Speed on the Internet: Its Dimensions and Significance

We talk rather frequently these days about the "speed" of our internet connections. Those in the know understand that speed also equals "bandwidth." Therefore, "broadband internet" is better than the narrower bandwidths that preceded it. Speed has several meanings and connotations when applied to the internet.

• One important meaning is the length of time from when you touch a keyboard button on a PC, mobile phone or PDA, until the device displays your input. For users of the internet, this meaning of speed is very important, and it helps to explain why, once someone has gotten accustomed to fast, broadband internet connections, they're unwilling to go back to slower interaction with the web.

• Another meaning of speed has to do with bandwidth and how much data can be transmitted per second or other unit of time via different networks. In other words, I can say that I'm connected to the web at 54 Mbps or 100 Mbps. The vast majority of non-technically-inclined people in today's world probably tune out such explanations as irrelevant to their own, day-to-day concerns.

• In practical, human terms, yet another meaning of speed is how quickly a video segment will load and play on your computer, mobile phone, pda or other device. As with the response to keyboard input, the goal here is instantaneous response.

• In today's world, another way of thinking about speed is in relation to politics. Universal access to speedy networks equals the possibility for democratic politics and the chance for an information society in which everyone prospers. I'm not suggesting that content and other factors are irrelevant, but equal access to information and equal capability to disseminate information seem to demand speed on the internet and through the world's networks.

• Speed and virtual reality (aka Cyberspace). It is also the speed, or bandwidth of internet connections that makes possible Cyworld in Korea, Second Life in the U.S. and other world's of virtual reality. Do these worlds have a history, like the real world? If so, how is the history different from and related to the history of the real world we inhabit? Most importantly, how fast is the history evolving? Is it accelerating?

In the final analysis, there can be no doubt that speed is important. The reason I emphasize this point is that some people in the United States, Britain and other countries are still questioning strategy for building-out broadband internet networks that will allow all citizens to access information with blazing speed. Speed matters. It matters a lot. P.S. I'm enjoying the speed access to the internet that living in South Korea affords me! More on this topic in future posts.

Speed Matters: The U.S. Lags in Internet Download Speed

It is not only in Olympic swimming events or track that speed is important.  The new 2008 report, "Speed Matters," a project of the Communication Workers of America, quantifies just how much the United States lags behind other nations in the speed of its broadband internet infrastructure.  The full report is available for download at the organization's website, http://www.speedmatters.org/ This second annual survey of internet speeds in each of the fifty states shows, not surprisingly, that the United States continues to lag behind other countries in the world.  The median download speed for the nation was 2.3 megabits per second (mbps). In Japan, the median download speed is 63 mbps, or 30 times faster than the U.S. The U.S. also trails South Korea at 49 mbps, Finland at 21 mbps, France at 17 mbps, and Canada at 7.6 mbps.

The median upload speed from the speedmatters.org test was just 435 kilobits per second (kbps), far too slow for patient monitoring or to transmit large files such as medical records.  The report also notes that about 15 percent of Americans still connect to the internet via a dial-up connection, something that has been virtually nonexistent for years now in South Korea.   It is worth noting that the debate over the importance of high speed, broadband internet was concluded years ago in South Korea.  People here are already enjoying many of the benefits that high speed internet connections bring and, if anything, the Korean populace seems to look forward to even higher speeds in the near future.

Korea Ranks Number One in Fourth Annual "Speed Matters" Survey

The Communications Workers of America has released its fourth annual "Speed Matters" survey of broadband internet speed in the United States.  As shown in the accompanying graphic (click to see a full size version) their report benchmarks several other countries around the world, including South Korea.  The new report argues that speed matters because 1) speed makes the promise of the internet a reality, 2) U.S. economic growth depends on high speed internet, 3) millions of Americans don't have high speed internet, and 4) the U.S. trails far behind other countries.  According to this latest report, the United States ranks fifteenth among the countries of the world in average broadband internet speed.

More on Korea's speedy digital networks

As a quick perusal of prior posts on this blog will show (you can read them at this link), I've long been concerned with the speed of digital networks in general and how fast Korea's networks are in comparison with other countries around the world.  Given the multiple organizations that measure internet speed and the many different methods they use, placing Korea in context compared with other countries can sometimes be very confusing.   The purpose of this post is not to solve that problem, but rather to call attention to OpenSignal,  a relatively new (founded in 2010) company that specializes in mapping wireless coverage and speeds.   One strength of their measure is that it comes from users of their app all around the world and therefore reflects internet download speeds in actual usage situations.

