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Despite Data Caps and Throttling, Industry Says Mobile Can Replace Home Internet (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T and Verizon are trying to convince the Federal Communications Commission that mobile broadband is good enough for Internet users who don't have access to fiber or cable services. The carriers made this claim despite the data usage and speed limitations of mobile services. In the mobile market, even "unlimited" plans can be throttled to unusable speeds after a customer uses just 25GB or so a month. Mobile carriers impose even stricter limits on phone hotspots, making it difficult to use mobile services across multiple devices in the home. The carriers ignored those limits in filings they submitted for the FCC's annual review of broadband deployment.
is the poor man's pay-as-you-go broadband. No caps after midnight.
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But I'm about to hit my data cap
I have my mom on a T-Mobile hot spot because it's by far the fastest connection where she lives (other option is DSL that literally 10x slower).
However the data cap is absurdly low - 10GB, way less than the summary mentions. She could make do pretty well with 25GB (even streaming video) but 10GB is just on the edge where it often runs out near the end of the month, and there's no way to add more data when it runs out.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Up the limit to at least 400GB without throttling and then we'll talk about it replacing home internet.
Do you really think they hate overage fees?
The big telecoms monopolies aren't even trying, now that they've pwned the FCC.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
Those responsible for the statements and supporting "evidence" from each of the respective companies should face immediate arrest for filing false claims with intent to commit fraud related to federal regulations.
You didn't think the industry spent billions lobbying against net neutrality without expecting to make it all back, did you? They want everyone to be tied to wireless so that they can throttle, cap and otherwise limit their connections in order to force customers into more expensive plans.
The goal is now and always has been to extract as much profit while providing the bare minimum service that they can get away with.
Not if you want to also do "streaming gaming". As for me, I'm happy I investing in MAME, Roms and standalone games early and often - the pay-as-you-go, loot box or online models seem like a PITA no one should have to deal with.
of the standard. Otherwise it should not be legally classified as 5G.
The most valuable content I download off the internet is in the form of books (approx 5 megabytes for a few days reading).
4k high-speed fiber noise is just noise, almost entirely worthless junk incapable of improving life except for a momentary distraction.
Wherever television programming is introduced to an area, birth rates collapse. Eugenicists would be proud of the West's communication infrastructure, particularly guys like Adolph Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, etc.
I'm on 6mb DSL (768k up) and only got that recently after some fiber was run. Prior I could get 3mb DSL but I was on the edge of service for that, and S:N ratio kept me from having a decent connection - I'd loose connection every 5-10 minutes. So 1.5mb DSL.
While my phone co (Windstream) has been making massive improvements in connectivity where I am (mostly rural, N Central Fl) I'm still on the edge of connectivity for my AT&T cell/data. As in, I may have 3g, or 4g. Or LTE. I may have one dot on connection meter, or two. Or mostly none. Depending on where I am in the house or what part of the "yard" (5 acres) I'm in.
So no, when lack of density prevents cable or DSL from being available, you can't always depend on cellular - until AT&T et al start building more towers.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Back in the '30's, electricity wasn't to be had out in the sticks. Part of FDR's New Deal basically had the Feds pay for the wires to fix that.
It could be done again, if we wanted to spend a metric fuckton of money doing so.
Note, for those who want to blame a political Party for the failure to do so, it hasn't been done under Trump (R), nor was it done under Obama (D), nor Bush (R), nor Clinton (D). This has been a bipartisan "Yuck Foo" to the people who live out in the boonies (probably mostly because there aren't enough of them to matter come election time)....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
should be throttled.
For blatant Orwellian abuse of the language, if for nothing else.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I guess mobile broadband is good enough if you don't need internet in your line of work... That probably excludes most professionals working from home and farmers who are more and more reliant on technology.
What about latency?
...this untenable position? Money, of course.
A: From the article:
In other words, it's about cutting capital investment costs to increase profit margins.
