Time for the word "terminal" to reach the end of the line

I stirred up a bit of debate over the weekend via posts on Twitter suggesting that the use of the word "terminal" in the telecoms industry is always a good sign that the speaker is stuck in a legacy age. (Twitter being the terrible medium for debate that it is, I was unable to discuss this meaningfully - hence this post).

Typically used by network-centric, standards-centric, telephony-centric members of the industry, I have long believed that 'terminal' exemplifies the denial of reality endemic in many "old school" telecoms professionals. Nobody outside of the network fraternity uses the word "terminal". You'll never hear Steve Jobs, or even most of Nokia's current and former execs utter the term. People say "mobile", "device", "cellphone", "smartphone".

This is not a new stance of mine either - I made the same point almost exactly 5 years ago in this blog post.

After a bit of a verbal ping-pong match with @TMGB this morning (I'm tempted to describe him as the dinosaurs' "Chief Asteroid Denier", but that's perhaps a bit unfair), I've reached a slightly clearer position. In historic telephony standards, there is indeed still a specific technical notion of a "terminal" defined. It's a bit similar to the old mainframe/green-screen architecture, or various other technology domains like industrial SCADA systems.

But in the past, being a terminal was pretty much the only thing that a phone did. Even more recently, being a terminal was the main or most important thing it did, even if it was as an SMS terminal rather than a telephone terminal. Therefore it was fairly natural for people to refer to any mobile phone as a "terminal", firstly because that was the only type of device, and secondly because it was - to all intents and purposes - the only useful thing it did.

But obviously, over the last 10 years, things have changed. Modern devices do a huge range of things - often simultaneously. Acting as network terminal in a standards-based, telephony sense is simply one of a smartphone's functions, and increasingly not the most important. Many of those functions are not even anything to do with a network connection - the camera, MP3 player and so on. Arguably, connectionless technologies like HTTP and IP do not have "terminals" in the telecoms sense of the word. The majority of device value thus resides in "non-terminal" functions.

Using the word "terminal" now to refer to a smartphone or other new device is therefore extremely sloppy. Today, terminal=function in mobile, not terminal=physical product. And yes, this is more than just an abstruse semantic discussion, because perpetuating the idea that the terminal function is somehow the paramount use case of a device- and, moreover, is independent of the other functions is a huge fallacy which may drive the industry down blind alleys.

The idea that a telephony call (the most obvious example of the terminal function) should over-ride anything else the device or user may be doing is not just arrogant, but a huge error in understanding user behaviour and modern OS's. Yet that remains an unspoken assumption among many in the industry.

Often a smartphone (or, certainly, tablet) user will be doing many things more important than receiving a phone call, particularly a trivial one from somebody they don't want to talk to. Yet the "terminal is the #1 application" mentality is insidious - standards like Circuit-Switched Fallback for LTE telephony assume it to be true. Multi-tasking, multi-connection devices mean that the terminal capability does not exist in isolation - and concurrent tasks need to be considered and sometimes given priority. This will need clever UI design, as well as various user interactions in the device's upper software layers that are not generally considered in network-centric views of "terminal" behaviour.

Furthermore, as we move towards smarter devices and especially VoIP-based telephony, the idea that the "terminating software client" is actually the last point of the chain becomes ever less true. The OS, or another application or browser, might intercept a phone call before it reaches you, or initiate an outbound one on your behalf. The ultimate "voice" application may simply be calling a telephony API - or may pick-and-choose other non-service based voice capabilities.

In other words, even the word "terminal" becomes factually incorrect.

So, to be clearer:

The word "terminal" is a legacy of a time when mobile devices were primarily intended for connection to specific services (especially voice telephony), over a network access run by the same service provider. Nowadays, a mobile device may have a terminal function but can also operate in many other modes - standalone & offline, connected to another network (eg WiFi), using a specific installed app. It is therefore not just factually wrong, but dangerously naive to continue referring to it as just a "terminal" - and thus I believe I am justified in my views that continued misuse of the term is a good indicator of the mindset of the person saying it.

I want to report a 3G coverage problem - how difficult can it be?

Various emerging business models demand good, reliable, near-ubiquitous mobile data coverage, especially in dense urban areas. We hear a lot about congestion, but rather less about the more basic problems of getting a signal. Whether it's a "not-spot" because of buildings, poor setup of the antennas, inability to site a base station, a recurring equipment fault or just some other RF weirdness, gaps and other coverage-free zones are going to be an increasing problem.

