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High-Bandwidth Users Are Just Early Adopters
silverpig writes "Cisco has released a whitepaper on mobile data usage which has some interesting data in it. The top 1% of users consume 20% of the bandwidth, but that share is down from 30% previously. 'Regular' users are catching up as they watch more video. High-bandwidth users of today will be relatively average users by 2015, so network operators should look to those users for insight in designing their future networks."
I thought those heavy users were all supposed to be pirates?....now they say they are early adopters, does this mean we're all going to turn into pirates? Best get out my peg leg and shine it up....
An IT infrastructure company came out with a report stating that operators should beef up their infrastructure.
That means I actually have to spend money on my network!
The fact that this is a white paper by a company selling network equipment didn't set off anybody's conflict of interest meter?
You're talking about the same companies that knew IPv4 addresses were rapidly depleting for years and are just now taking steps to implement IPv6. Their main concern is minimizing expenses while maximizing profit. The less your average user uses, the more users they can squeeze onto the same pipe. I'm pretty sure most ISPs would love it if everyone bought an $80 data plan and only used it to check their email. There's no room for long term planning when you have shareholders that expect constant short term growth.
Just because there's a conflict of interest doesn't mean the data is a lie. This should be as obvious as the correlation/causation idiom.
There's a difference between "conflict of interest" and "we know what we're talking about," although the two do sometimes overlap.
On the other hand, look at the infrastructure difference between the US and other countries. Sure, we have rural areas, but in urban areas we aren't getting the level of service that happens in Japan or Korea or even (I think?) some European countries. This is after having "loaned" telecom companies massive amounts of money to build infrastructure, and they (mostly) did not.
When you consider that everyone and their mom is now using Youtube, and wanting to do video phone calls, Skype, streaming Netflix, etc, it's hard to argue with Cisco's conclusions (at least, as the summary stated them ;)). In five or ten years, demand for streaming video will likely be even higher, and that's just the most obvious one.
Just call them "bandwidth hogs," oversell your capacity, and blame your connectivity problems on the people using most of the flow they paid for.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!