U.S. Mobile Internet Traffic Nearly Doubled This Year

An anonymous reader sends this news from the NY Times Bits Blog: "Two big shifts happened in the American cellphone industry over the past year: Cellular networks got faster, and smartphone screens got bigger. In the United States, consumers used an average of 1.2 gigabytes a month over cellular networks this year, up from 690 megabytes a month in 2012, according to Chetan Sharma, a consultant for wireless carriers, who published a new report on industry trends on Monday. Worldwide, the average consumption was 240 megabytes a month this year, up from 140 megabytes last year, he said."

Comments

Ads?

[Animats]

What fraction of the increase was ads?

Re:Ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

What fraction of the increase was ads?

Even though ads might seem to be the obvious "consumer of bandwidth", ads are not the biggest consumer of bandwidth. Take some time to sit around an airport, bus, or train for a few hours and watch how people use their phones as "data devices". I don't mean watch them talk or text. I mean watch them. If they don't have their laptops tethered to their phones, they are probably watching video clips from "wherever". Why do they watch video clips on their phones, mostly phones with decent displays like iPhones and Galaxies, entertainment. Watch them watch a video for a few minutes. Then watch them scroll up, scroll down, perhaps enter new search criteria or browse another web site. They might find another video to watch for a few minutes or maybe a video to "share", either as a link to a friend or with someone sitting next to them.

If they are actually on a plane in flight, they may have stored a full length video on the phone, but that doesn't count against "data usage".

Before asking for citations, I cannot provide them as I am paid by cell phone companies to research this stuff for them.

Re:Ads?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I don't know, but the latest tumblr app update now downloads inline gifs automatically raher than just a preview you have to click on.

So that will add needlessly, you can't even disable that "feature" (which also would be nice because fast scrolling chokes it and the app resets itself all the time now. POS-class atm.)

Re: Ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're the creep watching everyone and looking over their shoulders?

Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[paiute]

Yes, this huge volume of traffic totally makes their overage charge of $1.99 per MEGABYTE if you go over your 2 GB monthly limit. Why do I fucking pay 15 dollars per gig for the first 2 and then 2 thousand dollars for the next one? Is it to lull me to sleep and then ram a huge charge up my ass? Because it feels like it.

Did I mention fuck Verizon? I went into a store, but the guy said there were no more iPhone 4s available anywhere. I should get a 5 - all the 4s had been sent back to Apple. Went home, found a 4s on the Verizons website for 99 cents. Do the stores and the website belong to the same organization? Because it doesn't feel like it.

The only bright spot about dealing with Verizon is the followup quality control call which lets you scream obscenities at the corporation for a few minutes.

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. My Verizon plan says: Data overage is $15.00 per 1GB. $15 is perhaps still a lot, but it is a lot less than $2000.

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[PingXao]

That is their new business plan. Verizon is dumping all their old POTS copper wire business in regions where they (previously) offer landline service. They have stopped rolling out FiOS fiber-to-the-home pretty much everywhere. Their stated reasoning, believe it or not, is they can make more money on wireless overage charges. It's not a matter of POTS landlines and FiOS not being profitable. It's a matter of them not being profitable enough.

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this huge volume of traffic totally makes their overage charge of $1.99 per MEGABYTE if you go over your 2 GB monthly limit. Why do I fucking pay 15 dollars per gig for the first 2 and then 2 thousand dollars for the next one?

Don't worry about the previous comment. The poster complaining about overage charges went off their meds a few days ago. We have found them and are returning them to "the home" now. Sorry for the disruption.

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[Anonymous Coward]

Their stated reasoning, believe it or not, is they can make more money on wireless overage charges.

citation please

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[tepples]

You don't have to do business with Verizon, there are other cellular carriers

In a lot of places, it's either Verizon, no signal, no signal, or no signal.

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[ewieling]

I pay something like $15/gig for overages on Verizon's 6/gig/month "Mobile Broadband" service. Looks like the days of 3G/4G on phones being cheaper than 3G/4G on USB dongles is over. I am a bit surprised overage prices for phone data are so high. Are you sure you are not on an old plan where overage charges were sky high?

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to do business with Verizon, there are other cellular carriers

In a lot of places, it's either Verizon, no signal, no signal, or no signal.

You don't need to use Verizon to use Verizon towers. this page lists 9 companies which basically resell Verizon service. Many of these don't have Verizon's "hard" data cap. Many sell "unlimited" service with a "soft" cap. After the cap you are limited to 56k->ISDN type speeds, which sounds bad, until you realize that unless you stream music or video, a lot of what you would do on a phone would be passing only small amounts of data around.

