Mobile Traffic Surges During UEFA EURO 2012

As football (soccer) fans already know, last week was the final of UEFA's EURO 2012. And although the game was disappointing for Italy fans (probably an understatement), it showed us interesting trends in mobile data traffic.

During the games, Digital Spy published research showing that 8.3% of British fans were watching the EURO 2012 games on the web via a desktop, notebook computer, smartphone, or tablet.

Using Harmony Analytics, we found the same thing, and not just in Europe.

We observed a 156% increase of traffic to sports sites in Asia-Pacific and a 215% increase in Europe during the final match day. In addition, in Europe, there was a 210% increase in HTTP streaming of live sports broadcasts during the EURO 2012 final match day, while in Asia-Pacific the increase was only 20%. These statistics were reversed for P2P streaming, with a 123% average increase in Asia-Pacific and a 42% average increase in Europe in June, the month of the competition, compared to the same timeframe during the previous month. These findings reflect the differences in the way Europeans and Asians view football over mobile networks.

Unsurprisingly, in North America there was only a minor increase in sport-related traffic during EURO 2012, with an 8% increase in mobile internet traffic for sports sites and a 24% increase in the P2P streaming peak during the games. This demonstrates the popularity of European football in Asia-Pacific and Europe versus North America where, despite David Beckham's best efforts, "soccer" hasn't yet caught on at the same rate as the rest of the world.

With the summer Olympics rapidly approaching, it will be interesting to see how mobile traffic trends are affected. Four years ago, at the Bejing Olympics, iPhones were only a year into the market and iPads were only a pipe dream. With mobile devices of all types penetrating the market in increasing numbers, we look forward to seeing how operators plan for the anticipated surges in traffic. Stay tuned for more Olympic insights ...

-- Naomi Rabbie, Director of Corporate Marketing

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