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Australian Man Uses 1TB of Mobile Data in a Single Day (stuff.co.nz)

An anonymous reader cites an amusing article on Stuff: When Telstra offered its mobile customers unlimited data for two separate days this year as compensation for network outages, some customers took it as a challenge to download as much as they possibly could in one day. On Sunday, 27-year-old Sydney resident John Szaszvari outdid himself and everyone else by ploughing through almost a whole terabyte of data. That's more than double what he managed during the first free data day in February -- an already mammoth 425GB.

37 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. This. by pushing-robot · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is why we can't have nice things.

    --
    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    1. Re:This. by Calydor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, this proves that my phone provider's ridiculous cap of 200 MB per month truly is ridiculous!

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    2. Re:This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      This is why we can't have nice things.

      You just need to get an ISP with a rigorous electron/photon recycling program.

    3. Re:This. by Maritz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      To stop morons from you from using wireless

      Why is it always just when you insult someone that your proof-reading skills disappear into the abyss... Now you just look plain silly, AC. ;)

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    4. Re:This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      >> To stop morons from you from using wireless

      > Why is it always just when you insult someone that your proof-reading skills disappear into the abyss... Now you just look plain silly, AC. ;)

      Yeah, but that's not the core point here. He can insult others if that makes him feel some kind of weird satisfaction.

      The one thing he can't do is say BS -- and that's pretty much what he has managed to accomplish. Because he has been brainwashed into believing bandwidth is some scarce thing, I had to endure a dial-up connection recently (at a road, where cell phones should be pretty good!). Two weeks ago on a holiday I had to do with 2 Mbps while last year I had 6 Mbps with the same operator on the same spot.

      That's artificial scarcity, no doubt, created to make money on us -- and all the monkeys will beat the newbie who wants more speed.

    5. Re:This. by religionofpeas · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There is plenty of bandwidth to go around.

      That depends entirely where you are, and how many people are sharing the same cell tower/sector with you.

    6. Re:This. by jittles · · Score: 5, Funny

      There is plenty of bandwidth to go around.

      That depends entirely where you are, and how many people are sharing the same cell tower/sector with you.

      We have no room for your "physics" nonsense around here, buddy. Go back to YouTube with all those ridiculous evolution and other psuedoscience videos. People come to Slashdot to discuss real science. Come back when you've finally learned the earth is flat.

    7. Re:This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Why is it always just when you insult someone that your proof-reading skills disappear into the abyss... Now you just look plain silly, AC. ;)

      Not sure if /. does it or not but on Reddit when someone posts something the admins dislike they can use a "wand" to screw up the grammar in order to make people perceive them as idiots.

    8. Re:This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually it shows that the bandwidth that we all paid for is sitting mostly idle, in order to use the artificial scarcity for market segmentation. Remember, bandwidth cannot be saved or stored. None of that 1.4TB of data which that man transferred on those two days was borrowed from some other day or slowed anything down before or after those two days. That bandwidth was available right then and there, and had he not used it, it would have gone to waste.

    9. Re: This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If you don't know what you're talking about, you might as well just stop talking.

      The air only has so much bandwidth, the tower is only fed with so much bandwidth.

      Yes, mobile providers oversubscribe. There's no getting around the fact that it makes sense to do.

      If you want every customer of a mobile provider to have their own time division slot in the air in the available frequency bands, then each sector (oversimplified to hell) can support somewhere around 250 concurrent customers. (I forget the exact number, someone please correct me)

      At about 1000 customers per base station, and a total install cost over 10 years (including maintenance, install, and some light upgrades) of $22mil, total cost per customer is around... $180/month.

      That's not including actual bandwidth costs (which are actually fairly trivial) but that tower is only going to be fed with maybe a 1gbps line (really high balling here..) So each customer gets 1/1Mbps.

    10. Re:This. by stephanruby · · Score: 2

      This is why we can't have nice things.

      Starve a person for years and of course given an all-you-can-eat buffet he's going to binge eat until he busts a gut.

    11. Re:This. by PRMan · · Score: 2

      It's Muphry's Law...

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    12. Re:This. by sims+2 · · Score: 2

      Nice how they aren't rolling out landline broadband so they can get away with per bit billing isn't it?

