The UK's 5-Minute 4G Data Cap

Barence writes "The tariffs have been announced for Britain's first 4G network and they include a data cap that customers will break within five minutes. EE's high-speed data service will start from £36 a month — or £21 a month SIM-only — although the lowest package's 500MB download limit might put data-focused early adopters off. With EE claiming average network speeds of up to 12Mbits/sec, that means users could theoretically exceed their cap in just over five minutes of full-speed downloads — or a little over ten seconds a day. There are no unlimited data deals."

Comments

Mobile bandwidth

[girlintraining]

So, guys... how's that whole "Let the market decide" argument working out for you? Capitalism works great for non-critical, non-infrastructure goods and services... but when it gets its hands on something everybody needs, it's gonna take you to the cleaners. Every single time.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Quakeulf]

Introduce competition.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[shaitand]

"The tariffs have been announced for Britain's first 4G network and they include a data cap"

I tend to agree that human life and welfare and critical infrastructure shouldn't be left to the ravages of greed but tariffs are normally levied by government not free market.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Racemaniac]

because we've seen in the past that the "competitors" wouldn't ever dare to make deals to keep the prices artificially high

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[somersault]

High speed mobile internet could be the definition of "non critical". It's not a need. It's a luxury. And as far as I can see things have at least improved over the last 10 years here in the UK, but they're still not great obviously.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

From context, my inference is that UK usage of "tariff" is more broad than ours. (For British readers: Americans only say "tariff" when speaking of taxes on imported goods.)

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[pr0nbot]

Not sure this is the example I'd choose for the failure of capitalism... the rail fiasco, or energy prices, are much clearer examples. 4G isn't exactly a critical infrastructure service, and if it ever becomes one, by then all the other providers will have come on-stream (they're rolling out 6 months from now).

The downer for me in this announcement was that I'd hoped to have enough data on 4G to ditch wired home broadband (limited to 3Mbps until FTTC comes along) and just tether my phone, but if these caps are indicative of what all the providers will be allowing, then that's a dead end.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Phrogman]

Here in my part of Canada, there is no competition. Oh there are companies that are theoretically competing with each other, but they seem to have agreed that charging outrageous prices is working for all of them so why fuck with it. No one is offering cheap, efficient service to the masses. Competition does not work when the service or item in question is more or less essential, and the barriers to entry are significant.
The CRTC here in Canada just seems to rubberstamp what the industry tells them to do.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[h4rr4r]

Do we have any evidence that competition in such fields works as it normally does?

Judging from the US mobile market I have to say it does not look likely.

Real competition would have to be regulated into existence. Force compatibility of technology and radios, force cross network compatibility and legislate costs for using other networks. We would probably also have to set a maximum subscriber count or region limits. Might even be easier to just make the actual gear owned by a non-profit and let the profit seeking enterprises act only as MVNOs.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[cayenne8]

I'm a bit confused on what the tax has to do with the data caps?

I sympathize that the caps are too low, but what does that have to do with tariffs? Is the govt not only taxing the 4G connection, but regulating the cap amounts too with said taxes being levied?

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Synerg1y]

If only, if only, somebody thought of this... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_networking

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[h4rr4r]

In this case, UK English, tariff is not referring to a tax. The "tariff" is what americans would likely call a cell phone "plan".

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

Competition is fundamentally limited by the combination of very high start up costs (infrastructure becomes a sunk cost) and very low marginal cost (once the towers are all built, running them is cheap). Railroads, power lines, and wire/fibre based telecommunication share these traits and historically demonstrate a tendency towards monopoly/duopoly structure.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

So, guys... how's that whole "Let the market decide" argument working out for you? Capitalism works great for non-critical, non-infrastructure goods and services... but when it gets its hands on something everybody needs, it's gonna take you to the cleaners. Every single time.

It's not so much the criticality(or lack thereof) that gets you or saves you; but the barriers to entry and costs of duplicate entrants.

Plenty of user-critical-without-which-modern-civilization-would-come-to-a-screeching-halt goods get produced just fine under market conditions, so long as the barriers to entry aren't too high and competition between suppliers of identical or reasonably substitutable goods is fairly robust.

Infrastructure, of course, is sort of a classic case of high barriers to entry coupled with high costs of duplicate entrants. You've got a finite amount of desirable spectrum to work with, and every market entrant needs to put a net-connected box of RF gear on a pole in every chunk of land they want to provide service for. The spectrum and buildout hassles tend to leave you with an oligopoly, at best, among people who actually provide wireless bandwidth, and possibly some MVOs who provide specialized customer support/billing/advertising offerings to sell bandwidth to subscriber groups that the primary telcos don't want to deal with.

In addition to having strong 'natural monopoly' characteristics, Infrastructure goods and services bite you twice: Not only are they natural monopolies/oligopolies, and thus tend to fall into ugly pricing, they are infrastructure, something over which other goods and services and interactions take place, so they are extremely well placed to allow holders of market power in the infrastructure market to exert it in any of the markets (or socially valuable nonmarket activities like 'communication') that occur on top of that infrastructure. Wacky fun!

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[MBGMorden]

While that works, part of the problem in modern society is the cost involved in starting up a competitive business. Most of the tenants of capitalism were thought up when the largest companies around would qualify as a small business by modern standards. The industrial revolution saw the rise of megacorps and the problem has continued to rise into the digital age. It costs a fortune to start a telecom company to compete with an existing one - not quite the same as wholesaling your apples for less than the competing cart next door.

What the solution is I'm not sure, but I think it will eventually have to involve government ownership of some of the very core services or at a minimum some rather strict regulation. We already have that with some things - where I live the power generation is handled by a government entity (Santee Cooper - a SC state agency), as is water and sewer services. Ambulance/911, law enforcement, and military are already handled by the government. Its just a matter of deeming telecommunications a critical public service.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Brannoncyll]

"The tariffs have been announced for Britain's first 4G network and they include a data cap"

I tend to agree that human life and welfare and critical infrastructure shouldn't be left to the ravages of greed but tariffs are normally levied by government not free market.

In the UK a 'tariff' in this context means what you guys would call a 'plan'. From Wikipedia: The word comes from the Italian word tariffa "list of prices, book of rates," which is derived from the Arabic ta'rif "to notify or announce."

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[girlintraining]

Introduce competition.

When a capitalist says this, it's a hand wave. They're dismissing cost of entry into the market. And let me explain to you why cost of entry matters in telecommunications (or for that matter, any infrastructure industry)... First, limited resources. You need access to land to run cables. If you're wireless, you need to negotiate for spectrum. Both are controlled by someone else. And the law says they don't have to sell to you at a competitive price -- or any price, for that matter. They choose whether you get in the door or not... and they may just choose to charge you an arm and a leg. Municipalities sign exclusive contracts saying only your competitor can run cables in that area for a period of 5, 10, 20, even 50 years. Why, you ask? Because those companies tell the municipality if they don't agree, they won't do business with them. "Too risky. Need to protect our investment," they say.

And then there's spectrum. It's not all equal -- and how well your network does wirelessly still depends on finding land to put your towers up. Again, exclusive contracts -- they'll fuck you every time. You can't just ask J. Random home owner to host your tower.. he'd probably love the income, but the government has zoning regulations... oh, and exclusive contracts.

In fact, in every case where capitalism has failed in an infrastructure capacity, it's for that reason: Exclusive contracts. Exclusive rights. Exclusive. Not inclusive. Inclusive means competition, and we don't want that. Exclusive means "protected investment"... and "protected investment" means... you, the consumer, are gonna pay a premium. Not them, not the guys who forced you down this road. You. Because their money is more special than other people's money. Their money has a government stamp of approval.

So the next time you hear a capitalist say "induce competition," remind them that they're the ones that asked for the exclusive contracts. Afterall, it's good business, right? And for them... it is.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Coisiche]

You're jumping to conclusions about a language you don't speak. In British English a tariff is a list or schedule of prices for such things as rail service, bus routes, and electrical usage (electrical tariff, etc.). I was unfamiliar with other uses of the word until seeing your comment and doing a 2 second google search to find that it also means a fee, not a tax, on imports or exports (trade tariff) in and out of a country, which I assume must be the main American English use of the word.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[ColdWetDog]

High speed mobile internet could be the definition of "non critical". It's not a need. It's a luxury.

What are you about? Of course it's critical. You might miss out on a tweet on a slower network. Someone else might see that advertisement for the limited edition, genuine zirconium ear studs that you've always coveted.

Damn it man, Lindsey Lohan might get arrested again and you wouldn't know about it for minutes.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[firex726]

Also considering the initial startup costs, just to break in would be very difficult.
Cell towers are not cheap, nor the network wot support them.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[drunkennewfiemidget]

That's all of Canada.

Robelus can eat my ass and the CRTC is a joke.

Example: Rogers' best Internet plan is $130/mo. 250G of data. You will exceed that in less than 5h at full speed.

Fucking assholes.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

As a competitive force, that falls into the "Oh, you math geeks are so adorable. Why don't you go off and play in the ISM band where the big kids' table doesn't have to look at you..." category.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Frosty Piss]

Competition does not work when the service or item in question is more or less essential, and the barriers to entry are significant.

4G service *is not* "essential". Desirable perhaps, but not essential.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[default luser]

From context, my inference is that UK usage of "tariff" is more broad than ours. (For British readers: Americans only say "tariff" when speaking of taxes on imported goods.)

I'll agree that it's probably not government-levied.

However, the Brits do mandate their *sharable* networks by government regulation so that the devices all play nice with each other, and many times before people have prattled on about how great this system is because it produces cheap phone plans.

Well, now the UK has it's first modern wireless service update in nearly a decade, and of course there are price premiums and massive caps just like everywhere else in the world.

It's just a laugh because people across the pond pretend that thanks to massive regulations they are immune to high prices, whereas in-reality those low prices came from having a mature network that was relatively small (and thus paid-for earlier, resulting in lower prices).

