Asian telcos shell out over US$100b for network quality upgrade per year

But there isn't much improvement.

According to Nomura, even as Asian telcos continue to spend more than USD100bn in annual capex, network quality is still not improving much in most countries. 

Fastgrowing data traffic is one problem, but the issues around signalling and application/device design are some other bottlenecks that are not widely understood.

Here's more from Nomura:

These generate unnecessary traffic and congestion, and are an issue for operators as well as consumers, as data is consumed without the actual usage.

In this report, we explore these signalling problems in detail and review various ways through which telcos are looking to better manage traffic patterns rather than just spending more capex, which alone may not solve the issue. This will benefit customers on tiered-plans too. 

Bad signals, bad designs, and background data – customers beware! Typically, applications such as messengers/social media need to stay “on” and signal to the network constantly for updates.

These signals need radio capacity, thereby reducing the net handling capacity of networks. Signalling is also caused when a device re-establishes a connection with the network while it switches from “idle state” (battery saving mode) to “active state” or when users move between cell-sites, per Huawei.

Another challenge is the difference in designs of various operating systems (OS) and the unpredictability of how different apps work on different OS.