Mobile Measurement Framework Discussed with Stakeholders
FCC and industry officials gathered Friday to discuss adding mobile measurements to its two-year-old broadband measurement program. “It remains difficult for consumers to get detailed information about their mobile broadband performance,” said FCC attorney Daniel Kirschner. After releasing two “Measuring Broadband America” reports and being on track to release a third later this year, the FCC will look into measuring mobile broadband performance, as proposed in the National Broadband Plan. For the first time, U.S. consumers will have information about mobile networks, which have become an “integral” part of consumers’ daily lives, Kirschner said.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
The commission has chosen a “collaborative” model, said Walter Johnston, chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology’s (OET) Electromagnetic Compatibility Division. “That means we are engaging with stakeholders at a very early stage in the process,” Johnston said. The project, a “cross-bureau effort” between OET, Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau and the Wireless Bureau, has received support of major mobile providers including AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint Nextel, and CTIA, Johnston said. FCC attorney James Miller emphasized that “we ultimately retain the final decisionmaking authority and that serves as another feature” of the collaborative model.
Modeled off the wireline measurement program, with white boxes installed in users’ homes that execute tests on a predefined schedule, the mobile program will use active testing self-initiated by the software application at various intervals, Johnston said. The commission has developed an initial proposal to collect data in the context of the current measurement program, reusing the existing data collection platform and software, he said. The proposal includes a “volunteer-based smartphone app” running on volunteer smartphones, using a randomized testing schedule. It will be “scalable,” built on efforts already under way in other countries, including the U.K., he said. An Android application has been developed and the commission is currently “in discussions” for an Apple app, he said. “We're also open to discussion on passive metrics we can acquire from the smartphone as well."
"One of the analytical challenges is to try to baseline this data set against other standard measurement sets,” Johnston said. “One of the things we're discussing with the wireless service providers is accumulating a data set based upon this measurement approach, accumulating variables associated with the data set -- such as the type of platform the user is using -- and then seeing how well this data set correlates against other data sets.” The commission will use fixed wireless locations as “beacon reference points” to correlate against, he said.
For the rest of this year, the commission will work with parties to test the client software and code, and examine key issues such as privacy, security, data formats, and test schedules. Proposed metrics include UDP latency and packet loss, upload speed test, download speed test, and infrastructure data such as cell tower ID and signal strength. The commission expects to start data collection efforts in Q1 2013, and move to the analysis phase in Q2, after which the commission would produce a report, Johnston said. The first of the monthly mobile collaborative meetings will be Oct. 10, on the same day as the next wireline broadband measurement meeting. “We seek input and rough consensus when possible, but in the end it’s our program and we make the final decisions,” Johnston said.
The commission has tried to come up with application-specific metrics, including performance of VoIP, not just throughput measurement, said Chief Technology Officer Henning Schulzrinne. The agency will never “be able to do every possible analysis,” but all the data will be made public so outside analysts can investigate variations, he said. “One of the markers of mobile is how do we capture both spatial and temporal variability,” which is going to be much larger than the wireline report, he said. The analysis has evolved and been enhanced between the first and second wireline reports, and Schulzrinne expects it to keep being enhanced, he said.
The commission recently started working with standards bodies on defining components of a complex system, Schulzrinne said. The commission wants standardized metrics because that ensures very precise and repeatable measurements, he said. It’s important to have protocols that will let the agency control the system in ways that are efficient and secure, he said.
"I want to emphasize, there’s a lot of criteria that the testing program has to meet,” said Johnston. “It has to meet our needs in terms of collecting data for the public, it has to meet the service providers’ needs in terms of ensuring that their network is protected, and most importantly it has to meet the consumers’ needs in terms of privacy and security.”