Don't worry kids, you will always pay high prices for new technologies :D

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[shaitand]

I'd say it is broader than imported goods and includes taxes on trade in general. For instance, I've heard the taxes imposed on a phone bill referred to as tariffs but the tariffs are government fees, if the charge originates with the private company then it is a "charge", "fee", or "surcharge" not a tax or tariff.

I do see the other definition listed in the dictionary but have never heard anyone use the word to refer to anything but a tax.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[wonkey_monkey]

but when it gets its hands on something everybody wants and is willing to pay crazy prices for, it's gonna take you to the cleaners.

FTFY.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Synerg1y]

Fortunately, it doesn't get easier than plug n' play: http://www.open-mesh.com/ . My point is if you don't like the way somebody's conducting a service, become the competition, all 3g/4g devices also connect to... wifi. A $5 a month paywall would also make this project fairly profitable to anybody with the up-front investment cash.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Dunbal]

Government/oligopoly partnerships working as designed. I see no problem here. If you keep complaining we'll just have to give you a little more indoctrination about how great "free markets" are. Of course you have never seen a real free market in your life, but that's besides the point.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[shaitand]

4G in and of itself might not be an essential class of service but it is fair to put it under the umbrella of "internet" and internet is essential.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[cornjones]

It's not gov't involved. 'Tariff' in this context is simply the price the carriers are charging. I probably includes the taxes (VAT) but it is simply the price on the plan.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[girlintraining]

You are correct, but only to a point. This isn't a "natural monopoly" situation because spectrum is (theoretically) a public resource. Nobody owns it, it's leased from the government under a set of rules... and cell phone spectrum operates using specific standards designed to be interoperable. So multiple economic agents can share the same resource (spectrum), since they're required by law to interoperate. And it's the same thing with land: While it is a limited resource, that's not what's keeping cell phone towers from popping up everywhere. You're only paying a few thousand dollars per year in most suburban areas in taxes for your house. The land itself is probably worth less than a quarter million. The cost of putting up and maintaining a tower, locating it on land of that value, will recoup costs in under ten years.

What's causing the monopoly is exclusive contracts. When a municipality allows, say, Verizon to throw up a tower, they're agreeing to let only Verizon put up towers in that area for a period of time. But it's not the towers that are the problem -- it's the land. It's the backbone... the wires that connect the tower to the main office. And if you're new, you're going to have to negotiate with your competitor for access to cables to get your data back. Unsurprisingly... this costs a lot, if they don't just say "No" flat out. Mind you, they never do that -- they just throw up so many hurdles and legal challenges that it's effectively the same thing.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[dywolf]

Let me FTFY: "[..] but when it gets its hands on something everybody wants, but no one has the guts to actually go without, it's gonna take you to the cleaners. Every single time."

You are not insightful. In fact you are the opposite, willfully blind to your own fallacy. The market, ie consumers, did decide. They just decided that they dont care. They simply don't have the desire, or knowledge, or will, to stand up and say "hey, this is a ripoff, and im not going to give you my money anymore". They voted with their dollars, and their vote was one of apathy. They either dont know better or they dont care.

You want to change it? Fix their ignorance. Educate them that it doesnt have to be this way. Believe it or not, if you want change, and you're in the minority that sees the need for it, you may actually have to do some legwork and help make it happen.

But that's too hard. And logical. And goes against the easy way of blaming capitalism even when I dont understand it. So lets just get rid of it and mandate everything via the government.

(And thus does the cycle of apathy repeat)

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[acoustix]

but when it gets its hands on something everybody wants and is willing to pay crazy prices for, it's gonna take you to the cleaners.

FTFY.

This!

How is mobile Internet access a need? (Hint: It's not)

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Fuzzums]

Nobody NEEDS 12Mbits/sec on a phone.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[dywolf]

Dont blame capitalism for consumer apathy/ignorance.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[alen]

market is working fine

just a few digital couch potatoes who do nothing but listen to music all day or watch netflix or some other media are whining.

ios and android both have lots of offline options to sync via wifi and not use data. its the same OCD couch potatoes that seem to think that streaming is somehow cooler or better

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[aicrules]

There is nothing artificial about a price that enough people will pay to make it worthwhile to the company providing the services/goods for sale. A free market doesn't work on the principle of one person or even a few people whining about the price of a service setting the price lower. Yes, if you don't like a price point and also cannot afford it, but enough other people can afford it and pay it, your poor little plight will not directly impact free market. Heck, even when there are NOT enough people who want to buy a service or good to make it profitable for a company that doesn't mean it will IMMEDIATELY be reduced in price. Free market doesnt' mean instant gratification, even for a super majority. It still beats ACTUALLY artificial prices being set by "societal needs" and other such B.S.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[dywolf]

So the solution to exclusinve contracts from regulation is.... more regulation.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Phreakiture]

That's pretty close to correct.

Also, here in the US, you will find the word "tariff" used to describe the legal documents that define such a plan. The term is used in the utility and insurance industries, at the very least.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[alexgieg]

So the next time you hear a capitalist say "induce competition," remind them that they're the ones that asked for the exclusive contracts. Afterall, it's good business, right? And for them... it is.

Which is why capitalists neither vote nor support libertarian candidates, preferring to go with some of the big government parties, not caring much whether it's right or left-leaning. Libertarianism, with all that talk of deregulating markets, undoing legislation, removing trade barriers, eliminating subsidies etc. is quite scary for them. It's way, WAY easier to "make a deal" with a handful of high level bureaucrats and a few very friendly mega-corp CEOs, all working together to lock down the market into a de facto monopoly, than to deal directly with hundreds of millions of customers and thousands upon thousands of competitors.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Grizzley9]

So, guys... how's that whole "Let the market decide" argument working out for you? Capitalism works great for non-critical, non-infrastructure goods and services... but when it gets its hands on something everybody needs, it's gonna take you to the cleaners. Every single time.

Need is the subjective word here. Is 3G or Edge not still available at competitive rates? The newest data streaming tech is anything but a critical need. Let alone the implications of having a government run the network. At least now we have the delusional air of privacy around our communications.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[bluefoxlucid]

Because everybody needs high-speed mobile broadband all the time. It's just so ridiculously important to stay informed with 160kbit/s high-quality streaming music radio. You couldn't stay informed with lightweight mobile Fark and Slashdot.

My provider says I eat 50-100MB a month. Most of that is the Mint.com app. I have an Android phone and use the Web browser to Facebook (though Facebook Mobile proper app will eat 100MB in about 5 minutes--their stand-alone Messenger app is very light-weight). I send text messages and pictures through Gmail. Granted at home it connects to wifi and I generally don't spend every waking moment sending a picture to Facebook every 5 minutes.

Also: UK data plans are worse than in the US.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[StormReaver]

I generally agree with you that Capitalism frequently breaks down, but this isn't one of those times (that time is coming, but it's still decades away). At the present time, we are still firmly in the phase of smart phone data usage being really convenient, but not even close to being critical infrastructure.

Right now, we're in the consumer intelligence test phase. This is a test of people's ability to differentiate between what they need and what they want. If you sign up for a data plan under those terms, you fail the test and are not intelligent enough to make spending decisions (assuming that money has a finite limit for you).

The only way that prices are going to return to sanity is for all of the stupid people signing up for these outrageous plans to grow a spine and say no.

But that's not going to happen.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[vux984]

Rogers' best Internet plan is $130/mo. 250G of data.

I doubt you need 250GB of data on your phone per month, or even per year. I'm not saying you couldn't use it. I'm saying you don't need it.

You will exceed that in less than 5h at full speed.

7.5 hrs by my calcs, but even that is unlikely. I doubt the average user would be able to exceed that cap in under 24hrs even if they tried as getting maximum theoretical peak speed for a sustained 250GB burst is just not going to happen.

But that's beside the point. Mobile data caps on the top end plans is like those "free gas for a year" prizes. Its far more than enough gas for the average commuter in the average car.

But some slashdotter will cry foul because in a Veyron at 250mph driving 24hrs a day he'll be out of his "free gas for a year" in under a week.

Think of it as the networks are selling you 250GB/mo for $130, at the maximum speed they can deliver it, because that's the real deal on the table.

If you don't find that to be good value then don't buy it, but I'm curious how you rationalize that you should somehow be entitled to "all you can possibly consume", especially seeing as they haven't promised you 'unlimited' anything.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[shaitand]

Internet is a critical infrastructure service. Singling out 4G or other individual types of internet isn't very productive as it opens the door for nitpicking and debate. If one wants to argue 4G is essential (or not) the argument is whether internet is essential or not. In the modern world, it certainly is.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[neonKow]

I disagree. It's quickly getting to the point of becoming essential. Yes, we're used to using 3G for now, the internet is already starting to evolve with the expectation that mobile users will have access to 4G type speeds, just like we survived a long time on dial-up connections for the PC, but these days, the vast majority of sites most people visit (gmail, twitter, google, facebook, pinterest, youtube, hulu) rely heavily on images, videos, and AJAX calls that just don't work very well without a solid, high-bandwidth connection.

Government regulations need to be ahead of the curve if they want to keep telecoms from exploiting consumers. Well, exploiting more than they already are.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Phreakiture]

Reminds me of an amusing story.

In one area in rural upstate New York, just a few dozen miles outside of Albany, there was a small town where they wanted cell coverage, but nobody wanted to allow the tower to go up on their property.

Eventually, one local celebrity stepped forward and said enough was enough. He didn't need the income, and didn't (at the time) have a cell phone. He just was sick and tired of hearing about it. He had done well enough for himself and had plent of land in a good, high location and let them build a tower on it.

His name was Andy Rooney. Yes, that Andy Rooney

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[RMingin]

Tenets of capitalism. Capitalism does not have renters, but it does have core concepts.

Your sig quote is particularly amusing in this context. I'll go put on my grammatical fascist armband and sit quietly in the corner now.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[NatasRevol]

Third on the list of purchases: Machine guns.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[bluefoxlucid]

It's a political disease. People want more or less regulation, but they don't understand that regulation is not fungible. Regulation that raises barrier to entry and solidifies control in the hands of the megacorps is bad; regulation that protects the consumer and lowers barrier to entry without punishing megacorps just for being big but without directly aiding them is good. We have a mix of good with bad and a habit of throwing out the good and causing disasters.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Cederic]

How else would you constrain demand for a limited resource?

