Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Smartphones Bandwidth Efficiency

       
Sprint announced yesterday that it "will increase its postpaid rates by applying a $10 per month Premium Data add-on charge to activations of smartphones beginning Jan. 30. The charge will assist Sprint in offering simple and affordable unlimited plans for its customers while maintaining a wireless network able to meet the growing appetite for a richer mobile experience. Subscribers with smartphones will still receive the best value in wireless, including the Any Mobile, Anytime feature offered nationwide only by Sprint". 
  
See the carrier's press release "Smartphones Drive Wireless Data Explosion" - hereHowever - are all smartphone alike? Maybe not. RIM thinks they are better.
 
While I usually cover network based solutions that help carriers manage bandwidth and QoE, there are obviously some ways for the end-user device's software to help achieving better QoE and reduce network load.

An article by Deon Liebenberg (picture), regional director for Sub Sahara Africa at Research In Motion (RIM) covers "the need for more efficient utilisation of network bandwidth" and how the[ir] smartphone o/s and applications may help achieving higher efficiency.

See "Efficient smartphones key to a strong mobile user experience" - here.

"A February 2010 report from Rysavy Research[5] highlights how integral efficiency is to the BlackBerry solution. From network bandwidth conservation to battery life conservation, this report found that only the BlackBerry platform operates the concept of “just-in-time data”, whereby only as many bits as required are pulled down: this helps to make mobile email efficient for carriers, without impacting the end-user experience ... In addition, competitive tests conducted as part of this research illustrated that the BlackBerry platform uses one-third of data consumed by competitive browsers when surfing popular mobile websites. This represents a substantial saving in network traffic and lower costs for users on usage-based data plans"

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