My right thumb slid across the home pages of the HTC One SV that Vodafone sent me to test its new LTE network, searching for the Speed Test app.
First impressions are important after all. And secretly, I'm hoping Vodafone has managed to maintain the speeds I saw at a private speed test session in Bondi earlier in the year.
But this is the real world, and while it's still a few days before Vodafone starts activating 4G for its current customers, I'm not quite sure what to expect.
I pressed the orange button that starts the speed test, waiting for the results…
Ping: 35ms Download: 25.2Mbps Upload: 14.8Mbps
Vodafone started building its LTE network about 12 months ago with a single cluster in Sydney, according to Technology Program Manager for LTE at Vodafone, Allen Didovich. From there, the rollout expanded across the five capital cities and regional hubs that went live this week.
Vodafone may seem a little late to the party though, especially given that Telstra's LTE network has been online since September 2011 - a good nine months before Vodafone even began building its own network.
It's no surprise that Vodafone admitted that its poor 3G performance was the reason for the slower rollout. Given the sheer number of issues the telco faced back in 2010 and 2011, the focus for Vodafone's engineers needed to be on righting the capsized ship that was its 3G network.
As Elise Davidson, Corporate Affairs Manager at Vodafone explained "One of the things in the media commentary about our 4G rollout is the line that everyone's saying 'Vodafone is finally rolling out its 4G, and it's late to the party'.
"The fact is, for Vodafone, it was vitally important that our core network team focused on a complete rebuild of the 3G network, which was done over the past two years, and then we've built a completely new 3G+ network that has facilitated our ability to start this 4G rollout."
Vodafone's Head of Network Product Management, Robert Glennon, added that the past 12 months was as much about getting the 3G network right as it was about launching 4G.
"It's no secret that we've had network problems in the past, and it simply wasn't right to start building 4G whilst we still had problems in the past on our 3G/3G+ network," Glennon said.
"The last year for us has been characterised by a series of massive transmission backhaul upgrades, which have delivered frankly massive improvements on the 3G network on any meaningful ledger.
"And now that we've improved and fixed the 3G network, we're in the position to bring in this exciting new 4G program. And that was always the strategy - we wouldn't go to the party on 4G while we still had problems to address on 3G," he added.
Ping: 41ms Download: 58.1Mbps Upload: 13.6Mbps
Vodafone has an advantage over its rivals Telstra and Optus with 4G, and it's an advantage the telco is keen to exploit.
Unlike Telstra and Optus, which have different chunks of spectrum within the 1800MHz band, Vodafone has 20Mhz of contiguous spectrum, or spectrum all grouped together.
"Essentially, what that means for us is that we have a network that's optimised for Category 4 devices into the future, but it also enables us to offer more efficient network experience," explained Didovich.
"And what that potentially translates to from a customer perspective is a better and more consistent experience when the network is more loaded.
"So it's just like a highway, essentially. The more lanes you've got on a highway, the more free flowing the traffic," he said.
And that's the essential piece of the puzzle for Vodafone. Having experienced first hand what happens to a network that can't handle the strain of an army of customers accessing its network at once, the contiguous spectrum will make the entire network more able to withstand high demand.
"Everybody loves talking about headline speeds, but at the end of the day, really what customers are looking for is a more consistent experience day to day on the network, and with the amount of spectrum that we have, we're able to better offer that more consistent experience," Didovich told us.
There's also a convenient knock-on effect for the 3G and 3G+ networks as customers transition over to LTE and ease the load on the slower networks
According to Robert Glennon, the difference in load for 3G was evident within hours of switching on 4G for a limited number of current customers this week.
"It's good news for the 3G network because the more 3G customers you migrate over to 4G, that's more and more capacity freed up on the 3G network," Glennon explained.
"We've already seen some examples of customers on the 3G network complimenting us on the speed improvement they saw, just in the busy hour [of launch day] afternoon."
But for all the talk of contiguous spectrum, the advantage is only temporary. Come 2015, the spectrum made available from the digital dividend auction will come online for Telstra and Optus, and the rival telcos will be able to offer similar bandwidth advantages.
It's something Vodafone is aware of, but Didovich denied that Vodafone not taking part in the auction will put them at a disadvantage down the track.
"In the short term, or short to medium term, we will maintain an advantage in our spectrum holding, and that will translate to a better, more consistent customer experience as the network becomes loaded, and also from a headline speed perspective as well," Didovich explained.
"We've got some strategic plans about best utilisation of our spectrum holdings. We don't believe we'll be at any disadvantage in the future, which is the reason why we didn't participate [in the auction]," he added.
Ping: 39ms Download: 59..3Mbps Upload: 17.2Mbps
Like women in the proverb, a network builder's work is never done. One of the biggest challenges with creating a new network - and an LTE network in particular - is ensuring it works well with all kinds of devices.
"A network is sort of a living, breathing thing, and really, the reference to the customer is through the handset. And we know from our own experience how most devices perform on the other networks, and I can tell you we've set ourselves some pretty high standards in certification of these devices," Didovich told us.
The challenge arises from differing implementations across device manufacturers.
"The way in which Samsung might implement something versus Apple versus HTC can often mean that you have decisions to make in the way which you configure your network," he explained.
"And we know for a fact that other networks have suffered quite a bit because they've had to bias their network substantially to support a more popular device, and therefore compromise the experience of other users. But we think we've got pretty much the right mix now."
As part of ensuring the best performance across the board, Vodafone has expanded its certification processes for handsets.
"With LTE, there's some extra challenges as well around having devices moving between 3G and 4G coverage and some of the challenges that are well documented around battery life and various other things," Didovich said.
"Some of the tricks that some of the other guys have gone into in the earlier days were that the networks competed to supported a particular device, but other devices performed poorly.
"So what was happening in the earlier days of LTE was that people were actually switching LTE off on their devices. They were having extreme challenges with things like battery life and whatnot," he added.
"And that's something that we have taken some learnings from and really just focused on making sure that we offer a really good experience from a device perspective."
Ping: 30ms Download: 41.9Mbps Upload: 13.0Mbps
Vodafone has a very specific strategy for launching LTE, which began earlier this week when it started transitioning current customers to 4G before opening the network to new customers in July.
"I do think that one of the things that we've gotten right is the way that we've taken it to market," said Robert Glennon.
"There's no big promise, there's no big bang, just rewarding our guys first, looking to our customers first and bringing them across [to 4G], making sure we've got the experience right."
The decision to reward loyal customers first paid off, with the initial network switch going better than expected.
"It was a bit like Y2K in here - everyone was kind of anxiously waiting to see how it all went, and there were huge cheers at how smooth the process was," Elise Davidson told us.
What's more, the company only had a total of four calls to customer support on the first day about the LTE switch on.
As more customers are added to the network, that number may increase, but for numbers that Glennon claims are in the tens of thousands, that's an impressive performance.
***
My testing is far from complete. Because frankly, there's still a very long way to go for Voda's LTE network.
Vodafone plans on releasing coverage maps in July when it invites new customers onto the network, which will give a better indication of where LTE is available. In our early testing in Sydney, coverage has been decent, though it's hard to know exactly where to expect 4G coverage.
But as Davidson told us: "It's not an arms race. At our launch, we're not looking for new customers, we want to make sure that the ones that we've got have a seamless experience."
From a pure speed perspective, the signs of Vodafone performing beyond expectations are high. The feel in my hand is that this is generally a bit faster than both Optus and Telstrs.
But until the network is available to everyone, it's tough to know just how well it will perform under load.
Still, the early signs are positive, which is good news for Vodafone customers. As the network expands over the next 12 months and beyond, the performance will ultimately speak for itself.
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