If they offered everybody unlimited bandwidth at £20/month then everyone would switch off their DSL subscriptions and tether.

Even without that happening, population density means that there just wont be enough bandwidth to go around.

The price is ludicrous, but if everybody needs this then they're fucked, because there are some pretty strict upper limits involved.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Bartles]

Considering I have unlimited 4G service here in the states, I'd say pretty well.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[gedw99]

Also there is this open hardware and software mesh.

http://cozybit.com/

open code that runs the mesh on git hub
https://github.com/cozybit/open80211s

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Those guys look similar to Meraki, before they starting branching out into wired stuff as well. Having been there when Meraki made the Big Switch and firmware-updated everybody out of their devices and into a 'cloud managed only' model, are there any sellers you know of that don't require some slightly creepy hookup to the mothership but do make things a trifle easier than "Obtain a FooCorp Model X router(version 3 only, other versions contain totally different chipset and run VXworks) and flash the one true OpenWRT_bleeding_edge_experimental with the kernel patches from xhackerx's git repository"?

Of the ones I've seen, mesh gear is either "Dead simple, The Cloud handles it for you, until we decide to change the terms of service." or moderately heavy firmware tweaker stuff that depends on router hardware sourced from mass market vendors who change chipsets about three times as fast as they change model numbers.

Do you know anybody who handles meshing out of the box/with actual stability in hardware you can buy, (I'm not averse to paying more than Best Buy's sale rack); but with local control?

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Jesse_vd]

I'm almost positive drunkennewfiemidget was talking about home (cable) internet. Rogers dominates most telecommunications here

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Bartles]

You're right, 640k should be enough for anybody.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[FireFury03]

Also: UK data plans are worse than in the US.

Really? I get 2GB of 3G per month for under £5... that's a hell of a lot cheaper than any of the prices I've seen quoted here by americans...

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[NeutronCowboy]

Actually, quite a few companies LOVE Libertarianism: those that have an entrenched market. Monopolists. Companies that have locked up a very limited resource that is needed by everybody. Companies that sell stuff with a very inelastic demand. See for example the Koch brothers supporting what amounts to economic anarchism. It's surely not because they think that it will reduce their bottom line.

It's way, WAY easier to "make a deal" with a handful of high level bureaucrats and a few very friendly mega-corp CEOs, all working together to lock down the market into a de facto monopoly, than to deal directly with hundreds of millions of customers and thousands upon thousands of competitors.

What makes you think that there are thousands upon thousands of competitors in a market that all have similar market share? It's far more likely that there are a select number of companies that have significant market share, and that they will benefit from non-compete arrangements. It's actually much easier to make friendly deals with other corporations than with bureaucrats, because the corporations are after the same thing: easy money. Offer them that, and you're done. Short of bribes, it doesn't work like that with bureaucrats.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[h4rr4r]

Yes, which is why I suggested making it so no one has a nationwide network. Instead a bunch of smaller easier to manage networks that are forced to allow devices from other carriers to use their resources.

The reality is real competition cannot exist without something lowering the barriers to entry.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[eth1]

Introduce competition.

When a capitalist says this, it's a hand wave. They're dismissing cost of entry into the market. And let me explain to you why cost of entry matters in telecommunications (or for that matter, any infrastructure industry)... First, limited resources. You need access to land to run cables. If you're wireless, you need to negotiate for spectrum. Both are controlled by someone else. And the law says they don't have to sell to you at a competitive price -- or any price, for that matter. They choose whether you get in the door or not... and they may just choose to charge you an arm and a leg. Municipalities sign exclusive contracts saying only your competitor can run cables in that area for a period of 5, 10, 20, even 50 years. Why, you ask? Because those companies tell the municipality if they don't agree, they won't do business with them. "Too risky. Need to protect our investment," they say.

Which is why we just need a simple law that forbids the same company from providing any two or more of content, transport, or physical/wireless media.

Company A (preferably a co-op, HOA or municipality) owns the line to your house, but any ISP can connect to the other end.
Or you have one company that does nothing but provide and maintain standardized cell towers, through which any telco can provide service.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Fuzzums]

Funny :)

But when we're talking about "Capitalism works great for non-critical, non-infrastructure goods and services", having 12Mbits/sec bandwidth to watch netflix of a phone is not on my list of critical goods and services that need to be protected from "free market influence".
Is 12Mbits/sec on a phone nice? You decide. But critical? Most definitely not.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[TheGratefulNet]

look, only the 1% deserve uncapped data.

they're the 'content-creators', afterall!

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[jrmrjnck]

When you compare Somalia to similar (government-controlled) nations in Africa, it's hard to correlate the existance of "law and order" with any measure of social or economic well-being. Somalia has been engulfed in conflict for a while and yet the free market has managed some remarkable success stories.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[alexgieg]

Actually, quite a few companies LOVE Libertarianism: those that have an entrenched market.

And yet, for some reason, the likes of Ron Paul in the US can never really compete against the republicrats, and here in Brazil the few libertarian think tanks we had all closed due to lack of funding.

Sorry, but if you list a few exceptions to the rule, I can simply point out to the huge majority of basically everyone else out there.

Besides, even those love at best a limited form of Libertarianism. Full blown Libertarianism would have every single law causing single businessmen to avoid personal responsibility and to obtain government sanctioned advantages to be revoked, starting with the abolition of corporate personhood, limited liability, and copyright, patent and trademark laws, as well as the cessation of government possession of, for starters, the RF spectrum.

Short of bribes, it doesn't work like that with bureaucrats.

Why short of bribes? Evidently what I'm talking about is all about bribes, be them of the direct, indirect, legal or illegal kinds.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[escaped apperture]

Please let me correct that for you: "Everywhere in the world, there is no competition. Oh there are companies that are theoretically competing with each other, but they seem to have agreed that charging outrageous prices is working for all of them so why fuck with it"

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Uberbah]

Because without capitalism we wouldn't have a cell phone network to begin with.

Right, just like how landline phones and highways didn't exist in the Soviet Union, because they didn't have capitalism....

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Uberbah]

Considering I have unlimited 4G service here in the states, I'd say pretty well.

Pretty much not, or else the two largest carriers (Verizon & AT&T) wouldn't have data caps on their plans without ceasing to be the two largest carriers.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[NatasRevol]

You need to put free in quotes.

Or change it to government sanctioned monopoly.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Synerg1y]

As with any network there are multiple teirs of control, if you clicked my link on open-mesh you'd see they sell hardware with pre-loaded custom firmware. You can buy a small fleet of wrt54g routers and achieve the same result doing the flashing work yourself. The only way you'd have overmind control is to be the owner of the mesh network, not sure why anybody would let anybody administrate their network otherwise. Meraki is a step above in complexity for a mesh network. Sounds like something Starbucks would use to centralize their wifi hotspots.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Marksolo]

I regret not buying my latest cellphone in Saskatchewan due to the presense of Sasktel (crown corp) a 6 Gb plan is 15$ cheaper than a 1Gb plan elsewhere in the country. Becuase they have to compete Bell and Rogers have similar prices in the province. So much for the free market there are no incentives to compete elsewhere.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[CastrTroy]

My best advice is that if you live in the city, go with Wind or Mobilicity. I'm with Wind, and I have a $30 unlimited local calling, texting, data plan (slows down after 5 GB). For $40 you get unlimited long distance. Only disadvantage is that they charge you roaming when you go outside their "zone", which is basically outside the city. Even with the extra roaming fees for the few times I leave the city each year, I still come out way under what I'd be paying with Rogers/Telus/Bell. Also worth noting is that if you travel to another city, you're covered there too. I live in Ottawa, went to Toronto this summer. Only time I wasn't in a coverage zone was when I was actually between cities. Once I got to my destination, I was back in the coverage zone. It kind of sucks if you live in a rural location, but most of the population of Canada lives in cities, so I thought I'd put this out there.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[NeutronCowboy]

And yet, for some reason, the likes of Ron Paul in the US can never really compete against the republicrats,

That's because Ron Paul is a nutjob who doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting into the Presidency. What's more, Libertarians - or at least, the particular brand of US Libertarians that is more akin to Randians - don't fare well in the broader population, where they have to deal with people who might not be so well off to survive on their own.

Sorry, but if you list a few exceptions to the rule, I can simply point out to the huge majority of basically everyone else out there.

I pointed out that your general statement doesn't hold up, and that it needs to be qualified. Glad we agree on that.

Full blown Libertarianism would have every single law causing single businessmen to avoid personal responsibility and to obtain government sanctioned advantages to be revoked, starting with the abolition of corporate personhood, limited liability, and copyright, patent and trademark laws, as well as the cessation of government possession of, for starters, the RF spectrum.

Which is exactly what established corporations love about Libertarianism.

Why short of bribes? Evidently what I'm talking about is all about bribes, be them of the direct, indirect, legal or illegal kinds.

Point taken.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[vux984]

Ah, I'm on Shaw in Canada for home internet. I pay $75 for 400GB bandwidth at 50mbps/3mbps.

The top tier shaw plan is $190 for unlimited bandwidth at 250Mbps/15Mbps.

That's pretty freaking impressive if you ask me.

As to the rogers plan, I see that it is their home internet, $130, 250GB bandwidth, at 150Mbps/10Mbps.

Looking at the fine print, however, it appears the data overage rate for the ultimate plan is 0.50 cents a GB up to $100 maximum. So the plan can be restated as:

$230, 450GB (unlimited?), 150Mbps/10Mbps
$230 buys you 450GB, and its potentially "unlimited" as its not quite clear what happens when you hit the $100 maximum for 200GB of overage; possibly you can just keep consuming. Given that restatement looks a lot like the top shaw plan, I'd say there are good odds that its effectively unlimited for $230/mo, once you hit the $100 overage cap.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[tepples]

I'm almost positive drunkennewfiemidget was talking about home (cable) internet.

