Mobile Broadband Capacity woes: iPhone OS 4.0 with multi-tasking is coming.

Oh Great! Apple’s new iPhone OS update is adding multitasking to the iPhone now which is already causing enough nightmares to Telcos already with iPhones guzzling data like there’s no tomorrow!

Great news for users though. iPhone users have always yearned for multi-tasking and with the iPhone OS 4.0 they will get it this summer. Now, with multiple applications constantly pinging away at the Radio Network Controller (RNC) with their mouths wide open, the Telco nightmare is almost about to come true! The bandwidth and session count per user will go through the roof.

On top of the multi-tasking issue there is the matter of the battery! Apple with every successive release will continue to make the battery usage more efficient. To conserve battery the iPhone drops the data connection as soon as it is done with what it needs, emails, tweets etc in short bursts. This is great for the battery but the network suffers as a result of this. When the iPhone needs more data, it has to set up a new data connection. The need to initiate a new data connection everytime creates some trouble at the signalling end.

While the iPhone started this, Android and webOS use the same technique, and with wider penetration of these devices, Telcos need to gear up for this as of yesterday! Some highly clued-in folks at our operator clients tell us that the bigger problem is not the data capacity flowing through the towers, it is this frequent connecting-and-disconnecting which is posing to be more of a problem.

So we all know there is a problem! Where’s the answer? The answer partly lies in the Mobile Broadband 2010 report published by one of Wireless Federation’s group companies. Please write to Christina (at) WirelessFederation.com to pre-order your copy.