LONDON, UK - “One of the problems with Wi-Fi offload has been the fact the Wi-Fi network can become just as congested as the mobile network, especially if all the end-users opt to use the Wi-Fi network over the mobile network. Mobile operators have had very few options when it comes to traffic steering between the two networks to optimize performance. Today Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks made separate announcements that should help with this problem.
“Both Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks announced plans to offer real-time network steering to their mobile infrastructure customers. These traffic steering solutions will help in the balancing of traffic between the mobile network and Wi-Fi. Both solutions are network based so they don’t require the addition of any device side software, so traffic steering will work with already deployed smartphones.
“While both Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks also support standards based ANDSF, and their announced traffic steering solutions complement ANDSF, both are proprietary. To use Ericsson’s real time traffic steering solution a mobile operator needs to use Ericsson’s mobile radio access network, its Wi-Fi access points, and its wireless LAN controller. As an operator needs all three of these elements to deploy Ericsson’s traffic steering solutions, this could limit its market impact. Nokia Siemens Networks has not yet provided as much detail on all the elements needed to deploy its traffic steering solutions, but Ovum wouldn’t be surprised due to its proprietary nature that it doesn’t require at least the deployment of NSN’s mobile radio network gear in conjunction with the Wi-Fi network for the solution to work.”