Is cable available everywhere, even in markets with lower population density?

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[suutar]

well, first you'd have to find a place that has real competition, which to me means a situation where a new business could reasonably start up in competition with the incumbents. This might be difficult, because of barriers to entry; the US is probably not a good example now (though back when the incumbents were required to resell bandwidth to anyone who wanted it, it was closer, imho). It still might be better than many, but I'd be checking out Japan and/or Korea before I settle on the US.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[sanosuke001]

split all the cell companies (and cable isps) into two separate companies: 1. infrastructure company that leases bandwidth to anyone and 2. service company that manages services and allows access to leased bandwidth. Then, hopefully, the infrastructure company would be able to sell to anyone (give them special funding to help with keeping costs as low as possible if necessary) but then the service companies could start up with little upfront costs and then they could compete on services instead of "hey, our cell towers are bigger than your cell towers but we're still gonna fuck you in the ass without lube"

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[vux984]

Stop telling (or thinking you know) other people what they need.

People don't need terabytes of bandwidth. Its not water, its not oxygen, its not shelter. Its a luxury.

I'll gladly stipulate that entry level Internet access is becoming a nearly essential convenience in the developed world, but bandwidth measured in hundreds of GB at the rate of 100+ Mbps is still a luxury anywhere.

Deal with it.

So what do you do when there aren't alternatives?

Same thing I do when I find I can't lease a Bugatti Veyron for $100/mo. I keep on living just fine with the entirely practical and realistic options available in the real world.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Vrekais]

I'll just say, having gotten this far into the comments and no one else having said, that in Britain "tariff" does not mean Tax you are indeed correct. It is broadly applied to anything of a repeat payment nature, usually essential services such as Gas, Electricity, Water and I suppose in today's world Internet Services and Mobile Phone plans.

In fact tariff never means Tax in English technically, but as you said they are applied to goods usually when imported or exported but as a fee not a tax. (Slavishly paraphrased from Wikipedia as I was curious).

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[gbjbaanb]

but this is normal - EE is the first to introduce 4G, so naturally their offerings are priced in the "early adopter" bracket where anyone who really, really wants it can have it, if they really must. The rest of us can drool over the speeds and get by with our slower service. Its no different to the latest iPhone or a Ferrari.

In time, competitors will arrive with lower priced, or greater capped offerings and the market will find a good equilibrium level.

The only par I'm worried about is the trend for the mobile ISPs to band together - EE is Orange and T-Mobile together, so we've lost 1 ISP already. I would be much happier if we could have all the ISPs who buy mast and network capacity from a jointly-owned infrastructure company, but I think the government nixed that idea.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Patch86]

Might even be easier to just make the actual gear owned by a non-profit and let the profit seeking enterprises act only as MVNOs.

That's how the UK railways works these days. The track and infrastructure is owned by government-owned Network Rail, and private companies just operate the trains.

And I use "works" in the loosest possible sense. It's a flipping train-wreck.

Pun partially intended.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[confusedwiseman]

If the theoretical average consumption is an adequate restriction, as stated, "[...] I doubt the average user would be able to exceed that cap in under 24hrs even if they tried [...]" then why does the cap need to be put on the consumer? Perhaps one month I have an actual need for more than the cap, however every other month, only 25% of the cap is used. As with most agreements between large corporations and the consumer, there's an odd sense of one-sidedness.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Archtech]

I doubt you need 250GB of data on your phone per month, or even per year.

I doubt most people need a phone at all.

So what?

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[future assassin]

just to break in would be very difficult.
Cell towers are not cheap, nor the network wot support them.

How are they going to recoup those costs when no one wants your product. Failed business model, next....

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[vux984]

If the theoretical average consumption is an adequate restriction, as stated, "[...] I doubt the average user would be able to exceed that cap in under 24hrs even if they tried [...]"

First, there a few things that need to be clarified; please see my other responses in this thread, as it's been pointed out that this is for a home internet plan, not a mobile plan. (Although why the OP felt the need to rant about a home plan in an article about 4G data is beyond me.)

But I think the direct answer to your question is that without restraints there are a group of users who will consume as much as they can possibly consume all month, every month. I'm really not all that interested in subsidizing their terabytes of bandwidth. If they really need to transfer 20 TB of traffic a month, they can pay for it themselves.

To your comment about occasionally hitting the cap, I'd say companies are getting more responsive to that need. On the mobile side in particular there are frequently "flex plans" that auto scale your plan to what you use; and they are implementing usage trackers and usage notifications as you hit 75% of the cap etc, so you have the tools and information to manage your usage, and choose the right plan.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Uberbah]

Libertarian blather. Even if you were to sprout wings, or in the case, telepathy, there's no amount of "education" he can do to "persuade the masses" that they should move in a monolithic block to demand xyz features for xyz prices from for-profit corporations as mere consumers.

Or was that a feature, not a bug for you?

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Uberbah]

This!

Hardly.

How is mobile Internet access a need? (Hint: It's not)

How is clean water a need?

How is landline telephone service a need?

How are highways a need?

Then there's the slight issue that the subject of this article isn't "needs", but "massively overcharging for a shitty service."

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Ichijo]

Municipalities sign exclusive contracts saying only your competitor can run cables in that area for a period of 5, 10, 20, even 50 years. Why, you ask? Because those companies tell the municipality if they don't agree, they won't do business with them. "Too risky. Need to protect our investment," they say.

That's strange because when the municipality decides to build its own network, the economics suddenly make sense even without the exclusive contract.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[jepaton]

I'm British. I understand "tariff" to mean a system of charges. I think that the most commonly encountered use here of the word "tariff" will be in relation to mobile phones. I had never thought of "tariff" as being a government related word until now. But perhaps, the language of government has persisted from when the government owned everything. From what I understand of the word, the modern British usage is correct although unfamilar to an American. The American usage seems rather alien to me. Isn't that fair?

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[tompaulco]

it is fair to put it under the umbrella of "internet" and internet is essential.
I don't think the internet is essential. Even in a first world country, you don't need access to the internet to survive, and you certainly don't need access to the internet of your own. Your job, the library, Starbucks, Home Depot, all provide public wifi. No need to spend $40 a month for your own connection.
As far as internet on the phone, that is only essential for people who have chosen to make it essential for themselves. For everyone else, internet on the phone is a toy.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[vux984]

I doubt most people need a phone at all.

At this point in a first world country its an essential convenience to have at least reasonable access to a phone. But sure, if you wish to be pedantic, its not essential to life.

So what?

So stop complaining when an fringe extreme luxury is limited or unavailable or more expensive than you want to pay.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[neokushan]

There is nothing artificial about a price that enough people will pay to make it worthwhile to the company providing the services/goods for sale.

Well that's utter crap for a start. I guess you're either not from the UK or simply haven't followed this whole debacle. The prices are high when compared to comparative 3G services - I pay £15 per month for an unlimited 3G service, but for £6 more (nearly a 50% markup) I can get a 4G service with a paltry 500mb of data. The only difference is 3G and 4G and guess what - there's several 3G providers and currently only one 4G provider. What a shock, their prices are over-inflated. It's not a case of "people paying what they're willing to", it's a case of people not having much choice - if you want faster data, you WILL have to pay just one provider and you will not have a choice about it. That might sound like a stupid thing to say, but there are plenty of people who don't have access to a decent fixed-line broadband service that would make good use of LTE.

The reason this all happened was because OFCOM allowed two huge mobile networks to combine and then allowed them to use "spare" spectrum for 4G - meanwhile, the rest of the mobile operators don't have spare capacity (and aren't allowed to use it for 4G anyway as it has already been allocated for 3G services) and have to wait and fight it out for a spectrum auction that has been delayed for years now (admittedly, this was somewhat self-inflicted but all the same - they shouldn't have greenlit EE to launch 4G this soon). EE will be the only 4G provider for about a year now and low and behold - inflated prices.

Why on earth would they charge less, anyway? No competition so no need. If you want 4G, you're stuck with them.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[shaitand]

If you hope to remain competitive with people who have an always on internet connection it is pretty essential whether that be people who are competing for jobs or companies competing for business. Heck, even if you want to be competitive in terms of general knowledge and skills.

If you go more than a couple waking hours without searching for a piece of information on the Internet those missing bits of information are going to add up to you knowing a lot less about just about everything. It might take the form of mental bitrot over a course of years but that is ultimately going to lead to you being far more ignorant as a human being.

Essentials isn't just food, water, and shelter you know. In a modern society we include the things needed for proper mental development like education. Especially since your ability to find and obtain those physical essentials is related to your level of mental development.

During the course of composing this message I googled a piece information related to socket programming, details on the most effective nutrient composition for cultivating a mushroom I will be inoculating a bed in the backyard with in about 10 days, and found effective and interactive Morse code learning software.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Jeremy Erwin]

The problem is that we sell rights to monopolize spectrum. It's time to let everyone compete. If you want to put up a few cell phone towers, have at it.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[shaitand]

Fair enough. My comments were intended to be taken in the context of how the word is used here in the US not to be statements of what is or is not correct. I think it is fair to say that both are correct and the British usage was intended in the story. People often forget that language is first spoken and then attempts are made to codify how it is spoken into rules rather than it first being rules that define how one must speak.

I've asked around the office here and asked people to define tariff and essentially the result is the same with each of us. A tariff is a tax. Even the dictionary association to imports/exports or even trade didn't get mentioned when asking over a dozen individuals independently with no context. When an association to trade was suggested it was agreed after the fact but nobody mentioned it out of the gate. It seems as though American English dictionaries may need an update.

In British usage is the word usually attached to services from a utility or public service related company or would the charges listed on a restaurant menu technically be "tariffs?"

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[bluefoxlucid]

I was looking at THIS data plan as my data point.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Darinbob]

My phone, after I finally caved into the smartphone fad, has only 300MB a month plan. That was the minimum. I would prefer it to be 0 if it saved me money. I do everything necessary via wifi. When I'm not near wifi I don't need to be doing stupid smartphone stuff, I use the phone for making phone calls! If for some reason I really really need to google while at the store, I can use that 300MB a month to do it. Otherwise I have data shut off on the phone.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[jepaton]

In British usage is the word usually attached to services from a utility or public service related company or would the charges listed on a restaurant menu technically be "tariffs?"