Open Signal as shown in the world map above and the bar chart at the left, measures "overall speed," which is a combined measure of speed versus availability of 3G and LTE mobile services. (click on the graphics to see a full size version.  Open Signal defines ".. overall speed as the average mobile data connection a user experiences based on both the speeds and availability of a country’s 3G and 4G networks. Overall speed measurements vary considerably from country to country depending on their particular stage of 3G and 4G development. For instance a country with fast LTE speeds but low 4G availability might have a much lower overall speed than a country with moderate LTE speeds but a very high level of 4G availability."  Obviously, South Korea's world leadership in LTE introduction and current penetration (availability) boosts its standing on this measure, relative to Singapore and a few other countries that have fast speeds, but lag behind Korea in availability.

Another was of effectively visualizing this is to see where Korea fits in the chart showing speed versus availability.  Click on the final graphic to see a full-size version of the screen capture.  Better yet, go to the online Open Signal report and see data for each of the countries in the chart by hovering over the dots.

Perspectives on speed and LTE in Korea

As regular, even semi-regular, readers of this blog know, I've long been interested in the world-leading status and steadily increasing speed of South Korea's digital networks. Koreans themselves seldom question the need for ever faster networks, the significance of which seems to be second nature to most citizens in this country, who are justifiably proud of their nation's status as an "IT powerhouse."
Technically, the speed of digital networks relates to such matters as the processing speed of semiconductors in the routers that connect the network and the bandwidth of both mobile and fixed networks.  There are a number of ways too look at and measure internet speed.   For a number of years now, Akamai's regular "State of the Internet" reports have shown that South Korea has the highest average internet download speed in the world.  In the latest such report, for the fourth quarter of 2012, South Korea continued its lead, with an average download speec of 14.0 Mbps, ahead of Japan with an average of 10.8 Mbps, and Hong Kong, which ranged third at 9.3 Mbps.

Another indication of speed is the extremely rapid adoption of LTE in South Korea, as shown in the accompanying graphic by Telegeography (click on the graphic to see a full-size version.  Korea's three mobile service providers have all built nationwide LTE networks and have introduced service at a rate faster than any other country in the world.  This has even led to some criticism that the adoption of LTE in Korea has been too fast, possibly cutting into profits that could have been earned from 3G services.
Various measures can be used to represent trends in the adoption and use of new mobile communication technologies, including the number of subscribers, the number of users per 100 population and so forth.   For this post, I've assembled a graphic from the latest report on mobile data traffic trends published by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (Korean language).  This graphic illustrates the dramatic increase in actual use of data (content) by Korean consumers (click on the graphic to see a full-size version).  As such, it shows that the generation of Korean language content and services seems to be keeping pace with which consumers are acquiring new LTE smartphones.
Note several features of this graph.  First, adoption of Korea's homegrown WiBro (mobile WiMax) 4G technology has remained relatively stable since January of 2012.  Second, levels of 2G usage are so small that the data does not even appear in this graphic.  For all practical purposes, 2G has been discontinued in South Korea.  Third, there is a slow but steady decline in use of 3G mobile devices for data transmission.   Finally, of
course, the dramatic growth of LTE is shown in the green shaded portion of the graphic.

OpenSignal report and Korea's lead in network speed

As readers of this blog will know, the speed of digital data processing and transmission was one of my recurrent concerns in earlier posts (see these for example).  A new (February 2019) report by OpenSignal confirms that Korea's 4G mobile networks are still the world's fastest.   The report makes interesting reading.  One of its main findings is that 4G speeds around the world "...vary tremendously across the day, showing the impact of congestion on daytime speeds."   (click on the graphic for a full size version)

