John Strand, CEO of Strand Consult, in his office in Denmark. He advised that telecom operators are often constrained, due to contracts with handset vendors, from revealing to the public the truth about a specific smartphone's performance. Molouk Y. Ba-Isa Saudi Gazette With the proliferation of smartphones, the demands on the mobile network in the Kingdom are growing. In the 1990s, Saudi consumers were delighted to be able to make voice calls anytime, anywhere. Now the Saudi public requires mobile broadband everywhere. “Mobile coverage has moved from being something that's nice to have to something you can't live without," said John Strand, CEO of Strand Consult, leaders in strategic analysis, reports and research for the global telecommunications and mobile industry. “At the time when the three mobile licenses were issued in Saudi Arabia, people were only using their phones for voice and SMS and they were used to the problem of poor coverage outside the big cities and highways. Now, in Saudi Arabia the use of the Internet has grown dramatically. Mobile networks which were voice and SMS-centric are now very data-centric." Mobile broadband expansion is vital but it's not going to happen, especially for rural areas, without “spectrum expansion." A report from Analysys Mason noted that Saudi Arabia would receive “considerable socioeconomic benefits from the release of harmonized spectrum in the 700/800MHz and 2.6GHz bands for use by mobile operators to deliver next-generation mobile broadband services." In particular, the Kingdom would benefit from a total GDP gain of SAR358 billion during the period 2013 to 2025 as well as jobs for 424,000 people by 2020. Mobile coverage in large rural areas would be enhanced, providing education and information benefits for the rural, often poorer areas of the Kingdom. Unfortunately, there has been no announcement when the required spectrum could be available, with the earliest estimates at 2015 or 2016 for 2.5 GHz and no information at all for 800MHz, which is most desirable for rural areas. “The biggest communications infrastructure challenge right now for governments worldwide is to ensure that mobile operators in the future will deliver more capacity and better coverage particularly in rural areas. This is also essential in the fight against poverty, as access to modern communication resources offers so many economic benefits," Strand remarked. “A government can offer advantages to an operator who provides good rural coverage – by extending the original license for instance. Network sharing provisions would allow for lower capital expenditure in order to bring services cost effectively to rural areas. Operators cannot be forced to provide reliable rural coverage, but incentives should be found." But before we all look to spectrum allocation and enhanced networks to solve all our communications issues, Strand advised that part of the problem with poor connectivity may be in our hands – or “handsets," to be precise. “The bad network connectivity which a lot of people experience with their mobile devices nowadays is not related to the network but related to the devices," he said. “People think that they have full coverage with signal strength of four or five bars displaying on the phone and then they try to make a call and they can't get a connection. All the bars suddenly disappear and then they come back and there's a connection. That's not usually because of the network but because there are some technical challenges with the smartphones that are on the market. Right now, in countries around the world, we see increasing numbers of people complaining about this and it's not the network provider's responsibility." To know if there is a decent connection, it's essential to have a reliable idea of signal strength. Don't depend on the signal strength bars, but have the smartphone display signal reception in terms of numeric decibels – this is sometimes known as Field Test Mode. Instead of showing the bars, the smartphone will show a negative number. The less negative the number, the better the signal strength. Ideal signal strength is about -50. “There is a big quality difference between phones," concluded Strand. “When we talk to the people working for the operators, they tell us that those phone manufacturers who are new in the market and have been making phones for fewer years, have less good phones that those that have been in the market for a long time."
