Martin – Page 256 – WirelessMoves

Opera Mini Statistics Update Q1-2008

Ever since discovering Opera Mini I am a glowing fan and have rarely touched another mobile web browser since. I've reported some statistics after the MWC in February and it looks like the user adoption continues to grow rapidly. Today, I discovered a report on the Opera web site which gives a number of interesting details as of the first quarter in 2008. Here are some highlights:

Current number of downloads: 44 million
Number of users in March 2008: 11.9 million, 26% more than in the previous quarter
Number of transcoded pages in March: A staggering 2.4 billion, 57% more over the last quarter
11.9 million users generated 33 million MB of data in one month. That's about 2.7 MB per person. Let's do some maths: 33 million MB that's 33.000 GB or 33 Terabyte [corrected from PB, 2/2009]. Now if you take that number, divide it by 30 days, 24 hours, 60 minutes and 60 seconds and multiply it by 8 (bits), that requires a bandwidth of 100 MBit/s. In practice the number is probably even higher since usage distribution is probably not the same throughout the day, despite OperaMini being used globally.
The required bandwidth above is only to the user side and does not include loading the full page to the opera servers first and then compressing it. It's difficult to say how much extra bandwidth this takes since pages are compressed by 90% but a lot of content is probably cached and is thus not retrieved from the web site every time it is requested.

With that growth I wonder how they can keep upgrading their data center for the transcoding, increase their internet bandwidth and still keep the service free!? I am using OperaMini a lot and the transcoding is always fast so they seem to be able to keep up with the task.Thanks Opera, your OperaMini is my application no. 1 on my N95.

Found via: MoMo Indonesia

How many Gold Subscribers Can You Handle

While well dimensioned 3G networks are offering fast Internet access today, some somewhat underdimensioned networks show the first signs of overload. Some industry observers argue that the answer is to introduce tiered subscriptions, i.e. the user gets a guaranteed bandwidth or a higher bandwidth if he pays more. But I am not sure that this will work well in practice for two reasons: The first reason is that when some users are preferred over others in already overloaded cells, the experience for the majority gets even worse. And second, if such higher priced subscrptions get more popular because the standard service is no good, it won’t be possible at some point to statisfy even these subscribers. So such gold subscriptions just push out the problem a bit in time but otherwise don’t help a lot. There is just no way around sufficient capacity or your subscibers will migrate to network operators who have made their homework. So instead of only investing in QoS subscription management I would rather also invest in analysis software that reports which cells are often overloaded. That gives the operator the ability to react quickly and increase the bandwidth in the areas covered by such cells. Having said all of this, what do you think?

Online with an AT&T Prepaid SIM

I've arrived in Florida and since I will stay for a couple of days I went to the AT&T store around the corner to get a prepaid SIM for mobile Internet access. Good timing on AT&T's side since they introduced an unlimited mobile Internet access package for $19.99 per month just a couple of weeks ago.

The process of getting a SIM only took a couple of minutes, they didn't even want to see an ID. Interesting, others report an ID and a social security number are necessary. Maybe an individual state/store decision. Anyway, activating the Unlimited MediaNet Internet access package also only takes a couple of minutes and the details can be found here.

I checked web browsing via OperaMini, eMail (POP3/SMTP), Shozu and A-GPS, all work well with my N95-2. Some sources report notebook access via the phone is possible, too, but I haven't tried that yet. A more detailed report will follow 🙂

What a difference to my trip last year where I had to hop from Wi-Fi to Wi-Fi hotspot to stay connected.

Is the 3UK Network Hopelessly Underdimensioned?

I arrived in London yesterday and as I already have a prepaid SIM from 3UK, I used it for Internet access. Interestingly, just like in the Italy roaming scenario with the same SIM, data rates in the evening around London Victoria station were less than 300 kbit/s. A rather unpleasant experience as web pages were loaded very slowly. So it looks like this is not only a roaming issue but the 3UK network as a whole seems to be currently aching under the load. If this is an issue on the cell level or if it is the core network equipment that is stretched beyond its limits in the evening hours is hard to tell from the outside. This morning, data rates are fine again, exceeding 1 MBit/s at the same location, i.e. also the same behavior as in the roaming scenario in Italy. I travel a lot and thus use lots of other 3.5G networks in Europe and I have never seen such a bad throughput anywhere before. Time to do something about it quickly before customers (including me) consider other options.

Mobile To Displace Fixed-Line Internet Within Two Years

A pretty powerful title for this post, taken from a recent article in the U.K.'s Times online. In this article, the author is speculating about what falling prices for mobile Internet access means for the U.K.'s broadband market as a whole. He says there is a growing trend that people, especially singles, prefer to go online wirelessly instead of via a fixed line DSL or cable connection at home they can only use there. I pretty much agree with the article as in other countries that are even further ahead with broadband wireless this can already be seen. As I've reported here, more than a third of Austria's broadband connections are already wireless and the number is still rising with 57% of all new broadband connections being wireless now. Incredible numbers! I am sure offers like 3's 1GB for 10 pounds a month on a prepaid SIM help as well.

WiMAX Frequency Implications

WiMAX world recently published an interesting article by Caroline Gabriel on spectrum and auction issues for Wimax (and other wireless technologies). A very good read!

I find it very funny how time changes opinions. Some years back, BT couldn't get rid of their mobile branch soon enough. Now, they can't wait to buy spectrum and to start from scratch. Total insanity, but it reflects the reality in my opinion that in the future, only operators being able to offer fixed (via Wifi) + cellular wireless access will remain relevant.

So far, I always thought refarming 900 MHz frequencies was a good idea. After this article I understand the political dimension of this a bit better. I guess some operators are hoping that they can use their current spectrum indefinitely and for a very low price if they can escape an auction.

