For mobile broadband, it’s the user that counts

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reader Forum section. In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but maintain some editorial control so as to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at: dmeyer@ardenmediaco.com or tford@ardenmediaco.com.
Everyday we read of one wireless network failing, another succeeding, municipal Wi-Fi is “in,” and then it’s “out.” The key to successful wireless networks, whether municipal Wi-Fi, enterprise wireless networks, WiMAX or any flavor of wireless, is the task of keeping the end user happy. Often overlooked, managing the end-user experience is one of the deciding factors for success or failure of a mobile broadband network.
Understand thy user
Keeping an eye on how your users are utilizing the network will put you in the driver’s seat of maintaining steady growth. An excellent case study of this in action is the city of Lompoc, California. Lompoc was one of the earliest test beds for municipal Wi-Fi. When they launched their “hotspot in a box” solution, it offered limited growth possibilities, poor control of the end-user bandwidth allocation and made it impossible for the IT department to manage the data traffic. How were people using the service? What services could be scaled back, or needed to be ramped up? Without the ability to address these important questions, LompocNet saw a rapid decline in users. Once they switched to a new platform that allowed them to tailor the service to the way users needed it, and that supported growth, paying users more than doubled in the first three months of the new service.
Understanding usage is also a big part of the success for large-scale wireless installations, especially if you have multiple types of hotpots with varied bandwidth allocations and/or usage demographics. While some locations need Wi-Fi access to be available 24/7, others can be open for a limited number of hours a day, reflecting the opening hours of the specific venue. Additionally, some locations will need more bandwidth than others. This must all be flexible – if the need to throttle down, or increase service arises, it must be possible to make this change immediately as a result of real-time information coming in from usage reports and needs to be on an individual, per-subscriber basis. Imagine the frustration of having a public hotspot available, and popular, but with not enough bandwidth available. The result would be a decline in use, which may be misinterpreted as “Well maybe they don’t want Wi-Fi here anymore.” The opposite would be true.
Manage bandwidth appropriately
A next-generation wireless service management system with a purpose-built access controller can optimize and control the bandwidth utilization for each individual hotspot to deliver the bandwidth to the end user as was promised when signing up for the service. Equally important is to apply the “golden 80/20” rule to bandwidth usage: many times 20% of the users – or fewer – are consuming 80% of the available bandwidth. Control features such as automatic bandwidth balancing where all available bandwidth is evenly distributed among the active end-user sessions at that specific moment, but allows for peaks at times when fewer people are actively using the Internet, will help the service provider to deliver a good end-user experience for all users.
Another automatic bandwidth control feature that is popular among many operators is the dynamic bandwidth throttling functions. These enable services that automatically throttle down bandwidth as the data allowance is consumed.
Optimizing the end-user experience with multi-wireless options
Sometimes it’s just not enough to manage the available bandwidth at the different locations. Broadband congestion is becoming a big problem, since most devices will soon be connected to the Internet in one way or the other. Many service providers are starting to offload their mobile broadband data to Wi-Fi and WiMAX to free up this congestion and give their subscribers a boost in data speeds. The current offering by the wireless carriers using cellular technologies is a far cry from the speeds found in many new devices (for Wi-Fi, 802.11n). Furthermore, many fixed broadband service providers have a very high capacity core and backbone network just waiting to connect to the faster wireless end-points that Wi-Fi and WiMAX can offer.
In Norway, the operator Telenor is using its Wi-Fi hotspot network as an offload vehicle for cellular data services. This will become a more and more common scenario as the 3G networks in Europe (as well as in the U.S.) are increasingly becoming congested with traffic. What’s happening is that many operators are beginning to leverage smart clients to allow subscribers to seamlessly roam between 3G and Wi-Fi/WiMAX, and automatically select the network that can offer the most cost-effective delivery of the best possible user experience.
Roaming and logon need to be simple
That seamless roaming capability, combined with simplified logon, is critical to keeping subscribers happy. The number of wireless broadband networks is increasing, and whether it is WiMAX, Wi-Fi, LTE or cellular, consumers must be able to switch from network to network without skipping a beat. Furthermore, there is a need to avoid the hassle of repeated logons, which becomes apparent when the user traverses between networks when moving from one location to another.
Parting with money – make it painless
When billing is complicated, as can be the case when integrating wireless broadband service into an overall package with, say, cellular, it’s a chance for subscribers to look for an easier solution. A key aspect with offloading to Wi-Fi is to make sure that the subscriber’s identity, service profile and end-user experience is handled consistently while traversing between networks of different wireless technologies and provides the operator with sufficient information of usage in both networks to cater to the ability to ensure a high service level. Tight integration with existing billing systems can ensure a simplified process.
Partnerships with other service providers and wireless network operators can address automatic roaming and ensure that Quality of Service is maintained for their subscribers while in other networks. Offering a mix of payment alternatives – via SMS, pre-paid, loyalty programs, credit cards, etc. – also enhances the customer experience for nomadic users still not set up for automatic roaming.
Additionally, for those operating broadband networks of different access technologies, multi-access support from the same subscriber management system is important to get service transparency when roaming between different access technologies such as cable, WiMAX and Wi-Fi.
Nothing impacts service provider’s profitability more than a well-managed user experience. With the right mechanisms in place operators can achieve new heights with customer satisfaction and low churn, which ultimately generates revenue.