Earlier this week, the UK Government announced that the long-awaited spectrum auctions for 2.6GHz and 800MHz (4G) will take place at the end of 2011. But mobile data specialist Acision is warning mobile operators that there is more to solving the network congestion issues they have faced in recent months than just chucking more bandwidth at it.

“The explosive growth of mobile data applications and services has been the defining industry trend of the past 12 months, but its success has been tempered by networks’ inability to cope with the increased traffic and unsustainable cost levels of all-you-can-eat mobile broadband packages,” says Acision SVP marketing, mobile broadband, Steven van Zanen. “This in turn has contributed to an unacceptable end-user experience, with recent research from Acision and YouGov highlighting that 84 per cent of mobile broadband users had experienced quality of service (QoS) issues, such as slow speeds, poor network coverage and connection loss.

“In order to raise customer satisfaction levels, while simultaneously operating a sustainable business, operators cannot solely rely on additional spectrum and 4G technology like LTE. They also need to address three major areas: control cost by employing techniques such as data compression and defining rules and policies to help better manage peak traffic; increase Quality of Experience by optimising media by device or available bandwidth and by prioritising cell traffic; and finally, raise ARPU by introducing differentiated service offerings suitable to subscriber needs.”