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US Mobile Data Traffic Usage Exceeds Voice
MojoKid writes "A report just released states that total mobile data traffic topped mobile voice traffic in the United States last year, for the first time. In fact, globally, data traffic topped voice traffic on a monthly basis last year, and the total traffic across the world exceeded an exabyte for the first time in 2009. Apparently, North America and Western Europe's mobile data markets are growing so rapidly they each should exceed an exabyte sometime in 2010. Interestingly, the nations with the largest data service revenues were: the US, Japan, China, the UK, Italy, Germany, France, Australia, Spain and Korea, respectively."
When I use voice-over-IP on my Interweb-enabled tubified G4 phone of course the voice traffic goes down!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Because of contention for the airwaves or because of the backhaul?
In terms of data size, a 10-minute voice-only phone conversation is absolutely miniscule compared to even a single page load of even a mobile-friendly web site
That can't be true. Loading yahoo.com (by no means a lean page) pulls in about 800kb of data. Voice-specific codecs tend to get about 15kbps, so a 10-minute one-sided conversation weighs in at about 9Mb.
How much if that data traffic is actually VoIP? I have a SIP client on my iPhone 3GS that gets more use than my cell many days.
Trolling is a art,
In the U.S., Verizon charges something like $0.05 per MB for overages on it's mobile broadband plans, or $50 per GB. It used to be somewhere north of $200 per GB so at least it's improved, but i have to wonder how much of their capacity goes unused even while they charge people for transferring what is a relatively small amount of data.
That is what I was hoping to see in this article. Makes no mention of how they define voice, since depending on the codec you could be 2.5 kb/s (LPC10, but you sound very robotic so very unlikely), GSM (13 kb/s), (u|a)law (64 kb/s). (And this is limiting. If you were using a wideband codec, that could be even higher)
But lets see, 10 minutes of voice (remember, these are one way bandwidths)
GSM (13 kb/s) * 600 seconds (10 minutes) = 7800 kb = 975 kB.
(u|a)law (64 kb/s) * 600 seconds = 38400 kb = 4800 kB. (Unlikely to see on the cell phones)
Remember that is just one way.
GSM: 2 MB of data for a 10 minute conversation(up & down)?
Not sure about the mobile web pages, but some of the normal web pages seem like they might break that by the time they get all their graphics and stuff loaded.
I don't find this all that interesting, since this pretty much a list of the world's largest economies in descending order. I'd be much more interested in per subscriber data.
Oops, I also mixed up my bits and bytes, AC below does a much better comparison.
You're thinking of late-1990s voice codecs. More recent codecs, along with improved link-level compression, have reduced it down to 1.5 to 2.0 Kbps, with no perceptible loss in quality.
You've still only reduced the codec bitrate by a factor of ten, resulting in 900 kb. That makes a 10 minute conversation not absolutely miniscule compared to a page load.
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
Verizon doesn't restrict video streaming and VoIP even on their existing 3G network, but the amount of transfer is quite limited. I've got a Mi-Fi with a 10GB plan but i know if i were to use it for netflix i'd eat through that quickly.
It's the same lie as with fixed broadband. The (mobile/fixed) operators have limited bandwidth, which is very costly to upgrade, and yet they want to drive increasing revenue through new applications. To put it simply, they don't want you actually using all the services you purchased to the full...for example:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=833011
I love the part where the AT&T drone says "we have to educate our [power] users"; translated as "shit, they're actually using the bandwidth they paid for!"
Ok, first off, loading Yahoo takes about 900 kilobytes (kB), not kilobits (kb).
Your 10minute conversation at 15kbps works out to 9 Mb, which is only 1.125MB.
And in reality cell phone codecs only take even close to 15kbps when they're running at full quality (and cell carriers being what they are, it's my understanding that they almost always skimp on that quality by at least half).
Wikipedia says AMR (the codec used in GSM and UMTS) varies between 12.2kbps and 1.8kbps.
Even the full 12.2kbps works out to 915KB for a 10minute conversation, the 1.8kbps rate only uses 135KB.
Of course, I think those are single channel rates, and you'll normally send as well as receive and thus double the data transmitted.
Overall I wouldn't call the voice call's relative data size minuscule, but it could easily wind up being less than a large-ish page load requires.
But in this case, it might be more appropriate to compare bandwidth needs. And in that measure the voice call really could be minuscule in comparison, since it's load is spread out over minutes instead of seconds.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
> but i have to wonder how much of their capacity goes unused even while they charge people
Obviously, just as much as they need to survive during the peak usage periods, or they would lower the price slightly and introduce new features to waste more MBs. Their purpose is to fool you into throwing money at them without wasting their time handling porn or coverage complaints, after all, not to leave your money in your investments (or pockets, at least).
I'm speechless!
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Our mobile data demands last year were 1 Exabyte - Which is roughly the equivalent of 1/5 the words ever spoken by humans.
