Smartphone devices increasingly difficult to support, says Vodafone

Communications between smartphone manufacturers and mobile operators needs to improve

Smartphone use on the Vodafone network will move from 20 per cent of devices last year to one in two devices in 2011, according to Vodafone UK chief technology officer Jeni Mundy, in conversation with Computing yesterday.

Mundi's remarks highlight the pressure faced by mobile operator networks to deal with the projected increase in smartphone ownership over the next few years.

She explained that newer smartphones such as the iPhone were introducing a much higher level of signalling overhead, where the product is continually communicating with the network even when there is no user activity.

This makes it difficult for operators to capacity plan within a network and means that even when requests for network data transfer have been factored into creating the right dimensions with regard to processor loads, the network can still struggle to cope.

"This is a problem that mobile network operators did not have to worry about in the past," said Mundy.

American operator AT&T suffered from a lack of capacity planning during the iPhone rollout in New York City last Christmas.

AT&T halted iPhone sales in the city briefly because of network performance problems owing to iPhone users' data downloads.

In June UK mobile operator O2 had to scrap its unlimited data plans for users, because it said a small number of smartphone users were using 36 per cent of the mobile broadband bandwidth available.

"We work closely with device manufacturers to try to make sure their devices work optimally on our network," said Mundy.

Asked if Apple chief executive Steve Jobs listened to Vodafone [with respect to device interaction with Vodafone's network], Mundy said: "I don't know – but we can live in hope."