FEATURE: Nine ways to fix the data crunch

To wrap up the ME TV series on the subject, we asked Amdocs for some remedies.

Ever since the first phone shipped with a web browser and a video player, the mobile industry has been hurtling towards unsustainable network congestion.

And now, the ubiquity of apps that perform frequent status checks, has led to such congestion of the core network that even voice calls are being missed.

According to a Cisco report, mobile data traffic will increase by a factor of 39 times in the next four years, reaching 42 exabytes annually by 2014.

This year, the industry finally confronted the ‘tsunami’ launched by video streaming, apps and broadband dongles.

Shortly after Ronan Dunne, O2's UK CEO, admitted: "There isn't a chief executive or chief technology officer in the industry who doesn't have this (issue) on their desk."