Ookla CSO Chip Strange highlighted meeting consumer expectations in an increasingly complex online environment as a significant challenge for service providers, with the frequently targeted gamer market one of the most demanding groups.

Alongside various network intelligence products, the company runs online speed test tools and applications which consumers use to check the status of websites and report connectivity issues.

Strange (pictured, below) told Mobile World Live when there are disruptions on messaging services, social media and games, the reports tend to come in more swiftly given people are “interacting with these applications fairly constantly”.

A man with glasses and a beard is smiling. He is wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and a striped tie. The background is blurred and appears to be a building exterior.

“The internet is obviously a vital component to everyone’s day-to-day lives for an array of different use cases,” he added. “That’s only going up and the expectations of consumers are only going up, as they should”.

He noted one of the main challenges for operators was ascertaining the real problem behind outages or slow performance.

Strange highlighted the “complexity of the internet itself and the number of services that are required to deliver a single experience” as “probably the largest challenge for the providers to understand what’s happening to them”.

While gamers have become an oft-cited target for operators promoting low-latency connectivity, Strange cautioned these users are “very sensitive about the performance of the networks”.

“We’re seeing different types of packages of services that are being offered by ISPs around the world specifically focused on certain use cases like gaming. If you’re a serious gamer and that’s your passion for your downtime, you may be willing to buy a higher class of service”.

However, he noted these people would be even more likely to rapidly investigate any problem.

“Like any expectation if you’re going to make a product offer you have to make sure that you can back it up”.

“If they [service providers] set higher expectations and then don’t deliver…it’s worse than perhaps providing an average experience they weren’t trying to back-up.”

Strange noted a broader increase in engagement around outages, explaining there was a spike in usage of Ookla’s Downdetector service availability product following a failed CrowdStrike update in 2024.

He also highlighted an issue with Meta Platforms’ services earlier in 2024 which resulted in 3.4 million reports from consumers on its platform.

Uplink
One way the connectivity landscape has changed in recent years, which Strange said is borne out by trends on its online Speedtest service, is the increased interest in network uplink.

Strange noted the consumer-facing website runs a downlink test first and then assesses uplink performance with its “abandon rates” after the initial assessment now declining.

“I think people are genuinely interested in uplink performance,” he said, noting its requirement for video, social media and gaming.

“Just like any evolution of a particular technology that’s used by consumers, the consumer matures as well”.

He noted users generally now have a greater understanding about their connectivity environments than they ever have, concluding the trend is “certainly not slowing”.