Public Wifi Users Complaint Sender App

[corneadoug]

Introduction

For a few months now (4 or 5 maybe), the telecom companies Wifi Network became quite unusable. As I ride subway for 3 hours a day, I realized all the different problems you can have (Bandwidth too slow, Missing network in some part, Network that doesn't recognized users, lots of connection/deconnection), and that the network is not being well maintained nor upgraded.

The Problem

Telecom companies advertise their network speed and Wifi coverage, however as the number of users grow, the bandwidth and the hardware can get used pretty quickly. As such, people use their 4G or 3G to replace the poor Wifi network. The result is that when you blow your data plan, you start paying a lot of money. (And 3h of subway can consume bunch of GB :) ) So the question is: Why should users pay money because of badly maintained infrastructure?

Idea

Since this problem brings more money to Telecom companies, and no one can boycott all of them, you cannot expect a solution coming from them.

As such, it means people needs to be heard, and one way to do that would be for them to send complaint emails. However, just sending basic emails is not a productive effort to fix their problems as monitoring a network that vast is pretty difficult.

The idea is to create an app, that can analyze the wifi network usage/connection status/speed and detect problems in the background without the user having to do anything. Then when the user want to send a complaint, the app will send a full report about the problem (Which equipment, location, problem etc...). More than just Telecom, this can be easily expanded to other network like coffee shops, government facilities etc...

[mozodev]

just to note, one of similar app... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.benchbee.AST&hl=en

an example of KT commercial campaign http://blog.daum.net/_blog/BlogTypeView.do?blogid=0q5NV&articleno=53&categoryId=0&regdt=20140828141647

[pretty00butt]

we discussed shortly with @corneadoug and @4ppolo . the widged could be helpful to this app. and Nicolas said that he could try to make a prototype to iOS version.

[ytseo]

As I know..

1. There's no public wifi network on subway. Subway wifi network only provided for their mobile phone users (or a few paid wifi users).
2. Subway wifi networks are just bridged wifi via 4G mobile network has limitation of bandwidth.
3. It was very useful before smart phone era, but now days almost everyone use smartphone with wifi capability. Almost every people (in same train with u) share small bandwidth together.

I think..

1. We can make complaint application.
2. Even though somebody complaint about network problems, but it's not useful for solving problem.
3. Current wifi infrastructures are not bad than other countries, and not bad system on current mobile network tech.

[corneadoug]

@yoseo

Somebody complaining about the problem, has obviously more chance to make a change than not saying anything, and waiting for it to be fixed.

The only person that can improve its network or fix it its owner, more than a complaint system, it's also a tool that help people localizing problem in the network.

It doesn't mean that they would fix it obviously, but it is a first step.

Another idea on the side was to make a shaming website using the data we have from the app users (a good example but not working well right now: www.untrainderetard.com). Just like @mozodev shown with it's KT commercial, they like to show how good their network is and compare to each other, maybe if you start showing and comparing how bad their network is, it will motivate them to work on it :)

[pretty00butt]

I agree with @corneadoug 's thought. It's important as a first step. Companies are not afraid of each consumer, but afraid of consumers' group action.

[ytseo]

Hi, @corneadoug

Sorry for my first comment without enough explanations due to the language problems. I didn't mean to raise an objection to your opinion. I totally agree with your opinion started with following sentence. "Somebody complaining about the problem, has obviously more chance to make a change than not saying anything, and waiting for it to be fixed".

What I wanted to tell you was the limitation depend on current technology. We have a lot of crowded area exceed limitation of current infrastructure. Bandwidth, number of connections, Wi-Fi roaming, hand overs, number of mobile devices, and a lot of high quality contents..

Usually Wi-Fi APs are connected wired network. But most of public Wi-Fi APs are connected to another wireless network with narrow 30Mbps(Maximum) bandwidth, and very weak in mobile environment due to handover between various base stations. Furthermore in case of subway, many people are getting on & off making ghost connections.

Of course there are some improvements that are possible like increasing numbers of APs, Centralized traffic management system to control dead ghost connection & roaming, and replacement of mobile network beyond Wi-Fi to LTE from Wibro. But that kinds of solution are inadequate for solving problems. I think we need long-term improvements with technological development to solve this problem.

The mobile technology is developing rapidly, and these kind of background infrastructure technology developing carry over new technology for end users consuming background technology. We are living in amazing world unimaginable just a few years ago, and our eye-levels are also higher and higher. Recently I felt the changing speed of consuming devices is advanced than infrastructure.

Happy new year. Thanks for my English dictionary to help making this comment :p

[ndethore]

I think that @yoseo has a point. I guess that users are pretty much "pwning" the WiBro's bandwidth during peak hours, eating up the 30Mbps/s. However, this do not change the fact that users (like me) are paying a public wifi subscription and receive a poor service. Telecoms/Governement could probably work on network optimizations but they need data to mesure where and how frustrated users are to consider this issue on their roadmap.

After a few research, it turns out that iOS is quite limiting regarding the number of infos we can get on about the current wifi connection... As I'm writing, we can only access the connected wifi's SSID, which cannot be used as a proper identifier for the reports that are going to be sent to the ISPs/Carrier.

During the january 5th meetup (24th Hack Night), we decided that we should instead focus on an Android version the reporting app as it might be easier to access relevant informations. @blaskowitz will have a look at the functionalities offered by the Android SDK in order to get the current router's IP and (if possible reverse) the IP address to a MAC address using the ARP table.

[pretty00butt]

@4ppolo can we still develop this app on android?