Most people head to the beach for the sun and sand, but I had an ulterior motive one day earlier this month as I headed out to beautiful Tootgarook Beach on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula: I needed coverage - and I'm not talking about sunscreen.
Most people head to the beach for the sun and sand, but
I had an ulterior motive one day earlier this month as I headed out
to beautiful Tootgarook Beach on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula: I
needed coverage — and I'm not talking about sunscreen.
Searching for shells, or just searching for a signal? (Credit: David Braue)
I'm not sure where it came from, but it was there: four bars and
full 3G coverage, which could just as easily be coming from Mount
Martha across the water as from any nearby base stations. I didn't
care where it was coming from, but it was enough for email to work
again. And it was a welcome relief from the situation at my
friend's holiday house, where we'd stayed overnight and
collectively struggled to get more than one bar between the lot of
us.
You know the drill: stand in one place, and there's no service.
Move three inches to the right, stand on one foot, hold your
phone over your head and suddenly you've got three bars. At least,
until the earth turns ever so slightly and everything goes awry
again. And this house is just three blocks inland from the
beach.
Whether such erratic performance is a symptom of one carrier's
network I cannot say, since all the phones present were trying to
connect to Optus' 3G and GSM networks, so we lacked any point of
comparison. What I can say, however, is that coverage varied
massively all over the peninsula, ranging from a full five bars and
3G coverage in the major towns to
stand-on-your-head-and-cross-your-fingers no service in other
places.
These weren't all far-out-of-the-way places, either; many were
heavily populated areas that happened to suffer mobile coverage
blackouts due to vagaries of topography or the curiosities of
weather patterns. With tens of thousands of people on the streets
and beaches, it's hardly the kind of wide-open, bush-filled space
that many think of as stereotypically rural.
Ongoing coverage issues were enough to make a person want to go
with Telstra, whose Next G network remains the unchallenged king of
coverage outside our metropolitan areas. Well, almost. But as I sat
there trying to get enough of a signal to send a few emails from my
office-away-from-the-office, it became clear just how much of a
compromise we are still making in mobile coverage once we head out
of the major cities.
Of course, that was already clear on the drive down — when a
downloading email attachment became stalled after we left the 3G
coverage area. And it would, of course, be painfully familiar to
anybody who relies on mobile communications in rural areas.
As I have previously suggested, ongoing upgrades to Vodafone's
network should theoretically improve the situation, and may already
have done so; perhaps those more familiar with its network in rural
areas can comment below.
But as my experience with Optus proved, I
doubt many would refute the suggestion that our mobile networks
remain horribly patchy — with 3G coverage still suboptimal and GPRS
still considered by many people to be the leading edge in mobile
data technology.
It's an old story in relation to voice services, but the growth of mobile data is steadily changing many customers' decision trees.
When you're talking about voice services, there's always GSM to
fall back on — but GSM and its GPRS overlay are hardly adequate
fallback methods for the growing number of people using wireless
broadband services. And those services are catching on like
wildfire.
But with LTE already starting to rear its head overseas,
Australian carriers are going to face a conundrum pretty soon: do
they invest in yet another generation of high-speed data network,
or do they keep building out their 3G networks to fill in the
morass of coverage blackspots that persist?
Without doing the
latter, visions of ubiquitous telecommuting such as Darren
Greenwood's (any beach references are purely coincidental although
we cannot confirm or deny rumours ZDNet.com.au's next office will be
opened at Bells Beach) will remain largely pipe dreams.
After all, now that pricing of mobile services has come down a
bit across the board, resolving coverage issues may be well and
truly the only way they can counter Next G's broad reach and,
despite Telstra's recent "efforts" to adjust its wireless broadband
plans, non-competitive pricing. This continues to be the secret to
Telstra's success: customers know they're paying a bit more, but
it's OK because their service is likely to work in places where
competitors' services won't.
It's an old story in relation to voice services, but the growth
of mobile data is steadily changing many customers' decision trees.
Telstra's latest results showed that its wireless broadband
business is absolutely exploding, probably in no small part due to
its superior coverage.
Optus and Vodafone/VHA will need to work
hard to make sure that Telstra doesn't enjoy a monopoly on wireless
broadband simply because their networks are too unpredictable; if
they can't guarantee a similarly seamless experience, even in
somewhat out-of-the-way places, they're going to find themselves
all washed up.