Reports

The experienced mobile coverage – what is bogus and what are the facts?

Around the world there are many who believe that you can install an app on a smartphone and use the resulting metrics to measure the quality of a modern mobile network. The New report from Strand Consult “The experienced mobile coverage – what is bogus and what are the facts?” documents that these measurements are worthless and do not provide an accurate picture mobile coverage they purport to measure.

When different app publishers claim that they can measure the quality of a network and when they publish their data, we see that there is often a heated debate between mobile operators in the media about who has the best mobile network in a country. It’s also the case that these app reports can be used be praise an operator one day for good coverage but blame them on another for bad. Vodafone, Orange, EE, Telia, Telenor, AT&T, Verizon, and Telefonica, and others have appeared either at the top or bottom of any one app report. So while operators’ media team would like the opportunity to take advantage of good press when they can, the strategy can also backfire.

The new report from Strand Consult “The experienced mobile coverage – what is bogus and what are the facts?“, which is offered with and without a workshop, focuses on the mobile phone and why it sometimes creates poor mobile coverage. This report describes the many apps which purport to measure the quality of a mobile network, and how political and regulatory systems hold mobile operators responsible for things which operators can’t control.

The report is a tool that makes it easy for mobile operators to document that these apps cannot be used to document the quality of a mobile network. In the report you can read about:

• Which companies produce the apps which purport to measure mobile network quality
• How these apps work in practice
• How operators and the press can abuse, or be abused, by these measurements
• How do these measurements impact an operator’ s image
• What several scientific studies from universities say about these kinds of measurements
• How can operators counter reports with bogus app measurements
• When to take these measurements seriously and why
• Cases: Practical experience from around the world

The premise of this report is a process Strand Consult has run over the last five years in Denmark. 10 Steps to reduce cost of mobile masts and improve mast regulation is a successful project which has helped to improve conditions for the Danish mobile operators. It describes how political and regulatory actors can abuse rogue app measurements to show something they cannot substantiate.

Given that much of the media coverage and criticism of mobile operators’ networks is unjustified, Strand Consult wanted to create a report that contains a combination of facts and cases that proves who is responsible for the different types of bad coverage experiences. Strand Consult proves that these apps are worthless. The goal of the report “The experienced mobile coverage – what is bogus and what are the facts?” and the associated workshop is to help mobile operators kill the debate created by the apps reports purporting to measure mobile network quality and coverage.

The debate on the mobile infrastructure is important, but it should be fact-based and proceed in an informed and objective fashion. The main factors for the perceived poor mobile coverage can be attributed to the mobile phones that people buy, not the network. In addition Strand Consult’s analysis shows that the municipal terms and rental rates for land for cell towers also has an impact on the infrastructure operators can actually build and operate. This is described in Strand Consult’s report How mobile operators can reduced cost of mobile masts and improve mast regulation.

The report “The experienced mobile coverage – what is bogus and what are the facts?” debunks in a simple way the myths of measuring mobile coverage. The goal that this report is to inform operators of the misinformation and prepare them for how to push back in debate on coverage. Strand Consult will use its knowledge and our ability to communicate to create transparency around these challenges.

If you want to know more about our unique new report and the accompanying workshop, please contact us

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