How are you doing with the World Cup and your mobile? Downloaded a couple of cool apps, shared the inevitable gags and consolatory funny pix around your chums’ network? Maybe watched a couple of amazing goals or even that unfortunate Lampard ‘non goal’?
Chances are that if you did any of the above it was with your work PC or laptop or home computer. Because many of us are finding that 3+G mobile broadband is about as much use as the England striker complement.
New research from YouGov, the number crunchers that among other things run the UK-wide ‘Dongle Tracker’ survey of mobile broadband contentment has found no less than 84% of those who responded say they have ongoing connection issues.
Most common beefs: slow speeds (67% of users), problems with coverage (49%), intermittent inability to connect (45%). Meanwhile 40% say dropped connections was their most common problem with this way of accessing the Web.
The researchers also say it is video content – of, presumably at the moment, the latest bit of astonishing South American or German football efficiency – that’s possibly to blame. Given that YouGov calculates that 36% of mobile broadband users watch video online, at least occasionally, factor in the fact that the average YouTube video streams at 1Mbps but the capacity of an average single cell site running HSDPA is a mere 18 to 21 Mbps, we may have an answer to all those annoying multiple pauses in the video play back etc.
There’s a reasonably straightforward technical mobile comms solution: operators just need to invest in technologies to optimise content for users connecting via cellular networks, rather than rely on existing caps or fair usage policies to throttle back demand. They could prioritise traffic better (er, why don’t they do that now as a matter of course?) and even try to charge punters more money (good luck) for certain sorts of files at certain times of day.
But there’s a deeper problem here, which is that unless you are standing right under a mast at the right time of day and the Gods are with you, mobile broadband just doesn’t work very well. The industry more than over-sold it, it sort of lied to us.
We thought we’d all have Star Trek communicators cum Tricorders cum mobile tellies or something in our hands by now, but great as smartphones and the rest of it are, they still run on networks that do really fantastic things, 80% of the time – but probably not when all of us are online texting or sending silly pictures just as the ref doesn’t something totally random (again).
It’s down, once again, to capacity and the risk of investment. It’s only really now that all the dark fibre we built out in the last decade is starting to be used enough to warrant the money lashed out digging up the roads. Mobile operators that mortgaged themselves up to the hilt at the end of the 1990s to buy 3G airspace don’t really fancy another massive wave of capex.
Until they do – though the signal compression and network management alluded to above will help short-term, possibly allied with more realistic pricing – we will just have to limp along with a service that really is a ‘C’ most days, not an ‘A’.
But in a way… the operators don’t really need to care. Digital natives especially just accept this is the way you share content on the move now and will put up with it. Oldies such as myself will be less impressed, wondering why it’s worth spending 3 minutes waiting for a website or image to load on even the nicest iPhone. Which – and this has to be an open secret, right? – is great at everything apart from making phone calls (ahem).
At which it is rubbish, in my experience. But it looks lovely, so I’ll put up with it.
Welcome to the world of consumer tech that gets by on appearance, not performance: sadly, not a technique business IT can ever get away with.
