More Mobile operators worldwide are concerned about the spiralling costs of mobile backhaul. The simple formula of adding leased lines to cell sites to meet the voice needs of more customers has been blown out of the water by the exponential growth in mobile data. Bandwidth-hungry applications need more backhaul to prevent them from clogging up networks, but flat ARPUs mean that the business case for more leased lines does not add up.
To overcome this barrier, operators are looking towards new more scalable backhaul solutions. The most attractive of these is Ethernet as it allows operators to increase their bandwidth requirements as and when they need it, while maintaining the necessary quality of service. The key to using Ethernet in mobile backhaul is pseudowire technology, which allows operators to carry any communications protocol over the network to meet all their voice and data requirements.
The ultimate goal for mobile operators is to move their entire network over to IP. This is already happening in the core network with the deployment of IMS, and the use of Ethernet in the backhaul network provides them with a clear migration path to an all-IP infrastructure.