What do mobile experience and a first grader’s math class have in common?

I’d like to tell you a little bit about my son’s day in school.

In fact, I would be happy to talk about it for the better part of the day.

The problem is, I don’t know much about it.

I only know it was “fun.”

Actually, I’m not sure about that either. “Fun,” is the automatic reply I get when I ask him, “How was your day at school?”

So what does this have to do with the mobile experience?

Mobile operators’ knowledge of what their subscribers are doing and how users experience the mobile Internet is similar in many ways to a father asking his son how his day was.

Operators may have limited knowledge about the radio side of the network, but not much more. This is analogous to me knowing my son’s curriculum. I may know when he starts  his math class and when he has recess, but I don’t know how he felt in class. Did he enjoy himself? Or maybe (like too many of us) he hated every minute. And what did he do during recess? Did he play football? Maybe he had an argument with his best friend?

In the same way, operators today are looking for ways to know more about their subscribers’ experience and they need to have clear metrics to do so.

What are their users most interested in while they surf the web? (Maybe you can offer them a deal that relates to their field of interest.)

What was their experience? How long did it take for the video to start? How long did it take the page to load? (Maybe you can prevent subscriber churn if you spot a problematic event and act on it.)

To help operators answer these questions, and many more, we enable them to extract user experience data from their networks. But we also provide much more information, such as data hogging subscribers, top applications, top web sites, average browsing speed, and more! All this information helps operators create a more complete picture of their subscribers’ online behavior to better target their interests while addressing any problems that may arise – a win-win for both you and your users.

Of course, you could always just ask your subscribers how their experience was but you’ll probably get the equivalent of “fun” as an answer.

-- Tal Dagan, Director of Product Management