Posts Tagged ‘3G capacity’
Mobile TV: rise of the BBC’s iPlayer on 3G networks
The BBC’s iPlayer has driven substantial traffic growth in fixed Internet networks in the UK. However, its impact has been artificially constrained on mobile networks by the restriction that iPlayer could only be viewed on mobile devices via a WiFi connection. This week, an update to the BBC’s iPlayer application on Apple iPhones and iPads finally allows iPlayer content to stream across 3G networks.
In the last few years, there has been a great deal of hype about mobile TV. At the peak of this hype, mobile TV was being seen by many in the wireless industry as the killer application for mobile phones. Sadly, many within the industry had the wrong idea – believing that mobile users would simply demand live versions of terrestrial TV channels, and a great deal of attention was directed to mobile TV broadcasting technologies, such as DVB-H, which offered the potential of transmitting a relatively large number of live TV channels to mobile devices.
Very few people seemed to realise that the whole nature of TV viewing was changing, and that the needs of mobile users were very different from people relaxing in front of their living-room TVs at home. The adoption of personal video recorders (on satellite, cable and terrestrial TV platforms) has empowered many TV viewers, by separating TV consumption from the TV schedules. At last, people can watch their favourite programmes whenever they want to, rather than having to watch them at the time they are transmitted.
Alongside the adoption of PVRs, we have also seen the rapid adoption of online TV services such as the BBC’s iPlayer. The BBC iPlayer went live (in its non-beta form) in December 2007 – four years ago. For the first time, people could view (and listen to) any programme from the complete range of the BBC’s TV and radio programmes that had been transmitted in the previous seven days.
iPlayer quickly had a substantial impact on fixed Internet networks and ISPs. By June 2008 (only six months after launch), iPlayer accounted for about 5% of all UK Internet traffic, and achieved about five million page views per day. Many ISPs complained that iPlayer was placing too much strain on their networks and that the BBC should contribute to the cost of providing increased capacity. By the end of its first year, 180 million programmes had been viewed.
By September 2011, the number of monthly requests for TV and radio programmes reached 153 million, with an average of 1.7 million iPlayer users per day. On average, each user of TV on iPlayer now streams over an hour of TV content per week. Each user of radio streams over two hours of radio content per week.
iPlayer has now seen considerable expansion beyond PC-based delivery, and versions of iPlayer have been made available on a raft of different devices and platforms, including:
- Virgin Media’s cable video-on-demand service
- Freesat digital satellite set-top boxes
- Freeview digital terrestrial set-top boxes
- Wii, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 games consoles
- the Apple iPhone and iPad
- Android mobile devices
- a range of other mobile devices, from Nokia, BlackBerry, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.
Despite the availability of iPlayer on a number of mobile devices, its use has been artificially constrained by only allowing content to be streamed via a WiFi connection. So, mobile users have not been able to access iPlayer content via 3G networks. We have long reported that mobile TV and radio services are extremely network intensive, and represent the most challenging services to support for mobile network operators.
While the avoidance of iPlayer traffic on 3G networks has provided respite for mobile network operators concerned about the limited capacities of their networks, such service restriction has also limited the perceived value of mobile Internet services. Increasingly, users expect the services they use on fixed Internet platforms to be freely available on mobile platforms, so it was only a matter of time before iPlayer arrived on 3G networks.
Now that UK mobile network operators have substantially reduced data allowances, they may feel that higher pricing and low data limits are sufficient safeguards to prevent high usage, allowing them to support a less constrained service mix.
In the absence of LTE networks in the UK until 2013 or 2014 (due to much-reported delays to spectrum auctions), it remains to be seen if 3G operators can strike the right balance between controlling network usage and providing a compelling mobile Internet proposition to users. I suspect that many users will be surprised by the speed at which their monthly usage allocation is gobbled up by iPlayer. Furthermore, many may be disappointed by the quality and reliability of the iPlayer service via today’s 3G networks. Extensive deployment of LTE cannot come quickly enough, although Ofcom does not anticipate wide availability of LTE coverage until 2015.
I believe that the launch of iPlayer on 3G networks will profoundly shape the future of mobile networks in the UK, even more than iPlayer has shaped the future of fixed Internet networks. More than any other service, end user expectations for iPlayer usage, performance and reliability will truly set the bar by which users judge their operators. For mobile network operators and mobile users, there’s no going back!
About the author:
Mark Heath, of telecom consultancy company Unwired Insight, provides in-depth telecom analysis of global mobile markets. Mark has authored more than 40 reports on key issues in the wireless telecommunications industry.
