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Trying To Improve Mobile App Experiences? The New Standard Is "Flawless"

John Reister

There was a time when consumers were so happy to have the power of a computer in their pockets that they’d put up with some usage flaws in exchange for information and entertainment on the go. But with higher costs of owning and using smartphones, and experiences enriched by 4G speeds, consumers have developed much higher performance expectations.

For the past two years, Vasona Networks has surveyed more than 1,000 smartphone owners about their mobile broadband performance expectations. This year, 72% of respondents said that they expect “good mobile data performance all of the time” with no hiccups or flaws. This is up 8% from the year before.

Even more striking is what we’ve learned about the increasing onus consumers put on their service providers to ensure great app experiences. In fact, the majority of consumers told us they hold their mobile operator most responsible when apps don’t function properly. This number is up to 55% from last year’s 40%, when app developers and operators were essentially tied for blame. This year, consumers that held the app developer most responsible dropped to 25%. In our most recent survey, the remaining 20% suspected either the device maker or operating system to be the cause of poor app performance. Considering recent operating system update struggles, perhaps there will be future increase in the blame placed there.

Regardless of where consumers place responsibility, delivering a great app experience is truly a shared burden across operators, technology providers and the developers of those apps.

On the app side, the developers that prioritize performance management work smartly to control the size of their apps, take advantage of the latest compression techniques, and give users control over how content is displayed depending on what type of network they’re connected to. These app developer strategies are well-covered by other authors on this site.

From our experience working with service providers, there are some exciting new techniques available for use in mobile networks that drive the best app experiences by smarter approaches to the RAN (Radio Access Network). Managing contending traffic that shares the cell air interface is a major area of focus. This is where bandwidth additions are most expensive, and, related to that, where congestion is most frequently encountered. Operators are finding better ways to address the diverse mixture of streaming media, web browsing and downloads that can cause severe congestion within cells.

Solutions like edge application controllers assess whether a cell faces congestion at any given moment, and understand which sessions are causing it and the experiences suffering the most as a result. Bandwidth is then reallocated based on application type and subscriber needs.

This is a leap beyond prior probe and DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) approaches that observe traffic patterns and congestion and then communicate through a policy control function to take enforcement action. But congestion and latency are transient phenomena that may last seconds or less. These small incidents can destroy app experiences and cause degradation with repercussions longer than the initial periods of congestion. In these cases, the information can be revealed too late by the probe and service experience is compromised before the DPI takes action.

The results of better approaches to RAN management are speaking for themselves. For instance, a US service provider using an edge application controller to manage the impact of congestion has achieved more than 30% improved bitrate performance for video and web browsing and more than 35% reduction in service latency during congestion. These numbers signify the difference between a great app experience and a frustrating one. Between a finger tapping happily on a screen or pointing angrily at the offending party.

As consumers stiffen their demands for mobile operators to assure flawless app experiences, the industry continues to move closer to that promise.

Click on the infographic below for a larger version.

John Reister is VP of Marketing and Product Management for Vasona Networks.

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Trying To Improve Mobile App Experiences? The New Standard Is "Flawless"

John Reister

There was a time when consumers were so happy to have the power of a computer in their pockets that they’d put up with some usage flaws in exchange for information and entertainment on the go. But with higher costs of owning and using smartphones, and experiences enriched by 4G speeds, consumers have developed much higher performance expectations.

For the past two years, Vasona Networks has surveyed more than 1,000 smartphone owners about their mobile broadband performance expectations. This year, 72% of respondents said that they expect “good mobile data performance all of the time” with no hiccups or flaws. This is up 8% from the year before.

Even more striking is what we’ve learned about the increasing onus consumers put on their service providers to ensure great app experiences. In fact, the majority of consumers told us they hold their mobile operator most responsible when apps don’t function properly. This number is up to 55% from last year’s 40%, when app developers and operators were essentially tied for blame. This year, consumers that held the app developer most responsible dropped to 25%. In our most recent survey, the remaining 20% suspected either the device maker or operating system to be the cause of poor app performance. Considering recent operating system update struggles, perhaps there will be future increase in the blame placed there.

Regardless of where consumers place responsibility, delivering a great app experience is truly a shared burden across operators, technology providers and the developers of those apps.

On the app side, the developers that prioritize performance management work smartly to control the size of their apps, take advantage of the latest compression techniques, and give users control over how content is displayed depending on what type of network they’re connected to. These app developer strategies are well-covered by other authors on this site.

