Device awareness is being talked about more and more amongst service providers today, particularly by those offering mobile data. What is it? Similar to location awareness, device awareness is visibility into what devices are on the network, what impact they are having on network resources and at what times of the day. Visibility to this data allows service providers to better understand how devices are impacting the network and offers the opportunity to better manage capex and opex while continuing to maintain a high quality of experience for their subscribers.

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Gitex Technology Week in Dubai, Oct 17-21, 2010

Last week’s Gitex Technology Week 2010 marked a special occasion.  Having started in 1981, the tradeshow celebrated its 30th year.  In 1981, the show had 3000 visitors and by contrast, 3500 suppliers participated in this year’s show.

To see how far we’ve come and to put things in perspective, let’s revisit technology available in the 50’s and 80’s:

• Just a few years before the 50’s, Thomas J. Watson, president of IBM, predicted that there would be a world market for maybe five computers.
• Not too long before 1980, companies at technology trade shows were still promoting the best punch-card available (durable, yet light weight), while the booth next door was touting their latest slide-ruler.
• In the early 80’s, Bill Gates thought that 640KB memory should be enough for anyone, yet he envisioned a computer on every desk and in every home.
• In the 90’s, we connected to the Internet using dial-up modems over voice circuits.
• Today, we use the Internet to carry voice and in our Fall 2010 Global Internet Phenomenon study, real-time entertainment and social networking showed substantial growth on mobile networks. Read the rest of this entry »

Internet users simply want, or arguably expect, their Internet to work anywhere and always, whether over a wire, or over the air.  They also want to use their favourite applications on the device of their choice.  Today’s release of our Fall 2010 Global Internet Phenomenon study points to this increased demand on Internet capabilities from both fixed and mobile environments.  For instance, at peak times in North America, real-time entertainment is the largest contributor to data consumption on both fixed (43% of peak traffic) and mobile access networks (41%).

In other words, “Whenever, Wherever, However”, reflects the consumer’s growing lack of distinction between wireless and fixed Internet usage.   For this very reason, for the first time we have compared the behaviours of fixed and mobile-data users together in one report.

What this means for service providers is that now, more than ever, predictive modeling, device awareness and personalized service tiers are critical to the proper management of both fixed and mobile-data networks in order to ensure their subscribers the best possible experience.
 
Fast Facts:

• In the United States, Netflix represents more than 20 percent of downstream traffic during peak times and is heaviest between 8-10 p.m.
• Real-time entertainment is unquestionably the dominant driver of data consumption on fixed and mobile networks worldwide, and is still growing substantially; up to 43% of total Internet traffic is real-time entertainment, up significantly from past studies.
• Social networking services like Facebook, continue to be a significant and growing proportion of mobile Internet traffic; in eight months the percentage of mobile traffic in Latin America attribute to social networking almost doubled, and in North America it increased by 33%.
• There is a wide variation between the average amount of time per month Internet connections are active;  for instance, in North America fixed connections are active for about 3 hours per day, whereas in Asia-Pacific fixed connections are active 5.5 hours per day.

For more information, please download the full report , or visit us for a personal overview of the finding in your region: Cable Tec Expo (New Orleans, Oct 20-22) Broadband World Forum (Paris, Oct 26-28)

Averages are tricky things – they can yield insight but they can also obscure important observations.  Consider an average human: two arms, two legs, two eyes, etc. - but neither male nor female.  Averages are fine when focused on characteristics that exist along a spectrum, but they break down when there are discrete (and very different) characteristics.

Consider an average Internet user, henceforth known as the “Average Subscriber”.  Not only does this Average Subscriber fall prey to the same issues as the average human, but he or she (he and she?) accesses the Internet on some hybrid of a fixed and mobile connection, for 24 hours a day (although there is a drop-off overnight), visits every single website (some more than others) and uses every single application, service, and protocol available.  From a marketing perspective, this information is mildly interesting but not all that useful.

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