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[Ol Olsoc]

Yes, this huge volume of traffic totally makes their overage charge of $1.99 per MEGABYTE if you go over your 2 GB monthly limit. Why do I fucking pay 15 dollars per gig for the first 2 and then 2 thousand dollars for the next one? Is it to lull me to sleep and then ram a huge charge up my ass? Because it feels like it.

We think of limits as some sort of communist plot, hatched by the president and the Democrats in dark vegetarian only rooms.

Yet there is a problem here. I hate to say this to digital people, but there is a limit to bandwidth when run outside of wires or fiber.

This is a big problem, because people want to look at their porn and watch movies on their smartphones. But that is a lot of data, if we dare call it that.

But we will reach saturation pretty quickly at this point.

And the same old solutions will be trotted out. But the RF spectrum isn't going to cooperate. There are physical limits, apparently unknown to the general public, and digital engineers, of Signal propagation, intermodulation, and just sheer numbers of users that limit the frequencies that will work for data. We're talking about a couple GigaHertz and above.

And we are really rapidly running out of available frequencies.If you want to dig for some, here you go:

http://transition.fcc.gov/oet/spectrum/table/fcctable.pdf

Or a nice graphical chart http://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/spectrum_wall_chart_aug2011.pdf

Because it's no fun looking through text lists. Don't even think about those lower frequencies, microwatts can somethings propagate around the world on them, and some other times, solar activity can knock them dead. The lower in frequency you go, they more atmospheric noise too, which will regularly knock out your signal. Look for 2 GHz and above. If you find a suitable place let us know. Not much real estate left.

A year or so, there were tests made to see if Data could be run at frequencies not far from the ones used for GPS. The RF guys said it wouldn't work, because there would be interference. Thee digital guys said, "WTF are you talking about?"

They ran the tests, and it didn't work. The only people surprised were the digital folks.

But what to we do? People "gots to" have their porn on their smartphones. I suspect that we are going to have to have a sort of hybrid system. Signals run through fiber, especially approach infintie bandwidth because if you need more signal, add more fiber. The cell phone towers as they are today are a technological dead end, rapidly being killed through popularity. We are going to have to have fiber going to shf points in individual buildings, and similar setups on the street. Very low power, really high frequencies to keep the range purposely short. It's doable, but people will have to pay. Otherwise, it's data throttling brought to you by the laws of physics.

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[Charliemopps]

POTS and FiOS are NOT profitable at all. I work for a phone company. What are you willing to pay for the fastest internet their is? $50/month? $100 even? It costs nearly a million dollars a mile to lay fiber. $3 million for a remote. They serve, on average, 1000 people. In city centers it'd be tens of thousands. Any investment to improve your service would take over a year to recoup even if you had 100% customer uptake, 0 churn and you excluded all maintenance costs. By the time it would be paid off their will be a new tech to replace it. That's that the telcos have learned. The only reason the telcos still exist is government subsidies and even those are drying up. Buried cable is dieing.

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[rolfwind]

How come can small communities in Scandinavian countries and those here in the states (that regularly get attacked by an incumbent utility) come together and afford to lay it?

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[gl4ss]

a million dollars? where the fuck? in new york in the case it needs a new hole in the ground?

over a year to recoup? OMG HOW SHITTY INVESTMENT /s.

aanyhow, these averages still sound pretty high for average mobile consumption, I wonder about their formula and they probably count all data traffic on the wireless networks for this to get it so high and count per person and not per device connected to the network..

I mean, sure, in some countries you can just run torrents all month long on 4g for 9.99 a month, but last time I checked usa wasn't one of them.

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[mjwx]

Yes, this huge volume of traffic totally makes their overage charge of $1.99 per MEGABYTE if you go over your 2 GB monthly limit. Why do I fucking pay 15 dollars per gig for the first 2 and then 2 thousand dollars for the next one? Is it to lull me to sleep and then ram a huge charge up my ass? Because it feels like it.

Its because there is a maximum bandwidth the network can handle before it becomes overloaded. So having no limits is an ideal way to make sure that the towers are maxed out 100% of the time. So what they do is give you a portion cheaply but charge excessively for anything beyond that because they want to discourage people from using up all the towers bandwidth. The high per MB cost is a disincentive.

I've seen this in third world nations where they simply dont care. You can basically forget about mobile internet because everyone is using their phone to download half the internet. There are a lot of charges that make no sense (like SMS's where it costs telco's a fraction of a cent to send dozens of them) but this isn't one of them.