The kicker is that they were just crying about how net neutrality was a terrible thing because they couldn't manage traffic better to keep mobile service running. They were also just crying about how mobile data caps are absolutely necessary to keep from "clogging the tubes" (an outright lie).
But they're trying to claim they want to claim that mobile is an adequate substitute for home/wired internet??
(This exact same argument failed in 2017 after Ajit Pai initially supported the idea but backtracked after taking a shit-ton of heat from the public and consumer advocates.)
Corporate executives don't deal in facts. They deal in their own malleable truth sundaes, sprinkled on top with factoids that they can sell in a different package at any time...
but your your were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
The laws of physics prevents good upload and low latency. The download is only on because the signal comes from a massive tower with mega signal strength. Meanwhile you must transmit back with a transmitter the size of a slice of bread at a low decibel level.
Take it from someone who has been stuck using commercial wireless at home for a decade, all versions of it fucking suck.
"5G LTE" you say? Wow, how amazing! :|
I still can't use Skype with my mom, let alone use services like Twitch or really even play any online FPS games without having 300-3000+ ping...
No, no wireless is NOT good enough to completely replace wired internet.
Over here it is quite common for ones sole internet connection to be over 3 or 4G cellular.
No cables, no caps, no fuss, very cheap.
Multiple 10s of megabits per second, even when hundreds of kilometers away from town in the forest.
Try to keep up America.
I thought geeks didn't like game streaming. Something about latency impossible to overcome. Anyway maybe we'll rediscover some of the techniques our ancestors used back in the dial-up* days to survive.
*Or just borrow from ship or plane internet.
Children these days. How do you think your parents survived in the dial-up days? Amusing too the "work at home" when half the battle is getting the boss to allow telecommuting in the first place.
... If you can take over the FCC, you can get away with offering less for more. That's kind of the point.
The Republican party has long been owned by Telco's, it seems. If you are a US citizen and vote for the Republicans, you get what you deserve. If you
didn't vote that way, you get what your neighbours deserve.
"All of human knowledge is out there for the cost of a broadband connection and a PC"
Actually, no it's not. And the quality is all over the map for what is.
they want everyone to have both and to pay around $160/mo for the landline and $70/mo (+$35 for your phone) for the wireless.
Thing is, I don't think voters are going to do anything about it. Texas, for example, has a senate candidate (Beto O'Rouke) who refuses corporate PAC money but he's behind in the polls by 9 points. Nancy Pelosi beat her primary challenger and she's as corrupt as they come. So far the voters still vote for whoever has the most money, regardless of where that money came from.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
To hell with cell towers being someone's main internet. NO WAY NO HOW!!!!!!!!!
..here comes the wireless industry to bugger you month after month after month and demand you thank them for the privilege. Tell 'em to shove it up their fat asses.
Also, THANKS, TRUMP, for appointing this piece of fucking garbage AJIT PAI, you fat orange-haired sonofabitch.
towers have limited capacity. in large cities, they're hammered, causing significant throttling issues. carriers have proven over and over they're unwilling to actually invest in adequate capacity.
in rural areas, there will never be micro-transmitters every couple miles to support the new faster tech. never.
and when verizon shuts down cdma at the end of next year, there goes that fucking neighborhood too. coverage is gonna go to shit in rural areas when that happens. already had that confirmed by a local verizon business rep last month.
and finally, simply consider the market penetration of streaming services. what happens when two-thirds of wireless customers start streaming hd or better netflix (et al) on one or several devices every day? who's gonna pay ten bucks a gigabyte to do that?
Why? Right now I can choose between Comcast or Centrylink for my home internet. If you add At&t, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint to that list then there are 6 carriers to choose from. We know that more competition is good. It's one thing for Comcast and Centrylink to "compete" in one field and At&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint to "Compete" in another. When all six are in one field then something tells me it's not going to be so easy for them all to keep treating customers like crap. Right now the cellular infrastructure can't handle the traffic load but once 5G becomes available it might allow for enough throughput the satisfy most people.
