Bad apps are making headlines around the wireless industry for consuming massive bandwidth and slowing down the network.

Joining social media and instant messaging apps, popular games such as Angry Birds, are the latest apps to send mobile signaling skyrocketing, In fact, Nokia Siemens Networks Smart Labs recently reported that an Android-based device playing Angry Birds with mobile advertising generated a whopping 2,422 signals in one hour of play!

Angry Birds is just one of the many available apps that constantly signal the mobile network for updates hundreds and even thousands of times per hour. Multiply that by the 48 billion mobile app downloads expected by 2015 and it’s clear that operators have a significant problem on their hands.

The Problem with Signaling
 
The problem with this constant polling is that mobile phones also rely on signaling to send and receive calls and SMS messages and sometimes these basic mobile functions are forced to take a backseat to unruly apps. Take South Korea’s KT Corp. for instance. The mobile operators network was nearly knocked out when a third-party app’s signaling traffic took the voice-call success rate down to 10 percent!

Although Apple maintains tight control over which apps make it to market, Google does not test its apps, and the sheer volume of available apps makes it nearly impossible for carriers to police unruly apps. Because of this, the problem of chatty apps cannot be solved by policy alone, but requires a more long-term solution like traffic optimization.

SEVEN Open Channel

SEVEN Open Channel is our answer to the mobile signaling problem. The traffic optimization solution works by monitoring all requests for data made by mobile apps and only connecting to the network if new updates are available. This results in a reduction of data consumption of smartphones and other mobile devices by up to 70%, and battery life savings by up to 25%.

Additionally, operators constantly struggle with the unpredictability of mobile apps and SEVEN Open Channel not only delivers traffic reduction, but also gives operators greater predictability into the status of the network. And the industry is starting to recognize the benefits of SEVEN Open Channel as well, as it received this year’s GSMA Global Mobile Award for Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough and Frost & Sullivan’s 2011 North America New Product Innovation Award in Mobile Traffic Optimization.

With data demand growing at more than 2,000-percent year over year, operators cannot afford to have apps behaving badly and generating these high volumes of signaling requests. We see traffic optimization as the future of mobile networks so stay tuned for even more from SEVEN and Open Channel in the coming year.