The popularity of the Blackberry and smartphones, such as the iPhone, are forcing mobile service providers to consider how best to meet the growing demands for rich data services that are straining mobile network capacity and eroding profits. Because their networks were originally designed for the low bandwidth requirements of voice traffic, mobile providers today have only a limited set of options for increasing capacity to accommodate data services. Most of these options are expensive and often time-consuming to deploy, and include adding more leased lines, moving to fiber, increasing the microwave spectrum, and using Ethernet ring.