The OpenSignal report indicated that Korea ranked number one in the world in average download speed, but it broke this down into 4G speed at the slowest hour of the day compared with speed at the fastest hour of the day.  Part of the graphic is shown at left.  Currently, 4G users around the world experience a wide range of download speeds between the slowest and fastest hours of the day.  Furthermore, cities see the greatest speed swings, indicating daytime congestion that might be relieved by 5G.  As noted in the report, "Users in Paris experienced the greatest range of 4G Download Speeds, fluctuating between 21.5 Mbps and 51.4 Mbps in a 24-hour period, followed by Sydney and Santiago. Worryingly, New York's fastest hour for 4G speed of 40.8 Mbps was in a virtual dead heat with the 40.6 Mbps Seoul’s inhabitants experience at their slowest hour of the day. But Seoul’s slowest hour of day is still faster than the fastest hour of day in Taipei (38.2 Mbps), London (38.3 Mbps) and 21 other cities analyzed." (My emphasis added in the quote)

Slow Light to Speed up the Internet?

I hadn't planned another post on the importance of speed for the internet, but ran across a fascinating article from the BBC (click here to read the full article).  Researchers in Britain and the United States say that a huge increase in the speed of the internet could be produced by slowing parts of it down.  The major limiting factor on the internet's speed comes about not from transporting information, but in routing it to its various destinations. Metamaterials could replace the bulky and slow electronics that do the routing, paving the way for lightning fast web speeds. As noted by Dr. Chris Stevens from the department of engineering sciences at the University of Oxford,  the current system ". . . limits the speed of the whole process to the speed of your electronics.  The light and the fibres can quite cheerfully sustain a couple of terahertz, but your electronics can't do more than a few gigahertz."  Using metamaterials to build a completely optical internet may help to get around this problem.  

Korea's continuing lead in speed

I received a message this past week calling my attention to the infographic at the left  (click on the infographic to see a full size version, or go directly to it at this link)  Note that the comparisons of South Korea with the U.S. are on the top quarter or so of the graphic, followed by U.S.-specific information.
This information prompted me to check Akamai's latest State of the Internet quarterly report, for the third quarter of 2012.   It shows that Korea continues to lead the world in its average measured connection speed to the internet, at 14.7 Mbps, followed by Japan and Hong Kong at 10.5 and 9.0 Mbps respectively.  South Korea is also the world leader in what Akamai calls "High Broadband"  with 52% of all connections at a speed greater than 10 Mbps, compared with only 18% of such connections in the United States.
When it comes to internet connections, whether fixed or mobile, speed matters.  However, high speed broadband networks do not simply appear overnight.  Indeed, the building of these new networks is a large, long-term construction project that requires massive funding, planning and leadership.  The larger lesson from this infographic, along with considerable recent research and discussion in policy circles, is that the liberal, U.S. approach to broadband, "let the market and private sector handle it" doesn't seem to work well, when compared with the government-led, long-term ICT policy planning in South Korea.
I've been working over the past several weeks on revision of a conference paper with a Korean colleague that examines the role of government leadership in the ICT sector, so this infographic was a timely reminder that policies and plans, or the lack thereof, ultimately affect the marketplace and consumers.   It also reminded me to appreciate the gigabit network at KAIST and the high download speeds we enjoy here in the Daedok Innopolis.   While Kansas City, Austin Texas and Provo Utah will soon get similar speeds courtesy of Google, over here in South Korea the entire nation will very soon be enjoying a gigabit network.

Korea's Lead in 5G Speed

 

A new OpenSignal report on 5G progress in the Asia-Pacific region underscores South Korea's global lead in implementing 5G network infrastructure. (click on the graphic for a full size version)  The report includes measures of speed, along with user experience and 5G availability and reach.  As shown in this graphic, Korea leads the region (and therefore probably the world) in average 5G download speed, 5G peak download speed and 5G upload speed.

Speed matters: July 2018 update

OpenSignal just published an article/post entitled "Explaining the huge gap between fastest and slowest 4G upload speeds in the US."  As readers of this blog will know, I've posted frequently over the years (check these out) on the importance of speed (a.k.a. bandwidth) on the Internet.
The OpenSignal article noted that average 4G upload speed in the U.S. during the period from March 1 to May 29, 2018 ranged from 2.5 Mbps to 7.5 Mbps.  (click on the graphic for a full size version)

This made me curious about the upload and download speeds from my office here in the Incheon Global Campus.  So I did a speed test (click on the graphic for a full size version of the screen capture).
Draw your own conclusions, but I would submit to you once again that "speed matters"!

