Five Questions With: Kevin Hasley

RootMetrics is all about mobile network performance, measuring how the various phone carriers fare in all kinds of locations – such as sports venues, airports and urban hubs – producing reports for consumers. Kevin Hasley, head of product at RootMetrics, takes a look at how Rhode Island carriers performed in the latest study.

PBN: What in your view is the biggest bit of news in mobile connectivity for Providence in your latest RootScore report?

HASLEY: The biggest takeaway from our latest mobile performance report in Providence is that T-Mobile is heating up the competition for Verizon. While Verizon earned outright wins in five out of six network performance categories during our last round of testing, T-Mobile now shares these awards with Verizon – including key wins in network reliability, speed and data performance. As part of T-Mobile’s network improvements in Providence, the carrier is also providing the fastest speeds in the metro area.

 

- Advertisement -

PBN: One of your categories for analysis is “call performance.” Does that mean a call dropped completely – disconnected – or one that might fade in and out?

HASLEY: RootMetrics’ call performance category measures how reliably each network places and maintains calls. Our automated test software places calls from mobile phones to other mobile phones while driving throughout a metro area.

In our report for Providence for the first half of 2018, all carriers displayed the similarly strong performance, though T-Mobile was the only carrier with no dropped calls. When it came to blocked calls, we saw carrier improvement across the board – some as much as 2 percent – compared to the previous testing period.

PBN: Your website says that your analytics examines everyday situations that may prove difficult for a mobile communications system. What might some of those include?

HASLEY: Our testing evaluates network performance across a broad range of everyday activities, [such as] sending and receiving texts, downloading and transferring files, and making and retaining calls.

RootMetrics scouters field test using our proprietary application that measures network performance across mobile network operators simultaneously and allows each scouter to assess performance outdoors, indoors and while driving. Our application is installed and run on advanced, off-the-shelf smartphones available to the public at the time of testing.

PBN: What are some current consumer cell phone trends? For example, do more people now text rather than call on their mobile devices?

HASLEY: Data rules the mobile world. Today’s smartphone users no longer rely on these devices to simply make quick calls – they expect to be able to do everything, from streaming TV and movies, to posting on social media and sending emails.

Consumers’ increasingly complex data needs are putting strains on the mobile networks, which are seeking to make major investments in technologies [such as] 5G to improve their capacity and support subscribers.

PBN: How does RootMetrics regularly adjust its testing and studies to better reflect what goes on in the current market?

HASLEY: We perform consumer surveys to understand how people are using their phones, and use that information to design new tests and methodologies that benchmark the carriers against how people are actually using their phones.

We also use results from our own crowdsourced app to inform how consumers are experiencing the network. This helps RootMetrics enhance our scoring algorithms to better assess the carriers in our scientific results. We find that when analyzed together, scientific and crowdsourced data can provide a holistic view of network performance for consumers.

Susan Shalhoub is a PBN contributing writer.