A recent survey from O2 in the UK shows that mobile users consume less and less minutes making phone calls, but spend more and more time on their device checking the web, listening to music, playing games and being social. One has to wonder, even if you now spend two hours a day interacting with your mobile device, what is it doing during the other 22 hours of the day?

This is where background traffic comes into play. And it’s really bad for wireless networks. Because the mobile apps that keep us connected at work and in our personal lives stay always-on to check for updates, our smartphones keep generating background data traffic even during the 22 hours during which they’re in our pockets. This unnecessary traffic does not bring any value to consumers, but jams wireless networks with a huge amount of uncoordinated network requests. On my device I’ve tracked up to 30MB of data consumed monthly by some apps that I don’t even really use.

What can mobile carriers really do about this unnecessary data traffic?  It’s proven impossible to insert any kind of control for network behavior on the flood of mobile apps that get published every day on the various app stores. The best that carriers can do, is integrate within their network a traffic management solution that eliminates unnecessary app chattiness and redundant requests for content updates. This is exactly what Open Channel does for any mobile application. Our tests have shown that we remove up to 40% of the unnecessary background traffic and delivers immediate relief to any wireless network.