Ricky Gill, senior technology architect at Telus is speaking in the “Handling the Mobile Data Explosion” track on Day Two of the LTE North America conference, taking place on the 21st-22nd November 2013, in Dallas, Texas, USA. Here, we get a sense of the opportunities and challenges that the data explosion represents.

How has LTE impacted the Canadian telecoms market?

LTE has provided a limited impact on the overall market but hard trends have emerged that are adding disruption to the status quo. Roughly 50 per cent of Canadians have a smartphone, so there is room for the penetration rate to grow and help to counter balance the decline in voice/messaging revenue due to OTT IP voice and messaging services. That line will cross and operators will rely on VoLTE to decommission their legacy networks to manage costs. In addition, investment in RCS services will increase in an attempt to compete or co-operate as required. The big three Canadian operators will refocus their traditional TV service offerings as well, as the uptake of paid-for OTT services continues to increase at a higher than projected rate.

The LTE North America conference is taking place on the 21st-22nd November 2013, in Dallas, Texas, USA. Click here NOW to download a brochure for the event.

What are the monetisation opportunities that effective policy control can bring to the LTE market?

In the near term, multi-device plans will enable Canadian operators to capture additional data revenues. In the long term, operators will apply service tiers and provide additional ‘Value for Money’ by incorporating additional parameters in top level plans such as free carrier wifi, wifi roaming and mobile TV. These services will be overlaid on current service tiers, which combine QoS with quota limits.

What is your timescale for implementing LTE-Advanced and what are the challenges for doing so?

LTE-Advanced is planned, but we are unsure on the timescales and challenges at this point in time.

With spectrum such a scarce resource, what role will small cells be play in dealing with high bandwidth demand in local areas?

It’s not small cells alone but rather the entire ecosystem that has to come together and provide the operator with the tools to ensure subscribers are given access to the best network at any point in time.  Small cells will improve capacity and coverage at a lower cost, but with limited backhaul availability operators should look towards policy management solutions to ensure subscribers get a consistent QoE and also provide various grades of QoS and security to help enhance the brand.