No wonder everyone feels crazy. Nothing in evolution prepared us for this much information about anything/everything/everybody all the time. I mean, it's great, it's fantastic, we now essentially carry a device that not only can communicate on several different levels with nearly anyone on the planet anywhere anytime, but it's also a repository of most human knowledge and on their way of becoming capable of nearly everything (Voice, then text, then cameras, mp3, web, navigation, apps then?). True, the data and communication links aren't in your pocket, and it's far from complete. But that's a lot of information. And it's all nearly instantaneous. Now we get frustrated not only if we can't get the information, but if we just can't get it fast enough. 5 seconds of "connecting..." is enough to get us mad sometimes. Never mind that 15-20 years ago it would have involved a trip to a library or several libraries, phone calls, or maybe taking a trip and talking to locals, and take days, hours, or months to find the info we're looking for, half a minute waiting can get us angry, we need to hear what kind of music they play at specific coffeehouses in Prague right now, dammit, we're trying to plan a trip here.
ADD isn't a disorder in this context, it's a result. It gets hard to concentrate for a while nearly everything can be looked up in seconds, nearly every desire that starts "I want to see...", "I want to hear...", "I want to tell..." or "I want to know..." can be instantly fulfilled. If it's not instantly gratified, it's quickly forgotten, and another desire takes it's place, even if it's just been seconds.
All opinion, and I'm not arguing that ADD isn't a disease, just that our technological environment has a lot to do with it.
This sentence no verb.
The interesting thing about LTE is that its entirely packet-switched. Voice will essentially be VOIP over the packet-switched network. Although operators will continue running their legacy circuit-switched networks for several more years (if only because they've already sunk billions into it), once voice transitions entirely over to digital transmission Verizon and co. will have to come up with another pricing scheme to extract higher ARPU from their customers.
Torrents would really only be an issue in dense urban areas. Especially in the boondocks, spectrum scarcity shouldn't be an issue.
with no perceptible loss in quality.
We've gone from 'So clear you can hear a pin drop' to "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?!"
'Loss in quality' indeed.
The codecs are adaptive, and when one person is talking the other one isn't, so they typically reduce the quality a lot. You're talking about 5-6MB for an hour of conversation at typical GSM quality. It's really not surprising that data topped voice; even with UMTS you can easily consume as much with data in about two minutes as you would in one hour with voice. With 3.5G technologies you are getting closer to consuming that much in a few seconds.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
A picture is worth a thousand words. I wonder how much a video costs...
how big part of all those GDP numbers out there is composed out of imaginary money
Banks use fractional reserve lending to create money. All fiat money is imaginary.
Torrents would really only be an issue in dense urban areas. Especially in the boondocks, spectrum scarcity shouldn't be an issue.
Capacity of a wireless network depends on subscribers per tower. Urban areas have more people, but they also have more towers.
On your next call, notice the lengths of dead air on both sides. Or, maybe you've already noticed the cuts to dead silence on calls through poorly-configured VoIP trunks.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
My data traffic ( dedicated to direct communication between humans, not just idle data use like downloads or forum posts ) exceeded 'voice' communication decades ago.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
OK, I am not any sort of audio expert or anything, but this range of 1.5 to 2.0 Kbps seems a scosh low. If not, why (and there is my question) is that the lowest you see for audio (talk) netstreams (like at shoutcast) nowadays is 16kbps with rarely an 8 out there. And tons of them run at 24 kbps (and I am paying attention to b or B, and man I wish this "industry" would pick one and stick to it) and above. Why aren't we seeing them run much lower, so they can push more streams? What's the difference, where's the catch?
Multiply by two. For webpages you upload a very tiny request and dl that 900kB page. In voice you upload and download. Though with my parents it sometimes feels one way.
MP3 or whatnot. Like I said, not an audio expert, but dang if I can ever remember listening to any stream at less than 8kbps. I am just wondering where these ultra low rate but high quality streams are (outside of the phone calls). Seems like a great way to save on hosting and streaming costs for internet talk radio stuff.
I never noticed that before! At least now it makes *some* sense to me.
It's a two-fold dilemma.
The telco/cable industries know they must upgrade to remain competitive with each other. OTOH, the industry also stands to make more money off a scarce resource by charging a premium for it. Ideally they prefer the latter, but know it's not sustainable because of the former.
Life is not for the lazy.
I think it's imperative that net neutrality apply to the cell carriers, too.
And we're quite a long way from that.
expandfairuse.org
Jewelry's non-imaginary use value is that it looks shiny. Or are you also going to write off the entire cosmetics industry, the entire designer clothing industry, and every other industry related to aesthetics, as imaginary?
It's even less, the HTML, Javascript and CSS are all gzip compressed ... that 800KB would be once it was uncompressed by the client.
the nations with the largest data service revenues were: the US, Japan, China, the UK, Italy, Germany, France, Australia, Spain and Korea, respectively."
I'm not surprised. Optus et al will charge you 55c / KB if you exceed your allotted data, and many plans don't include any. The more economical options are 300 MB for $10 (Virgin) or 1 GB for $20 (ThinkMobile), but they're rather difficult to find, so it's no surprise that they're collecting so much revenue from this.
On the plus side, at least we're allowed to tether.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.