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The release of a new mobile backhaul initiative for 4G/LTE from MEF (News - Alert), a global industry alliance for accelerating adoption of Carrier Ethernet, was announced at the first Metro Ethernet Forum Quarterly Meeting for 2012. According to sources, it might spell good news for mobile operators and their access providers who are set to benefit from potential backhaul savings of 25 percent and excellent revenue growth opportunities over their existing network infrastructure.   

In a release, MEF President, Nan Chen, said, “Mobile Operators all agree that the industry’s single biggest challenge and operating cost is in delivering the bandwidth needed for 4G/LTE (News - Alert) backhaul. It’s important to take a holistic approach, so for the first time, the MEF introduces its Mobile Backhaul Initiative with an integrated suite consisting of the MEF 22.1 Mobile Backhaul implementation agreement, MEF 23.1 Multi-CoS implementation agreement, and a technical business paper clarifying the urgency and justification of migrating to Multi-CoS if cost-effective expansion and efficient deployment of 4G/LTE are to be achieved. It also includes other technical guidance on best practices and a new paper on packet-based frequency synchronization.”

Contrary to predictions which indicate exponential mobile backhaul build-out costs, the magnitude of savings assured by the new MEF Mobile Backhaul Initiative will result in mobile operators and their access providers benefiting from substantial savings that will run into millions of dollars.

The cost benefits offered by the solution are said to be based on Carrier Ethernet’s capability to extend support to Multiple Classes of Services (Multi-CoS). Multi-CoS has been recently standardized as the MEF 23.1 Multi-CoS Implementation Agreement.

Nav Chander, Sr. Analyst at IDC (News - Alert), said, “Multi-CoS is a breakthrough in delivering sustainable quality and profitable deployment of mobile services, because it allows highly efficient bandwidth usage – with less dependency on over-provisioning, combined with more responsive QoS delivered to more users as it delivers significant benefits to both mobile operators and Ethernet access provider partners; and MEF is at the forefront of enabling the onset of a whole new class of mobile value-added services.”