Data-intensive smartphones and tablets, as well as improved displays, battery life and network connectivity have played a crucial role in the significant increase of mobile data usage, particularly at lunch time in the afternoon. With more and more people utilizing high bandwidth mobile data devices, the need for bandwidth management is vital.

Company officials from iGR Research have recently revealed that new network technologies may be able to handle the average level of traffic throughout the day, but there will be certain "pain-points” that will emerge in the cellular data network, necessitating a different approach to network architecture.

iGR is a market strategy consultancy company that is focused on the wireless and mobile communications industry. In its research report titled, Localized U.S. Bandwidth Demand Forecast, 2011-2016, the organization states that data consumption differs by time of day and geographic location.

Currently, most cellular voice and data networks use a macro cell architecture. During the day, particularly in high traffic areas, the bandwidth consumption exceeds what the macro network can handle.

Bandwidth management in situations similar to this proves to be of great importance, as it offers users the capability to monitor all active network sessions and control the traffic flow with “rate limiting” whenever there is an unfair demand from the user.

This bandwidth limiting will ensure that critical applications like VoIP, CRM and SSL always receive the amount of bandwidth that is needed, even when the network is crowded.

By 2016, iGR's model indicates that end users in congested downtown work areas will exceed the capabilities of the macro mobile networks by 146 percent. This model assumes the deployment and increasing availability of LTE (News - Alert) throughout the forecast period. Simply deploying LTE to meet excess bandwidth demand will be insufficient resulting in no service, bad service or slow service during these capacity holes.

iGR President Iain Gillott, said in a statement, "Improving efficiency and throughput cannot be handled by LTE deployments alone. Re-engineering at the macro level coupled with new network architecture considerations need to be part of a carrier's deployment roadmap in order to prepare for future demands from more robust devices and data-intensive applications."