Speed and digital technology in Korea's fight against COVID-19

I've commented frequently over the years on the importance of speed in digital networks.  Speed can refer to download speeds on mobile or fiber optic networks, processing speed in computers, mobile phones and data centers, and so forth.  Korea today possesses some of the world's fastest digital networks and has built e-government and big data while using these networks.  The speed of networks and data processing here has proven to be a significant advantage for Korea in fighting COVID-19.   The Korea Times, in collaboration with The Korea Foundation, is publishing a five part series on Korea's response to the Covid pandemic.  The latest installment, entitled "Korea's ICT, AI, Biotech shine in virus crisis" makes it clear that fast, state-of-the-art digital technologies are a key enabler of fast contract tracing, public education and related efforts to contain the virus.

Speed matters: check it with Ookla's open data!

As discussed and expressed in many posts on this blog over the years (see a selection here), speed matters.  Over the past decade or so, I've had more than a few encounters with visitors from the U.S. or Europe who expressed surprise when told that South Korea had the fastest broadband networks of any comparable country in the world.  Some of them thought that Japan had faster networks.  Just within the past year, such a view was even offered in a peer review of a scholarly publication I had co-authored!
Now, thanks to the folks at Ookla, any debate about which country or city, for that matter, has the fastest internet connections can be quickly answered by using their NetIndex Explorer.  It provides visualizations based on a large number of speed tests worldwide and is probably the best available empirical measure of broadband speeds around the globe.  If you don't trust me, take a look at the recent study by MIT researchers.   As shown on the accompanying screen capture (click to see a full-size version), taken a few minutes ago, South Korea has an average download speed of 54.0 Mbps, based on which it is only fourth fastest in the world, according to Ookla.  By comparison, when I did the screen capture, Japan showed an average download speed of 23.5 Mbps and China 22.9 Mbps.
So what three countries have faster average download speeds than South Korea?  Interestingly, two of them are cities, Singapore and Hong Kong, and the third is Romania.  Obviously, inclusion of cities and city-states like Singapore raises the question of whether this is an apples and oranges comparison.  However, Romania, which has a population less than half as large as South Korea, is a fairer comparison.

Ookla's NetIndex Explorer tool allows you compare countries and to drill down to the city level within nations, as shown in the second screen capture (again, click for a full-size version) where I created a line graph to compare Singapore, Romania and Korea over time.
Although other organizations, including M-lab, Google and Akamai and others, also measure internet speeds, Ookla deserves special recognition for making its data available publicly and downloadable for further analysis under a Creative Commons copyright.  This is an example of open data that is extremely valuable for the internet community worldwide!

Speed Matters and Korea Leads

Readers of this blog will know that the speed of internet connections has been a recurrent theme of this blog over the years (for example, check out these posts).  Intuitively, most internet users understand that the speed of an internet connection is important and from the consumer standpoint, the faster the connection the better.  Google has done research with its search pages that empirically demonstrates this preference for faster loading pages.  In 2013 a survey of European internet users showed that 45% of them would be willing to upgrade or change their supplier for higher speed.
South Korea leads the world in internet connection speeds and is showing no signs of slowing down.  As shown in the accompanying graphic (click to see a full size version) published by Netmanias, KT declared its Gigatopia vision in 2014, and has already implemented both fixed and mobile services to achieve that vision.

Korean consumers, as shown in the second graphic, are adopting the newer, faster services at a rapid rate.  Speed matters, and this is something well understood in Korea by policymakers, corporate leaders and consumers.

S. Korea Loses Top Broadband Speed Ranking? A Note on Misuse of Statistics

Akamai has released its latest State of the Internet report, this one for the second quarter of 2011.   As readers of this blog will know, I've periodically commented on and linked to these reports, as they are one valuable source of empirical data about the speed of broadband internet connections in countries around the world.  However, as with all statistics, they can be either used or misused.
One of my alerts sent me to an article on ReadWriteWeb entitled "S. Korea Loses Top Spot According to Akamai's State of the Internet Report."  This was news to me, so I decided to read the new Akamai report.   In fact, it shows that, on average, South Korea still has by far the fastest average broadband internet speed in the world.  Indeed, the headline, as it stands, is an example of misleading journalism.   As shown in the graphic to the left, taken directly from the Akamai report, the average download speed in South Korea during the second quarter of this year was 13.8 mbps, far higher than that of the Netherlands, at 8.5 mbps.   Note that Korea did experience a year-on year decrease in average download speed of over 17 percent.
What the ReadWriteWeb article seized on for its headline was a small section of the Akamai report devoted to what is called "global high broadband connectivity," devoted to an analysis that looks only at connections at speeds higher than 5 mbps.  On this one particular measure, the Netherlands recorded a 40% year on year increase, so pulled out ahead of Hong Kong and South Korea, which ranked second and third, respectively.   Clearly the headline used is misleading, given that Korea still appears at or near the top of virtually all the tables presented in the Akamai report.
If you've read this far, go ahead and link to the ReadWriteWeb article, but only to see a blatant example of misuse of statistics!

