With some Android applications polling for new data every three to five minutes (even when not in use), [...]
This is actually the providers' own fault. If you want to keep a connection to a "push service" like gmail, imap, voip or jabber, you usually do so by maintaining an idle TCP connection, where the server can push notifications to you.
However, thanks to the IP address shortage, almost all 3G providers deploy NAT and only give private addresses to their users. That means that their gateways are maintaining connection tracking tables, which usually have a certain timeout after which idle connections are kicked out.
So as a developer, you are forced to regularly send keep-alive messages to prevent getting dropped. And because there is no documentation on the timeout, and it is better to be safe than sorry, most developers go somewhere below 5 minutes.
If Google supported C2DM without requiring users log in with a Google account, there would be far fewer apps having to fall back to their own (perhaps chatty or buggy, but definitely redundant) push mechanism.
Not saying this is what happened in DoCoMo's case, but in our experience there are a great percentage of users that do not or cannot use C2DM, and this necessitates a separate connection for each app. There should be a way for the network provider to subsidize a default C2DM connection as it is in their interest.
My guess here is that the software in question is using standard VoIP signaling protocols and not C2DM at all.
Telcos are getting whatever they started. If they wouldn't kill WAP OTA-Push (OMA-WAP-TS-PushOTA-V2_1-20051122-C) 10 years ago, they wouldn't have their network overloaded today, because you would not need long-living TCP connections.
(Similarly, if they wouldn't kill E.164 ENUM, they wouldn't have problems with phone numbers migrating among providers. History is full of examples of telco shortsightness).
Comments
With some Android applications polling for new data every three to five minutes (even when not in use), [...]
This is actually the providers' own fault. If you want to keep a connection to a "push service" like gmail, imap, voip or jabber, you usually do so by maintaining an idle TCP connection, where the server can push notifications to you.
However, thanks to the IP address shortage, almost all 3G providers deploy NAT and only give private addresses to their users. That means that their gateways are maintaining connection tracking tables, which usually have a certain timeout after which idle connections are kicked out.
So as a developer, you are forced to regularly send keep-alive messages to prevent getting dropped. And because there is no documentation on the timeout, and it is better to be safe than sorry, most developers go somewhere below 5 minutes.
If Google supported C2DM without requiring users log in with a Google account, there would be far fewer apps having to fall back to their own (perhaps chatty or buggy, but definitely redundant) push mechanism.
Not saying this is what happened in DoCoMo's case, but in our experience there are a great percentage of users that do not or cannot use C2DM, and this necessitates a separate connection for each app. There should be a way for the network provider to subsidize a default C2DM connection as it is in their interest.
My guess here is that the software in question is using standard VoIP signaling protocols and not C2DM at all.
We could go forever discussing "If X didn't".
Telcos are getting whatever they started. If they wouldn't kill WAP OTA-Push (OMA-WAP-TS-PushOTA-V2_1-20051122-C) 10 years ago, they wouldn't have their network overloaded today, because you would not need long-living TCP connections.
(Similarly, if they wouldn't kill E.164 ENUM, they wouldn't have problems with phone numbers migrating among providers. History is full of examples of telco shortsightness).