Double digit growth each month during the last year
BICS, a global wholesale carrier for voice, mobile data and capacity services, has announced a rapid increase in LTE roaming traffic over its IPX network.
Last year, kicked off by the European holiday season of 2014, the company experienced a 25% month on month growth in traffic which continued throughout 2014 and into the first quarter of 2015.
Said Mikael Schachne VP mobile data business, BICS: “LTE roaming continues to go from strength to strength and now boasts an extensive footprint covering over 100 countries and over 235 operators supported by the full value IPX can offer.
“During the European holiday season last year, LTE roaming usage growth peaked at over 25% growth every month, and this has continued, unabated, into 2015. This demonstrates consumers’ strong demand for the high speed data roaming services that needs to be met by operators in order to remain competitive in their domestic markets,” added Schachne.
Access to domestic LTE now covers 90% of consumers in developed markets, according to the GSMA’s Mobile Economy 2015 report. With such widespread domestic availability, subscribers now expect the same data speeds when they are travelling.
In order to meet these new demands, BICS stated that operators need to replace their existing SS7 signalling network with a new IP signalling infrastructure built on an IPX network, a change that requires a whole set of commercial agreements and technical interconnections.
BICS’ LTE roaming services are supported by its IPX transit capabilities, which also enjoyed a huge increase in adoption rates and traffic levels over the last year. During 2014, capacity usage on the BICS GRX network grew 45% while in the same period IPX transport – comprising of next generation data traffic – grew by 400%.