I guess this would be a major disadvantage for potential new entrants. 900 MHz is great for indoor coverage especially in cities, as even 3G coverage at 2.1 GHz fades away very quickly indoors. So if new entrants wouldn't have a chance to get such bands in the future, they would be at a constant disadvantage everywhere, not only in the countryside.

As a user on the other hand I don't want to wait until 2020 before I get 3G and 4G deep indoors without Wifi. Ugh, a tough call for regulators.

Concerning the first mover advantage and the claimed 18 months WiMAX lead over LTE: First, I think this lead is not really a lead, as it is debatable how much faster WiMAX is compared to current HSPA networks. Additionally I wonder if 802.16e is really ready for prime time. One year ago, three companies have bought nationwide licenses in the 3.6 GHz band in Germany. I haven't heard from them since doing anything beyond patchy deployments in a few places!?

In the meantime, 3G price plans have become available that give users several gigabytes of data per month for a couple of pounds. Should there be any first mover advantage, that's pretty much a show stopper in itself.

Sounds all a bit negative for WiMAX but I think there are still opportunities out there. The 3GPP operators are far away from doing everything right. Especially for those occasional users who just want to open their notebook no matter in which country they are and get access for some time without worrying about subscriptions, SIM cards, etc, this camp has not yet the right answer. And then, there are the countries that don't have 3G yet for various reasons such as India and China. In some countries, however, incumbents are starting to wake up. So hurry, WiMax before this one goes to them as well.

3 UK Data Roaming Performance

Here I am, back in Italy and again using my 3 UK SIM for Internet access, since there are no data roaming charges between 3 networks in different countries. Very interesting and also a bit depressing to see the performance throughout the day. Sunday morninig 8 am seems to be a pretty quiet time and I easily got 1.5 MBit/s in downlink. Evenings seem to be high time, with data rates dropping to less than 300 kbit/s and long page loading times due to lots of lost packets. I am pretty sure it’s not a cell overload since the Wind UMTS network at the same locations easily gives me 1 MBit/s and no packet loss in direct comparison. So the bottleneck is either the link back to the home network or the GGSN in the UK .

While it’s good to see the networks being used and affordable data roaming in place, I’d appreciate sufficient capacity in the core network.

Putting The Hotel TFT To Good Use

Since I travel a lot, I often stay in hotels. One thing in hotel rooms I could live without is the TV set, as I never have the desire nor the time to watch anything anyway. In recent years, however, I've noticed that good old cathode ray tube TV's are giving way to TFT TV's. Last week I took a closer look and noticed that these TV's usually also have a VGA or DVI input. Excellent, now I can finally put them into good use and connect them to my notebook as a second screen. All that is needed is a VGA or DVI cable, which I will take with me from now on. The picture on the left shows how my typical hotel setup looks like. Screen 1, screen 2 and a 3.5G HSPA modem for Internet connectivity. Almost as good as at home 🙂

S60 Power Measurements

In a comment to a recent blog entry somebody left a link to an interesting S60 utility that records power consumption and other interesting technical information while Noka NSeries and other S60 based devices execute programs. Running in the background, one can perform actions and see the impact on power consumption. The picture on the left for example shows power consumption during different states during mobile web browsing.

The left side of the graph (click to enlarge) shows power consumption while a web page is loaded, i.e. while the device is in Cell-DCH / HSPA state. Power consumption is at almost 2 watts during this time. Once no more data is transferred, the mobile is set into Cell-FACH state by the network which requires much less power. However, the 0.8 watts is still significant. After about 30 seconds of inactivity the network releases the physical bearer and only maintains a logical connection. In this state, power requirements drop to about 0.2 watts which is mostly used for driving the display and the background light. When the device is locked and the background light is switched off, the graph almost drops to the bottom, i.e. to less than 0.1 watts.

An excellent tool to gain a better understanding of power requirements of different actions and processes!

Wireless and Mission Critical

I am on the road quite often and, as most of you have figured out in the meantime, a heavy user of 3G networks for Internet access. While I generally like the experience some network outages like this two and a half day nationwide full Internet access blackout in the Vodafone Germany network recently sends shivers down my spine. After all, we are not talking about a third class operator but one that claims to be a technology leader in the sector. As I use Vodafone Internet access a lot I was glad I was only impacted for half a day, having been in a DSL save haven for the rest of the time. If I had been on the road, however, this would have been a major disaster for me.

I wonder if the company that delivered the equipment that paralyzed the Vodafone network for two and a half days has to pay for the caused damage!? If it’s a small company then such a prolonged outage with millions of euros in lost revenue can easily put them out of business. And that doesn’t even consider the image loss for all parties involved and the financial loss of companies relying on Vodafone to provide Internet access. The name of the culprit was not released to the press but those working in the industry know very well what happened. Hard times for certain marketing people on the horizon…

Vodafone is certainly not alone facing such issues as I can observe occasional connection issues with other network operators as well. These, however, are usually short in nature and range from a couple of minutes to an hour or so. Bad enough.

To me, this shows several things:

There is not a lot of redundancy built into the network.
Disaster recovery and upgrade procedures are not very well thought trough as otherwise such prolonged outages would not happen.
Short outages might be caused by software bugs and resetting devices.
I think we might have reached a point where capacity of core network nodes have reached a level that the failure of one device triggers nationwide outages.

So maybe operators should start thinking in earnest about reversing the trend a bit and consider decentralization again to reduce the effect of fatal equipment failures. And maybe price should not be the only criteria to be considered in the future. Higher reliability and credible disaster recovery mechanisms which do not only work on paper might be worth something as well. An opportunity for network vendors to distinguish themselves?