Korea Still Has the World's Fastest Internet

Akamai is about to release another of its quarterly "State of the Internet" reports and it shows that South Korea continues to have the world's highest average internet access speeds, and by quite some margin.  As noted in a report by Fortune magazine, South Koreans hook into the internet at an average speed of 14 megabits per second, or seven times the global average.  We visited the topic of internet speed in a post last month.  As MikeinSeoul noted in his comments, the relatively small geographical size of Korea has something to do with these speeds.  Along with its mountainous geography and relatively small size, South Korea is highly urbanized with a very large proportion of the population living in high rise apartment complexes that are connected to the nationwide fiber optic networks.
Having reiterated this much, there is more to the Korean story than simply its size and geographic advantages.  South Korea is slightly larger than the state of Indiana, yet it has much faster internet connection speeds than Indiana.  My forthcoming book with Dr. OH, Myung, Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society, addresses some of the reasons why Korea today possesses such advanced and fast digital networks.  Policies and persistent long term investment in building networks clearly had something to do with it, and they began back in the early 1980s.
For the fun of it, I just did two speed tests, using the tool that is freely available on speedtest.net.  The first (results in the top graphic) showed the speed of my connection from rural Gangwon Province to a server in Seoul.  The second tested the upload and download speed to a server in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  Just thought some of you might be interested.  (Click on either of the graphics to enlarge.)

Speed matters, as Korea demonstrates again

As reported in The Korea Joongang Daily, commercial internet speeds are about to jump 100-fold next year.  As illustrated in the accompanying diagram, (click to see a full size version) this increase in speed will come with the introduction of a newly developed network called the Wavelength Division Multiplexed Passive Optical Network (WDM-PON).  Not surprisingly, this technical advance was announced by the state-run Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).
The director of ETRI's optical access research team noted that this new network would offer the highest internet speed available anywhere in the world. “Such technology can send 10 gigabytes of data per second,” he noted. Current Internet networks can only send 100 megabytes per second, meaning they are 100 times slower. One byte is equal to eight bytes.
Readers of this blog will know my view on the importance of speed in next generation broadband networks.  See for example my post in February of this year.

U.S. Digital Deficiency Jeopardizes "Super Power" Status

The title of this post is taken from the article just published by Shelley Palmer, and it pretty much says it all. He notes that children born in America this year will be the first true Digital Natives of the Information Age. They will grow up in a time when all of their telecommunications tools: video, voice and data are based completely upon digital technology. He then appropriately questions whether U.S. public policy contemplates a future constrained by the agendas of big business as opposed to positioning America to truly prosper in the global information economy. His article notes that " An average broadband connection in the United States is 1.5 Mbps down and 768 Kbps up -- about enough speed to watch a fairly low resolution streaming video or do some casual web surfing. Cable modems are faster and you can certainly purchase more connectivity, if you can afford it. But, on average, consumers are offered asymmetrical (faster download/slower upload) broadband connections and no one seems that unhappy about it. They should be. A child born in Korea or Singapore this year will be a digital native of their respective countries. They will grow up in a time when all of their telecommunications tools: video, voice and data are based completely upon digital technology. And they are very likely to start their journey through the Internet with 100 Mpbs symmetrical broadband connection." On my recent trip to the U.S., I experienced just how slow an 11 Mbps wireless connection to the internet from a motel room seems after being accustomed to fast connections here in Korea. Speed is vital to fully use and experience the modern internet. A lack of speed slows down convergence. The Broadcasting and Communications Commission (BCC) reported yesterday that Korean telecom firms (KT, LG-Dacom and Hannaro) are to invest around 1.57 trillion won ($15.8 billion) on Internet-protocol TV (IPTV) services this year. A large portion of that investment will reportedly be used in expanding and improving Internet networks in order to provide the speed necessary to guarantee high quality for real-time TV broadcasting on existing networks. Clearly, in this era of convergence and ubiquitous networks, South Korea seeks to maintain its status as an IT power. What is the U.S. stance?

