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How to Double Bandwidth on the Cheap - a core issue for
mobile operators
By Dr Barry Smyth, CTO and cofounder of ChangingWorlds - www.changingworlds.com - (April 01, 2002)
Barry Smyth Explains How to Double Bandwidth on the Cheap
Since 1995, the phenomenal growth of the Internet has created a huge and
widely diverse source of information, services and applications. The desire
to merge this wealth of information with the phone's mobility has been the
driving force behind the mobile Internet. However the mobile Internet is not
the 'Internet made mobile' and never will be.
Mobile operators in Europe have committed over 120 billion euros to buy the
right to use airwave frequencies, to provide the life- changing and business
boosting services promised by the emergence of the mobile Internet. They
need return on investment.
Yet every user's daily experience with the mobile Internet is one of
lengthy, frustrating and failed mobile Internet sessions. This means poor
value for money for the end-user and an experience he is not likely to
repeat.
Clearly, the mobile Internet as epitomized by the first generation of
WAP-enabled phones and mobile portals, has failed to meet user expectations,
resulting in limited take-up, and poor revenue growth for mobile operators.
A combination of factors has been responsible: unreliable early handsets,
limited content, slow connections and mobile portals that were difficult to
use and navigate. Today the first 3 of these issues have largely been solved
(or are about to be) by improved handsets, better content and high-speed
infrastructure such as GPRS. However mobile portal usability remains a key
problem limiting the ease with which users can locate and benefit from
wireless content.
Mobile phones by their very nature cannot offer the same rich user interface
and connectivity as the computer. Limited screen space and reduced memory
are key concerns. But the core usability problem is that the menu-driven
nature of mobile portals, whereby users access content services by
navigating through a series of hierarchical menus, means that users are
spending a significant amount of their time on-line navigating to content.
That this frustrates users and limits the efficiency of mobile information
access should be clear. But the fact that most mobile operators continue to
charge users for their navigation time (as well as for their content time)
simply adds insult to injury.
The result: today the mobile Internet offers users poor value-for-money
Recent studies highlight the scale of this problem and the gross mismatch
between user expectations and mobile Internet realities. For example the
Norman-Nielsen WAP Usability Report indicates that while the average mobile
Internet user expects to be able to access relevant content within 30
seconds, the reality is closer to 150 seconds.
With the current generation of WAP phones, there are two basic types of
navigation steps. The first is the menu select: the user clicks to select a
specific menu option. The second is a menu scroll: the user clicks to scroll
up or down through a series of options. Accordingly, an item of content
within a mobile portal can be uniquely positioned by the sequence of selects
and scrolls needed to access it, and the navigation effort, associated with
this item can be simply modelled as click-distance, the number of these
selects and scrolls.
Given that this menu navigation effort is a major stumbling block for the
Mobile Internet, the aim of all mobile operators should be to reduce
click-distance to improve mobile portal usability. Personalization
techniques for adapting the navigation structure of a mobile portal can
reduce click-distance and thus radically reduce navigation effort and
improve portal usability. An intelligent personalized navigation solution
that automatically reorders the menu options of a mobile portal to suit each
individual user would radically reduce mobile portal click-distance on a
user-by-user basis. This enables the user to get to the information he wants
faster. The result: Increased usage of the Mobile Internet and duration of
sessions online.
Also by cutting navigation time in half, bandwidth can be effectively
doubled without a major infrastructure investment. Moreover, this bandwidth
doubling can be achieved on top of future bandwidth increases and as
operators move to faster GPRS systems.This would clearly enhance the revenue
opportunities for operators, not only for today's airtime based charging
models but also for tomorrow's content-based charging models.
As mobile operators attempt to shift from pure airtime-based charging models
(where navigation time is charged at standard rates) to content-based
charging models (where navigation time is not charged for, or charged at a
reduced rate), personalized navigation can ensure that revenue levels are
maximized by increasing content time in favour of reduced navigation times.
At the same time, network resources that would have been utilized in the
service of navigation can be more profitably re-deployed in the service of
content.
From an end-user point of view the result is a mobile portal that is
personalized, easier to use and that delivers superior value for money. This
in turn leads to increased usage of the Mobile Internet and duration of
Mobile Internet sessions. Crucially, this means improved incremental revenue
opportunities for mobile operators alongside improved user loyalty and
reduced churn.
About the Author:
Dr Barry Smyth is the Chief Technical Officer of ChangingWorlds, an advanced
personalization technology company based in Dublin, Ireland. ChangingWorlds
delivers advanced personalization technologies that automatically match
online content, products and services with the right users and customers, at
the right time, every time. ChangingWorlds recognise the unique challenges
faced by players in the Mobile, Digital TV and Internet markets and have
developed personalization solutions specifically for these domains.
Point of Contact
Kathrina Gallogly
Marketing Executive - ChangingWorlds
Phone: +353-1-4359805
Fax: +353-1-4359810
Mobile: +353-87-4158513
Mail: kathrina.gallogly@changingworlds.com
Web: www.changingworlds.com
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