Basking on the euphoria of a new office in Lagos Nigeria, Nokia Siemens Networks last week announced the launch of Liquid Net, a new way to deliver broadband and allow an operator to set up its network to self_adapt to meet capacity and coverage requirements based on demand.

The new approach also aims to significantly improve the quality of broadband services worldwide. With Liquid Net, operators can unleash the full potential of their existing business assets and create new revenue sources.

Spectacular broadband growth means networks must be ready to cope with personal data consumption of more than 1GB per mobile user per day1. Demand is also highly unpredictable, fluctuating between locations at different times as people use broadband at home, at work and on the move. Abrupt changes in broadband use can also occur when, say, new device software is launched, or updates to popular applications and over_the_top services are released, leaving operators no time to prepare.

“Capacity in today’s conventional networks is typically frozen in separate places; at individual base station sites, in parts of the core network that manage voice and data services, or in the optical and IP transport networks,” said Marc Rouanne, head of Network Systems at Nokia Siemens Networks. “Each is a potential bottleneck to someone getting the broadband service they want at a particular moment. Fluctuating, unpredictable demand in one part of the network means huge chunks of capacity can be left idle elsewhere, making poor use of existing investments. For example, as much as 50% of a conventional core network’s capacity can be dormant.