Slashdot Mirror
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?"
I think the idea is to slowly promote an idea that caps and traffic shaping are good for the vast majority of customers.
The top X% of any distribution is always going to consume some "large" number Y. I bet the top 1% of income earners earn 80% of all income. The top 1% of book readers probably read 80% of all books. And I bet the top 1% of slashdot posters live in 80% of all basements.. it's just basic math. Whenever there's a distribution.. well, some people will do a lot, and some a little.
Who would have guessed that consumers would actually use their data plan?
This post comes with a double-your-money-back guarantee!
Any offense taken to this post is at your sole discretion.
A US friend of mine boasts of going into the hundreds of gigs on his mobile plans, because he can, when we in Australia are stuck on 1, 3, maybe 10gb plans at the most. As a user of one of those 'data hogging' iPhones, it certainly uses more mobile data than my previous nokias (1-2gb now, compared to a few hundred mb) that's a ridiculously huge scale difference between the increase of the iPhone in natural use over phones before it, and those who'd *bittorrent* from their phones just because they can.
Yeah, that's where the rubber meets the road
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
>But assuming it's true, who's at fault?
Oh its the Internet users. Its always the 1% that are the hogs and the poor Internet providers must provide data caps to make their oversold lines work for the rest.
Cry me a fucking river. Maybe just maybe don't sell your packages when you now your network wont handle them.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
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?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Occupy Verizon?
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
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.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
1% uses 50%. Does the top 20% use 80%?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
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).
Better known as 318230.
Today's data hogs are tomorrow's average users. What do you expect when *every* new electronic device is coming out connected to something (watches, cars, refrigerators, you name it in addition to the usual standbys), carriers are pushing smartphones and advertising fast new networks and new apps? You have smart TVs and a half dozen connected set top boxes just in the living room. Netflix comes on everything. The industry is pushing always available all-you-can-consume content, then at the same time complaining that people are consuming too much. Sigh...and then you get "solutions" of tiered traffic and data caps and throttles. But what happens when the early adopters of today become the normal users? Is every person who watches Netflix streaming or downloads movies and TV from iTunes or Amazon or streams Pandora the 1 percent of data users?
When the average cost to transfer a gigabyte of data is below 5 cents - http://business.financialpost.com/2011/02/05/how-much-does-bandwidth-actually-cost/ - I don't buy all these complaints from carriers about customers using huge amounts of data, especially since the typical "unlimited" (heh) data plan costs $30/month. At that rate, a customer would have to transfer 600 gigabytes of data in a given month to equal the raw cost of that bandwidth to the carrier.
Now, admittedly, that is based on the raw cost of bandwidth, and, of course, other factors come into play in figuring the cost of delivering that data, but the point is that carriers are, without question, earning money hand over fist with the current rates they are charging. I mean, we also have carrier CEOs admitting that the cost of bandwidth has little to do with the cost of services - http://stopthecap.com/2011/07/28/time-warner-ceo-bandwidth-costs-are-not-terribly-relevant-to-broadband-pricing.
No, these common refrains from the carriers are due to nothing more than them wanting to have their cake and eat it, too. They don't want to upgrade their infrastructure to support the bandwidth capabilities today's customers are demanding, but they still want to justify charging the rates they do whilst continuing to advertise "unlimited" data plans. So how do they go about doing that? Blame any and all bandwidth problems on "data hogs".
Again, I'm not buying it.
Who cares about total usage? What is the percentage of the network that is being used? If the network is 10% loaded and 1% of the users use 80% of the 10%, who cares? If the network is 100% loaded, then I might care.
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.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
"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.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
If you look at that study, it appears that 3G modems are the real culprit - unsurprisingly, since they can be used as a broadband replacement in areas where landlines aren't available. It's not really the phone users who are the heaviest, probably the people using a 3G dongle with a router. I quote:
Uplink data volumes:
3G Modems (various): 2654%
HTC Desire S: 323%
iPhone 4S: 320%
Downlink data volumes:
3G Modems (various): 2432%
iPhone 4S: 276%
Samsung Galaxy S: 199%
we in Australia are stuck on 1, 3, maybe 10gb plans at the most
I really don't get why carriers in the US don't use this sort of a model. I am on a 1.5 gb plan with optus, and it is more than enough for my phone, and for my laptop (I use my phone to wifi tether). There isn't ever really anything that I want to do using my phone that will use up more data than that.