Speed in Mobile Broadband Solutions

I've commented on the importance of speed in internet connections in several prior posts. Now Jeff Orr, a leading industry analyst of mobile broadband, has created an elegant chart that visually portrays the relative speed of different mobile broadband solutions. (Click on the chart to see the full-size image.) In comments introducing the chart, Orr notes that "As more mobile broadband networks are launched and accessible to a greater potential market of users, a common question I receive is how these protocols compare in speed. This first chart shows multiple contemporary protocols and their maximum claimed data rates." Both his comments and the chart are right on target.

The U.S., Korea and Broadband

Almost on the eve of President Obama's inauguration Business Week has published an interesting article, entitled "Bring U.S. Broadband Up to Speed," and its recommendations are right on target.  As the sub-head notes, "For long term economic growth Obama's stimulus package should include a $10 billion to $15 billion investment in high speed communications infrastructure.  Quoting from the article:
"The U.S. desperately needs to catch up with global leaders in two areas of high-speed broadband communications. The first is extending the current world-class wired broadband service now used by big business, smaller companies, and consumers across America. The second is increasing the transmission speed and reach of wireless service to nearly everywhere in the nation. Achieving these two goals would bridge the digital divide between city and country and provide a powerful productivity tool to all sectors of society: private enterprise, nonprofit organizations and institutions, and every level of government."
The article goes on to note how companies in other countries are leveraging broadband and the internet to operate more efficiently and create game-changing advantages.  Australia, with territory nearly as large as the continental U.S. and a very similar population distribution, has wireless network speeds of 21 Mbps to cell phones, laptops, and other wireless devices on a mobile Internet that reaches 99% of the population.  Plans are to double Australia's network speeds to 42 Mbps in 2009, "enough bandwidth to download a two-hour movie to a laptop on a beach in four minutes."
Business Week could have just as well have elaborated on South Korea.  This country built its first digitally switched network in the 1980s.  The Public Switched Telephone Network was completed in 1987, just before the Seoul Olympics.  Improvements to that network continued until, in the early 1990s leaders here saw the need for building "information superhighways."  The Korea Information Infrastructure project from 1995-2005 laid down the most extensive fiber optic, atm-switched communications network in the world, allowing those who live here to enjoy fast internet service.  However, things did not stop there.  In South Korea, development and investment have been consistent and continuous since 1981!  Policymakers here and most people have come to appreciate the productivity advantages and possibilities brought by the information revolution.  Soon WiBro (Mobile WiMax) will be available throughout Korea, but that will not be the last stage of this revolution.  Ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence will be prominent in the next phase of development.
It seems clear that the U.S. could benefit from Korea's example and that a strong government-industry partnership between the telecoms sectors of the two nations would be beneficial to both as Obama takes office.

Korea's lead in speed

As frequently noted in earlier posts on this blog, the value of speed in broadband communications networks and digital communication devices, has never been questioned in public policy debates here in Korea, as it has in the U.S.  Two items in the news this week suggest that South Korea will maintain its "lead in speed" for some time to come.
First, Samsung Electronics announced that it is mass producing the world's first 128 gigabyte ultra fast embedded memory for next generation smart phones.  (click on the graphic to see a full-sized version) As noted in the Samsung press release,"For random writing of data to storage, the blazingly fast UFS embedded memory operates at 14,000 IOPS and is 28 times as fast as a conventional external memory card, making it capable of supporting seamless Ultra HD video playback and smooth multitasking functions at the same time, enabling a much improved mobile experience."
Second, as reported in The Korea Joongang Daily, Korea's LTE networks are getting faster.  As noted in the article,"Korean mobile carriers on Thursday introduced their upgraded LTE technologies, which ramp up the current 300Mbps networks to 600Mbps at the maximum ahead of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) that kicks off in Barcelona, Spain in March."  Each mobile service provider is using different technology, but with the same result:  increased speed.