Generated by Jive SBS on 2010-04-08-06:001

Service Provider Mobility: Our WiMAXStudent Testers have Spoken!

Posted by Ryan Lasure Feb 19, 2010

We’ve been extremely busy with multiple projects that are currently occurringwith our WiMAX network. One of our projects includes our WiMAX Usability Study.Various students of Ball State University have agreed to participate, in exchangefor a free broadband Internet connection! Oh, and we ask that the studentscomplete a few surveys per month. Sounds pretty awesome, right?

Today, I’d like to share with you some results from a recent study conductedamong the student testers! This is a preliminary survey, so we covered verybasic information. Will the results surprise you? Or are the results something youwould have expected? Lets see!

Most recently, we have given away USB WiMAX dongles to students, and asked them tocomplete the installation process themselves. This process includes self-installing the driver/device software, followed by inserting the USB dongle, and disabling their WiFi connection.From that, we found that (click on chart to view larger):

Service Provider Mobility: Our WiMAX Student Testers have Spoken!

Generated by Jive SBS on 2010-04-08-06:002

• 50.0% of students felt that the installation was easy• 36.8% of students found the installation to be moderately difficult• 0% found it very difficult

13.2% of students were unsuccessful at installing on their own• Reasons why students were unsuccessful were things as simple as they have not gotten a chance

to self-install at the time of the survey, to operating-system type issues such as the non-driversupport for Windows 7 (all versions) running 32-bit.

Student testers are asked to use WiMAX whenever convenient. In most cases, studentsalready have an Internet connection, whether it be at their own residence, or while oncampus. We asked them where they used their connection most (students were allowed toselect multiple choices) and found that (click on chart to view larger):

• 57.4% of students connect off-campus• 42.6% connect on-campus

Service Provider Mobility: Our WiMAX Student Testers have Spoken!

Generated by Jive SBS on 2010-04-08-06:003

When asking how many hours per week they connected to WiMAX last week, we found thefollowing usage (click on chart to view larger):

• 16.7% of students never used their WiMAX connection (0 Hours)• 13% used their connection between 0 and 1 hours• 29.6% used their connection between 1 and 3 hours• 9.3% used their connection between 3 and 5 hours• 7.4% used their connection between 5 and 7 hours• 7.4% used their connection between 7 and 9 hours

16.7% used their connection for more than 9 hours•    Of that 16.7%, our ‘power users’ averaged just under 40 hours of connection time

per-week

Service Provider Mobility: Our WiMAX Student Testers have Spoken!

Generated by Jive SBS on 2010-04-08-06:004

We also wanted to know the approximate time of day they used their WiMAX connection(Students were able to select multiple choices). We found out that (click on chart to viewlarger):

• Students connected between the morning hours of 5AM-9AM 9.3% of the time• Students connected between the daytime hours of 9AM-5PM 44.4% of the time• Students connected between the evening hours of 5PM-11PM 70.4% of the time• Students connected between the late night hours of 11PM-5AM 18.4% of the time

Again, those were just a few preliminary questions that we asked, and plan to ask the samequestions again over time, to see if there are any particular trends that form.

What are your thoughts about our findings? Are there any questions you would likeanswered? Post your comments and questions! We want to know!

237 Views Tags: usability, 4g, wimax, bsu, ball_state_university, usability_study

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Service Provider Mobility: Our WiMAX Student Testers have Spoken!

Generated by Jive SBS on 2010-04-08-06:005