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the stores and the website belong to the same organization? Because it doesn't feel like it.

The answer might be no. There are Verizon corporately owned stores, then there are independently owned authorized retailers. Face it. Few wanted that 4s anymore. They shipped back those iphone 4s phones back because they didn't want to be stuck for a financial loss with last years model of phone which is rapidly diminishing in value. They still paid full wholesale costs for it, and because its apple, the margins small. Do you think they should be required to operate their store at a loss just to satisfy angry cheap ass broke customers such as yourself who crave last years tech?

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[Dragonslicer]

Any investment to improve your service would take over a year to recoup...

If you require your return to reach 100% in under a year, it's not really fair to call that an "investment".

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[Dragonslicer]

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[Anonymous Coward]

Its because there is a maximum bandwidth the network can handle before it becomes overloaded. So having no limits is an ideal way to make sure that the towers are maxed out 100% of the time. So what they do is give you a portion cheaply but charge excessively for anything beyond that because they want to discourage people from using up all the towers bandwidth. The high per MB cost is a disincentive.

But the carriers want to have it both ways. They want to sell you on all the Netflix and ESPN you can watch on their amazingly blazingly fast LTE network but don't want you to actually use the network to stream anything. And it means that the three people hitting my Verizon tower in Bumfuck, SC, get screwed over with data rates built for users in Manhattan.

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[Ol Olsoc]

Troll?

Let me put it in a manner that own't upset people.

There is only so much available bandwidth, and there is no more. Lower frequencies are not applicable to Data transmission due to atmospherics and propagation. Higher frequencies are mostly in use. Shannon's limit for data transmission is in effect, and some methods have been attempted that could in theory prove it wrong, but the needed transmit power heads to infinity in pretty short order. Since we don't have transmitters that powerful, if we want to stuff more data into a line, we have to make it go much much slower. No free lunch.

Point is with a limited amount of total bandwidth available, should that be taken up by people who want to watch movies on their way to work? Should the ability to consume all that data take precedence over GPS or long distance passenger jet communications, two things that have been affected by the desire for more data to the smartphone.

Re:Let me wish Verizon a Unhappy Christmas

[Anonymous Coward]

Can any of them us 4G yet? The only one I found that can is data only, no voice or text. 70 a month for 20 GB.

Thank you Zuckerberg

[Anonymous Coward]

Mostly Facebook garbage probably.

I don't own a smartphone

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda off topic but i feel out of place because i am still using a dumb phone from 2004. It is an old flip style phone with GPRS internet and 900 MHz 1,900 MHz capability. It doesn't even have the 800 MHz or 1,800 MHz band. It does not come with a VGA camera either. I haven't seen the phone roam on another network in the United States of America.

I hardly send text messages using the numberic keypad. Push 1 three times to type C. I turn predictive text off.

Re:I don't own a smartphone

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an awesome story, grandpa.

Re:I don't own a smartphone

[gl4ss]

if it's gprs from 2004 it probably runs j2me apps so it fills all the smarpthone tickboxes the same as a wp7/8 phone.. soo.. HA!

No data here

[Anonymous Coward]

In Canada I am lucky to have a provider that offers unlimited data, well 10gigs is their soft cap and then the speed is reduced after that. Based on that study there must be 100 users that do not use data at all.

Re:No data here

[Hamsterdan]

I'm curious, what's the provider?

Crazy rates

[ls671]

consumers used an average of 1.2 gigabytes a month over cellular networks this year,

At current cellular network rates, it's a cash cow.

I'll wait until rates get lower a bit before I start using it. Eventually, it should be just about as low as wired connection rates. Just wait a few years yet.

Re:Crazy rates

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't go lower anytime soon. Would be quicker and cheaper to just move to another country.

Re:Crazy rates

[AHuxley]

The crazy rates are great for profit taking and the basic physics of too many users and the limits of any mobile network.
The consumers are trained to pay more, the bandwidth use is controlled and sold in tiny fractions at great profit. The older hardware in place can still function under the load.
The options are to free up more spectrum, build out more expensive hardware vs limit the number of users or their bandwidth.

Has supply expanded to demand?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet the doubling is just from expanding the available backhaul.
It's not like I can get much over 0.03Mbit/sec in rural america.

A further pain point than that is AT&T overselling their 1.5Mbit DSL so you can get crappy 75kbyte/sec download speeds.
Satellite is not an option - someone provide bandwidth for the masses, not just urban city centers.

