Cambridge Broadband Networks Launches "Backhaul Blog" to Spur Debate Across Telecoms Industry

(Business News & Technology News, 3 Jul 2008)

Backhaul is one of the biggest issues facing mobile operators today and according to ABI Research already accounts for 30 percent of their operating expenditure with an annual cost of $20 billion. In response, Cambridge Broadband Networks, a developer of carrier-class transmission equipment for cellular backhaul, has launched a blog to foster discussion around the issues. Known as ¡®the backhaul blog¡¯ (www.thebackhaulblog.com), the forum is aimed at a wide cross-section of industry professionals, including mobile operators, analysts and journalists, and will carry thought-provoking comment from a variety of contributors.

The launch comes at a time when traditional fixed line and microwave backhaul solutions are fast becoming an area of contention for operators with the introduction of high bandwidth, data-oriented services, "all you can eat" price plans and mobile broadband "dongles", all of which dramatically increase the network capacity requirements.

This growth in mobile data represents a major challenge for cellular operators according to Lance Hiley, VP Market Strategy at Cambridge Broadband Networks: "Backhauling data is currently too expensive for operators and is eroding their profit margins. Arguably most also currently lack the capacity to cope with exponential data growth and there is concern that should devices such as HSPA dongles become too widely used before backhaul capacity is upgraded, the overall experience for their customers will decline as cell sites get overloaded with data requests. As such operators around the world will have to think carefully about how they upgrade their backhaul infrastructure. This blog has been setup as an open forum for the industry to discuss these challenges and how we as a community of stakeholders can help solve them."

The backhaul blog will be monitored by Cambridge to ensure constructive discussion on the blog, however moderation will be kept to a minimum. Potential headline authors are asked to: "Write with conviction. Write with passion. Write with intelligence. Write each entry as if it could not be changed." Contributors are encouraged to understand that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and any disagreements should be explained in a reasoned and well-constructed fashion.

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