The promise of Wi-Fi is three fold. First, it economically reduces strain on Radio Access Networks (RANs), especially in shorter-range or high-density situations. Second, by rolling out a network of company-branded and -managed hotspots, carriers can move up the value chain. (Just look at AT&T's extensive network of Wi-Fi hotspots in McDonald's and Starbucks.) Third, by managing the Wi-Fi handover and keeping the customer within a controlled network, carriers can ensure session integrity, consolidate identity management and policy control, and better monitor and guarantee Quality of Service (QoS).

As mobile operators race to meet skyrocketing demands in densely populated and hard-to-service areas, small cells have risen to the challenge and provide another crucial piece of the connectivity mesh. Small cells are just diminutive macro cells, pint-sized radio access nodes that can be installed, positioned, and operated in less time and for less cost than their bigger brothers. The inherent self-organizing and self-management capabilities of small cells grant them distinction from femtocells and picocells.

Lower-power access nodes with a shrunken profile aren't new; but the way they are being used has changed. "While small cells, including microcells and picocells, have been used for the past two decades to improve voice coverage, now mobile broadband is shifting the game to capacity upgrades," wrote Stéphane Téral, Principal Analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research.

Small cells are a critical component in the mesh of wireless connectivity. "...the chief objective is to complement and enhance the macro-cell layer from a capacity standpoint with a new breed of low-power nodes like public space femtocells and Wi-Fi,” explained Téral in a statement.

Don Bowman of Sandvine agrees that this is the era of the small cell. “There is no question in my mind that small cells are here,” Bowman said. “Small cells are [also] going to be heavily used in indoor technologies,” he added.

Pipeline's 2014 COMET Innovations Awards Program also saw a variety of vendors submitting advanced solutions to capitalize on these opportunities. Aptilo's 3GPP Wi-Fi Access Unified SolutionWi-Fi enables Wi-Fi only, non-SIM devices to authenticate on service provider networks to tap an estimated 60-70 percent of devices that cannot be authenticated today. Nokia presented their Flexi Zone product which ultimately won the Innovation in Networking Technology category this year. Flexi Zone takes the capacity and functionality of a macro base station and puts it into the industry's smallest indoor-outdoor micro/pico cells. Nokia also submitted their centralized RAN solution which links multiple base stations and turns the resulting interference into useful traffic, increasing capacity and improving the customer experience.

But in addition to Wi-Fi and small cell solution, satellite technology must be employed in order for the connectivity mesh to extend to the sea and air. Luckily, like most other technologies, satellite telecommunication has dramatically improved over the past decade. Costs have fallen and capabilities have risen due to miniaturization, reduced power consumption, near-earth-orbit arrays, advanced interference management, and Ka band spectrum. Today, satellite isn't just providing maritime phone service; it's adding capacity and coverage for global CSPs.

Intelsat CEO Dave McGlade commented on the significance of the launch of a new satellite at the end of March, “...its customized beams will further progress our global mobility broadband fabric, allowing always-on broadband for ships and planes traversing the world’s busiest transport routes,” McGlade said in a statement. “Intelsat delivers broadband infrastructure everywhere, and the successful launch of Intelsat 22 delivers enhanced satellite capacity for telecommunications leaders in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, such as the UAE’s Etisalat and Ethio Telecom of Ethiopia.”

Virtualization

Network virtualization technologies erase the need for local network management and enable network ubiquity. The prevailing technologies are software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV). By applying the concepts of virtualization to the network itself, both acronyms promise to change the way networks are designed and controlled and how services are instantiated, monitored, and managed.