Where is the concern for

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the concern for microwave radiation? Ignoring ICNIRP the insane, standards have been lowered by 200 to 1,000 times over the past few years yet I've measured levels of 24,000 micro watts/meter squared half a block from my house [biological effects occur in humans above 4 uw/m2]. Wireless routers put out regular-as-clockwork spikes of 22,000 uw/m2, when Salford et all (1997) found that 25,000 uw/m2 "damages the blood-brain barrier". DECT (cordless) phones are almost as bad, and modern baby monitors are DECT phones in disguise.

For those quickly reaching for the "-1, Troll" mod, check out "Resonance: Beings of Frequency" instead.

Re:Where is the concern for

[Anonymous Coward]

No one comments. Just one pathetic down mod. Where is the professionalism here? We are the ones installing wireless routers. Are we just ignorant, or are we afraid to be down-modded?

Re:Where is the concern for

[Anonymous Coward]

Take your anti-RF woo and shove it up your ass, you delusional paranoid fool!

Those people

[Anonymous Coward]

Those people and what they are doing with their shitty smartphones doesn't deserve to bear the name of "Internet".

Re:Those people

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we are a condescending prick, aren't we.

Re:First!

[Anonymous Coward]

No astroturf here.

Immigration

[tepples]

Would be quicker and cheaper to just move to another country.

Which country, and how would one go about qualifying for a visa?

Re:Immigration

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.chinaconsulatesf.org/eng/lszj/zgqz/ http://www.travelvisapro.com/visa/china

Could've been 10 fold

[EzInKy]

It is only the cellular companies pricing models that are keeping this segment from exploding. And yes AT&T, I'm pointing the finger at you! You are still so stuck in a pricing model that wants to profit for each minute people spend communicating with each other. Perhaps another break up is needed?

Too expensive, capped, and slow.

[antdude]

I still don't own a mobile smartphone because of this. I want to have affordable one like landline uncapped fast ones.

Re:Too expensive, capped, and slow.

[Runaway1956]

Define "affordable". My landline costs ~$15.00 per month. I have no long distance carrier associated with that landline, meaning I do not / cannot make long distance calls. The only real use that I have for the landline, is the DSL that comes into the house on the same line. DSL is definitely over priced - $75 for less than 1 MB connection. If I lived in a city, a bottom tier offering would be cheaper and faster. I'd be happy to get rid of DSL, if wireless could supply my needs/wants. Unfortunately, wireless coverage sucks here. There are times when I have to walk outside, even walk out into the roadway, to get a good signal. "Good signal" being relative of course. Sometimes, I actually have a full bar, and still can't make a phone call, so I resort to text messages.

Re:Too expensive, capped, and slow.

[antdude]

Ouch, that's expensive. Do you live in rural area. Affordable like $50 for fast, unlimited, etc.

Re:Too expensive, capped, and slow.

[Runaway1956]

Yes, I definitely live in Outback, Nowhere. Fast affordable internet is available as close as Texarkana, about 40 miles away as the crow flies. There is nothing fast out here, in the sticks.

Re:Too expensive, capped, and slow.

[antdude]

Ya, that what sucks about rural areas. I would never be able to do that. Satellite Internet is too slow, capped, and expensive. :(

Oligopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon and AT&T are an oligopoly - pure and simple.

And undoubtedly, this is so government sanctioned tacitly. "Cooperate with us on these surveillance matters ... and we'll cooperate with you on these pesky little matters of regulation/price control etc.. " *wink wink*..

On a side note, to many who might say, you don't have to do business with Verizon/AT&T ::: I say, you're either ignorant or underestimating the pathetic state of quality of Sprint/TMo etal in many areas of country.

Case in point --- couple of years back, I *HAD* to go with Verizon & have been pretty much stuck with them. When I recently moved from one state to another , and coincidentally, my two year contract with Verizon was about to expire, I thought of going with TMo. I especially liked the fact that TMo is relatively transparent with their pricing. So as much as I *WANTED* to go with TMo -- I found their service pretty much worthless in many local areas. One of which was an local hospital where I have to visit frequently due to family situation. I didn't want to go with AT&T because, with the carrier switch , I'd have been losing the unlimited data option from my verizon plan & paying way more for same amount of data with AT&T.

Re:Oligopoly

[Ol Olsoc]

Verizon and AT&T are an oligopoly - pure and simple.

And undoubtedly, this is so government sanctioned tacitly. "Cooperate with us on these surveillance matters ... and we'll cooperate with you on these pesky little matters of regulation/price control etc.. " *wink wink*...

