Mobile data offloading

Mobile data offloading, also called data offloading is the use of complementary network technologies for delivering data originally targeted for cellular networks.

For the operators the main purpose for the offloading is congestion of the cellular networks.

The main complementary network technologies used for the mobile data offloading are Wi-Fi, Femtocell and Integrated Mobile Broadcast.

This is due to surge of the mobile data.. Increasing need for offloading solutions is caused by the explosion of the Internet data traffic and especially the growing portion of the traffic going through mobile networks.

In addition, WiMax and terrestrial networks (LAN) are also candidates for offloading of 3G mobile data.


Femtocells use standard cellular radio technologies, and thus any mobile device is capable of participating in the data offloading process, though some modification is needed to accommodate the different backhaul connection .

Wi-Fi technology is different radio technology than cellular, but most Internet capable mobiles devices now come with Wi-Fi capability.

The consolidation of Wi-Fi networks is proceeding both through a community approach, FON as the prime example, and by the consolidation of Wi-Fi network operators .

In the IWLAN architecture, a mobile device opens a VPN/IPsec tunnel from the device to the dedicated IWLAN server in the operator’s core network to provide the user either an access to the operator’s walled-garden services or to a gateway to the public Internet.


Studies show that significant amount of data can be offloaded in this manner to Wi-Fi networks even when users are mobile .

In the remotely managed approach a network server initiates each offloading procedure by prompting the connection manager of a specific user device.

Access Network Discovery and Selection Function (ANDSF) is the most complete 3GPP approach to date for controlling offloading between 3GPP and non-3GPP access networks (such as Wi-Fi).

Many operating systems provide a connection manager that can automatically switch to WiFi network if the connection manager detects a known Wi-Fi network.

The connection managers do not require coupling of the cellular and the WiFi networks.