagues presented can certainly be interesting and helpful to some areas of carriers’ operations, I can’t help but argue that a real planning tool is necessary today to design the networks of tomorrow and help carriers keep up with ever-changing demands and execute successful new service introductions in the meantime.

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