The first meaning only, so utilities and public services such as water, gas, electricity and phone have tariffs. The figures shown on a restaurant menu are merely prices, taxes and surcharges.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Darinbob]

Internet everywhere you go is not essential. If you're in your home then just use wifi on the phone instead. And using mobile data plans to watch youtube while on the bus is absolutely positively not essential. You don't need 250GB a month for anything essential, you really can't even use that much data without seriously doing a lot of unessential stuff.

Save the bandwidth instead of wasting it people! It's not an unlimited resource.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Issity]

Telecommunication is not free market. I don't know how it is in the UK but I suppose you need to obtain a licence to use frequencies used by mobile communication. Just as with radio - you can't set antenna and start broadcasting (unless you are so called pirate).

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[alexgieg]

It's news to me that libertarians are in favor of regulating what two parties can agree in a private contract between themselves.

Of course libertarians are in favor of regulating this kind of thing. The difference is on what is to be regulated. A libertarian form of regulation would be very simple: both parties in a contract are allowed to do whatever they want with whatever they own, and nothing with whatever they don't own. The problem with mega-corp CEOs making deals with bureaucrats is that such deals don't stay limited to whatever both CEOs and bureaucrats own, but turns into us "agreeing" too OR ELSE...

My reference to the friendly mega-corp CEOs is related to bureaucrats validating such cartel deals by way of restrictive legislation that prevents the entry of new competitors in that sector. Without that, any such backdoor deal is only valid between the dealers. Anyone outside the deal isn't bound by it and can do whatever they want. A cartel in a pure free market is much weaker than its big government-sanctioned counterpart.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[shaitand]

Bandwidth is limited but any moment in which the pipe is not 100% utilized is a wasted opportunity.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Onymous Hero]

So, guys... how's that whole "Let the market decide" argument working out for you?

Ok I realise I'm replying to a troll, but here goes:

It's working out great, thanks. 4G is a new technology which has (at the moment) a very limited customer base. So, of course it's going to be expensive. When 3G first came out in the UK, there was a single network operator, 3. They didn't have great network coverage and prices were high. With time, new entrants came to the market and prices fell while service quality increased. The UK now has an excellent choice of cheap call and data plans.

The same will happen with 4G - of course it's going to be expensive to start with. Those new base stations are not free.

... when it gets its hands on something everybody needs, it's gonna take you to the cleaners. Every single time.

Everyone needs food. I don't see anyone (short of the real loony left) calling for state-owned farms and food distribution.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[neokushan]

That's a bit like asking how people survived prior to the internet in general. The internet is becoming more and more essential to daily life every day, yet there are still those who are woefully underserved. As time goes on, the slower services provided by 3G, dial-up and long distance DSL lines won't be able to cope with everyday needs.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[neokushan]

3G data is still prohibitively expensive depending on who you go with, but so is/was 2G data. Still, I do agree with pretty much everything you've said there.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[TuringTest]

Only if the price to entry is low. If it's high, the unregulated market itself would prevent competition

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[the_leander]

£15 will get you unlimited internet on a pay as you go plan on Three. The same plan on a contract is £12.50. Frankly unless you have a very specific need that requires both mobility, data rates exceeding ~12mbps at peak and are living in a few select areas, this really is a crappy deal.

Internet connectivity is a necessity in the UK, even those on unemployment benefits will soon be required to have access to prove that they're looking for work. But this plan is an absolute joke no matter what way you cut it. Thankfully there are other options that would be more than adequate.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[scotjam]

http://www.rogers.com/web/link/hispeedBrowseFlowDefaultPlans

"Up to 150 Mbps download speed available in select areas
Up to 10 Mbps upload speed available in select areas
250 GB monthly usage allowance
9 Emails and a suite of options

$122.99 per month"

(Note: this indeed appears to be for regular (wired) internet access, not mobile broadband)

So yes, it would probably take longer than 24 hours to use this up, but a 250gb limit is ridiculous for your fastest and most expensive package. In the UK, ISPs such as Sky or BT provide unthrottled access for c. £25 + £15 line rental per month; you can easily download more than 250gb using one of those puny 20Mbit ADSL connections (which in reality probably means

It's not water or oxygen, but it does enable a lot of cool things, and there's no reason for it to be so expensive compared to other Western nations.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[bluefoxlucid]

Ah, see, in America, we have unemployment offices EVERYWHERE, and if you're not there you pay $3.50 for a bus ride (that takes 3 hours because stops are every half-block) to get there. That way we create jobs,and we pay for it by taxing the people who are on unemployment 30%, so when you get your $1600/mo cheque you get like $1066.

America has basically two strategies: Tax "the rich" (meaning big business, not rich oil tycoons--we call the businesses "The Rich" because it sounds better, like class warfare... all the peasants hate the nobles and they love Robin Hood) and destroy economic growth; or tax the poor and create wide-spread poverty while using the money to pay for services provided by big businesses, concentrating money at the top. Nobody wants to hear that trickle-down and trickle-up economics are a balanced cycle, that raising taxes on business income directly causes a decrease in venture projects (i.e. new ideals) and thus a decrease in market growth and jobs AND that raising taxes on consumers decreases the amount of money they can spend to support new business ventures despite all tax advantages passed to said businesses (tax advantages on income they're not getting).

Gotta raise taxes on SOMEBODY, so we raise taxes on everyone at different stages. Taking a more general approach, we might have been less cavalier... we might have admitted that you can't tax $RICH or $POOR to death without incurring an impact because of trickle-up/trickle-down economics. But then we wouldn't be able to "create jobs" by staffing too many government folk at high expense.

The government supplies free cell phones to unemployed people automatically--it goes out when the unemployment system detects you have no job (this is reported). A free data plan, a call-in system, whatever... even a kiosk system where the unemployment "offices" are largely unstaffed and instead replaced with a main office that allows access to many government services. Less taxpayer money, but that's okay because the big businesses get jobs and we tax the people at the bottom/the businesses are rich and we tax them 'cause they can afford it.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[WorBlux]

Yes but you can do things like a mesh network to decentralize the infrastructure. The handsets themselves would end up a bit more expensive but you could slash infrastructure requirements.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[WorBlux]

Okay, but there's not a free market in the area. The government regulates and distributes radio bandwidth for starters. Second is the wiretap requirement which necessitates the central cell design rather than mesh or other p2p systems.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[jseale]

Also considering the initial startup costs, just to break in would be very difficult. Cell towers are not cheap, nor the network wot support them.

Not to mention much less real estate to put up towers in the UK as compared to the good ol' USA, unless you plan on installing them in the Scottish highlands. where they'd most surely become loch-ness monster food. Aye!!

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[FireFury03]

Internet connectivity is a necessity in the UK, even those on unemployment benefits will soon be required to have access to prove that they're looking for work. But this plan is an absolute joke no matter what way you cut it. Thankfully there are other options that would be more than adequate.

Your local library will let you access the internet... (as will, I think, the jobcentre)...

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[aicrules]

Yes if you want 4G, you have to pay for it, OH MY FREAKING GOODNESS WHAT A CONCEPT! If you think that is unreasonable you are a complete idiot and will never understand why that the ONLY way things work.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[neokushan]

Nobody's arguing that you have to pay for it, the argument is that the markup for it is rediculous when combined with the amount of data you have. Here's a hint: The amount of data a network can support is largely due to the backend and has little to do with the wireless technology in use. It's not like that LTE/3G spectrum has to go all the way to the central hub, rather once it gets to the radio tower it should be fibre or some such all the way. That backend is already in place for the 3G stuff.

Charge a premium if you must, but the caps that go with them are unreasonable.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[aicrules]

"the markup for it is rediculous" ...saying it's ridiculous is your personal opinion. And if enough people won't pay it to where it's not profitable for them, then they'll adjust. That may mean lowering the rate, that may mean raising the rate for current customer base to see if they'll still pay it, that may mean adding value options to the service till enough people find it a worthwhile value, or that may mean they have to drop the service all together. As a customer you either think it is worthwhile and buy it, or you don't feel it is worthwhile and you don't buy it. You want an incredible markup? How about Soda and Beer? You can see the ridiculous markup in action when you note that it is sold at wildly different per-ounce prices depending on container and delivery method. A restaurant charges you $2.50 for free refill soda. You drink three of those and you've probably drank less than a 2-liter bottle that you can buy for 99 cents at the grocery store. And even that 99 cents is a 90% markup on the production cost of that one bottle. But people buy both. Some people don't want to pay $2.50 for soda at a restaurant so they opt for the free water. That's their choice. It is not your choice to force a business to lower its prices just because you don't want to pay that much. They have said 4G costs this much, would you like to buy it? Two answers you can give: Yes i would like to buy that service or No, I would not like to buy that service. Sure, in some industries there is room for bargaining, and sometimes if you call up a service company like this one they will have special deals, but in generally the question is still a yes or no. Not an acceptible answer: CRY CRY CRY THIS IS TOO HIGH PRICE THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW!!!!!

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[vux984]

So yes, it would probably take longer than 24 hours to use this up, but a 250gb limit is ridiculous for your fastest and most expensive package.

I agree, if that were the entire story, but its not. If you read the fine print on that rogers plan, the overage rate is specified as:

"50 cents/GB to a maximum of $100"

That changes *everything*. Their 'fastest and most expensive package' is actually something of a flex plan that scales based on actual usage from:

150Mbps/10Mbps 250GB @ $130 /mo to
150Mbps/10Mbps 450GB (unlimited?)* @ $230 / mo

Adding 50 cents/GB to the $100 maximum takes us to 450GB @ 230. However, it appears only the billing caps at $100 extra not the bandwidth, meaning that at the $230 price point you have an essentially unlimited plan.

Based on what one of their cable competitors "Shaw" offers; this is a reasonable interpretation; Shaw also offers a very fast unlimited plan up around $190.