      --
      Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
    13. Re:This. by mjwx · · Score: 2

      This is to say, he downloaded 1 TB on a mobile connection.

      People in Australia have been able to download 1TB per day on wired HFC/Fibre connections for years. You could even do it on ADSL if you're dedicated and close enough to an exchange.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    14. Re: This. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      1Gb uplink is only because they don't want to spend the extra $5k for a 10Gb or 40Gb uplink. On a $22mil install, that's free. When it comes to lots of clients, TDMA is sub-par to CDMA. In theory, a CDMA tower can support millions of connected devices, you just need enough processing power from the ASICs. CDMA scales nearly linearly with processing power, the number of towers, and the number of channels, while having virtually no issue with all towers using the same channels.

      Technology keeps making equipment cheaper and faster at a phenomenal rate, something close to 100% faster and 50% cheaper every year on average. That's 4x the bandwidth for the same cost. Instead of doing "light upgrades", maybe they need to make towers more modular to allow for semi-regular medium upgrades.

    15. Re:This. by mrvan · · Score: 2

      Am I the only one to have downloaded a linux ISO using 4G? It's south of 1G, but around 0.7 or so I think...

      (I'm on a 4G/month plan, so I shouldn't do it every day, but I can do it every week if I want :))

    16. Re:This. by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2

      I'm not sure why this was modded down. Remeber when AT&T made a recent stink about how their mean old unlimited customers were destroying their network because they were using Netflix and the like? Last night I saw an AT&T ad advertising their 'unlimited if you are also a satellite customer' data service to.... stream video just like Netflix. I think we all get that there are physical limitations to using the wireless spectrum, but the AC is correct that those limitations have nothing to do with the current pricing models being used by these companies. It is, indeed, a cash grab. In fact AT&T was recently nailed on that. Don't forget that AOL was a really successful company despite metered billing and poor service amongst a sea of better alternatives, it's a classic story in the industry that all these other CEOs are trying to mimic.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  2. Remember John Szaszvari! by Sneftel · · Score: 2

    All ye who would piss and moan about capped network plans: Consider how much of your unlimited internet plan's cost would be subsidizing some stoner's gigantic Simpsons hoard. Hint: It's bigger than yours.

    --
    The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
  3. Begs the question... by Pollux · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From the article...

    And then the downloads began: 14 seasons of MythBusters; 24 seasons of The Simpsons; the entire Wikipedia database; Microsoft software for his job; updates for his Xbox games; and "a lot of random other stuff". He also synced all his Spotify playlists offline..."It's always movie/TV night at my house at the moment."

    With all that binge-watching, when does he ever has any time to do his job?

    1. Re:Begs the question... by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Funny

      His job is posting pro Msft comments on Slashdot...

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    2. Re:Begs the question... by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      With all that binge-watching, when does he ever has any time to do his job?

      What makes downloading = watching?

      He said it himself. "It's always movie/TV night at my house at the moment". Maybe he does his job during the day.

  4. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by danbob999 · · Score: 2

    This is doable on LTE.

  5. Re: Let me guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    4K porn should die. The lower resolutions smoothed out those little skin imperfections. Now every wrinkle is a canyon. And 60 fps? What's wrong with Reverse Cowgirl Anal at 30 fps?

  6. 994GB of Horse Porn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    994GB.

    neigh!

  7. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Which is why every time they roll out new networking technology and tell us a) how awesome it is, and b) that we should splash out on a new phone to use it ... that I have no choice but to think "yeah, sure, in theory, but you'll never upgrade your system to allow anything like the demo".

    Every time they tell us how awesome the network is, how fast it will be, and all of the cool things we'll be able to do with it, they then turn around and say "but you can't really use it because if everybody did that the network would collapse".

    This stuff is pure marketing lies. They're never going to give you even a fraction of what the marketing campaign about how awesome it is tells you you're going to get.

    If they showed you what you'd really be getting, they'd be advertising a Ferrari, and giving you a Ford Pinto. It's all lies. I just have no idea how such blatantly false advertising is even legal.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  8. It is called Pareto principle by Trachman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    1. Download the list of users.
    2. Sort by the usage
    3. Select the top user

    For the selected user publicly start shaming, start puffing cheeks and rolling eyes.