Ofcom report to Government could fall at first hurdle
In his wireless blog, Mark Heath expresses his concerns at Ofcom’s plans for a statutory report to the UK Government on the UK’s communication infrastructure.
The UK Government’s Digital Economy Act 2010 gave Ofcom a new duty to provide a report to the Secretary of State every three years on the state of the UK’s communications infrastructure. This is long overdue. While I hope that this will become a useful exercise, Ofcom’s recent announcement of its approach gives me some concern.
The new Digital Economy Act requires Ofcom to report on various aspects of networks and services, including coverage, capacity, reliability, resilience and the extent to which networks are shared, or services are made available on a wholesale basis. Ofcom is also required to report on the use of spectrum and to provide international comparisons. Ofcom is due to deliver its first report to the Secretary of State by 7th August 2011.
While there are various sources of information on the services offered by mobile network operators and their pricing, it is almost impossible to find reliable information on aspects such as 3G/HSPA coverage and network capacity. As we have discussed many times in our blog, 3G/HSPA coverage is substantially worse than 2G coverage for all UK operators, and there are major challenges over network capacity, with rapid take-up of smartphones and mobile broadband services. Accurate, independent assessment of coverage and capacity levels could not come at a better time.
Even where information, such as coverage maps, is available from mobile operators, different assumptions made by each operator and inaccuracies of radio planning tools makes an accurate comparison impossible. For example, I have just had to cancel mobile phone contracts with 3 for all members of my family after a dramatic degradation in coverage in my local area and home. Amusingly, I have had several letters and phone calls informing me that the coverage is in fact excellent (no doubt because a radio planning tool says so). If similar errors are accumulated over the entire country then coverage metrics may be highly misleading.
Thankfully, Ofcom has stated that it will not be using coverage data obtained directly from mobile network operators. Instead, it intends to use modelled data available from industry associations, such as the GSMA. This will no doubt keep costs down compared with undertaking its own extensive measurements. However, as the sources of such data, and the assumptions behind them, are not clear, this methodology may be flawed. If the results are not robust, it will not take long for the mobile operators to develop compelling arguments for why they are not valid.
Ofcom is also required to report on the capacity of UK networks and here I have even greater concerns. At present, there is no reliable public information on whether mobile networks have sufficient capacity and whether their services are being affected by a lack of capacity. So, the principle of an independent assessment of network capacity is welcome. However, Ofcom’s discussion on how it will do this is extremely vague and gives me little confidence. For example, Ofcom talks about using network demand as a proxy for network capacity, which is highly confusing.
No doubt we will have to await the first publication, on the 7th August, to see the real extent of these new reports. I hope that this potentially valuable exercise does not fall at the first hurdle.
About the author:
Mark Heath, of telecom consultancy company Unwired Insight, provides in-depth telecom analysis. Mark has authored more than 40 reports in the wireless telecommunications industry.
3G capacity shrinks as users migrate from GSM networks
In his wireless blog, Mark Heath, of Unwired Insight, explains how available 3G capacity per device is falling.
As mobile users increasingly migrate from 2/2.5G to 3G networks, the available 3G network capacity is being shared among a greater number of users. By 2014, a typical incumbent mobile network operator would see its 3G capacity per device shrink to a quarter of its 2008 level if it made no technology upgrades. Just to stand still and maintain current levels of network capacity per device, mobile network operators would have to upgrade from HSPA to HSPA+ and/orLTE.
Following the launch of 3G services by operators, the total available 3G network capacity had to be shared among a relatively small number of users, resulting in a relatively large capacity per user. This is why 3G operators were initially unconcerned about the take-up of mobile broadband services, even though they can consume large amounts of network capacity (in excess of 1GB per user).
However, the continued migration of customers from 2/2.5G to 3G services, together with the ongoing increase in overall cellular device penetration, will cause network capacity per 3G device to shrink dramatically for a given technology.
To demonstrate this effect, let’s take a typical incumbent 3G operator in Western Europe with 20 million customers (split between 2G and 3G networks), 15 000 3G base station sectors and 2 x 10MHz of 3G spectrum. With a relatively small number of 3G devices initially, this operator’s network could support an average traffic level of 352MB per month per device if it used HSPA technology in 2008. However, as users migrate from 2/2.5G to 3G services, this figure falls below 80MB per month per device by 2014 (less than a quarter of its level in 2008).
What makes this fall in capacity per device even more problematic for mobile operators is that the usage per device is increasing strongly, and will continue to do so as smartphones and broadband dongles become a larger proportion of the 3G devices in use.
About the author:
Mark Heath, of telecom consultancy company Unwired Insight, provides in-depth telecom analysis. Mark has authored more than 40 reports in the wireless telecommunications industry.
