What will cloud mean for wireless networks?

An interesting piece from CNET’s Marguerite Reardon today discussing the emergence of cloud and its effect on wireless networks and carriers. It’s no secret they are feeling the pain of keeping up with customers’ increasing demands to access more and more data on their smart phones, mp3 players, tablets, you name it.

“Using these services will no doubt eat up a lot more bandwidth than just downloading a song one time to your computer or smartphone,” writes Reardon. “Once music moves to the cloud, you could be downloading that same song every time you sync your device or even every time you listen to it.” And therein lies the problem – the wireless networks are having a tough time keeping up.

According to a report by Cisco Systems, Internet traffic on mobile devices in 2010 was three times all Internet traffic in 2000. Reardon cites a statistic from one mobile carrier that says by 2015 it “will handle as much wireless data in a month and a half as it did in all of 2010.”

Fared Adib of Sprint Nextel tells CNET he hopes the industry as a whole will work together to find the answers to these problems. He points to the increased use of Wi-Fi as one possible solution but acknowledges more must be done to make using Wi-Fi more seamless for consumers.

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.