    Well, that is statistics... You will always have a percentile that uses more service than others. The question is why this is a surprise.

    Mr Vilfredo Pareto discovered this phenomena 120 years ago.

    1. Re:It is called Pareto principle by VorpalRodent · · Score: 4, Funny

      Mr Vilfredo Pareto discovered this phenomena 120 years ago.

      This was all the more impressive considering the limited 4G coverage at the time.

      --
      Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
  9. Instead of real downloads... by swb · · Score: 2

    He should have had a way to just pump /dev/random across the cellular network and into /dev/null on the receiving side.

    His mistake was actually downloading real data instead of just trying to see how much crap he could push through the network.

    1. Re:Instead of real downloads... by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

      /dev/random slows way way down after a few megabits

      That's why there is /dev/urandom. It uses a lot of CPU though. On my system, /dev/urandom to /dev/null runs at 21MB/sec, whereas /dev/zero runs at 7GB/sec.

    2. Re:Instead of real downloads... by tomhath · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ...and to keep idiots from pumping /dev/random across the cellular network and into /dev/null in order to burn bandwidth for the sake of burning bandwidth.

  10. Japanese Man eats 59 hotdogs in one day by Cajun+Hell · · Score: 4, Funny

    World amazed by new record.

    "I never thought he would do it," said one spectator.

    "I came here thinking I would win, and then this happened," said a contestant, followed by several expletives.

    "You've gotta respect that," explained one of the judges.

    "I agree. This is big important news," said a Slashdot editor.

    --
    "Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
  11. Re:Seems impossible by thegarbz · · Score: 2

    Or just one LTE-A phone. Telstra's network supports Cat 6 LTE (300Mbps)

  12. The unrelenting march of technological progress by red_dragon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This 1 TB/day threshold rang a bell as I remembered a BSD trumpeting a similar record, albeit in the opposite direction, in the late 1990s... and sure enough, Slashdot covered it back then:

    Wcarchive Does 1.39tb In 24 Hours

    Back then people had serious discussions about what sort of storage controller, network interface, and upstream connectivity was needed to achieve this result. Nowadays we can stuff that same performance in a trouser pocket. What an age to live in.

    --
    In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
  13. What a pig by Blake1024 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It is inconsiderate people like this that causes the rest of us to have caps in the first place. Yea, yea, I know - any company with more than $100 is evil, and this guy is "the people" so whatever he does is good. Give me a break.

  14. Re:11.6 MBps over 3G ??? by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 2

    If they showed you what you'd really be getting, they'd be advertising a Ferrari, and giving you a Ford Pinto. It's all lies. I just have no idea how such blatantly false advertising is even legal.

    More like a leasing service where you get a Ferrari but only 1 hour per day. Which would actually be a great deal. If it actually worked out that a number of people didn't have to commute at the exact same time and each of you could commute to work in a Ferrari for the price of owning a Ford Pinto.

    Network Bandwidth is such that it is beneficial to have extremely high speed in bursts with caps. Imagine the scenario where you want to watch a Movie. It is 5GB and you can't stream it. You either have to wait say 24 hours at slow speed to download it. Or you can download it at 100MB/s and watch it in a couple minutes. Both use "5GB" of data but the infinite burst speed is a better value for the customer. Just like only having 1 hr a day of drive time is actually more valuable to most customers than 24 hours of owning a ford pinto. If you only use 1 hr a day of commuting it might as well be a fancy car than having a shitty car sit in your driveway or parking lot for 23 hours a day.

  15. Re:Stargate Atlantis needs to come back! by The-Ixian · · Score: 2

    I am an avid sci-fi fan (books mostly) and have always meant to watch SG but never have.

    I know that there are hundreds of episodes of untapped sci-fi if I ever get really bored.

    It's like my emergency escape pod... just sitting there waiting... but if I watch it, I lose the safety net.

    --
    My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
  16. Re:Balancing act by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    What "reasonable" means should not be written into a law, but instead common sense should be used when interpreting it.

    For consumer products that often backfires in practice because too many will test the limit and the legal system tends to favor consumers under vagueness (at least outside of Texas). It's better to spell it out, and not call it "unlimited" unless it really is.