Latency matters

A white paper with two companion interviews prepared for EXFO

Download the interview “Latency as a service” with Mansoor Hanif, Former Director of Converged Networks and Innovation in BT R&D

Download the interview “Managing latency-sensitive applications” with Neeraj Pandey, Associate Vice President Vodafone Shared Services, India

Watch the webinar

The impact of latency continues to grow as networks become more complex, carry more traffic, and support more real-time services, and as we move to 5G with target RAN latencies of 1ms or less.

Ahead of 5G, the pressure for latency reduction is already on. Users expect the same QoE regardless of access type – wireline or wireless, licensed or unlicensed – and are quick to abandon apps that are too slow, or leave the network and move to another operator.

Latency cannot be avoided, of course. But it can be precisely measured, understood, and managed in order to minimize its impact on QoE and network performance. Some aspects of latency are technology dependent and cannot be eliminated, some may be controlled or removed, and others are outside the network operators’ control. In this report and the two companion interviews, we discuss how latency affects wireless networks, and how operators can measure it and benefit from an efficient management of latency.