Data Hogs: the Monsters Carriers Created

jfruhlinger writes "A recent study claimed that the top 1 percent of mobile data users eat up half of the available bandwidth. But assuming it's true, who's at fault? Stats show data usage has increased radically with each new model of the iPhone, and similar phenomena are in place for Android phones — all of which are gleefully sold to the public by the same people who complain about 'data hogs.' Isn't this the equivalent of a car dealer heavily promoting Cadillacs, then complaining about poor fuel efficiency, then charging a ton for extra gasoline?"

Comments

yeah

[dropadrop]

I think the idea is to slowly promote an idea that caps and traffic shaping are good for the vast majority of customers.

Re:yeah

[wisty]

You don't understand - Carriers make money for overselling. They want you to buy 1GB a month, because they don't think you'll use it. If you do, they'll complain that you are using too much, and "hogging" data.

What they really want is to charge you for a 1GB plan, then charge you extra if you actually use it. Carriers want to upsell people to plans they won't use, and feel cheated if people use what they bought.

Doin what?

[vlm]

Doin what? Until you answer that you're just spinning wheels.

Is there some kind of spam sending virus out there? That would make sense and you could hope they'll fix it.

Are they spending a lot of time at websites? More than 10 or maybe 15 years ago now, Akamai fixed that, maybe the mobiles need that?

Is it one specific app, like google maps?

Is it tethering people trying to run an entire disaster recovery site over a phone?

Does it really matter? Supposedly 1% of the population, that being teen girls, made up most of the call volume at one time. So?

How does their battery survive this intense use? My new android phone barely lives thru the day with light use, so they must be living on a charger?

Why are they "monsters"? What a weird way to describe human beings. That means I should use my leet skyrim skills and cast an ice spear at them, right?

Nice car analogy

[Baloroth]

Yes, it is like selling a fuel-wasting car and then forcing the consumer to purchase fuel from you and only you. And advertising the fuel inefficiency as a feature. And rationing the fuel and switching from unlimited fuel to rationed fuel... ok maybe the analogy breaks down somewhere around there.

The carriers want their cake, that is selling phones with data-heavy features that people love, and they want to eat it too: i.e. not expanding their network with all the profits they are making in order to handle the load from the phones they just sold. Greedy bastards. The solution would be to create some genuine competition instead of the cartel-like operation we have in the US right now, but the barrier to entry is so high that is next to impossible. Maybe some government regulation might even be in order (much as I usually hate such things), given that these companies often have what amounts to a government-granted monopoly on certain EM spectra.

3G Modems

[Dan East]

According to the stats, 3G Modems account for 26 times more data usage than the baseline (iPhone 3G), and nearly 10 times more data usage than the next biggest consumer device (iPhone 4S for downlink). "3G Modems" don't count as phones, at least not in my book. That would either be tethering, running a phone as a wifi hotspot, or a dedicated hotspot device.

So these are probably people that don't have broadband service and use 3G for the home connectivity, or people that constantly travel. My uncle just set something up like this a couple weeks ago - they have no other options for broadband at their home, and even had to use a DSS dish as a signal reflector to be able to get 3G service because they are so remote (the dish was my idea, seemed to work good).

1% use half of the data

[Relayman]

"A recent study claimed that the top 1 percent of mobile data users eat up half of the available bandwidth." No it didn't. It said that the top 1% download half of the total data downloaded. There's a big difference.

Re:Taking a cue from

[gbjbaanb]

what's the alternative?

Build out some network bandwidth, then divide it by the number of subscribers you have, and charge them for their slice of the whole.

Make sense?

I doubt you'd agree when you get charged the hundreds of dollar per month that would cost you. Besides, its a bit daft to think that every subscriber uses 100% of their bandwidth 24/7, so why not oversell it? After all, if I use 10% of my total bandwidth, there's no reason why you can't allocate that to 9 more subscribers, thus bringing the price down to 1/10th of what it was.

So obviously overselling is ok, but what level is reasonable for this? There's a tradeoff between the price of the network, shared out amongst all subscribers, and the bandwidth you get. Most people don't use much bandwidth - your average mom and pop will use it to surf a little, read emails, etc and use 1Gb per month max, so if you assume all your subscribers are like that, the service should be dirt cheap.

Until you get someone who comes along and basically abuses the system by keeping it on 24/7, streaming torrents or running a video webserver. These people skew (or should that be screw) the carefully planned subscriber/bandwidth ratio which basically means everyone else is subsidising their use of the network, to the detriment of everyone's use of the network.

Re:To be fair

[PopeRatzo]

Who would have guessed that consumers would actually use their data plan?

I'm more surprised at how many users don't use their data. I know a few iPhone 4 users who pay for the highest AT&T cap but don't use more than 250mb a month. Have never used more than 250gb in any month.

If the telecoms are going to start charging more for people who use a lot of data, will they start charging less for people who don't use anywhere near the amount of data they're paying for?

My family plan, with my wife and daughter and me, allows for like 1200 minutes or something. We probably don't use more than 400 or 500 minutes. Why don't I get a rebate? If I go over 150gb on my DSL connection, I have to pay an additional $10/50gb. The month that I was on vacation and used 0 gb, I still payed full price.

Telecommunications needs to be a highly regulated utility. I really don't need to pay someone who is going to work so hard to develop new ways to get me to pay more for less.

Re:To be fair

[NatasRevol]

if you are pulling over 10gb a month transfer, that is excessive, even for streaming media.

So I can't watch ONE movie a day? Because that would be like 15gb.