End users would welcome video optimization techniques for better experience, survey suggests

Not only would wireless broadband users be content to have video compressed over the air so they could enjoy a better experience, some may even be willing to pay for it, according to research commissioned by mobile messaging provider Acision. Wireless operators and video content providers should work hand in hand to take measures to improve the customer experience before consumers become really dissatisfied, the company said.
Today, the explosion of video over wireless networks is leading to increased dissatisfaction with U.S. consumers, with 63% of people surveyed complaining they had to wait for the video to play, and 58% complaining the video paused frequently, according to a YouGov survey commissioned by Acision.
The survey, which polled more than 1,000 U.S. mobile broadband users over age 18, found pricing for service and reliability the top two issues for users, at 26% and 25% respectively. Only 9% said usage allowance was a concern. Speed (60%) and connection problems (45%) are the top Quality of Experience issues overall.
Nearly half of the people surveyed have watched mobile video, and of those users, 78% said they have experienced service problems. Nearly 70% of users said they would support video optimization in order to deliver a better quality experience, although most people (48%) said they wouldn’t pay extra for compression of video and photos across the network. Nevertheless, Acision said that since 26% said they would pay more, and 26% said they didn’t know, operators should explore the option. “We think there is room for the carriers to maneuver,” said Arie Baak, Acision’s product marketing director. “Everyone is focused on the enormous volumes of traffic,” he continued, but operators also need to address it from the end user’s point of view, which means addressing the quality of the experience. The YouGov survey found that more than 40% of respondents said they would accept a policy that reduces the size of the video to improve the experience if it decreased the amount of data that counted toward its consumption limits.
“There is a common message we are seeing from the research conducted in both the USA and U.K. Mobile broadband customers need more communication on the issues affecting their experience with the service,” said Russell Feldman, associate director at YouGov. “We believe they are capable of recognizing there are problems with the service and are open to creative ways of dealing with them. Data caps are but one tool available to carriers but the research shows that consumers will consider other service differentiators if given the choice.”
A statistic that industry insiders are familiar with –that 5% of consumers consume more than 80% of network traffic – doesn’t resonate outside the industry; 59% of end users weren’t familiar with the stat. Not surprisingly, most people surveyed (76%) didn’t know if their operator had a fair-use policy. Once people understood that operators could implement a policy that allows it to distribute bandwidth so that as many people as possible have better quality experiences, 64% of people said they would support such a policy. Going even further, 45% of users said they would pay extra for such a policy.
“We’re still at the early stages of data growth but there are time pressures to fix these issues,” Baak said. “We had five years to fix SMS. Today the timeline is compressed.”