Peggy Anne Salz of bnetTV interviewed Joel Brand, Bytemobile vice president of Product Management, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on February 16, 2010. In this video clip from the show floor, Brand discusses ways for network operators to increase uptake of existing data plans and intelligently roll out new data plans, while alleviating network congestion and associated pressure on profit margins.
Bytemobile released its first-quarter 2010 Mobile Minute Metrics report today. The report anonymously sources the aggregate data traffic in a global cross-section of Bytemobile customers’ wireless networks and provides insight into the current state of the mobile ecosystem.
Analysis of various 3G networks indicates that the data traffic mix is consistent across geographies – with video as the dominant form of traffic.
Other key data from the report:
●Video is the dominant form of laptop-generated wireless traffic. However, automatic software updates consume 10% of the total laptop-generated volume in networks.
●A minority of mobile data users consume the majority of network bandwidth – with 10% generating approximately 85% of total traffic.
●Consistent with 4Q 2009, internet videos average approximately five minutes in length, but users watch them for an average of less than 60 seconds.
●Generally, the majority of mobile videos are downloaded by more than one user, with 36% of videos downloaded up to 100 times and 6% of videos downloaded 1,000 times or more.
1Q 2010 Mobile Minute Metrics – Interactive Presentation
Image courtesy of RonAlmog under Creative Commons Attribution License.
Bytemobile decided to take a look at event-driven mobile data usage. What could be a better case study than last Sunday’s Super Bowl XLIV, which was watched live by more than 106 million people.
We set out to investigate if there was a noticeable surge in demand for Super Bowl-related mobile websites such as nfl.com, espn.com, foxsports.com, and cbssports.com.
Analysis of a cross-section of 3G networks in Bytemobile’s U.S. customer base indicated that there was a substantial increase in sports-related applications usage and resulting mobile data traffic around the Super Bowl.
When you consider that a typical day consists of billions of network transactions or mobile data requests, the surge in Super Bowl-related traffic becomes even more significant.
Some of our findings:
● The average increase in transactions resulting from sports-related data traffic on operators’ networks was 41%.
● While the total number of transactions on operators’ portals increased by an average of 10% on Super Bowl Sunday, transactions on operators’ sports portals decreased overall.
● Transactions on NFL.com increased by an average of 3.7 times.
● Transactions to Fox Sports increased by an average of 3.5 times.
● CBS Sports – the official sponsor of this year’s Super Bowl – generated approximately 3.5 times the transactions than it does on a regular day.
Mobile Minute kicked off the new year and the new decade with its first webinar – “Next-Gen Data Services: Adding Value to Traffic” – on February 4. You can access a full replay of the webinar here and on the Mobile Minute page of our website.
The event’s approximately 460 registrants came from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America, the U.S., and Canada. Attendees represented a broad cross-section of wireless network operators and other participants in the mobile ecosystem.
FierceWireless Editor Phil Goldstein moderated a panel consisting of three speakers: Fabio Mungo, chief technology officer of Accenture Mobility Operated Services; Scott Lane, director of 4G Product Marketing at Sprint; and Joel Brand, vice president of Product Management at Bytemobile.
Fabio Mungo led off the discussion with an overview of the mobility market, its drivers and the impact of those drivers. He characterized it as a ‘market of mass niches’ rather than a mass market per se, indicating that entertainment and data products would drive the U.S. segment to $200 billion in 2010. Mungo cited the interconnection among multiple devices and applications as a key cause and effect of the ‘always connected lifestyle’. He added that low-cost devices and ubiquitous connectivity will continue to spawn a wealth of new mobile applications and business models.
Scott Lane cited the magnitude of the mobile data revolution as comparable with – or potentially even greater than – the PC and internet revolutions that had preceded it. From the carrier’s perspective, the three critical elements for success are: 1) a network to process and deliver the data traffic; 2) spectrum to provide ample capacity for the network; and 3) devices to deliver value to the consumer. Lane also discussed the details of Sprint’s 4G network build-out based on WiMax technology.
Joel Brand focused his presentation on mobile data rate plans of the future, which should balance the respective needs of consumers, carriers and content providers. He cited the impact of flat-rate pricing on the data traffic explosion and subsequent evaporation of data revenue in proportion to volume, as well as the side effect of network resource monopolization by a small percentage of users. The challenge for carriers is to map rate plans to user needs and preferences and to communicate with their customers in order to build value over time. Brand closed with a brief overview of Bytemobile’s WebGate™ Service, which provides carriers with numerous capabilities to meet this challenge.
The webinar concluded with a robust question-and-answer session in which Mungo, Lane and Brand fielded inquiries ranging from ‘Is it necessary to proxy all traffic through a service delivery platform in order to add value?’ (no) to ‘What specific mobile data applications will generate more revenue in the next four to five years?’ (video). Also, the following poll question was posed to the participants and yielded an interesting mix of responses:
Other Mobile Minute events are being planned for the coming months. We will cover these events on our blog and website as part of our ongoing efforts to provide thought leadership and consultative education to the rapidly evolving mobile internet space.
