Member Article

Word Cup 2014: Lack of control over data could be a mobile own goal

FIFA World Cup 2014 kicked off yesterday in Brazil. For football/soccer fans around the planet it’s bigger than the Olympics. For enterprise mobility managers it promises to be a watershed moment in the consumption of corporate mobile data.

What do football and cellular bills have in common? Mobile managers face a sharp rise in data costs from employees on annual leave during the tournament – and diminished productivity for many who aren’t – as they catch-up on match highlights or, in the worst case, watch them at length on their devices. At home or abroad, the personal and professional often blur where company mobile devices are concerned. The adrenaline rush of a major sporting event just amplifies the effect.

A 2010 study found that mobile data traffic jumped 24% globally during the last World Cup. Video streaming increased 11 percent during the games and YouTube streaming increased 32 percent on mornings after matches. In the last 4 years, smartphone and tablet adoption has increased tremendously, and elements like 4G, video and increasingly complex apps are coming together to make the 2014 World Cup a black hole of data consumption.

Video applications are by far the worst culprits for data consumption on any mobile device. Even viewing for just ten minutes a day can consume 1GB in less than a month. Add HD to the mix and you consume twice the amount of data that standard videos do. The rollout of 4G and more powerful devices have made video the top mobile data hog.

Educating employees and having a clear policy for data roaming and acceptable use when travelling abroad for personal reasons this summer are the best place to start. As always with mobile data, staff should be directed to use Wi-Fi whenever possible.

But for enterprise-wide peace of mind during World Cup 2014 adding a mobile data gateway to your IT toolkit is the most dependable solution. It enables businesses to take control of their bills by raising visibility of what data types and apps are driving up bills. Organizations can set and enforce acceptable use policies right down to applications and data types. It also allows you to use data compression technologies that tackle the singular issue of mobile video as well as other types of content and cap usage.

Eldar Tuvey is responsible for driving Wandera’s strategic direction and growth. Previously, Eldar co-founded and served as Chief Executive Officer and Board Director of ScanSafe and was responsible for creating a global leader in managed web security that was acquired by Cisco in 2010. Eldar gained extensive business and finance experience during a career in investment banking. Previously employed at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in London and Hong Kong, he advised on numerous international financing and merger related projects within the Corporate Finance division.

Eldar completed his MBA at INSEAD and holds a BSc in Economics from Bristol University.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Eldar Tuvey .