ITU warns about mobile network congestion

The International Telecommunications Union has warned that the use of smart phones is continuing to clog up mobile networks, adding that governments need to act quickly to rectify the issue.

An official from the International Telecommunications Union has recently warned that the rising use of smart phones is causing severe congestion on mobile networks. He said that it was vital that governments took speedy action to rectify this problem, as it would cause huge issues for mobile broadband users and other users of mobile devices.

He said that higher end smart phones such as the Apple iPhone were using up around five times more data than the traditional handsets. Speaking about the problem the ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure said that this was putting massive strain on mobile networks.

He stated: “We are still seeing users frustrated by chronic problems of network unavailability. Robust national broadband plans that promote extra spectrum and the faster rollout of fibre networks are vital to support the number of data-intensive applications.”

The ITU said that ‘capacity crunch’ could be avoided if governments were more proactive now and took action to deal with the problem. The union stated: “Mobile broadband is increasingly the technology of choice for hundreds of millions in the developing world, where fixed-line infrastructure is often sparse and expensive to deploy.”

The ITU also said that ninety percent of the world is now covered by a mobile signal. However, it added that only ninety eight countries had specific broadband plans in place.

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Source – Reuters