In particular, cloud-based services are going to be very sensitive to the quality of a given operator's network. It's bad enough losing access to the web and email in certain locations - think how much more problematic it would be for critical business processes dependent on hosted applications, used via mobile devices.

Because of this, you'd expect that operators would want to get prompt feedback from their customers about any real-world problems they've missed. Surely in this area of their business, they'd recognise that overall "quality of experience" is best monitored and reported by the end-user, not simply deduced and inferred from boxes & probes and software in the network.

Well, that's certainly not the case for Vodafone UK. Over the last year I've been on its network for my main phone, I've noticed quite a lot of coverage gaps and holes around central London. Sometimes I get bumped down to 2G, sometimes nothing at all. And some of those gaps are in absolutely predictable and consistent physical locations - I've encountered them repeatedly, at different times of day, to the extent that I can even plan my usage around them on certain trips around town. To me, this suggests that congestion and capacity isn't the problem - it's plain and simple coverage.

I've put them on this personalised Google Map - http://goo.gl/maps/hTv3 - both are near Regents Park and Camden in London. One is right in between two of the busiest train stations in the country - Euston  and Kings Cross, right outside the British Library and near the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras.

In the big scheme of things, the two most obvious gaps are not a huge problem for me. Given my typical travel patterns around London, I probably lose 2 mins of mobile data access a week, usually when I'm on a couple of specific bus routes and using my phone for a mix of email, personal apps and so forth. But they contribute to my sense that Vodafone's London network isn't that great - especially as the company hasn't detected and fixed the (very consistent) problems proactively using whatever "service assurance" tools it presumably has at its disposal.

So I decided to report the issue.

I've heard good things about the @vodafoneUK Twitter team, so I thought I'd try that route rather than calling customer service on the phone, especially as I was reporting outdoor locations without knowing the postcodes. The @vodafoneUK team pointed me towards the VFUK online e-forums, rather than (say) giving me a direct phone line or email address to report coverage issues.

Already feeling like this was a lot of work, I nevertheless proceeded to register for the eforum (which needs a different login to other VF services, naturally), read through their harsh instructions to search for pre-existing forum posts that might cover the problem already. Then I had to go to the coverage-checker engine to see if there were any existing problems reported - which meant that I had to use Google to find two appropriate post-codes to enter, as you can't just click on the map.

Both inquries gave the response "Important service information - we're working on correcting a network problem that may affect the performance of your device"

Given that both problems have been ongoing for months, I didn't have too much confidence in this being accurate, so I put this post up on the eforum. Nothing too controversial, just a quick note to tell Voda they've got some issues. I gave a link to this blog so that their support people would know I'm not just an "average user" but have some knowledge of the industry.

The first response almost beggars belief "Now I'm not saying there isn't a problem, but the investigation I've just done points to this at the moment." . Yes, that's right, I spend all day signing up for forums and posting messages about non-existing problems. I've got nothing better to do. And your "open cases" support system is obviously better than a real-world customer with a real-world device, reporting on a real-world problem. Unreal.

Somehow, I remain civil, writing another post pointing out that yes, these issues are still real. And give some hints on how the VF engineers might replicate them if they want to do tests.


The next reply takes the biscuit: "If you can provide 3 examples of these drops  for every area you experience these in then I will definitely raise this case.". Coupled with a request by email (with a spam-tastic "Customer Service" as sender and "No subject") for my information. So if I wanted to "raise a case", I had to send through not just my phone number, but also full name (OK), and also "for security" - two digits of my VF security code (!!! very secure via email), my address (irrelevant to the question and they know this from my number), and my date of birth.


Because "security" is always important when reporting network problems.... perhaps I am some evil-doer wanting to do a "denial of service" attack on their radio engineers' time by submitting fake faults?

Oh and then the email asks for a few more details, copy-and-paste from some stupid template (possibly the wrong one too, voice not data):

• Fault description: (please detail the exact nature of the fault)
• Tests performed (Manual roam SIM in different handset)
• Date issue started:
• Device make an model:
• Results of trying SIM in another handset:
• IMEI number of the handset:
• Postcode of location:
• How far do you have to travel to get signal?
• Address of issue:
• Error tone/wording:
• Numbers effected (Please provide 3 failures, including Number called, date, time and location when call made/received):

As you can understand, I decided that a more profitable use of my time was to write this blog post instead. I'm shaking my head in disbelief about how hard it is to report an important - but simple - problem. Without basic coverage, a whole host of future business models are rendered useless. The idea, for example, of getting media companies or Internet firms to pay for "priority delivery" for 3G data, or some other sort of non-neutral network approach, is totally contingent upon delivering a reliable service.

