Apps that play nicely on the network may get special treatment and promotion from operators, who in turn can tune their network to play nicely for the apps. This offers more of a partnership, and dual-upside for the apps guys and the mobile operators, than the combative "Google tax" messaging we see from some of the major European operators (oh OK, then, from TIM and FT/Orange).
But the issue is, how can operators and developers combine to specify how different apps on different devices work on the network, what are the optimal settings for both user experience and to reduce things like signalling load?
Huawei has launched a collection of tools that are designed to let operators assess the performance of applications in terms of their impact on network performance, and user experience.
The vendor said its Apps Insider solution will enable mobile operators to reassign network resources for applications, and developers to improve the efficiency of their applications. The Apps Insider assesses user experience, power consumption, signaling consumption, traffic consumption and connection consumption of applications in terms of multi-radio (UMTS/LTE/Wi-Fi) capability, privacy and security.
What Huawei is offering is the process that builds a profile of apps, ranks their performance, and produces a series of recommendations for how developers and operators should optimise apps and networks for the best user experience. Huawei says that it will regularly release a network friendliness ranking of applications and provide suggestions for optimising the network friendliness of applications.
Speaking of OTT co-operation, it would be ludicrously negative to report that the GSMA has announced that a quarter of all interoperability tests at its recent round of RCS-e tests in Spain failed. On the upside, 75% of tests were succesful. Interpretation here depends if you are a glass quarter empty or three quarters full sort of person, and what sort of success rate you expected to see in the first place.
The five week test fest focused on two main work streams, a technical stream to resolve issues that had been identified during testing and a product one to improve the user interface and user experience.
A GSMA statement said that the technical work stream confirmed a high level of interoperability between different RCS devices and clients, as well as to the three Spanish networks.
An emotional sounding Adolfo Gutiérrez Ocaña, from Telefonica said, "Such activities demonstrate the close human link between manufacturers and operators." So that's what they get up to at these events!
Whilst we're looking at upsides, there was a small piece of good news for RIM, which announced that it had got a judge to overturn a jury's recent verdict and damages award for supposed patent infringement of MDM vendor Mformation. The downside for Mformation is that it is now left with a legal bill and no case to take forward against RIM. It cannot appeal the latest decision without a new trials.
By the way, still no major network fails at the Olympics. I had one PR contact me at the start of the week offering an opinion piece on the major network failings at the games, and what operators could have done to stop them. That's interesting, I thought, what failings? Perhaps I had a story. But back came the reply, "Have there not been failings? I thought there had..er..let me check and come back to you." Since then, nothing.
So, we are nearly through The Games, then, and still no major mobile network issues reported around the Games venues. I tested the Games mobile experience out for myself at the Olympic Park on one of the busiest days of the games, with cyclng, athletics, swimming, hockey, water polo and handball all going off – there must have been a couple of hundred thousand people at least in the Park. I walked through the park with a steady HSPA signal quickly updating full desktop web pages. WiFi was fine too, and delivered video of a major swimming final whilst I was sitting in a large crowd.
Capacity in Central London is still its dear old self, however. I had one American visitor complain that obviously the increased tourist traffic had really hit mobile broadband coverage hard. "Are you kidding?," I said, "I'm afraid this is normal for London". Maybe BT and O2 can move all the WiFi and small cells to the West End and the City after the Games. Or even better…the slogan of the Games is "Inspire a Generation", perhaps we can adapt that to "Inspire a Fourth Generation"?
Keith Dyer
Editor
Mobile Europe