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GWS: Study claims mobile users satisfied with 1-5Mbps speeds

jon1

ULTIMATE Member

Just want to break this off into it's own thread, because it's a bit off-topic in the other threads

A few questions/points I have:
- I don't think 1mbps should be the minimum here, there is a huge difference between 1 and even 2 or 3 mbps in terms of scrolling social media, we're talking 2-3-4x speed increase each time. Once you get into the ranges of 5-20mbps the data isn't there to load, so you don't see much benefit.
- Are the kind of people who spend most of their screentime browsing Facebook the kind of people who understand mbps, even if they claimed to understand it?
- Did GWS ask these people to measure their speed using the GWS OneMeasure app, which consistently reports my speed at 1/3rd of what it is in reality?
- This survey obviously doesn't question the users who are putting the most strain on networks today, they might have asked some of the lightest users possible, I'd wage a nice bet that TikTok is a lot, lot higher up on the charts of usage than Facebook. According to every other source, TikTok is among the top social networks today, with Facebook near the bottom. A nice statistic is that US Adults spent 4.43 billion minutes on TikTok last year. Using the rough numbers below, we can assume that's 8Billion Megabits or using 253mbps across the USA, 24/7 in 2023, which doesn't include people watching live streams, making live streams, uploading content, etc, etc, etc
TikTok-stats-2-620x595.png

According to TalkHome, TikTok uses 840MB of data in an hour of continuous scrolling. The TikTok feed is made up of ads that aren't cached in the buffer of videos (which only lasts a few minutes anyway), and Live Streams that we all know certainly aren't going to work well at least at 1-2mbps, even less so if your trying to run that stream yourself (as in uploading)

We can actually draw the bare minimum for TikTok at around 1.87mbps, on the lowest quality it uses 840MB in an hour assuming you don't come across any live streams or advertisements, and that you don't open the comment section.

WhatsApp video calls are actually extremely optimized, only requiring atleast 0.3mbps which I assume is the same for Messenger, Instagram, all the meta chat apps.

In terms of Youtube we're probably exceeding this 1-5mbps range, for a 720p video you need 2.5mbps and for 1080p you need 5mbps, apparently 4K uses 20mbps

So technically, they have some good points with the apps they used, but anyone who's more than a moderate user is going to need more than 5mbps pretty quickly imo. Networks here already only advertise their speed limited plans for light users, e.g VF's 2mbps plan or EE's stay connected are very clear that they are for light users. There's a market here if the pricing of those plans actually made sense, often an MVNO is offering a cheaper deal with a much faster speed.

What's interesting though, is let's say a site has 200mbps DL backhaul, it can only handle:
- 106 people watching TikTok or
- 80 people streaming 720p YT or 40 people streaming 1080p YT or 10 people streaming 4K YT

If you have a school with anywhere from 500 kids, all with phones, and they get out at 3PM, what's going to happen? A nice graph from EE (Look at the grey line, the others were showing that this spike disappeared during lockdown):
1920_ee-graphstiktok1.jpg


I can vouch first hand that ever since TikTok became popular, all speeds drop pretty low if anything around peak times on all 4 networks here

What do you guys think? I used google for the data usage numbers above, so please correct if they were outdated. Personally I think GWS is looking to show some USA carriers in this, they seem to be much more relevant over there and this is in-line with the billing tariffs they offer
 
Last edited:
Here's the source:

Here's a huge flaw:
1 Data sourced from Magnify, GWS’s mobile intelligence data platform. Magnify is comprised of key insights collected nationwide from consumers participating in our market research program. These are real-life consumers who use their mobile devices as normal throughout the day so that the analytics data GWS gathers provides the most accurate picture of the nation’s mobile connectivity experience. In particular, data is anonymously collected from Android smartphones 24 hours a day, seven days a week, whenever and wherever the consumers use their devices. Data is reported in aggregate for market research purposes only. All information collected is weighted to a user’s demographic representation of the U.K. adult population. Analytical data related to network performance and app engagement was collected during a six-month test period (7/1/23 – 12/31/23).

2 In addition to collecting network performance and app engagement data, GWS surveyed participating consumers to understand sentiment and perception via GWS Magnify. This survey was conducted during the month of January 2024, with a total response size of 2,951.  

2,951 responses, and who actually uses this app?


People who have signed up to use the app, you will not find it on the Google Play Store, it's not suitable for Apple devices, just Android, only Android.

That's like running a story on Car usage and only surveying Diesel car owners.
 
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Looks like El Reg has ran an article about it too:

About android devices only that have an app that is not available on the Google play store installed on them...

Waste of bandwidth
The app reports your speed wrong, it consistently states my Box connection at 2-300 when nPerf reports 950mbps

Their only Speedtest server is bandwidth capped under a gig and hosted in the USA. The app is built with a build a web app for all platforms framework and can’t share your Speedtest reliably because the share menu isn’t running natively (cheap janky way to build an app) and it looks like it was built in scratch
 
Here's the source:

Here's a huge flaw:




2,951 responses, and who actually uses this app?


People who have signed up to use the app, you will not find it on the Google Play Store, it's not suitable for Apple devices, just Android, only Android.

That's like running a story on Car usage and only surveying Diesel car owners.
Another huge flaw is this

How did they find the respondants?
Considering that the respondents used Facebook mostly, did they run Facebook ads which would've netted more light users?
Did a Partner carrier in the USA who sells speed limited plans mass-message speed-limited customers with the survey in return for bill credits?

How did they manage to even get near that many people to download their god awful app and allow it permissions to track their usage like that?
 
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