With bandwidth, size does matter

Mobile data service providers offering WAP, GSM, GPRS, HSCSD and 3G connections deliberately seem to be playing down the significance of data rates, but anybody who has worked in data networking knows that bandwidth is everything.

To be fair to the service providers, the metrics used for wired data networking cannot be applied to a cellular world, where network performance fluctuates and coverage is full of dead spots, black spots and other areas that mobile signals fail to reach. This uncertainty would simply not be tolerated in a wired environment.

But the inability to guarantee even a minimum data rate does not justify the mobile operators' claim that subscribers don't care about bandwidth or technology, only about the services, such as email and internet and intranet access, that technology enables.

This argument may be true in some respects, but it is also designed to deflect attention away from the failure to guarantee reliable data transmission.

This strategy is akin to a train company deciding to abolish the timetable so that performance can no longer be measured.

Whatever their understanding of technology may be, potential subscribers to mobile data services are sharp enough to know that none of the services they sign up for will be worthwhile unless the network provides sufficient bandwidth to make them usable.

So if those of a more technical mind do tend to bang on about data rates, it is for a good reason and not down to some pathological obsession with numbers.

A good example can be found in the recent assertion, made separately by both Vodafone and T-Mobile, that a 3G subscriber who has a 3G signal during a data call will not notice anything but a "slight dip in speed" if the service defaults back to GPRS data rates.

In my experience, GPRS speeds have rarely peaked beyond 10kbit/s. So I could be happily browsing the internet with 3G data speeds somewhere in the range of 40kbit/s to 64kbit/s one moment, and defaulting back to 10kbit/s the next. At this point, I would probably notice more than a dip in speed, because the web application I was accessing would become immediately unusable.

Similarly, what if I were sending or receiving a large PowerPoint presentation, a newsletter with pictures, or any other file containing high graphical content? If I were using a 3G connection that file might download in 10 minutes or less, but if the connection goes back to GPRS, I am more likely to be looking at an hour.

Given that I am about to get into a taxi, onto a train or board an aircraft - I am, after all, a mobile worker who needs to stay in touch while on the move - that is an hour I do not have.

I am actually a big fan of mobile data services, especially 3G, which for the first time provides enough wireless bandwidth to actually browse the internet on the move at dial-up rates.

I'm just asking for a bit of honesty here, for providers to stand up and say it like it is, instead of trying to convince us all that bandwidth doesn't matter.