Vienna surfing: assessing mobile broadband quality in the field

Abstract

This paper presents our findings from a mobile broadband QoE field trial conducted in the city of Vienna, Austria. Using their own laptops in everyday contexts, participants regularly assessed the quality of their mobile broadband connection (tasks: web surfing, file downloads) which in the background was manipulated via traffic shaping throughout a period of three weeks. We discuss our study setup and observations of field trial participant behavior (rating patterns, times, contexts, etc.) as well as the results and lessons learned from correlating end user QoE ratings with measurements performed at client and network level. In addition, we compare our results with those from similar lab experiments, showing that the two evaluation contexts (lab, field) cannot be used interchangeably due to deviant QoE rating behavior of participants.