What service puts the biggest strain on UK Mobile Broadband networks? If asked, most consumers would probably suggest any one of the usual suspects - from video sites to streaming and P2P downloads. Surprisingly they'd all be wrong because according to Mike Schabel, the director of Alcatel-Lucent's research wing (Bell Labs), Email is responsible for the heaviest load.

It's true that website browsing and P2P surfing still account for most of a Mobile Broadband operators data traffic, yet the biggest resource hog remains the humble email service. This is apparently because email is an inefficiently managed application and you'd be surprised to see which is the most efficient, very surprised!


Why the discrepancy you ask? Well it's largely to do with the way mobile services work and the fact that email constantly checks (polls) the server for new messages, which can easily consume nearly 70% of a Mobile Broadband operators signalling resources.

Despite all this the actual data traffic for email remains a meagre 4% of the overall total. By comparison website browsing eats up 70% of data traffic but only 12% of signalling resources. It's worth pointing out that weather updates, stock tickers and secure transactions often look like email to the operator, so we may not be getting a completely accurate picture.

Indeed most computer based email clients rarely poll/check the server for new messages quite so frequently, preferring default intervals of anything from 5 to 10 minutes. Due to this we would suggest that much of the load is more likely to come from the ‘always-on’ style applications as used on Smartphones, as opposed to those connecting via a USB Modem from a laptop or netbook.