With the coming of BlackBerry Messenger on Android devices, many thought buying data would automatically be as cheap as buying on Blackberry phones; but months after, buying data on an android device remains as expensive as ever.
According to NCC in a post on its Facebook page, “The issue of data usage on Blackberry and Android smartphones has been generating a lot of comments lately and the Commission has a duty to protect and inform all stakeholders in the industry on all issues of concern.
“RIM, the manufacturer of BlackBerry, utilizes a special compression algorithm to serve users of Blackberry handsets who have subscribed for Blackberry internet service. Whenever such a subscriber browses the internet and opens a webpage, a request is sent via the handset’s browser requesting for the page to be downloaded to the phone. This request is channeled to RIM’s gateway in Canada, which fetches the webpage, compresses it and sends the compressed data back to the BlackBerry phone as a download”, the regulatory body said.
Explaining further, it said “On an Android phone, the request to open a webpage by telephone subscribers is sent to the gateway of the network operator which then processes the information and sends back the page to the Android phone as a download (the data is not compressed – thereby requiring more bandwidth).
“The amount of bandwidth uploaded is identical between both Blackberry and Android phones, the difference lies in the fact that most of what subscribers do on their phones is to download content which varies on both. BlackBerry is indirectly subsidizing bandwidth by compressing the content downloaded by subscribers”.
In effect, an internet subscriber using an Android smartphone to open a webpage may be downloading 100KB of data, while a subscriber using a Blackberry opening the very same webpage would be downloading 25KB due to the compression of data by RIM.
The NCC is however promoting wired infrastructure around the country through projects as WIN (Wire Nigeria) and promoting a Broadband Roadmap for the country in a bid to greatly reduce the cost of bandwidth thereby reducing the cost of browsing the internet on smartphones.