Location-aware Opportunistic Communication
Most advanced 2G technology (EDGE) can provide download throughput of up to
48 KBps. We performed an experiment to measure the throughput of 2G data
connection in wild by repeatedly downloading a MP3 song of about 5MB size on five
different phones, which were used by volunteers for a week. The median download
throughput achieved by the EDGE network across two operators was about 18 KBps
while the variation was from 4 KBps to 28 KBps. We also observed many instances
of failed downloads - approx. 22% downloads failing for Operator A and approx.
42% for Operator B. Low throughput and failed downloads were primarily due to
two major reasons - variable wireless conditions (low RSSI) and variable load on
cellular networks. As a result downloading content (especially multimedia) on EDGE
network results in several limitations described as follows: