Finland is often cited as a miracle of education. Its telecommunication regulation is equally impressive. In 2011, the Finnish consulting Rewheel has predicted that the country’s mobile operators would grow data traffic without increasing investments. It has been proven right, as shown in the chart. Data traffic in Elisa’s Finnish 4G/LTE network has grown by more than 20-times between 2011 and 2017.
In the first iteration, the benefits of MVNOs were marginal. Different brand, perhaps better customer service . . But it appears Google is offering a new model where your handset would jump to the best available signal. Google purchases capacity on multiple networks making this possible.
With the rise in smart phones (particularly on the Android platform) it makes sense to have an app to test, either deliberately or by having it run in the background, the speed, latency and packet loss (among others) that your mobile broadband connection offers. The FCC has done just that. With the hope of having a large number of people in the United States downloading and running the app multiple times a day, that will normalize anomalies, the NY Times also reports that it will allow the commission to aggregate data about broadband speeds from consumers across the country. It will use the data to create an interactive map, giving consumers a tool to use in comparison shopping rather than relying on wireless companies’ promises. LIRNEasia’s sister organisation Research ICT Africa (RIA) is also using a similar app developed by Georgia Tech called MySpeedNet.
Google sees mobiles as the future, especially in markets like India, according to Business Standard. Mobile Internet fastest growing vertical, says Google India MD. Listing a set of next big trends in the overall technology sector, Google India says mobile Internet is set to lead the way for the industry. As against 14 per cent in the US, 11 per cent in Russia, and 6 per cent in the UK, Google India sees about 40 per cent search queries from mobile phones in the country. “Mobile phones are the future.
We do not believe in the killer app. Multiple apps is what we think will drive mobile broadband. But if there be a killer, it will probably be search, as this NYT article suggests: Today, Google says mobile searches are growing as quickly as Web searches were at the same stage in the company’s early days, and they are up sixfold in the last two years. Google has a market share of 97 percent for mobile searches, according to StatCounter, which tracks Web use. Now that it dominates the field, Google is throwing its burly computing power and heaps of data at new problems specific to mobile phones — like translating phone calls on the fly and recognizing photos of things like plants and items of clothing But it search reinvented, not the same old, same old.
LIRNEasia Chair and CEO, Rohan Samarajiva, will make a presentation on “The Budget Telecom Network Model and its Extension to Wireless Broadband” at a workshop entitled, “Mobile Broadband: Igniting the Service Revolution” to be held on 26-27 November 2010 in New Delhi, India. Organized by the IIMA IDEA Telecom Centre of Excellence (IITCOE), the workshop brings together several key senior executives from the corporate, government and non-for-profit sectors in India. The PPT presentation is available for download here. More information on the event can be found here.
We have long complained about the absurdity of some of the definitions used in the collection of ICT indicators. One of our favorite targets was the definition of mobile broadband subscribers in the 2007 Handbook, which was defined as terminal devices capable of accessing broadband networks, irrespective of how they were actually used. But now that dog is no longer available for kicking. The expert group appointed by the ITU has recently revised the definition. The 2010 handbook now defines the mobile broadband indicator as actual subscriptions.
LIRNEasia’s preliminary round of mobile broadband quality testing in selected locations in Western Province unveils both hopes and issues. The good news is that the quality of both key pre-paid mobile broadband services is satisfactory, in majority of locations. However, unusual quality drops in several places indicates that this performance is not always a certainty. In general, a mobile broadband user in Western Province can expect a reasonable quality unless a rare issue like the distance from a tower or a higher number of simultaneous users hinders it. LIRNEasia tested the broadband quality of the popular pre-paid High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) broadband connections of the two key providers.
LIRNEasia will be releasing the beta version of the Mobile AT Tester software on 13 February 2010. All bloggers (Sinhala/Tamil/English) are welcome to participate the event. The soft launched is at Renuka City hotel and will commence from 9:30 am to 12.00 noon followed by lunch. For further informaton please click here.
Few days back we heard that flat rate was the way forward. Here is the riposte, in words from experts (including LIRNEasia) and in new offerings from Reliance. Let the debate continue. The experts see business sense around sachet pricing, especially for a low income group subscriber in the villages of India, who is mostly a prepaid user and does not have a big budget to spend. They say sachet pricing can yield results not only for Inetrnet penetration, but other services other than voice.