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Jesse_vd]

Not even close

Re:Mobile bandwidth

[Phreakiture]

Yeah, I guess I did tell it like Paul Harvey a little, didn't I? Completely inadvertent.

Data Caps in Canada

[mat.power]

My cap is 500MB in Canada, granted I'm not on 4G currently. Regardless, if you have such a low cap you probably aren't using your device for bandwidth intensive applications when on data, if I want to watch videos, etc. I wait until I'm on WiFi (and networks are available virtually everywhere, at least in Ottawa where I live). You can also reverse-tether your phone to a computer if there is no WiFi around. That being said, I do disagree with the idea of data caps, looking forward to switching from Bell to Wind when my contract is up (as they offer unlimited data).

Re:Data Caps in Canada

[compro01]

Note that Wind's data isn't quite fully unlimited. Their "data fair use" policy kicks in at 5GB (10GB with the $10/month premium data) and may throttle you to 256k/128k, and if you keep pushing it, down to a sub-dial-up 32k/16k.

Not sure if they actually utilize that throttling option regularly or not, but even if they do, they're still better than anyone else's data plans except Sasktel's 10GB-then-drop-priority method.

Re:Data Caps in Canada

[mat.power]

Ah good to know, thanks for that :) I don't see myself ever going past 5GB anyway, Wind is attractive mostly because their package also provides more for less than what the big three charge. The "unlimited" data is just a bonus, as it will be nice to not have to worry so much about how much data I've used. I'd also like to support competition to the big three.

It's obvious how they got these numbers

[Skapare]

They found out what the capacity of the whole network is, and divided by the number of people that could potentially buy a smart phone.

ridiculous data caps

[ruir]

What a joke. Here in Portugal, I have not bought a "4G" iPad, because the "unlimited service", with a hidden clausule of a "fair use" of 15GB only allows you to work for 1 week or at most two until it gets capped to 128kbps. With 12Mbps, Id guess that in a weeks time with fairly modest use you will exceed the cap.

Re:ridiculous data caps

[Dog-Cow]

What in the world do you intend to do with an iPad that could possibly use 15GB a month? I've owned a 3G iPad, literally since the day it first retailed, and I don't think I've used that much in total.

Re:ridiculous data caps

[Synerg1y]

netflix

Re:ridiculous data caps

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Netflix streaming? Or HBOGo. Or any other video intensive application.

Or how about Remote Desktop or VNC to our corporate accounts.

Or how about relying on iCloud for syncing my music and photos.

Just because YOU don't use data, please don't assume others don't actually take advantage of their devices.

Re:ridiculous data caps

[SuperMooCow]

FaceTime. Netflix. Radio streaming. YouTube and Vimeo. Graphic-intensive websites.

Re:ridiculous data caps

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

What in the world do you intend to do with an iPad that could possibly use 15GB a month? I've owned a 3G iPad, literally since the day it first retailed, and I don't think I've used that much in total.

It's also worth noting that the existence of potentially useful services that would consume data tends(with a certain amount of 'lived-before-my-time' leapfrogging and inertial lagging) to depend on available bandwidth(and vice versa, to some degree).

Nobody is going to bother rolling out a service like netflix streaming or that-video-game-streaming-outfit-that-just-died-horribly if there aren't enough people with broadband(or who can upgrade to broadband just by switching plans) to be potential customers. There also isn't much incentive to get out the backhoes and put new wires in the ground if there are very few people willing to pay a premium for more bandwidth, because there isn't anything to spend that bandwidth on.

To some extent, protocols that spawned on academic or corporate campuses and then migrated out provide some built-in, market-insensitive, impetus: if all your evolving is done on screaming fast LANs you have a great deal of freedom to build cool stuff without worrying about who has dialup and who has fiber-to-premises. The merry world of piracy also does some good work in this area, since the costs of entry are free-as-in-stolen(unlike something like netflix); and the content offerings(again, because of the ease with which new content partners are involuntarily brought in to the ecosystem) scale neatly from shitty 96kb/s mp3 rips and ultra-crunchy video snippets, up to high res textbook scans and bit-for-bit BD-ROM rips, providing a convenient ladder of incentives for lower bandwidth people to move up to better services.

For those customers who aren't corporate/geek enough to make heavy use of LAN-dwelling protocols and capabilities, and who aren't motivated to hoist the jolly roger and set sail for the bay, there is very much a reciprocal relationship between available bandwidth and available services. Not much incentive to improve bandwidth if nobody can buy services to use it on, and not much incentive to start services if nobody has the bandwidth needed to become a customer...

Re:ridiculous data caps

[Fuzzums]

Awsome. full hd on a 7" screen.

Re:ridiculous data caps

[Alioth]

15GB is pretty decent for an iDevice.

I tether my iPhone, at lunch at work I tend to use it so I can watch a half hour long TV programme most days of the week. I also stream internet radio in the car. Since I last reset the counters (on 12th Feb 2011), I've only used 18GB of data - in 18 months.

In fairness my average usage is higher over the last few months, but I suspect 15GB of data will still last me 4 or 5 months, despite streaming video while the phone is tethered to the laptop.

Re:ridiculous data caps

[Synerg1y]

Someone needs to take Commerce101 :)

Re:ridiculous data caps

[ruir]

I subscribed a 3G device with a 1GB pen, and every single time, it only lasted for two weeks. With *very* modest use. I have seen the foruns of the 4G product, and almost everyone complaints it wont go past 5 or 10 days. Specially as it is marketed as unlimited, when it only allows 15GB, allows 40Mbps in optimal conditions, and as a connection for a full household.

Re:ridiculous data caps

[ruir]

youtube...

Its simple...

[AdmV0rl0n]

Don't sign up. When they see the lack of custom - they will rethink the idea/deals.

In many cases people are their own worst enemy by signing up to things that are not in their favour. Apply an evolutionary curve to problems, let bad ideas/products die/ let the good ones survive.

In some ways, I'm surprised that no mobile vendors have realised that they could decimate the old school ISP model with an aggressive take on this. All you can eat for £25 a month. They would unhinge the old bandwidth supply models too - as business realises that its mobile workers benefit greatly from an always on/always available model over the old 'on this WAN/LAN/WWAN model. A £60 all you can eat business tariff. Yum Yum.

Re:Its simple...

[girlintraining]

Yeah, because it's easy for people to form collective buyer and seller pacts as individuals. Just walk over to your neighbor, and convince him to join your cause! Capitalism works because it depends on individual actors (you, your neighbor...) to make decisions about what would best benefit them. And usually, it does work. Sometimes it doesn't -- and when there's a market imbalance, it's usually the government's fault. And it is in this case -- exclusive contracts on spectrum use and land use keep competition out.

Getting together and collectively saying no doesn't change the terms of the contract... and even if you bankrupt them, someone else will come in, buy up the cables and towers they put up, and you'll be right back where you started. Yes, the price may come down because the new guy's getting the infrastructure at a fraction of the cost to build it. But who's going to lay new wire and towers after that? Eventually... you'll be out of date, and paying just as much (if not more) than the guys who didn't arrange a collective bargaining agreement.

The problem here is the exclusive contract as a financial instrument. If you want low prices... destroy them without delay.

Re:Its simple...

[slim]

Yeah, don't sign up for internet. Great idea, we'll get right on it.

He means, don't sign up for this particular 4G plan.

You could, for example, pay £12.50/mo and get 3GB of 3G from another network.

Re:Its simple...

[aicrules]

The people who came here to complain about a price point for a service as if they're being mandated to buy it aren't going to listen to any manner of common sense. I must be insane because I keep coming into discussions thinking maybe there won't be so many people crying how the world owes them a living.

Re:Its simple...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

At least in the US, it isn't entirely clear that the mobile vendors want to decimate the old school ISP model except where it fits their existing business interests.

If you are a wireline ISP, and already have sunk costs(quite literally) buried in the dirt, it only makes sense to 'decimate' the old school model if you can make more money by selling cut-price wireless access, rather than selling your already-amortized wireline services comparatively cheaply and bleeding the business users and/or compulsive smartphone crowd for their data use.

It has been argued that Verizon is actually doing this to their DSL and copper POTS phone services, in order to rid themselves of their gradually decaying copper infrastructure and its unionized linemen. They are still competing in areas where they already have fiber laid; but their DSL pricing and plans have actually gotten sharply worse, with apparent indifference to the fact that this is handing those customers over to cable, where it has a presence. The cable guys, for their part, tend not to have a wireless service that they can work with directly; but they very aggressively bundle cable 'content' packages with internet service' and have been pretty clear about their desire to restrict video-over-IP that competes with cable content exclusively to cable subscribers as much as possible(note, for instance, all the cable company ads that feature somebody streaming on their smartphone/tablet, on the go(ie. not on the internet service they are selling; but thanks to the 'content' service they are selling) rather than the "Cable is a fuckload faster than DSL, switch now you peons!" message from a few years back..

There have been a few attempts("Clearwire" comes to mind); but that road seems littered with skeletons and desperation.

Re:Its simple...

[Muggy7]

£10/month unlimited data on giffgaff, great value! Order here and I get payback points: http://giffgaff.com/offers/affiliate/muggy7 Sorry, couldn't resist...

Re:Its simple...

[cdrguru]

Sure, remember the old AT&T with their One Rate plan? Basicallly, they oversold the entire network to the point where it was unusable except from between 1:30AM and 1:35AM when people had their alarms go off to be able to make phone calls again.

The problem with selling unlimited use is you better really have unlimited capacity - because it will attract new customers, so even if you could support your existing customers, you will get a ton new customers and have to support them. And the simple truth is, you can't. The bandwidth simply isn't available to do so on any existing wireless network. So you end up with a lot of unhappy customers - way, way more than you would have had with a plan that ensures limited data use that the infrastructure can support.

That is where we are today. There are far too many users and people capable of really exercising the network capacity to turn an unlimited plan loose.

Re:Its simple...

