Video Traffic on Mobile Networks to Surge, AT&T CTO Says.

SAN FRANCISCO -- By 2014, about 90 percent of consumer mobile IP traffic will be video, AT&T Chief Technology Officer John Donavan told the MobileBeat 2010 conference here. He was citing a recent Cisco forecast, but said it wasn’t “very far off” of AT&T’s own internal projections.

A variety of video applications will drive that growth, from video telepresence to streaming video, he said. By 2014 it will be a “point-to-point video world,” Donavan, said. “Video calling, video streaming, video links -- it’s going to become part of every process and enterprise use, and part basic communication that’s person to person,” he said.

AT&T’s mobile traffic to YouTube doubled within six months between fall of 2009 and spring 2010, Donavan said. And every minute, more than 24 hours of video are being uploaded to the site, he said. “We are really moving from a ’talk to me’ to a ’show me’ culture,” he said.

In order to handle the coming wave of video and other data that will be transmitted over wireless networks, carriers will need far more equipment than is currently deployed in the field, Donavan said. “The scale we're putting into networks has no historical standard for the amount and volume that we're doing,” he said. “We have a very small amount of the equipment we're going to ultimately need deployed, deployed today.” And usage follows mobility, he said. Wherever AT&T has added capacity -- whether it’s improved indoor reception, WiFi locations or more RF resources on streets, “you just see consumption move right along with providing the network,” he said. With the consumer there is “always a preference for mobility,” he said.

Carriers such as AT&T are running into several challenges as they begin to build out such networks, Donavan said. “It’s hard to narrow down one choke point,” he said. “It’s a little zoning here, equipment availability there,” he said. Because the pace of innovation is so great, companies are speeding new products to market, he said. “The traditional methods by which you test it and manage this process have kind of broken down,” he said. But the money and commitment to build the network is there, he said. “We will move heaven and earth to get out in front of this demand,” he said.

Over time, the process of getting new applications onto devices and networks must be simplified, Donavan said. And more billing systems are needed so application developers can more effectively monetize their products, he said. “We really need a maturation of the entire ecosystem,” he said.

Meanwhile, AT&T is trying to take advantage of its internal resources by developing an in-house venture capital system to fund employees’ startup ideas, Donavan said. Ideas are voted up or down by employees on an internal social network, and ultimately approved by a panel of AT&T executives. Half the funding for the projects come from the CTO’s office, the other half from the department that will ultimately use the product, he said. Historically, AT&T’s labs have been very good at “Capital R Research, and small d development,” he said. “We're doing a lot of things to move along faster and introduce some of this development skill,” he said.