According to the Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), 64 commercial LTE networks have been launched and there are another 312 operators making the investment now. As first reports of the how customers use LTE and how much if affects their behavior it is interesting that network planning software is another area for investment.
According to research house Analysys Mason tells us that the move to a data centric world is fuelling the growth in the network planning and optimization software. Worldwide spending in 2011 was $488 million and this is set to increase at a rate of seven percent until 2016. The figure for mobile is greater, at 8.4%.
Whether LTE will solve the capacity problem is one question, but the increase in planning software means that operators are not betting on it. It also points to the fact that operators believe that they need to get the most out of the network.
At the same time, the market for analytics software is on the up, partly to address the signaling storm that the sheer variety of content is creating. Gartner believes that the Business Intelligence market is worth $10.5 billion and that is without systems integration, professional services and social media analytics. This takes the total market to close to $1.8 trillion according to the Big Data people, Practical Analytics.
Whether the increase in planning and analytics is driven by need (to get the most out of assets) or desire (to address customer needs better), or a mixture of both, it must be a good thing for all concerned.
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