 This section initially takes a look at some trends that can help us understand this dynamic nature, before we try to analyze the future trends to take into account. Recent Trends in Telecom Customer Profiles Evolution Usage of Dongles VS. Smartphones Originally, subscribers who looked for connectivity to continue to have access to their work and hence needed mobile broadband access with their laptops purchased dongles instead of a smartphone, which was a device that helped one get e-mail and other important applications like messaging. Now comes the interesting part. Depending on how the smartphone works in terms of idle time handling, smartphones could end up generating a lot of signaling traffic in comparison to dongles. One such study by NSN (albeit in 3G networks) found that even though dongles accounted for 60% of the data traffic load, they generated only 1% of the signaling load. This is due to the fact that the dongles were getting connected and staying connected, whereas smartphones were aggressively optimizing power management and hence were becoming a new state called fast dormancy handling, where they were switching into RRC idle states very quickly. CHAPTER 3 DEPLOYMENT CHALLENGES IN EVOLVING 4G Another key aspect of the dongle tends to be that most of them support only data connections VS. smartphones that have to support traditional customer service-based services of voice, text messages, and data connections. Hence, dongle implementations tend to be simpler as the complexity of connection management and other settings is managed by the connection management software in the laptop. This remains true even in cases of dongles that support voice. Hence, dongles cost a lot less than the equivalent smartphones. By keeping track of a variety of devices getting connected in the network, the operator can continue to remain alert about trends of subscriber usage. For example, the following observations were made on Vodacom LTE networks in 2011(http://mybroadband.co.za/news/broadband/39919-data-usage-smartp