A mobile network (also wireless network) route's communications in the form of radio waves to and from users. It is composed of base stations that each cover a delimited area or "cell." When joined together these cells provide radio coverage over a wide geographic area. This enables a large number of portable transceivers (e.g., mobile phones, pagers, etc.) to communicate with each other and with fixed transceivers and telephones anywhere in the network, even if some of the transceivers are moving through more than one cell during transmission.
Mobile networks are rapidly becoming the universal service delivery vehicle for all applications. The key question is whether they can manage to keep up with the underlying bandwidth demands. The rising demand for mobile broadband services has accelerated the move to LTE and LTE-Advanced. This latest mobile technology further increases not only bandwidth but also quality requirements of the backhaul network.