There should be no more excuses for operators, it’s time for data service to step up to the plate, says an expert in optimising networks and applications for supporting data services.
Yair Shapira, cto and vp of business development for wireless data optimisation company Flash Networks, told Mobile Europe that the time for making excuses for low data service penetration is over.
“There are UMTS and EDGE networks, and devices are freely available, but the market hasn’t caught up.” he said.
“For example portal services should have reached around 35% market penetration — device penetration is at around 65% and now many of these devices can support these services. But there is only an average of 3% service penetration, with perhaps Vodafone hitting 5%.”
Shapira said the financial implications were that instead of operators working on original assumptions of a $12 increase in ARPU due to data services, they are looking at around $4.
He single out poor user experience as the main factor, citing the difficulty of site navigation to access email, a ringtone or timetable information.For example email is barely possible over wireless.
But according to Shapira where operators have adopted optimisation technologies to improve the user experience they have seen a dramatic acceleration in the adoption of services.
“We began working with Vodafone Italia in March 2003,” Shapira said, “and from March to August they have seen a three times growth in the number of users using mobile data, and the MegaBit usage gas increased by sixteen times. So that’s a total of 45 times the mobile data usage over six months.”
Shapira claimed that the operator had attributed a large proportion of the rise to Flash’s NetGain product, although it seems a larger number of adequate devices and the introduction of flat rate pricing also had an impact.
Shapira said that the category of products marketed by Flash, but also by competitors such as CellGlide should be considered a must have in the mobile data world. Other vendors trying to address the packet shaping and optimisation needs of operators include CellGlide and NetSpira.
“When operators tried Wap 2 over 3G it was not much better than Wap 1 over 2.5G. It became apparent that it had nothing to do with the bandwidth, the problem is the function of the mobile user in the network. Operators still need a gateway to solve the puzzle between the services, the network and the user.
“Wireless data protocols don’t really work over wireless. For example the changing bandwidth, packet loss, network delays and changes make it impossible for a content server to send data at the right rate and useability to the user.
“You need sensitivity to the network to use the data effectively, and need a gateway from the wireless to the content world.”
Techniques such as Flash’s NetGain work by manipulating the TCP/IP transport layer, creating a sort of TCP+, “our own technology but working on standard TCP” according to Shapira. This translates protocols like WAP and http into proprietary protocols but without requiring a client on the handset. This manipulation of the content layer can mean creating compression for small screens, or blocking attachments for devices we know can’t support them.
“The worst nightmare for the network people is that next generation services do take off!” Shapira claimed.
“For example, one UMTS cell can support 3-4 video transmissions and nothing else. So there will be a huge problem with capacity once they succeed. The alternative is capacity enhancements — by 2010 Hutchison is looking at network expansion of $14 billion in incremental capability. So they can increase prices, which would have to go up to EUR1.5 per MB, or squeeze the vendors or work on ways to increase the network economics,” he outlined.
The NetGain server resides within the carrier’s core network and as such competes with the intelligent packet core solutions of the main infrastructure vendors.
“Since GGSN/ routing is a commodity,” Shapira said, “vendors need to add functionality, which is why we are partnering very intimately with the leading players. Others can do brute force manipulation, but are then able to do nothing with the manipulated content.”