Tellabs Blog

Ok, the idea that your smartphone might know when you're hungry is a little far fetched. But not that far. Think about it: nothing else is closer to your brain than your smartphone.

That means it could be one really helpful little device. It gets real-time information, it moves with you and knows your location, and from your behavior it infers what you're interested in (food!).

Hunger pangs
The trick is to design your network so that it's smart enough to help improve both user experience and network efficiency.

However, disparate pieces in the network don't always work well together.  Any knowledge about what's passing through the network is typically derived offline on stand-alone devices. So, user expectations, operators' business models and the mobile Internet ecosystem are often not aligned.

What if you could change that?

Smart backhaul is brain food
Operators can help improve the user experience by adding more intelligence to their networks. Specifically, network intelligence enables operators to tailor information to individual users while enabling the network to adapt to dynamic traffic patterns. A smart mobile backhaul network can:

• enable real-time integrated network intelligence
• distribute intelligence through a flat IP architecture
• enable dynamic, real time DPI and analytics.

To make your mobile backhaul network smarter, you could integrate your networking components and produce integrated, real-time data. And your network could adapt to that information .  You'd have a more consistent, more flexible, optimized network that provides application awareness about user patterns and preferences.

Smarter networks, better experience
But how does this improve the user experience? Smart backhaul enables operators to add more value. The example I mentioned earlier, mobile advertising, is one opportunity. Mobile advertising is more effective because it is more relevant, timely and localized. My colleague Alan Thompson describes how mobile advertising protects users' interest while enabling service providers to bring in additional revenue.

In addition, service providers can offer security services to subscribers. As users store more and more information on their smartphones, studies indicate that they'll be more willing to purchase security services that keep that information safe. As users begin to understand that device-based security isn't as effective as network-based security, they'd be more likely to purchase network-based security services from their service provider. Network-level security provides the most timely, real-time updates and ensures secure round-trip data transmission from the device.

As operators' business models shift, adding value for users creates more opportunities for new revenue. To capitalize on this opportunity, you need a smarter backhaul network that's more adaptable to individual users and dynamic traffic patterns.