Keeping Up With Demand, Changes Are Wireless World’s Biggest Challenges, Say Tech Titans

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Screen Shot 2016-04-13 at 8.08.34 PMA handful of technology titans from the wireless industry converged midday yesterday for an hour-long discussion on the most critical obstacles in their companies’ network deployment plans. Stephen Bye, CTO, C Spire; Jay Bluhm, VP, Network Planning, Sprint; Ken Borner, VP of Engineering and Network Operations, Atlantic Tele-Network; Narothum Saxena, ‎VP – Advanced Technology & Systems Planning  U.S. Cellular; and Henry Hayter, Senior Director, Network and Mobility, TNS, focused on the value of leveraging their networks and provided insight on how the networks will connect and interconnect in the fast-changing and faster-evolving worlds of 4G and 5G. And they discussed how carriers are integrating the latest versions of LTE-U, LAA and WiFi technologies. Sue Marek of SDxCentral, skillfully served as moderator during the opening keynote session at the CCA’s Mobile Carriers Show in Nashville, TN.

Sprint’s Bluhm seemed to be speaking for all of the panelists after being asked about the biggest challenge: “Keeping up with data growth. Optimizing where that growth is going to happen… we’re just always chasing.” C Spire’s Bye immediately agreed. “Our challenge, a great challenge to have, is keeping up with demand.” He added this his company serves “a lot of underserved regional businesses, hospitals and banks, and that his company is seeing “more fiber growth than on the wireless side.”

TNS’ Hayter, said his operation is “filling in the white spaces” and reports “mobile data consumption is exploding.  We have had to scale up very quickly and that has been a big challenge.” And there is the cost aspect. “Price pressure causes new price models to be created,” Hayter added.

Saxena said US Cellular has found that 99% (of its customers) have access to LTE. Keeping up with data growth is the biggest challenge. Backhaul and fiber is challenging.”

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