[TheRaven64]

Note that that's 'unlimited' (no tethering, fair use policy applies). If you want a data plan for things that actually use data, £12.50/month buys you 3GB (must be consumed within one month) from giffgaff. They lost my custom when they put their call and text fees up from 8p/minute, 4p/text to 10p/minute, 5p/text and then plastered misleading price comparisons all over their web site implying that everyone else is more expensive than them. I switched to a provider that was still offering the 8p/4p price.

Re:Its simple...

[strikethree]

Don't sign up. When they see the lack of custom - they will rethink the idea/deals.

Yeah. That worked really well for ISDN lines in the USA. ISDN -never- became popular. Even when I was buying my first cable modem (1.5Mbps) in San Diego for $60/month, a 128k ISDN line was still abusively priced at about $1k/month.

Not buying at the outrageous price just means being satisfied with the lower tier of service. "They" will wait forever.

Limits

[Meneth]

Bandwidth in the air is limited, and everyone has to share. Perhaps this will teach some people to return to wired connections.

Capitalism, or an un-critical consumer base?

[concealment]

Capitalism works great for non-critical, non-infrastructure goods and services... but when it gets its hands on something everybody needs, it's gonna take you to the cleaners.

While I'd love to blame an economic system for this, I feel the truth is more mundane: consumers are oblivious to what they are purchasing and are content to pay high prices for bad service.

Imagine if even 25% of the new phone buyers took a look at these plans and said, "Wow, that's a terrible option. I'm going to roll back to my old Nokia flip-phone and wait for industry to get its act together."

Yeah, well... they don't do that. They keep buying overpriced cable, ridiculous cell phone plans, Nickelback, lies by politicians, McRibs, etc.

The problem is that the consumers will deny themselves nothing, and if it's a bad deal, they just pass the buck along to someone else.

Re:Capitalism, or an un-critical consumer base?

[dywolf]

Bingo. But GIT and most of the rest of /. doesnt get that and would rather "blame capitalism."

Re:Capitalism, or an un-critical consumer base?

[girlintraining]

While I'd love to blame an economic system for this, I feel the truth is more mundane: consumers are oblivious to what they are purchasing and are content to pay high prices for bad service.

"Today, I'd like to pay more for everything!," said no one ever. That's the same argument politicians use against the unemployed, but the names have been changed to protect the guilty: "They're just lazy and don't want to work", and then complain that unemployment is only high because of minimum wage laws. The truth is... a lot of people are working jobs they don't want to for less than they're worth because that's all that's available. It's supply and demand -- the price is set in the area near or at where those two curves meet. The price isn't the problem here -- not by itself. It's right where it should be... given market conditions. And I've never seen the price fall radically out of alignment with supply and demand in a stable market. Ever. If you can find me an example, step forward and collect millions in grant money for your economic research... because a lot of people would want to analyze that and figure out how the hell it happened. So let's talk about those market conditions.

Imagine if even 25% of the new phone buyers took a look at these plans and said, "Wow, that's a terrible option. I'm going to roll back to my old Nokia flip-phone and wait for industry to get its act together."

Collective bargaining. I covered this in another post on this thread, but briefly -- let's say it works. The company goes bankrupt because the price fell out of the bottom and their debts and such start to mount -- you can only cut so many corners, and 25% of corners is usually "I'm dead" in business. In steps the new guy, buys out all the infrastructure at a fraction of cost, and can charge a lower price because he's only paying maintenance cost, not installation costs. You get your 25%, and everybody's happy, right? Wrong. Eventually, the infrastructure will have to be replaced, or upgraded -- and there won't be money for that. Or maybe there will be, but who's going to do business in your area since they know they're going to have to up the price to cover the investment cost of new infrastructure? Nobody will. You've made your group a financial liability -- an unstable element. And so you'll have your cheap phones... but they'll be running on 5, 10, 20 year old infrastructure. Eventually, your neighbors will be sporting better plans, lower prices, etc., and you're still stuck with infrastructure that's out of date. In the end, you'll pay more.

If you want to fix the problem, you need to look at exclusive contracts, and how they work. I cover this elsewhere in this thread, so I won't repeat it again here.

Re:Capitalism, or an un-critical consumer base?

[Antimatter3009]

While I'd love to blame an economic system for this, I feel the truth is more mundane: consumers are oblivious to what they are purchasing and are content to pay high prices for bad service.

What difference does it make? Saying capitalism doesn't work because consumers are ignorant is no different than saying socialism doesn't work because people are greedy. Yeah, it'd be great if we could change behavior to make these systems work as intended, but that's not really an option. If the system doesn't work, it doesn't work, period. The reasons don't much matter unless you have a solution to match them.

Re:Capitalism, or an un-critical consumer base?

[mk1004]

The typical cost of "telephone" service that families are paying have gone up significantly since the days when we only had land lines and pay phones were ubiquitous enough to be used when you were out in your car. How many families are paying a couple hundred bucks a month or so so that every family member can be reached 24/7? Between cell phones and home internet/TV bills, people often spend a much higher percentage of the household income for these services than before, and then wonder why they have no money for anything else.

Re:Capitalism, or an un-critical consumer base?

[Wrath0fb0b]

Yeah, well... they don't do that. They keep buying overpriced cable, ridiculous cell phone plans, Nickelback, lies by politicians, McRibs, etc.

They don't do that because most people don't need arrogant commenters who think they know better and want to dictate what they buy. What do you think such a condescending attitude accomplishes?

And FWIW, personally I like the McRib, I think my politicians are doing a alright (B/B-) job and I'm quite happy that I can buy a cell phone that would be in the top 500 supercomputers in 1993 with a WWAN faster than LANs of the time (remember 100baseT came out only in 1995). I don't know how you decided that this is "overpriced" but it looks like a fucking steal to me.

Nickelback sucks though, no argument there.

Re:Capitalism, or an un-critical consumer base?

[Maximum Prophet]

... I've never seen the price fall radically out of alignment with supply and demand in a stable market.

First, what's a "stable market?". Lets go to http://www.investorwords.com/6679/stable_market.html

"A market that is able to handle a large volume of trades, such as foreign exchange transactions, without causing large shifts in price."

So, by definition, you are correct. If prices fall out of alignment with supply and demand, as they've done in the stock market because of high speed trading, you don't have a "stable market".

You are ignoring market inetia. A market will only fulfill a demand when the expected profit exceeds the decision maker's time and effort. Regulation and exclusive deals between government and business drive up cost and effort for potential competitors. If a local government gives exclusive rights for cable service to one company, and the courts agree that includes anything like wireless that *looks* like cable TV, the costs and effort for a cable competitor are effectively infinite until the contract expires.

Re:Capitalism, or an un-critical consumer base?

[Uberbah]

Failo. The entire point of capitalism is to make the most amount of money possible for the smallest investment possible. Which, in the absence of competition, frequently makes for shitty choices for the consumer.

Which is kinda the point of the story.

Re:Capitalism, or an un-critical consumer base?

[Fr33z0r]

While I'd love to blame an economic system for this, I feel the truth is more mundane: consumers are oblivious to what they are purchasing and are content to pay high prices for bad service.

I wouldn't say that accurately describes anybody I know. Just about everybody I associate with knows exactly what their smartphone does and how much they get screwed on data, but ridiculously limited packages are all that's available when it comes to mobile internet.

Imagine if even 25% of the new phone buyers took a look at these plans and said, "Wow, that's a terrible option. I'm going to roll back to my old Nokia flip-phone and wait for industry to get its act together."

So rather than having a device with all the features we want, but having a cap on bandwidth while we're away from a wireless hotspot. You're suggesting we revert to devices which do almost nothing of what we want, don't have wireless, and are basically useless for any kind of internet activity.

They keep buying overpriced cable, ridiculous cell phone plans, Nickelback, lies by politicians, McRibs, etc.

They should just go back to listening to the radio until the cable TV industry gets its act together. etc.

The problem is that the consumers will deny themselves nothing, and if it's a bad deal, they just pass the buck along to someone else.

It's not that consumers will deny themselves nothing, but that the bathwater is bad, and we realise throwing the baby out with it is a poor solution.

Twenty minutes over here

[Meniconi,Nando]

Over here, we can take a full 20 minutes to use all of ours unlimited data plan at 12MB/s. (For the non-residents, unlimited has a different definition in the US, usually 2GB a month)

I've seen worst

[SuperMooCow]

$31.50/month service that includes voice, text and data*.

* Includes up to 50 MB of data per month. 15 per additional MB.

Frankly, apart from email, I don't see how useful 50MB can be. Forget websites, YouTube or Netflix, even 500MB wouldn't be enough for that. But 50MB is a sick joke if you ask me.

Can't anyone do math?

[David Muir Sharnoff]

The premise is wrong. At 12Mbps, it takes 44 minutes to move 4GB.

that is for the cheap plan

[cornjones]

according to their site, http://ee.co.uk/plans#section-phones, the 500mb option is on the cheapest plan. for 36gbp you get 5gb. The previous highest i could find when shopping around early in the year was 2gb from vodafone.

While I would prefer an unlimited plan, this doesn't seem particularly unreasonable, or am i missing something?

Re:that is for the cheap plan

[FireFury03]

While I would prefer an unlimited plan, this doesn't seem particularly unreasonable, or am i missing something?

I would say that unlimited is an unreasonable thing to want (and also an unreasonable thing to offer. And it's very bad that a few years ago the ASA ruled that the word "unlimited" could be used to mean "limited" to further muddy the waters).

However, as for whether their prices are unreasonable, I'd be inclined to say yes if they want to appeal to a reasonable proportion of the population: most people wouldn't significantly benefit from LTE over the existing 3G network (especially since LTE is currently only being rolled out in urban centres where you can probably already find wifi anyway), and their prices seem extremely high compared to the under £5/month that I pay for 2GB of 3G.

Of course, they will likely get an exclusive deal on some new shiny bit of hardware in the future, and a lot of people will be pushed onto LTE by virtue of being unable to get their desired device without an LTE contract... which can only be a good thing for those of us who buy our own devices outright and only pay for connectivity that is actually useful rather than the latest marketing hype.

