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

To be fair

[mr1911]

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

Isn't this the 80/20 rule in the wild?

[paiute]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

1% uses 50%. Does the top 20% use 80%?

Re:Laws of mathematics

[vlm]

And I bet the top 1% of slashdot posters live in 80% of all basements.

Top 1% of posters get 80% of all +5 articles. This is true.

Lost All Respect

[camperdave]

I've been first time shopping for a cell phone. It has been a nightmare. You can't pick a phone and then pick a plan. You have to pick a plan, then pick one of the phones that that particular provider carries. It's completely backwards. I don't (to use a car analogy) pick a fuel provider and then choose from the cars they sell.

I've lost pretty much all respect for the telecommunications industry. It should be cut in half, separating the provisioners from the content providers. One company runs the cable and another provides the tv channels. One runs the wire, and another provides the dial tone. One runs the fiberoptics, another provides the internet. One provides the cellular network, another provides the phones for it.

Re:Nice car analogy

[vlm]

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.

I have a better standard /. car analogy. WHAT IF my local car stealership's service dept intentionally had only one mechanic to make all warranty and recall repairs, so as to boost profits, so car service was excruciatingly slow, but as a PR move to avoid hiring more wrenches, they "discovered" that 1% of car owners made up to 90% of service appointments (because they have a lemon or whatever)?
So now we can control the car owners as such:
1) they might be one of the 1% high users so they better shut up instead of complaining about slow service, or they might get cut off from all contracted service, or something similarly illogical.
2) we can get the users blaming each other for making service appointments instead of blaming the company for not hiring more wrenches.
3) The stockholm syndrome victims will blame themselves or their fellow drivers or anyone other than the stealership who is ripping them off
4) The guys on /. will complain, but since there is a govt controlled monopoly / confuseopoly, I guess they're just screwed and will have to bend over and take it anyway.

Re:Taking a cue from

[kasperd]

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.

This would work great if they made throttling to actually match the principles you describe, and then advertise the lines as such.

For example they could advertise a line as 100Mbit/s maximum speed, 1Mbit/s average speed. As long as you stay below 1Mbit/s averaged over a week, you will get your 100Mbit/s. If your average over a week goes above 1Mbit/s though, then your maximum speed will start decreasing. Once your weekly average hits 2Mbit/s your maximum speed will have decreased to 1Mbit/s, which is sure to get your weekly average down again.

They could improve it even more by allowing users to put their traffic into different QoS bands, and ensure that they provide incentives for users to use appropriate QoS bands for the traffic they are sending. I think the following three QoS classes would make sense for most users.

• Default QoS. In this class you get to transfer as much data as specified by your subscription. It is intended for webbrowsing, email, and most other more or less interactive usages. The providers should guarantee that there is capacity to give you the bandwidth you paid for in this class.
• Latency sensitive QoS. In this class you only get to transfer one third of the amount of data specified by your subscription. It is intended for VOIP, action games, and other applications where latency is the important factor. On the routers this traffic needs to go into a special queue. That queue should be short since this traffic is very sensitive to latency. That will increase packet loss a bit, but for some latency sensitive applications packet drops are less of a problem than increased latency. Since this class by design should never ever use more than one third of the capacity of any link, packet drops should be rare anyway.
• Bulk QoS. In this class you get to transfer as much data as you want, it doesn't count towards your usage, and you don't get throttled for using too much. OTOH traffic in this class is not guaranteed at all. It only gets what is left over when the above two classes have gotten what they need. This would be useful for downloads lasting hours or days. Probably most traffic in this class would be bittorrent.

I think a classification as described above would give users sufficient incentive to use the proper class for their traffic, and providers don't have to pretend to know better and reclassify the traffic.

Re:yeah

[icebike]

But the thing is, when the lights dim, or the Air conditioning goes out you KNOW there is a shortage.

But we have no idea of the actual tower loading percentage of the cell companies. In my west coast area, dropped calls are a rarity, and I can pull 3G data all day long, and never notice any interruptions. So is there a shortage or not? Certainly not here. Maybe some other places.

There is no throughput shortage in fiber at least

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Look, there is no throughput shortage, at least in fiber. Maybe some wireless spectrum is literally jammed packed and "golly we just don't have anymore or other spectrum we could use or any other alternatives... just running out folks!" .

I'll let people who know comment on that ;)

Somehow I doubt it's ultimately much different than the situation we have with fiber now.

In general, throughput is not a natural resource like oil or gas for which the amount can be said to be finite in any meaningful way.

We can create more fiber throughput at will, and whats more, we could being to use the copious, in fact, excess amount of fiber optic that exists now :

Less than 50% of the fiber-optic lines buried in the U.S. are being used, up from about 3% a decade ago, estimates TeleGeography.

from: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704529204576256541491117496.html

A decade or so ago I happened upon a booklet (at B and N no less) that outlined, in extremely frank language, that the way for cable providers to increase their profits without having to create value or increase investment was to create an artificial "shortage" of bandwidth by establishing a tiered system of throughput for which access to the upper tier was subject to bidding .

In this way, profits could be increased not through reaching more customers or even improving service.

Is this different than what Enron was doing when they were blacking out the West Coast by creating a "shortage" of electricity? Is this not the same sociopathic personality types and the same "captains of industry" doing what they do best- lying, manipulating consumers and scheming to increase profits without adding value?

Just so none of us forget how this scam works; from the Enron tapes: From:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/02/eveningnews/main620795.shtml

Energy trader: "Just cut 'em off. They're so fucked. They should just bring back fucking horses and carriages, fucking lamps, fucking kerosene lamps."

And when describing his reaction when a business owner complained about high energy prices, another trader is heard on tape saying, "I just looked at him.

I said, 'Move.' (laughter) The guy was like horrified. I go, 'Look, don't take it the wrong way. Move. It isn't getting fixed anytime soon."

California's attempt to deregulate energy markets became a disaster for consumers when companies like Enron manipulated the West Cost power market and even shut down plants so they could drive up prices. ...

Consumers like Grandma Millie, mentioned in one exchange recorded between two Enron employees.

Employee 1: "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?

Employee 2: "Yeah, Grandma Millie man.

Employee 1: "Yeah, now she wants her fucking money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her ass for fucking $250 a megawatt hour."

Another taped exchange between different employees regarding a possible newspaper interview goes like this:

Employee 3: "This guy from the Wall Street Journal calls me up a little bit ago"

Employee 4: "I wouldn't do it, because first of all you'd have to tell 'em a lot of lies because if you told the truth"

Employee 3: "I'd get in trouble."

Employee 4: "You'd get in trouble."

"I'm just -- fucked -- I'm just trying to be an honest camper so I only go to jail once," says one employee.