Mobile Services – Three Technologies and How to Monitor Them

When a mobile user accesses a handset for interactive mobile data services, the action will utilize one of three services: SMS, mobile Internet or streaming video. Users spoiled by high-definition TV and fast Internet access, will expect instant service, ease of use, and high-quality images.

As a mobile service provider, how do you ensure the quality of the experience you provide? One of the best ways is to utilize sophisticated monitoring technologies to stay on top of what your users are seeing on their handsets.

Monitoring requires taking three critical measurements:

• Response Time: average time in seconds to complete the mobile transaction;
• Success Rate: percentage of time a successful mobile transaction was completed;
• Download Speed: average speed, in bytes per second, at which the mobile transaction was completed.

Two monitoring techniques are available, tests using real handsets and tests using virtual handsets, also called probes. Each has specific activities at which it excels.

SMS

SMS (Short Message Service) is the cash cow of mobile communications. Besides being the largest form of personal communication, SMS is used by service providers from American Idol to JP Morgan to provide opportunities for user interaction using this popular technology. Service providers use SMS to allow users to request data such as weather forecasts (Weathercaster), personal financial information (Chase), stock prices (Charles Schwab) and account balances (American Express). Leading entertainment companies such as mobZilla, use SMS to provide alerts and information about special events. As businesses rely on SMS to send and receive queries hundreds of thousands of times a day, message outage can mean significant revenue loss. End-users who experience slow service or failed downloads while trying to transfer funds or execute a stock transaction may not be very forgiving.

In the SMS market, service providers depend on SMS aggregators such as VeriSign, Sybase and mBlox to communicate with users anywhere in the world. Probes can send short code messages, receive a response and validate content, and measure the round trip time. This enables them to establish a “perceived performance” level for live SMS messages and identify a pattern of normal service behavior. In addition, it enables service providers to see how carrier networks rank according to performance and availability, as well as validating Service Level Agreements for latency and success rate.

Equally, when SMS is used to push information from a mobile Internet provider, probes are capable of executing and measuring complete WAP (wireless application protocol) to SMS cycles and providing similar information.

Mobile Internet

Mobile site owners can also take advantage of probes to collect the information required to measure performance/availability over time, by market area, and by carrier of their properties over the mobile Internet. Probes can be programmed to test mobile site performance at regular intervals from multiple locations to provide an accurate picture of user experience when browsing from various carriers, such as Cingular and Verizon. Statistics from probes can identify errors by type and frequency and help mobile site providers home in on the cause of transaction and content errors.

The Internet has matured to the point where it is fairly stable. Last week’s measurements for consistency and Quality of Service provide a good yardstick for next week, except at peak times such as the end-of-the year on-line retail season and tax deadlines. However, the speed and availability of a mobile network change on a daily basis. It is unwise to assume that Web and mobile experiences will be identical from week to week.

There is a perception in the mobile community that if you can’t control the service provider, why bother to monitor? The answer is: knowledge is power. Monitoring mobile Internet’s performance on various carriers provides valuable information on how to fine-tune the experience. The provider becomes aware of the source of complaints from a particular market area and can be better prepared to respond. In addition, in the highly competitive mobile Internet market, it is good to be able to compare your mobile sites’ performance on various browsing sites with prominent mobile services providers such as E-Bay, Yahoo, and American Express. Operations, design and marketing teams aiming to continue to improve their applications and services could do worse than use industry leaders’ data as their targets.

Video and TV

When monitoring the growing area of providing video clips and live TV over mobile handsets, the preferred methodology is testing with a real handset. Using real handsets deployed in multiple markets and connected to multiple networks, is the best way to understand the end user experience. Whether the end user is enjoying movies from YouTube or streaming live video of NASCAR races on Sprint TV, only real handsets running pre-programmed scripts will allow accurate measurement to answer questions such as:

• Did the first image show up when the download request was made?
• How long was the delay for an end user to start watching the requested motion sequence?
• Did the video stream freeze due to poorly timed buffering?

As with SMS, there are aggregators such as MobiTV that provide most of the content that various video and TV services provide, and the wise provider stays regularly informed on how his users are perceiving overall Quality of Service, how various streaming servers are performing, and the variances in networks and markets.

Mobile services are on a steep learning curve with new ideas emerging almost daily. In a service environment with a seemingly unending mix of handsets, networks and carriers, as well as third-party content and backend technology suppliers, regular and sophisticated monitoring of the end user experience can mean the difference between success and failure in the market.

Apple Broke the Internet – New Blog

If you tried to log on to watch Steve Job’s keynote at MacWorld, you may have been disappointed. Tony Perez comments on his own experience, and the conclusions he draws in “Apple Broke the Internet.”

Super Bowl Effect: Mobile Access Uneventful

With increased user interest in Web and mobile access for news and entertainment, Keynote was curious to see the impact of the US fascination with the Super Bowl on mobile access. Keynote monitored the top mobile sports sites – ESPN, Fox, CBS and Yahoo Sports. All four sites showed no impact on availability or performance before, during or after the game.

A question that Keynote will seek to analyze with continued Super Bowl monitoring is the reason why. Is watching the Super Bowl a social event where most people prefer to gather around a larger screen to watch the game together? Is the mobile population less interested in the Super Bowl than the US population as a whole?

Steven Siegel, vice president for brand solutions at HipCricket, a mobile-marketing agency, was quoted in the “New York Times” as saying he was disappointed there were “not as many examples of mobile programs as I would have liked to see”. It’s a new world. We’ll keep watching and report back next year.

Informative Trade Shows – Where to Go to See What’s New in Mobile and Web Performance

The following trade shows provide information on the evolving mobile Internet and Web markets. If you choose to come to the show, we hope you will drop by the Keynote booth so we can say hello.

CTIA Wireless
April 1-3, 2008 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Whether in broadband convergence, enterprise, advertising, social networking or entertainment, CTIA Wireless will have something for you. See Keynote in booth 5275. To get a free exhibit pass ($150 value), please complete registration by March 14th (promo code: WIRE08).

More on CTIA Wireless

Web 2.0 Expo
April 23-25, 2008 at Moscone Convention Center, West Building, San Francisco.

Web 2.0 Expo is specifically designed to help teach Web 2.0 techniques and best practices to people directly involved in the design, development, engineering, marketing, and business of second-generation Internet technology. Web 2.0 Expo features in-depth profiles of the business models, development frameworks, Web operations infrastructure, design strategies, and Internet marketing that are changing the world as we know it. See Keynote in booth 300.