How Town Planning Is Like LTE Network Planning

Imagine, if a small town consisting of one main road, a few arterial roads with the traditional system of traffic lights, one day woke up to a new reality.

Overnight the town residents were shocked to see thousands of new business moving in, bringing with them many more residents, constant commercial activity and of course, a higher volume of vehicle traffic.

Should the town’s first move be to add more houses and streets? Think again – adding only these elements without the necessary additional infrastructure would simply increase the congestion and inefficiency of the roads.

It’s the same in a network. Just adding bandwidth or spectrum can’t solve today’s sudden surge of more activity of thousands or hundreds of thousands of smartphone subscribers using their mobile data for most of their awake hours.

The town needs to revamp its traffic light system just as the network – now filled with new elements and fragmented from the data strain and new services, needs to upgrade its signaling – and in 4G this means its Diameter signaling.

And what does upgrade mean? Well let’s go back to our town. If once upon a time, the town’s planners would have simply added more streets and traffic lights, today they would consider an advanced traffic direction and management system that operates according to the traffic flow for maximum optimization.

Cars that might once have gone down main thoroughfares will now be directed down alternative paths, balancing the load between roads.

So too, network architects must include Diameter solutions such as DRAs for intelligent, dynamic routing, load balancers for unlimited scalability and network control, and Diameter gateways for instant connectivity with legacy elements.

You wouldn’t want to live in a town whose infrastructure hasn’t kept up with its growth would you? Well, why would you subscribe to a carrier whose network hasn’t kept up with your needs for reliable and fast service?