Today, most service providers employ a flat pricing model for mobile data. For these providers, controlling network infrastructure costs will help improve profitability. And replacing the legacy time division multiplexing (TDM) backhaul with Ethernet will go a long way toward controlling costs. However, providers will have to distribute timing to the base stations over the packet networks.

This white paper discusses the market trends that are causing service providers to upgrade the legacy TDM backhaul to an Ethernet backhaul. It also highlights the importance of testing new Ethernet backhaul deployments and presents the methodologies to test packet-based (IEEE 1588) and physical (SyncE) timing distribution.