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

[tilante]

Here's the thing -- they're already measuring usage. Every month, I get a bill from AT&T that says how many megabytes of data traffic each of the three people in my family used. I can even go to their web site and see how much traffic each of us used each day for the last month.

The carriers have the ability to measure usage, and they are using it. Any whining from them of "we can't identify who the hogs are" or "we don't know where the traffic is coming from" is simply lying. They're already measuring these things for billing purposes. Taking that data and using it for planning purposes only requires some investment in software to sort through the data they already have.

I'll note too that they fail to provide incentives for keeping your usage low. For example, from AT&T, for $15 a month, I can get 200 MB / month of data. For $25, I can get 2 GB / month. So, my wife, who was routinely using around 250 MB a month, upgraded to the 2 GB a month... and once she did, she started doing things like frequently streaming video to her phone. After all, she'd have to use eight times as much data as she used to before she'd exceed her new cap, so why shouldn't she?

It gets worse, though. For my work, I need to be able to remotely access the machines I work on at a moment's notice. I can't guarantee I'll always have a wi-fi connection available if I get an emergency call from the boss, so I have tethering. However, AT&T won't let me pay, say, a few extra dollars a month and use tethering with my 200 MB / month plan. Instead, I have to pay for their tethering plan, which gives me 4 GB / month of data, with tethering, for $45 a month. There is no lower option that allows tethering.

So now I've started watching videos online. I didn't bother getting 3g on the iPad I got myself for Christmas either... why pay the carrier another fee, when I can tether the iPad to the phone and actually get some use out of that 4 GB a month I'm having to pay for?

I would've been happy to give AT&T $5 a month for tethering and stay on my $15 a month, 200 MB / month plan, and not change my habits of using the phone at all. But if they're going to require me to pay $45 a month for a 4 GB plan in order to get tethering, I'm going to damn well increase my usage! Otherwise, I'm paying an additional $20 a month for nothing.

If I wind up using, say, 1 GB a month, I'm actually being charged 4.5 cents per MB. Before, with my 200 MB plan, I was being charged 7.5 cents per MB. If I somehow managed to use all 4 GB in a month, I'd be charged 1.125 cents per MB.

When the carriers effectively are giving steep discounts to "data hogs", what do they think is going to happen? If I had to buy 4 GB at my old plan's rate, I'd pay $300 for it. You can bet I'd be watching my usage carefully in that case! As it is, I *have* to pay for 4 GB a month, so I try to use as much of it as I can!

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.

Re:yeah

[jtownatpunk.net]

I finally figured this out last fall when Comcast came down on me for going over their cap. "This is the first I've heard of any problem. Can I pay a higher rate to have a larger data allowance?" "No. Absolutely not. And if you go over 250 gigs in any of the next six months, your account will be closed and you won't be able to apply for service with Comcast again for 12 months." I pondered that for a while. It just didn't make sense. They're offering a product. I like their product. I like it so much I'm willing to pay additional money to get more of their product. They refuse to let me pay for additional product.

THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO PAY FOR THE DATA YOU TRANSFER. THEY WANT YOU TO PAY FOR DATA THAT YOU DON'T TRANSFER.

I don't think enough people have had that light bulb moment yet.

The cable company's favorite customers are grandparents paying for 250 gigabytes of data every month and only firing up the computer once a week to look at the latest pictures of their grandkids. They use maybe 0.1% of their allotment and that's the way the cable company likes it.

I bought a game this month that was 22 gigs. That's almost 9% of my data allowance. I pay $55/month for my internet connection so it cost me an extra $4.84 to buy that game thru Steam. These days, 250 gigs is nothing for people who actually use their tubes.

Cellular data plans are even worse. In Q4 2010, Verizon started an advertising campaign telling people all of the wonderful things they'd be able to do with a 4G connection. Then they rolled out service with 5 and 10 gig caps. You couldn't do ANY of those wonderful things with a cap like that. Download HD movies? Sure. One at a low bitrate. Then you can't use that 4G data connection for the rest of the billing cycle. The funny thing is this action has had the effect of locking in the very customers they don't seem to want. Old-timers with unlimited data plans were able to keep those unlimited plans and roll them over to 4G phones. Not only that, my unlimited data was only good for the phone, not tethering. That had a 5 gig limit. Now it's unlimited across the board. Oh, and I've noticed that, rather than offer larger data plans as they roll out media-centric mobile devices, Verizon is chopping the pricing plan into smaller and smaller slices. And they keep changing what they offer like they're trying to fine-tune it. Right this very moment (it could change any second), they're offering 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, and 12 gig data plans. And $10/gig for overages.

I suggest everyone make a point of using 99% of your "allowance" every single billing cycle. Run that shit right up to the limit every single month. Maybe that will skew the data enough to make data providers come up with a more logical billing method for consumers.

It's like some sort of corporate schizophrenia where the policies being implemented are completely disconnected from what marketing promises and the reality of consumers.

Laws of mathematics

[rfioren]

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.

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.

To be fair

[mr1911]

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

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.

Re:Come now

[smitty777]

Yeah, that's where the rubber meets the road

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: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.