NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Why simultaneous mobile voice and data matters
Collaboration and coordination rely on concurrent voice and data access. -Increasingly important for customer service and group work. Eventually the mobile will become an access router for a personal area network emphasizing the need to support concurrent voice and data. V ----- Original Message ----- From: nnsquad-bounces+vint=google.com@nnsquad.org <nnsquad-bounces+vint=google.com@nnsquad.org> To: nnsquad@nnsquad.org <nnsquad@nnsquad.org> Sent: Sat Jan 22 22:03:02 2011 Subject: [ NNSquad ] Why simultaneous mobile voice and data matters Why simultaneous mobile voice and data matters Verizon is understandably attempting to minimize the perceived need for simultaneous voice and data for their version of the iPhone. A few persons who aren't heavy smartphone users have asked me why this should matter. After all, how many people are going to browse on their phone at the same time they're talking on a call? Actually, that relatively infrequent scenario isn't the big problem. What *can* be very irritating is that without simultaneous voice and data capabilities, your data activities *prior* to a call can be seriously disrupted *by* the call, to the extent that after the call you may have to start from scratch with what you were doing on the data side earlier. While I haven't experimented with this under CDMA, I certainly have under GSM prior to 3G simultaneous voice and data capabilities. A typical underlying cause for the problem is that mobile network NAT timeouts can be very short -- often just a relatively few minutes. If your voice call prevents the data side connections from ACKing or receiving "keepalive" packets, by the time you finish your voice call you may easily find your current Web e-mail or editing session (or whatever) "connection" has closed. Depending on what you're doing at the time, this can be a royal pain. So again, it's not so much about actually talking and browsing simultaneously. Rather, the issue is how voice calls affect data activities that were already in progress at the times that voice calls arrive. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com) http://www.vortex.com/lauren Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 Co-Founder, PFIR (People For Internet Responsibility): http://www.pfir.org Founder, NNSquad (Network Neutrality Squad): http://www.nnsquad.org Founder, GCTIP (Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance): http://www.gctip.org Founder, PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Google Buzz: http://bit.ly/lauren-buzz