LTE and WiFi: Experiences with Quality and Consumption

Numerous reports over the past few years have noted that wireless data consumption continues to increase at incredible rates. Such growth rates tend to be felt most acutely in the cellular space where smartphones and tablets continue to increase in capability and popularity. Unfortunately, there exists limited public data with regards to fine-grained user performance, particularly with regards to the transition between 3G and LTE and the interplay between 3G, LTE, and WiFi. The focus of this paper is to offer insight into these particular transition points as gleaned from nearly two hundred well-instrumented smartphone users. Specifically, we note the considerable impact that the quality of smartphone WiFi plays in addition to noting that consumption across WiFi and cellular tends to stay remarkably consistent once sufficient cellular speeds are achieved. We conclude our paper with a variety of research and data challenges that we pose to the wireless networking community.