Mobile Content Delivery Networks Might Be Affected by Net Neutrality

Content delivery networks routinely are used to improve end user experience for all sorts of applications. The same sort of logic would indicate that the same sorts of techniques will be used by mobile applications as well.

But network neutrality rules could affect the pace and scale of such application performance enhancement, indirectly if not directly.

Today, it is the application provider that makes the decision to use a CDN. Network neutrality rules that forbid quality of service features would not change that, but would prevent access providers from creating such levels of service.

One example would be a service provider capability that applies expedited or assured delivery for any video stream, or featured video streams. Much the same functionality could be provided for other types of traffic, including voice, conferencing or enterprise data interactions, for example, depending on how any possible rules are crafted.

Up to this point such enhancements have not been terribly necessary. But the amount of real-time traffic is growing.

According to the Yankee Group, fewer than 600 million smartphones will be in use in 2010, but that number will more than double in 2014 to nearly 1.4 billion.

One key difference between smartphone usage patterns and more-traditional devices is the increased amount of video traffic consumed by smartphone users.

Yankee Group :: Research Report