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No Such Thing As 'Unlimited' Data (wired.com)
An anonymous reader writes: According to an article at Wired, the era of 'unlimited' data services is coming to an end. Carriers don't give them out anymore unless they're hobbled, and they're even increasing the prices of grandfathered plans. Comcast's data caps are spreading, and Time Warner has been testing them for years as well. It's not even just about internet access — Microsoft recently decided to eliminate its unlimited cloud storage plan. The big question now is: were these companies cynical, or just naive? We have no way of evaluating their claims that a small number of users who abused the system caused it to be unprofitable for them. (A recent leaked memo from Comcast suggests it's about extracting more money, rather than network congestion.) But it's certainly true that limited plans make costs and revenue much easier to predict. Another question: were we, as consumers, naive in expecting these plans to last? As the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Unlimited data plans clearly won't work too well if everybody uses huge amounts. So did we let ourselves get suckered by clever marketing? T-Mobile plans may also be dropping unlimited data in 2016.
Yes there is. Your pipe has a max speed. The theoretical maximum amount of data you could use by saturating your pipe 24x7 should be considered unlimited. Nothing less.
I'm not sure why people have been clinging onto these ideals of "unlimited data." The vast majority of us use a very limited amount of data; why would you want to get lumped into a payment pool to help cover those who use excessive amounts? The rest of the world is moving to more finely-grained billing, which helps to more efficiently allocate scarce resources: cloud hosting and car insurance plans come to mind. Yet here we are, begging for a more expensive bill.
The problem is not with data caps per se it is with the fact that US carriers are imposing an ever lower data cap with insufficient competition to allow customers to be able to pick and choose. In other countries with functional competition in the telecom sector this is not the case. Ex: My ISP here in France has a 3Gb/month data cap on 3G Data. On 4G data the data cap is 50 Gb/month and instead of billing all overage they reduce DL speed on those exceeding the data caps.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
So, in other words, telco's are large Ponzi schemes whose business model is predicated on misleading customers about what they're actually buying so that faulty business models can be sold as if they weren't complete bullshit?
I'm sorry, but there's a word for that: fraud.
So maybe I can sell 1 million people my car? And then when I don't have 1 million cars I can say "well, I wasn't selling you my car, I was selling you the idea of car?
Sorry, their shitty business model and deceptive marketing are their own damned problems.
Oh, but wait, this was to maximize shareholder value and executive bonuses, so it's perfectly OK to commit fraud, right?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Every other country is offering unlimited plans. Cheaper unlimited plans in Australia and New Zealand are now the norm.
Here's the thing, we're not talking about a resource. There is not finite supply of water pouring into your house. We're talking about bandwidth. We're talking about electrons that are always flowing down the wire. There is no real resource being consumed by using more data.
During non-peak times when your switches are not at capacity, it doesn't really take more electricity to process more data (not really; not measurably). During peak times, it may be more difficult to offer quality of service because everyone is streaming something (even if it's just a video). Your total cost is in the infrastructure for standard data at peak.
It's not a resource like power or water. That electricity is always running over those wires. The more powerful switches you need are a sunk cost!