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Mobile Network Performance during the COVID-19 Outbreak from a Testbed Perspective

Published: 21 September 2020 Publication History

Abstract

COVID-19 has changed our lives and continues to have a drastic impact. It forces us to impose restrictive social distancing measures and leads us to rely more on the Internet. Mobile networks become one of the major means to access the Internet for most of us. We investigate the performance of 9 mobile networks in Europe around the time when restrictions were imposed, considering web QoE, throughput, RTT, and signal coverage. Our results show countries' mobile networks are impacted by COVID-19 (as high as 46 % increase in page load time) at different times based on the outbreak timelines in these countries. Moreover, we find that operators responded properly and the network performance is back to the pre-COVID-19 times.

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  • (2024)Revolutionizing Mobile Broadband: Assessing Multicellular Networks in Indoor and Outdoor EnvironmentsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2024.345196112(120840-120863)Online publication date: 2024
  • (2023)Mobile Broadband Adoption, Performance Measurements and Methodology: A ReviewElectronics10.3390/electronics1207163012:7(1630)Online publication date: 30-Mar-2023
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  1. Mobile Network Performance during the COVID-19 Outbreak from a Testbed Perspective

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      WiNTECH '20: Proceedings of the 14th International Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental evaluation & Characterization
      September 2020
      135 pages
      ISBN:9781450380829
      DOI:10.1145/3411276
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      Published: 21 September 2020

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      Author Tags

      1. COVID-19
      2. RTT
      3. mobile network performance
      4. signal coverage
      5. throughput
      6. web QoE

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      Overall Acceptance Rate 63 of 100 submissions, 63%

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      • (2024)Comparative Study Of Indoor Performance Metrics in Ibra City's Mobile Broadband Networks, Oman2024 6th International Conference on Communications, Signal Processing, and their Applications (ICCSPA)10.1109/ICCSPA61559.2024.10794218(1-6)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
      • (2024)Revolutionizing Mobile Broadband: Assessing Multicellular Networks in Indoor and Outdoor EnvironmentsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2024.345196112(120840-120863)Online publication date: 2024
      • (2023)Mobile Broadband Adoption, Performance Measurements and Methodology: A ReviewElectronics10.3390/electronics1207163012:7(1630)Online publication date: 30-Mar-2023
      • (2023)Longitudinal Analysis of Inter-City Network Delays2023 7th Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference (TMA)10.23919/TMA58422.2023.10198987(1-9)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2023
      • (2023)Measurements and Analyses of 4G/5G Mobile Broadband NetworksWireless Communications & Mobile Computing10.1155/2023/62056892023Online publication date: 1-Jan-2023
      • (2023)Indoor Quality Assessment of 4G/5G Mobile Service Providers in Muscat Governorate of Oman2023 10th International Conference on Electrical and Electronics Engineering (ICEEE)10.1109/ICEEE59925.2023.00040(178-183)Online publication date: 8-May-2023
      • (2022)Measuring and Assessing Performance of Mobile Broadband Networks and Future 5G TrendsSustainability10.3390/su1402082914:2(829)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2022
      • (2022)Research on the Relationship between Mobile Network Data and COVID-19 Cases2022 14th International Conference on Computer Research and Development (ICCRD)10.1109/ICCRD54409.2022.9730439(12-15)Online publication date: 7-Jan-2022
      • (2022)Impact of Covid-19 on education in perspective of networksINTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL CONFERENCE “TECHNOLOGY IN AGRICULTURE, ENERGY AND ECOLOGY” (TAEE2022)10.1063/5.0106016(020008)Online publication date: 2022
      • (2021)The Approach to Network Planning Process ImprovementCurrent Trends in Communication and Information Technologies10.1007/978-3-030-76343-5_15(293-307)Online publication date: 27-May-2021

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