Five Questions With: Annette Hamilton

ANNETTE HAMILTON is director at RootMetrics, the independent source for real-world mobile performance comparison. / COURTESY ROOTMETRICS
ANNETTE HAMILTON is director at RootMetrics, the independent source for real-world mobile performance comparison. / COURTESY ROOTMETRICS

Annette Hamilton, director at RootMetrics, the independent source for real-world mobile performance comparison, talks about the wireless network testing that it conducts twice a year and some of the changes providers have made to stand out in such a competitive market.

PBN: How long have the RootMetrics studies been held? Are they done twice a year? How did they begin?

HAMILTON: We released our first results, for 11 U.S. cities, in January 2011. We released the first RootScore Report for Providence in October 2011. Testing is conducted, and RootScore Reports are released, twice per year.

We founded RootMetrics in 2008 because we couldn’t find a trusted source of consumer-focused mobile network performance information. We started from scratch and created a new way to evaluate mobile network performance.

PBN: How do you think these studies benefit consumers?

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HAMILTON:We publish high-level results, twice per year for each of the most populated 125 U.S. cities, all 50 states, and the U.S. as a whole. These high-level reports are available on RootMetrics.com for free and allow mobile consumers to compare mobile carriers, apples-to-apples, where they live, work and play.

PBN: It seems that most of the mobile carriers improve with each study – they obviously want to become more competitive, and offer more for consumers. Is there one area that continues to be a challenge across the board, or another area that they all generally excel at?

HAMILTON: In general, the performance of most of the carriers does improve with each study, offering better results for consumers. That said, some carriers improve faster than others in various ways (i.e., data performance or call performance) and in various locations (i.e., specific states or cities). That is usually because each carrier has a business strategy that prioritizes investments in particular geographic regions, in spectrum acquisition and deployments, or in technology rollouts – or all of these.

PBN: What are some of the positive trends that have been seen as a result of doing these periodic studies?

HAMILTON: Carriers have used our information over the years to understand where they can make improvements consistent with their overall business strategies, and we believe that has resulted in significant performance improvements over time.

One of the biggest mobile-performance trends we have seen over the years is the exploding demand for mobile data, and the efforts all carriers have made to deliver competitive mobile data to their customers. We anticipate this trend will continue for the foreseeable future.

Another trend we have seen is that – for the most part – call performance has become very good across all carriers in most locations. Call performance is no longer a major point of differentiation between the major carriers, rather it has become a cost of entry – something that must be reliable and of good quality, or it is considered a nonstarter for many consumers.

PBN: How does Providence rate for mobile performance? Has it improved over the last five years?

HAMILTON: For the most part, our latest RootScore results (for second half 2016) show that consumers in Providence enjoy a high level of mobile performance across all the areas we test – Reliability, Speed, Data, Call, Text and Overall Performance. The one exception is in the categories of Speed and Data Performance – Sprint lags behind in these two areas but is quite strong (along with the other carriers) in all other categories. Sprint continues to make investments in mobile technology so there is a good chance its Speed and Data Performance results will improve.

In the second half of 2016, median download speeds for all carriers except Sprint were 18 Mbps or faster – speedy enough to accomplish most routine mobile tasks with ease. Sprint lagged with a 6.33 Mbps median download speed, but, again, that could easily change.
We don’t have to look back five years to see how quickly mobile performance is improving in Providence. For instance: We started reporting on median data speed results for each carrier in the first half of 2014. Looking at data from the first half of 2014 – 2.5 years ago – you can see that the ‘fastest’ median download speed for any carrier was 16.6 Mbps (for AT&T) – and the lowest LTE penetration was 79 percent (Sprint). Compare that to results from the second half of 2016 (2.5 years later) when the fastest median download speed for any carrier had jumped to 24.1 Mbps (for Verizon) and all carriers now have 94 percent LTE penetration (Sprint) or better. Remember, LTE is a newer technology that produces faster and more reliable mobile performance.

Taken together, the LTE penetration and faster data speeds suggests that all carriers are investing to improve mobile performance for customers in Providence, and their investments are bearing fruit.

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