Email Consumes Maximum Mobile Resources, Claims Study
Bell Laboratories, the research wing of Alcatel-Lucent, has released findings which indicate that email consumes the maximum signalling resources when it comes to the use of 3G networks for broadband surfing, and not P2P (peer-to-peer) or web surfing. Email accounts for using up of 69 per cent of the signalling resources, as compared to its data volume of just 4 per cent.
Speaking to tech site ZDNet at a round table conference, Bell Labs’s Mike Schabel explained that although web surfing and P2P account for a large proportion of the volume of data, they do not use up much of the wireless network signal capacity. Constant connectivity via web-enabled phones is where the problem lies – encouraging news for those who use laptop mobile broadband for such activity.
He clarified that each application uses resources in different ways, as they have different efficiencies; email programs are the least efficient in that respect. Therefore operators should shift their focus from how much data is being sent to the way it is being sent. Email technology, according to him, may require a major overhaul in the near future.
It is generally assumed that high data-usage applications automatically result in high network signal usage, but that is not the case. Web surfing, which accounts for 70 per cent of the data flow, uses just 12 per cent of the signalling resources. Further, peer to peer transactions are found to be the most efficient on the network and consume the least resources, according to the study.