If I want to update drivers or files, I generally do it at home, not on the move. The only thing I really use data for is email/browsing on my laptop, the phone is also email or the occasional map when driving. Aside from that, I do all my serious stuff at home. It isn't because of a low data plan, it is simply because if I am out and about, the last thing I am thinking of is torrent files, distro updates or any other data heavy application.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
I remember back on 2003, when I worked at a company developing mobile applications (in BREW if you are interested) and everyone was talking about what would be the next big thing in mobile, the operators were looking for other sources of revenue and were betting that the money will be in selling aggregated services (meaning selling other things than calls). One of the big things was data, and they used to check data usage very closely and were very happy about it. back then I coded a simple ringtone download app (that basically had only funny sounds), that browsed trough categories and let you hear it and finally buy it so you could set it as a ringtone. Because people could just hear a full preview of the ringtone they wouldn't buy as much, they would just use it to hear funny sounds and laugh with friends, no need to buy it, if you wanted to hear it again just open the app again. the thing is that the preview didn't save the file to disk until you buy it, it downloaded from the server and played from memory, so the app used a lot of network. While it consumed almost nothing for today's standard, it was a lot back then. If I remember correctly the download speed was something like 14.400bps, that was before gprs. What I wanted to say is that it was a network hog. But they didn't complain, the execs from the phone operator were very happy and they loved the app exactly because it was using a lot of network, more then they ever saw before. of course on the other hand they sold network usage by the kb, no one ever dreamed of unlimited back then. but I believe the main reason was that it meant that their bet on selling aggregated services was right, data usage was indeed growing as they expected but now that it has they are complaining. the same way that they accepted 9 years ago that call minutes and sms were eventually going to be sold cheap (in bulk or on a flat rate for unlimited) and found new ways of making money (selling data and apps) they should once again innovate
Let me get this straight: your variety of English uses both trunk and tyre?
Almost all the phones out there, including iPhones and Androids and even Windows phones have the ability to open a socket and leave it open until it times out (15 to 18 minutes later) to detect when there is something to send, (an email arrived, a message, etc). Apple use the Microsoft method and expanded it big time in their push technology to prevent polling by several apps for multiple email accounts, etc. Google, Apple, Microsoft all support some form of this for email, calendar, and messages.
Unfortunately, the Facebook crowd can't live with out knowing instantly when someone updates a page in some dank part of the inter-tubes, and therefore many apps poll. Bandwidth has become so reliable that nobody bothers deploying push technology if they can avoid it. People want instant weather, news, stock quotes, etc, and its just easier for these software developers to poll for this data while the phone sleeps in your pocket.
Add to this carriers tracking your phone's position without your knowledge. Several carriers sell this service to their customers for tracking family members. Then there is the whole Carrier IQ debacle. Its hard to know how much data this really pushes, but I suspect it is small.
But most of the traffic is stuff that customers specifically ask for. They want the Facebook updates. They want the weather. And they insist on using pop mail accounts that don't support IMAP Idle and therefor have to poll for messages every few minutes.
Server side services, search, SIRI, are also growing in popularity, but again this is by user request. You don't have to strut around asking what your calendar looks like instead of tapping an icon.
So I don't thing the Carriers are guilty here of much beyond offering what their customers want in terms of connectivity.
The problem here is that the Carriers realize just HOW MUCH the customers want this, and are currently in that phase of their business plan where they are milking it for all they can, pretending there is a bandwidth shortage, and applying caps and tiers to maximize revenue. I suspect it is mostly to prevent calls via Voip from being cost effective, and to hold down those people who tether an entire household to a single 3g phone. We've seen this all before. Just about the time the bitch level raises high enough to attract regulatory attention things will become free again. Just like long distance calls. Just like text messaging.
Its a passing phase. As soon as LTE is as widely deployed as 3G today, carriers will stop selling minutes and just sell you bandwidth, and you will make calls over the net. Voip and sip will go from being virtually banned to mandatory.
Then prices will come down as tiers will expand, and they can launch the next phase of artificial shortages and over charging for what ever feature is next to strike the fancy of consumers.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I'm pretty sure that's why Americans (and us Canadians) call them tires: because their primary purpose is to wear out, and wear out the poor souls who have to change them constantly.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
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 :
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.
Its a lot different than fiber.
Each tower is limited in the number of handsets it can concurrently handle. Its finite. And smaller than you might imagine.
Each handset has to be dealt with every few milliseconds. (Are you there? Yes I'm here. Andy traffic for me?)
Less than can be kept track of is the number of simultaneous calls and/or data transmissions that can be handled.
Spectrum availability (radio frequencies) in a given area dictate how close towers can be built to each other. Towers cost money. Lots of Nimbys refuse to have them close by.
Its a lot different than fiber.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.