Mobile Network Comparison

Time for an old YouTube classic today. Mobile phones work with electromagnetic radiation. These electromagnetic waves transfer information between your handset and the mobile company’s cell towers. As it’s often several miles to the nearest cell tower, you need quite a strong powerful amount of electromagnetic radiation to reach it. And it just so happens that mobile phone radio waves have a wavelength of about 3cm – very similar to the heating radiation used in microwave ovens. So, by combining several mobile phones and calling them together, it’s possible to concentrating the heating waves in one position and use them to pop popcorn. Check it out for yourself:

(In case you didn’t realise, these videos are fake – it’s not really possible!)

O₂ is causing misery for hundreds of patients and doctors at Sussex Royal County Hospital in Brighton. The large teaching hospital on the south coast is a flagship institution but mobile phone network O₂ recently removed a signal mast cutting off all their customers.

A doctor who didn’t want to be named claimed that working at the hospital was worse than working in the third world since the outage. They claimed that it was directly affecting the care of patients and made it effectively impossible to contact consultants or registrars. They went on to say the following:

In fact, it’s worse than that – in India you can make calls, at the hospital you get nothing. We can’t text, we can’t get through to our consultants and O₂ are just hiding behind their website.

Dr Hugh Harvey, a radiologist, said that O₂‘s removal of the mast “directly resulted in delay of patient care” and that it was a disaster for doctors who were on call.

In response, an O₂ spokesperson claimed that they were “progressing” alternatives ” with the utmost urgency ” in order to restore service. But critics pointed out that the mobile netowrk had been given several months to find an alternative location for the mast and, in the meantime, they were causing communication chaos for residents and medical staff. It wasn’t clear why O₂ had failed to provide alternative means to provide a phone network.

O₂ said that they were trying to get neighbouring masts to take over some of the blackout and also looking for new sites for another mast. However, the communication situation in the hospital is still dire and it’s a nightmare for patients wanting to communicate and liaise with family and friends.

As the mast serves people who live near the hospital too, many others have been affected. To add insult to injury (in some cases literally), O₂‘s response about compensation has simply been to just give extra credit to affected customers rather than providing any sort of solution. They aren’t even offering the option to end contracts early while the signal is still non-existent.

At present, there’s still no signal at Brighton hospital. Brighton and Hove city councillor Gill Mitchell has claimed that the whole palaver has been “an utter, utter cock-up”.

Are you a doctor or patient at Royal County Hospital? Or do you just live nearby? Have you been affected by this O2 cock-up? And what do you make of O₂‘s response and the fact they’ve had several months prior warning about this issue?

Latest figures from a study by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) suggest that mobile internet advertising rocketed upwards in 2012. The study, conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, reported a total spend of over £500 million for mobile advertising in the UK last year. It’s thought that the massive increase in the popularity of smartphones and tablets and the affordability of budget Android options has contributed to this meteoric rise.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is one of the “big four” accountancy firms and a massive professional services provider. They conducted the research into digital advertising spending to get a better idea of the potential of mobile advertising in Britain.

Nowadays over 60% of the popular owns a smartphone and tablet sales show no sign of letting up. Because of this, mobile advertising grew over 100% in 2012. Broken down, search advertising contributed almost 70% of this spend as it rose over 160% from an already-decent £138 million in 2011.

Another factor that is increasing the money involved in mobile is an increased use of apps. The staggering rises in mobile spending overall saw the country’s digital ad spend across all types of device hit £5 billion for the first time ever (with Google incredibly accounting for about 60% of this). Mobile advertising’s share of that massively increased to about 10% with a spend of £526 million over all.

Our graph below clearly shows how UK mobile ad spend is rising far quicker than general internet advertising:

In fact, the year on year trend is incredible. Just 5 years ago the total mobile ad spend was just £25 million and it’s now risen to over 20 times that amount as of last year. As a percentage, the rises are even more staggering.

For example, in 2008 mobile spend accounted for just 1% of the UK’s total. But 2011 that proportion had quadrupled to 4%. But the most impressive rise of all was last year when the increase went from 4% of the total up to a massive 10%. It remains to be seen whether this level of almost-exponential growth will continue.

In comparison, the total UK advertising spend on the internet has been growing but at a much calmer, more steady rate. The average growth is just under about 20% year-on-year. This clearly pales when juxtaposed with the mobile figure which have seen a rise of over 100% each year and that percentage increase is continually getting bigger.

Tim Elkington, director of research and strategy at the Internet Advertising Bureau, thinks that the buzz around mobile is more or less unstoppable. Especially with the introduction of 4G services that will be rolled out to more users in 2013, it’s hard to argue with him. And social media is only just really find its feet in its attempts to monetise successfully. As services like Facebook and Twitter mature, it’s hard to see any let up in mobile advertising spending. In fact, social media alone accounted for over £300 million of spending which is up 300% compared to 2009.

What do you make of this report? Are you surprised by these figures? Do you see the trend continuing into next year?