So just to spice things up a bit more, I've also reported some other holes.... in the road.... to my local council, Westminster. I pay them about the same per month as I pay Vodafone. The road in question is less than a mile from the other sites mentioned. Let's see which one has better processes & more efficient engineering. The Council has a head start, as they have a simple page to report problems, including doing it via street name (not postcode) or "pinpoint on a map". Asks for details, gives a reference number, sends an email acknowledgement. Not a complex customer interface, but about 10x better than a supposedly customer-centric phone company worried about churn.

So - it's definitely easier to report holes in the road, than holes in the air. Let's see if it's quicker to get them fixed too.

Policy and traffic management moves to the edge of the network - the device

One of the hidden trends that I've been watching for a while, in the complex world of mobile broadband traffic management, is now starting to come to the surface: the action is moving down to the device/handset itself.

While a lot of manufacturers of "big iron" boxes like to imagine that the core network or the RAN is all-seeing and all-powerful, the truth is that any discussion of "end-to-end" is only true if it extends out to the user's hand (or ideally, retina or ear-drum). That is where quality of experience (QoE) really manifests itself and where radio decisions (especially about WiFi) are controlled. Anything observed or inferred from within the network about the handset is a second-best simulacrum, if that.

That's not say that the network-side elements are not useful - clearly the policy engines, offload and femto gateways and analytical probes in the RAN have major (even critical) roles to play, as well as the billing/charging functions allowing the setting of caps & tiers - even if I am less convinced by the various optimisation servers sitting behind the GGSN on the way to the Internet.

But most major network equipment vendors avoid getting involved in client software for devices for a number of reasons:

• The standards bodies are generally very poor at specifying on-handset technology beyond the radio and low-level protocols, and even worse at encouraging OEMs to support it. Few network equipment firms are willing to go too far down the proprietary route
• There is a huge variety of device types and configurations, which means that vendors are likely to need to develop multiple complex solutions in parallel - a costly and difficult task. It is also unclear how device-level software can be easily monetised by network vendors, except in the case of integrated end-to-end solutions.
• There are various routes to market for devices, which makes it very difficult to put operator-centric software on more than a fraction of products. In particular, buyers of unlocked devices such as PCs or "vanilla" smartphones are going to be vary wary of installing software seen as controlling and restricting usage, rather than offering extra functionality
• Testing, support, localisation, upgrades and management are all headaches

But despite these difficulties, some vendors are (sometimes grudgingly) starting to change their stance and are dipping their toes into the on-handset realm.

There are various use cases and software types emerging around device "smarts" for assisting in mobile traffic management, for example:

• Offload assistance and WiFi connection management
• Security such as on-device application policy and encryption
• User alerting - or operator feedback - on congestion and realtime network conditions from the handset's point of view
• Quota / data-plan management
• Feedback to the network on device status (eg power level, processor load etc)
• User control of application data traffic
• Low-level connectivity aspects

 I'm maintaining a list of vendors active in these areas (and a few others) as well as my thoughts on who really "gets it", but I'm going to hold off on naming them all on this occasion, as I know many of my esteemed  rivals occasionally drop by this blog.

However, one that I will highlight as being very interesting is Mobidia [not a client], which aims to put control into users' hands, rather than boxes in the network making arbitrary policy decisions. For example, it's one thing for an optimisation server to guess whether the user prefers a "non-stalling" but degraded video - but quite another (and much better) solution, for a software client to let the user participate directly in that decision and trade off quality vs. impact on their monthly data quota, via an app. I was very impressed when speaking to them, especially in comparison with some of the purely network-centric DPI/policy/optimisation vendors I met in Barcelona. I think this type of user involvement in policy will be an important piece of the puzzle.

Management of WiFi connectivity is another area where device-level touch points are important. Although some aspects can be managed from a device management / configuration box in the network - or via standards like 802.11u - that is only ever going to be a partial answer. There will need to be a proper on-device client with a UI, in order to get the experience right in all contexts. (I'll do another post on WiFi offload soon as there's other important issues, especially about the idea of backhauling traffic through the core).

Overall - device-based policy management is difficult, messy, heterogeneous and difficult to monetise. But it is going to be increasingly important, and the most far-sighted network vendors would do well to look to incorporate the "real edge" into their architectures.