The
transport chaos caused by this week's snowstorm created a
bonanza for the mobile phone network operators as shivering
commuters phoned or texted to change their arrangements.
Vodafone's voice traffic was up 50% and SMS traffic 58%, a
spokesman said. O2's voice traffic rose 20%, but SMS was up 70%, a
spokesman said. T-Mobile had the reverse traffic pattern, with
outgoing voice calls rising 73% and text 21%.
An Orange spokesman said its biggest spike was between 07.00 and
08.30 when people were calling to say they could not make it in.
But the upsurge continued with the mobile data network seeing "a
considerable uplift" as people logged on from home, a spokesman
said.
Wi-Fi usage was also up at Orange, and lots of people used their
phones to upload photos of them playing in the snow to social
networking sites such as Facebook, the spokesman said.
Some mobile networks faced pockets of congestion in the London
and Home Counties during rush hour, but most were pleased with how
their networks coped.
"We were extremely happy with the resilience of our network
during the snow storms across the UK. We are continually spending
millions on our network to ensure our customers get a great
experience. Clearly it is hard to account for bad weather, but we
are used to managing the need for increased capacity," an O2
spokesman said.
None said it was planning an increase in capacity as a result of
the week's weather.
The anomalous weather could speed up the adoption of smart
phones, especially if firms decide the capacity to work remotely is
a corporate key performance indicator.
Andrew Kitson, author of Juniper's new smartphones report,
doubted that a short bout of extreme weather would drive demand for
smartphones. But, he notes, "Smartphones are ideally placed to make
the most of the mobile enterprise opportunity."
He says CIOs need to bite the bullet and invest now in deploying
the mobile enterprise architecture that best suits their needs.
"CIOs need to realise that they will quickly reap returns on
that investment and will benefit long-term," he says, even though
he acknowledges that investment cash may be hard to come by.