Small cell offload represents the most important technology to operators over the next two years, according to the Telecoms.com Intelligence Industry Survey.

On a scale of one to five where one is the lowest in importance and five is the highest, a fifth (20.6 per cent) of respondents rated small cell offload five, with a further 40 per cent rating it four.

There was not much in it though. The technology was followed closely by software defined networks (SDN) and carrier grade wifi. SDN was rated five by 17.2 per cent of respondents and four by 42.4 per cent.

Carrier grade wifi was rated five by 18.1 per cent of respondents, and four by 40.1 per cent. Both SDN and wifi were given a rating average of 3.64 out of five, while small call offload was rated 3.71 out of five on average.

All of the technologies that were listed scored highly in the survey: SON, MIMO, self-healing networks and IPX/Diameter each garnered an average rating above three out of five. IPX/Diameter was rated the lowest of the seven technologies, with an average rating of 3.37 and the largest proportion of respondents rating the technology as one out of five.

The Telecoms.com Intelligence Industry Survey 2013, which will be published on February 18th, collected data from almost 2,000 industry respondents, including 600 operator employees from 260 different operators worldwide.

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