Tell us about the laws of physics in your universe.

Managing to turn a available bandwidth problem into corporate malfeasance and black helicoopters and tinfoil hats?

Ah what the heck Well played sir, well played.

Re:Oligopoly

[Lord Lemur]

I think it has something to do with the 40%+ profit margins. As in, if the government were regulating the industry in the intrest of the people, while permiting the oligopoly to exist, it wouldn't be happening.

I think the idea diverges from reality in the fact that they can just buy the regulation and legislation they desire. They have no need to colude with government to get the special treatment that they just buy at fair market price.

Mobile internet traffic has doubled...thus

[Chas]

Carriers are trying to get their customers off old, grandfathered "unlimited" plans by offering nominal "savings" based on what they use NOW. Never mind that the usage is increasing rapidly...

Had my company's Sprint rep try that on us. We very politely told him to fuck the hell off.

Don't get it

[dugancent]

I've had an unlimited data plan since the iPhone 3G and I've yet to break 1gb/month. I travel a lot and use google maps often, so I don't know.

No streaming video; maybe that's it,

Unlimited LTE FTW!

[jtownatpunk.net]

I'm so glad I have an old, unlimited account from Verizon. LTE would be pointless with a cap. It'd be like having a Porsche I could only drive a hundred miles a month.

Re:Unlimited LTE FTW!

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be exactly like that soon enough, everyone will have a Porsche but there is a finite limit to the roads. There will have to be a way to share it so everyone gets 100 miles a month then pays per mile after that.

Re:Unlimited LTE FTW!

[jtownatpunk.net]

Your car analogy fails because we already pay by the mile. A significant chunk of the money you pay for every gallon of fuel is taxes that are supposed to pay for the construction and upkeep of roads. The more you drive, the more you pay. Insurance rates are also based on mileage. If you drive on a toll road, you also pay based on usage. (I'm in Texas right now and this place is lousy with toll roads.)

Re:Unlimited LTE FTW!

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're all for paying for usage of essentially an unlimited resource, roads, you can always build more.
But you're against paying for a finite resource, spectrum, I'd like to see you build more EM frequencies

The analogy stands, Porches are getting cheaper and cheaper, more and more people are having them and using them more and more often, but its impossible to build enough roads to drive them all on.
The car will be like the phone, he's not trying to say the phone is like a car.

Re:Unlimited LTE FTW!

[Anonymous Coward]

Porches are getting cheaper and cheaper

It is the American Dream for everyone to have a porch some day. We're not quite there yet...but soon porches will be affordable for everyone!

Re:Unlimited LTE FTW!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea too many apartments, you may have to settle for balconies.

64-bit

[dwater]

It's because people moved to using 64-bit instead of the old 32-bit. Right?

Re:64-bit

[Hillgiant]

No no no. That doesn't result in more bits. Each bit is twice as wide. Pretty clever when you think about it.

Kids+Netflix

[glennrrr]

My wife's iPhone has a grandfathered unlimited plan and we've been averaging 3 GB a month with occasional throttling. This is mainly in 10 minute increments as kids get driven to after school activities. One could only extrapolate what it would be should we ever take a serious car trip. I've a non-unlimited 4GB/month tethering plan on my iPhone and that runs about $15/GB for overage, and the usage on that varies wildly some months are less than a GB some are nearly 5GB. When I'm providing Internet to 2 iPads in the back seat I'm at the mercy of the kids.

Re:Kids+Netflix

[reikae]

Driving the kids to some place around the corner while they watch movies on iPads. Sounds so stereotypically American that it's funny!

Also it somehow makes me feel kinda old and I'm only 31...

Re:First!

[Joce640k]

I'm using a 2TB Surface Pro Extra. It has 20% more Windows 8 than the standard Pro.

Great news...

[Anonymous Coward]

... for NSA.

This is a meaningless metric

[PJ6]

because it's is a direct function of the rates and plans offered by the carriers. If they back off the caps some more, we'll see another article like this in another year and be all, "Cellular data usage increased again ZOMFG!!!" Big whoop.

Re:First!

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you seen the commercials? You aren't supposed to call it Windows 8. The commercials all specifically say "the latest version of windows", and never mention Windows 8. I assume this is so that people don't associate them (the Surface) with Windows 8 which already has such a terrible reputation.

Re:First!

[Lord Lemur]

I'm confused, since when does the surface have good enough reputation to be damaged by windows 8?

Rense was on this in 2007

[Anonymous Coward]

The Radiation Poisoning Of America. Pretty horrific read.