Re:that is for the cheap plan

[mrbester]

You didn't look that hard: £15/mo unlimited, unthrottled data from 3. I even got a reduction on that for going into the store instead of ordering online.

Re:Top plans aren't much better.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If the bottom plan (500MB) is five minutes (10 seconds a day), the top plan is only 8GB, which, by my calculations, is only 16 times.

So... 160 seconds a day on average? That's the maximum plan?

What's the point of even having speeds that fast? (besides marketing)

My suspicion would be that the sales pitch(aside from a simple 4 IS BIGGER THAN 3 AND THEREFORE BETTER CONSUME!!!) would be very similar to to one given to Ma and Pa AOLer in the earlier days of wireline broadband: instant gratification.

If I'm a light user, I may only get 10mb of email(hey FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD:Inspirational!! has some cute puppy pictures with saccharine quotes attached, that adds up...); but I also only check once every day or three. If I'm on 56k, I'll be twiddling my fingers for ages while my computer does its POP3 thing, and won't even be able to check my Yahoo horoscope in under 10 minutes while my email is loading. If I upgrade to DSL or cable, my inbox will be pulled down in moments, and I'll be able to do anything I'd ever care to do at the same time.

In the phone case, since staying on all the time and quietly pulling things down in the background murders your battery, very high burst speeds might be able to offer faster time-to-gratification if somebody picks up their phone, knocks it out of standby, and expects their twitfeed or mailbox to update for use, or some youtube clip to load.

A heavily capped plan is useless to truly heavy data users; but high peak speeds do substantially improve user experience in terms of time between user request and completion of retrieval and rendering of whatever it is they asked for.

Data Rates

[BradleyUffner]

Faster data rates just mean that you will finish your download faster. The data doesn't get any bigger. If you are downloading the same content you would have downloaded at a slower rate you won't hit your cap any faster at the higher rate.

Re:Data Rates

[kevkingofthesea]

Yeah, I doubt many mobile customers are going to fully utilize a 12Mbps connection (and it's debatable whether that's actually what they'd receive in the first place).

Re:Because UK is not in the EU

[spike1]

Of course the UK is in the EU!
We're not part of the EURO but we ARE in the EU.

Re:Did anyone look at the cost of the plans?

[Cederic]

Considering I'm already a customer of EE paying less than that for unlimited data (constrained only by the 3G bandwidth), yes, I think the price is unreasonable.

£40 for unlimited and they'd have got me upgrading.
£30 for unlimited would be reasonable.
£36 for 500MB is laughable.

I think Wolfram Alpha can.

[kevkingofthesea]

And it calculates around 330 seconds (5.5 minutes)

As for where you got 4GB...

My service provider is Sprint so...

[dietdew7]

I fail to see what all hype about 4G is about.

Re:Did anyone look at the cost of the plans?

[godrik]

You don't speak marketing that's why.
it is unlimited!*

*up to 500MB

Price of spectrum and tearing up roads

[tepples]

What are the price of spectrum and the price of tearing up roads other than "ACTUALLY artificial prices"?

Re:Price of spectrum and tearing up roads

[aicrules]

I would answer your question but I don't know what you're asking. I do not know how much spectrum costs to buy or how much it costs to tear up a road, but there is some price that someone thought was reasonable enough to pay X for it. I was recently in the market to buy a new car. I had in mind what my budget was and what I thought was important, and I found several cars that were above my budget that had things that I wanted, while many that were well within my budget. I ended up buying something close to the top of my budget but that met everything I felt I needed in a car. I could say that the cost of manufacturing that car should mean car company could sell it for $5000 less and still make a "reasonable" profit. But I was willing to pay the price I paid (still very good deal compared to invoice/dealer invoice etc...). Not everyone can afford a 30+ thousand dollar car, but there enough of those people that will still buy a "lesser" car at a lower price that car companies find it worthwhile to sell lower end cars. That's why you don't see $500,000 cars filling up car lots, similarly you don't see $500 cars filling up new car lots. Do I have a RIGHT to buy a Ferrari on an Altima budget? Only if a company will sell me one for that. It may greatly improve my quality of life to own a ferrari, but an Altima does what I need and is within my budget. And if an Altima wasn't in my budget, a $500 clunker that gets me from point A to point B may be enough. Or I might have to use a bus or a taxi or car pool. No one...>NO ONE owes you anything unless it's an agreement between you and that person. That includes things that REALLY are essential like food and water. No company is responsible to feed you.

Re:Price of spectrum and tearing up roads

[tepples]

NO ONE owes you anything unless it's an agreement between you and that person. That includes things that REALLY are essential like food and water. No company is responsible to feed you.

It is my style of argument to propose something extreme and then work inward from there. So in your opinion, do people with serious disabilities deserve to starve to death?

Re:Price of spectrum and tearing up roads

[aicrules]

Deserve? If people all got what they "deserve" this world would be a very lonely place. From a natural selection point of view, if they can't do what it takes to survive, then they will die. It's not that they "deserved" it, it was just naturally going to happen. Much like we will all naturally die eventually...do any of us derserve to die? I don't know how to answer that. If someone in my family were unable to support themselves, I would absolutely do what I could to help them out. I don't want them to die just because they can't feed themselves. Do I think if my mother is disabled and unable to feed herself that the whole of society must be lawfully compelled to contribute to her sustenance? Not at all. That is draining the strong to prop up the weak. If you make that compulsory the society will collapse, no matter how large. I believe your right to choose how the fruits of your labor will be distributed are greater than the rights of someone else to take them regardless of the reason they may take them.

Its not that simple...

[Uberbah]

Don't sign up. When they see the lack of custom - they will rethink the idea/deals.

What they'll "rethink" is 4G service, not their pricing. If customers aren't signing up, why invest in new equipment when your old, mostly paid for by now, 3G network is making you more money and the customers have nowhere else to go?

EE will never hit 12Mb/s

[Malc]

Having been on Orange at work, and then transferred to T-Mobile, I find it hard to believe the EE's service will provide anything like this kind of throughput. You'd be lucky to hit 500MB downloading non-stop for a month.

With Orange, the 3G data service was frequently utterly unusable. Imagine coming out at Oxford Circus in London and trying to use maps on an iPhone and giving up waiting for it to load and it being quicker to walk around Soho in circles to find your intended destination. Or taking the train to Edinburgh and data connections timing until shortly after leaving Newcastle when suddenly the connections starts flying (bandwidth shaping or over-subscribed?)

On T-Mobile, when my connection stalls, I find I have a T-Mobile Orange signal. Forcing it back to T-Mobile fixes the throughput. Recently a colleague was changed to EE and seems to be only getting Orange's data service.

Re:EE will never hit 12Mb/s

[mrbester]

Not that T-Mobile was much better in central London. It's why I ditched them as soon as my contract was up.

average network speeds of up to 12Mbits/sec

[Rockstar Rich G]

"average network speeds of up to 12Mbits/sec" since when do 'average' and 'up to' refer to the same thing?

Re:average network speeds of up to 12Mbits/sec

[Maximum Prophet]

"Back in '05, we averaged 12Mbits/sec for 10 seconds in a row. Haven't seen anything like that since"

Re:Did anyone look at the cost of the plans?

[Maximum Prophet]

Back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, there was a local ISP offering "unlimited" service. When I asked if you could dial in and remain online 24/7, they said no, there's a limit of 20 hours/week, but you can do anything you want while online, so it's "unlimited!!!"

Not surprising at all

[DrXym]

Anyone who has looked at the utterly ludicrous and swingeing bandwidth caps and the data rates of 4G would have seen this coming. I really don't see ANY reason for these high speeds unless it comes with a monthly cap of at least 50GB or more to justify it.

Put everything in the Cloud!

[Y-Crate]

Who needs local apps and data?

Just hope that your ability to access and work with your own data isn't compromised by an arbitrary increase in prices. (along with the ever-present danger of having apps you rely on discontinued and deactivated / have features removed)

so what?

[slashmydots]

Just about every square meter of England is covered in Wifi so I can't imagine anyone being out of range for a meaningful length of time and having to actually use mobile broadband at all.

Re:so what?

[mrbester]

[citation needed]

Seriously, what?

Re:so what?

[the_leander]

BT offer a nationwide wifi hotspot network here in the UK. Access to it is free if you're a BT customer and I believe Orange's land line net package offers free access as well.

Google: Openzone

As if the user base has a competing alternative?

[Uberbah]

While I'd love to blame an economic system for this, I feel the truth is more mundane: consumers are oblivious to what they are purchasing and are content to pay high prices for bad service.

Or, the mundane truth is capitalist apologists are willfully oblivious to the lack of competing options for the consumer to chose from.

Imagine if even 25% of the new phone buyers took a look at these plans and said, "Wow, that's a terrible option. I'm going to roll back to my old Nokia flip-phone and wait for industry to get its act together."

In which case the phone companies will say "okay, cool, no one wants 4G so we can stop investing in it and coast on our 3G network, which becomes ever more profitable as those investments continue to be paid off".

The problem is, apologists will blame the corporations for nothing, and just pass the blame along to the consumer as if he or she has any actual say over what corporate beancounters decide to do in the absence of regulation.

supply for the demand?

[xenobyte]

From the TFA:

"There are no unlimited data deals"

Why? - There's clearly a market. Just set the price according to expenditures and let the customer decide whether it's worth it.

Re:Did anyone look at the cost of the plans?

[Cederic]

4G is a horse they're letting you ride for 4 minutes a month. Right now I have a pony pulling my wagon all month, for less cost.

Anyway, of course I want a pony. Doesn't everyone?

Re:Did anyone look at the cost of the plans?

[Fr33z0r]

You have a cap, beyond which your connection will be heavily throttled, likely 1GB, 2 if you're lucky.

The word "unlimited" can safely be ignored, there's always a provider-imposed limit.

Smart phones to the rescue.

[niftymitch]

The smart solution is to make phones smart enough to
not use data except from designated WiFi resources.

Sat or cell

[tepples]

So it appears you agree that in some areas, satellite or cellular is the only available last mile for home Internet access other than dial-up.