From our experience working with service providers, there are some exciting new techniques available for use in mobile networks that drive the best app experiences by smarter approaches to the RAN (Radio Access Network). Managing contending traffic that shares the cell air interface is a major area of focus. This is where bandwidth additions are most expensive, and, related to that, where congestion is most frequently encountered. Operators are finding better ways to address the diverse mixture of streaming media, web browsing and downloads that can cause severe congestion within cells.

Solutions like edge application controllers assess whether a cell faces congestion at any given moment, and understand which sessions are causing it and the experiences suffering the most as a result. Bandwidth is then reallocated based on application type and subscriber needs.

This is a leap beyond prior probe and DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) approaches that observe traffic patterns and congestion and then communicate through a policy control function to take enforcement action. But congestion and latency are transient phenomena that may last seconds or less. These small incidents can destroy app experiences and cause degradation with repercussions longer than the initial periods of congestion. In these cases, the information can be revealed too late by the probe and service experience is compromised before the DPI takes action.

The results of better approaches to RAN management are speaking for themselves. For instance, a US service provider using an edge application controller to manage the impact of congestion has achieved more than 30% improved bitrate performance for video and web browsing and more than 35% reduction in service latency during congestion. These numbers signify the difference between a great app experience and a frustrating one. Between a finger tapping happily on a screen or pointing angrily at the offending party.

As consumers stiffen their demands for mobile operators to assure flawless app experiences, the industry continues to move closer to that promise.

Click on the infographic below for a larger version.

John Reister is VP of Marketing and Product Management for Vasona Networks.

Hot Topics

The Latest

A new wave of tariffs, some exceeding 100%, is sending shockwaves across the technology industry. Enterprises are grappling with sudden, dramatic cost increases that threaten to disrupt carefully planned budgets, sourcing strategies, and deployment plans. For CIOs and CTOs, this isn't just an economic setback; it's a wake-up call. The era of predictable cloud pricing and stable global supply chains is over ...

As artificial intelligence (AI) adoption gains momentum, network readiness is emerging as a critical success factor. AI workloads generate unpredictable bursts of traffic, demanding high-speed connectivity that is low latency and lossless. AI adoption will require upgrades and optimizations in data center networks and wide-area networks (WANs). This is prompting enterprise IT teams to rethink, re-architect, and upgrade their data center and WANs to support AI-driven operations ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is core to observability practices, with some 41% of respondents reporting AI adoption as a core driver of observability, according to the State of Observability for Financial Services and Insurance report from New Relic ...

Application performance monitoring (APM) is a game of catching up — building dashboards, setting thresholds, tuning alerts, and manually correlating metrics to root causes. In the early days, this straightforward model worked as applications were simpler, stacks more predictable, and telemetry was manageable. Today, the landscape has shifted, and more assertive tools are needed ...

Cloud adoption has accelerated, but backup strategies haven't always kept pace. Many organizations continue to rely on backup strategies that were either lifted directly from on-prem environments or use cloud-native tools in limited, DR-focused ways ... Eon uncovered a handful of critical gaps regarding how organizations approach cloud backup. To capture these prevailing winds, we gathered insights from 150+ IT and cloud leaders at the recent Google Cloud Next conference, which we've compiled into the 2025 State of Cloud Data Backup ...

Private clouds are no longer playing catch-up, and public clouds are no longer the default as organizations recalibrate their cloud strategies, according to the Private Cloud Outlook 2025 report from Broadcom. More than half (53%) of survey respondents say private cloud is their top priority for deploying new workloads over the next three years, while 69% are considering workload repatriation from public to private cloud, with one-third having already done so ...

As organizations chase productivity gains from generative AI, teams are overwhelmingly focused on improving delivery speed (45%) over enhancing software quality (13%), according to the Quality Transformation Report from Tricentis ...

Back in March of this year ... MongoDB's stock price took a serious tumble ... In my opinion, it reflects a deeper structural issue in enterprise software economics altogether — vendor lock-in ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 15, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses Do-It-Yourself Network Automation ... 

Zero-day vulnerabilities — security flaws that are exploited before developers even know they exist — pose one of the greatest risks to modern organizations. Recently, such vulnerabilities have been discovered in well-known VPN systems like Ivanti and Fortinet, highlighting just how outdated these legacy technologies have become in defending against fast-evolving cyber threats ... To protect digital assets and remote workers in today's environment, companies need more than patchwork solutions. They need architecture that is secure by design ...