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Paving the Way Today for 3G Tomorrow

by john oyler
July/August 2001

As an industry, we love to talk about the future, be it third-generation networks, Bluetooth, 802.11b or the next exciting technology. The reality, however, is that carriers are out there promoting and marketing the 2G wireless data services they have today and already there are millions of users, and many more eager to try. Individuals come to work with their wireless devices, saying to their IT departments, “Connect me. Help me be more productive.”

Sure, we need to continue planning for the future, but we also must capitalize on the business opportunity that exists today. People are interested in using and willing to pay for wireless data services now. Whether that interest continues depends largely on the quality of their current experience. If we don’t focus on understanding and improving data performance today, we risk losing the interest of our customers and stunting penetration.

What do we know about today’s wireless data experience? There is a high degree of variability for the end-user, as shown in the accompanying graph.

Telephia recently began monitoring the performance of wireless data networks and applications. Measurements are taken continuously, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on major carrier networks. The data in the graph shows how long it took to download three popular WAP URLs on one carrier network during a recent 24-hour test period. On the same carrier network over the course of a day, three WAP sites showed significant differences in download time, with the slowest site taking up to four times longer to download than the fastest. (See figure.) Alternatively, in a separate test, a single WAP site showed consistent differences in download times on three carriers over a day, taking up to six times as long to download on one carrier than another carrier. Download time varied significantly throughout the day even for the same WAP URL on one carrier network.

There are multiple causes of this performance variability. Sometimes the source is a wireless network problem, sometimes a WAP site or server problem and sometimes an Internet or infrastructure problem. Regardless of the source of problems, we all share the customer, and thus share the responsibility for improving performance.

Wireless carriers, commerce/ content providers, enterprises and wireless ASPs must work together to improve this experience or customers will become disenchanted. A collective effort is needed to realize the incredible opportunity that wireless data represents.

John Oyler is president and co-founder of Telephia Inc., a San Francisco-based wireless intelligence company.