Here’s some good news for aspiring Philippine Pokémon Go trainers on budget mobile data packages. It turns out that the Pokémon Go app isn’t as bandwidth intensive compared to the Facebook and Spotify app.
A California-based networking company called Procera Networks dug into data and analyzed the stats of the popular monster-catching app on one mobile network in Europe. They found out that Pokémon Go wasn’t as much of a bandwidth hog as the typical app, including Facebook’s and Spotify.
However, because the app had so many concurrent users at a time, it created a strain on mobile network performance. Imagine the scenario when Pokémon Go finally launches in the Philippines, and the local telcos are caught off-guard by the gaming phenomenon. Mobile service outages because of Pokémon Go? Let’s hope not.
Cam Cullen, Procera’s VP of Global Marketing, remarked in a blog post: “Bandwidth is just one factor on a network. One usage parameter often overlooked is the number of sessions that the application generates, which affects “stateful” network elements (analytics, charging, and security among them), have to deal with “chatty” or “noisy” applications as they consume system resources.”
If you’re interested in reading more on how the Pokémon Go app affects mobile networks, more technical analyses, and networking jargon can be found in the original blog post.
Meanwhile, there’s still no word on when Pokémon Go will be released for Philippine consumption. Stay strong and persevere, fellow trainers.
