The way smartphones and apps installed on them are being designed is posing challenges to mobile network providers. However Vodafone Malta is already looking at twice the current mobile internet speeds, while keeping an eye on developments in the field of high speed fixed internet access over fibre optic cables, convinced that the current duopoly is not competitive for Maltese consumers.
Andrew de la Torre, the recently-appointed head of technology at Vodafone Malta, spoke exclusively at length to i-Tech about current and future trends in the mobile communications industry, both local and abroad.
“The trends we are seeing in Malta are very similar now to what is being reported at Vodafone Group level across Europe. In Malta we have got, ironically, exactly the same percentage, 22 per cent, of our customer base on smartphones. Roughly 50 per cent of the phones we are selling are smartphones, so we are seeing a significant uptake,” explained Mr de la Torre while showing charts depicting growth in every aspect of mobile communication.
“In the same way, the data usage itself is growing very strongly and in Malta it is an average of over 250 MB per month for our smartphone customers, double that of Vodafone Group level.”
It was here that Vodafone Malta’s head of technology lamented on the way smartphones and the applications installed on them are being designed.
“Many of the internet guys who are designing a lot of these apps are very unfamiliar with the intricacies of making things work over mobile technologies. For example they are designed in such a way that they are constantly chatting and synchronising in the background with internet servers. That poses a problem for us because they constantly occupy radio frequency resources when it isn’t really an important part of the services they are providing.
“More importantly, every piece of this communication in the background is eating away at the customer’s data bundle when they are doing nothing. In many markets we have seen data bill shocks arising from this kind of background consumption – where customers have bought a smartphone and chose not to sign up to a data tariff. In Malta we only have smartphone tariffs that include data.
“Furthermore handsets today are much more demanding in terms of the network quality that we need to build. Historically, mobile handsets were all manufactured by core telecoms companies such as Ericsson, Nokia, and Motorola and these knew how to design good radio. So older devices were really quite good from the point of view of their ability to receive mobile signals. Today’s devices are more about ergonomics, meaning the antennas are much more compromised inside the handset which effectively requires you to build better networks to compensate for this.”
Asked about the rise of tablets and the use of internet keys, Mr de la Torre had some interesting comparisons between trends in Malta and abroad.
“What’s interesting about tablets is that it is a form factor that gives more real estate to play with. We are not finding the same degree of compromises being made as we see with smartphones.”
The popularity of internet keys in Malta has not reached the same levels as in other countries, where it is popular at home despite many residents having Wi-Fi at the same time.
To cater for the rising needs in terms of usage of the Maltese mobile users, Vodafone Malta constantly invests in its network and in its customer relationship management systems where until March 2012 the company will be investing a further €11 million. However when asked about the possibility of having the faster 4G mobile technology in Malta anytime soon, Mr de la Torre gave some surprising insights into the use of current 3G technology.
“Our average network utilisation is about 37 per cent across the Vodafone Group. It’s actually a little bit lower in Malta. Therefore we have a lot of headroom for growth and we do have more spectrum that we can switch on. But we also have an additional speed roadmap. We currently have a speed of 14.4 Mbps available nationwide and speeds of 21.6Mbps and 28.8 Mbps are already available in our infrastructure. Our choice to go with the 28.8 Mbps or 21.6 Mbps will be linked to making sure there are actually devices that support these speeds. These higher rates are entirely limited to internet keys right now. When the devices catch up we can start doing something useful with that.”
Asked about whether Vodafone is considering the LTE (Long Term Evolution) standard to upgrade to 4G, Mr de la Torre revealed preparations are under way while confirming that it won’t invest any more in WiMax wireless internet access.
“We don’t need 4G yet and the logical move for Vodafone in Malta is to move to LTE in the long term. We are already preparing our network to be LTE-ready. The timing needs to be synchronised to a nice range of reasonably-priced devices for our customers to enjoy. We are also in the process of modernising our radio equipment as part of a five-year €50 million investment programme going on at the moment. Base station equipment will be moved to a technology called Single RAN, which is a common piece of equipment that supports multiple technologies such as 2G, 3G and LTE all in one item. Its power consumption is also significantly lower.”
Part of this investment goes into the installation of fibre optic cables that can carry data at very high speeds. While these fibre connections are used as part of Vodafone’s mobile communication infrastructure, the company would like to use fibre to provide fixed-line broadband, and enter the market in competition with Go and Melita. This would also enable Vodafone to provide such services as IPTV.
“While we are very comfortable with our mobile assets, I have to say that we have been having discussions with the Malta Communications Authority (MCA) around the status of the fixed broadband market at the moment, and in fact, we are eagerly awaiting their upcoming market review. Our view is that having only two players is not really in the best interest of the consumers,” concluded Mr de la Torre.