When I monitored the traffic usage on my home internet I found that streaming a 4k YouTube nature video took about 21Mbps; a HD movie from Netflix was 6.5Mbps, and my kids cartoon was 4.1Mbps. Seems to me that 40Mbps is plenty for most people, unless you plan on streaming multiple 4k videos at the same time?
... but because wireless is easier for the industry to deploy. It doesn't matter if customers do not agree that wireless is good enough to replace broadband. All that matters is that the industry can convince an industry-friendly FCC to rule that wireless is good enough.
Where $30/mo gets you 2GB/month. 60MB/day can barely get you a few minutes of Netflix.
With AT&T, the only option to connect a PC with more than 20GB monthly limit is $180 per month after fees. If you use it for online gaming, they will cut you off after a few weeks of daily use.
Good luck trying to do gaming online with data caps.
Yeah, it's clear the FCC has been hijacked by the telecoms.
Let be know when a twitch or YouTube or CAD or Adobe Crestive Cloud user can work from home.
These carriers donâ(TM)t know how their own networks work or they would realize that latency alone disqualifies wireless from being usable for gaming.
We need someone with guts to take a meat cleaver to these mega corporations. They have way too much power, and abuse it to the fullest extent of their capabilities. Standards are good. Lack of competition is not.
I assumed they were really talking about home 5g service competing with cable/fiber. My hopes are that it does as it'll mean in a few years most people may have at least 3 high speed internet options. I see no real need for 5g on mobile devices for most people. The cable companies are going to fight tooth and nail to try to keep them out of the home internet game. This just seems like them strengthening their position. In the end cable and mobile phone companies will all morph into some new competing industry. Not sure what it'll be called but it won't be defined by tv or phone.
Help establish an underground connection. I am sure a college somewhere would be a gorilla internet gateway.
Maybe we need to build out a hobby based wifi max meshed network. No media.... just data the way it used to be back in the late 90s.
No commercial traffic. The big telcos would be begging to connect us again.
In the old dialup days gopher and use net worked well. We were not bombarded with all the bullshit we are now. Yahoo used to be a decent News site.
Not anymore. Who cares about the celebrity bullshit ? Not me. And present the news in an unbiased format. Not slanted to the socialist left! (that's all the way to the left).
It is pretty good as my main internet source. However, they need to increase the cap before it would be acceptable for most. I put up with the limitations because of necessity.
My daughter and me consumes around 1250gb a mount, mostly using Netflix and similar servises.
Thank God we live in a modern country with 100/100 fiber
I assumed they were really talking about home 5g service competing with cable/fiber.
At least here in Finland, it's quite common that people have 4G connections for the home internet. The ADSL connection I had was 16/1, so once I tried the 4G+ giving 125/40 transfer speeds, it was an easy decision to switch. I have 15+ connected devices in my house (using Netflix and other similar services) and that 4G+ connection is quite sufficient for those. No data caps or throttling whatsoever.
The big issue for wireless is the data caps and the greater limits on bandwidth. Data caps are a solution to the problem of limited bandwidth. First we have to frame the problem which is rural areas not getting high speed internet and cutting this communities off from what is a large part of our modern culture, education and industry. The thing with rural areas is that they are rural due to not have large quantities of people. So the limited band width problem is less of a problem. If 200 people have to share 1,000 Mbps of service that is probably going to be faster than a lot of cable modem speed in US metropolitan areas. Especially since 1/2 the users won't be using their full share of 50 mbps at any one time. You'll probably get faster than 200 Mbps at 90% of the day. The Data Caps aren't really needed more than to prevent the download and upload all day on bit-torrent crowd which are used on metropolitan users anyway. Of course, the mobile companies want to keep tight even in rural areas for the profits. Of course, you still need enough towers with links (fiber or wireless) to get the share size of the bandwidth down to where it is truly high speed wireless. But that should still be much cheaper than running fiber to a large quantity rural houses with huge distances in-between.
I don't know whether to be disgusted or stupefied by the arrogance of their dishonesty.
Do corporations think they are so powerful they can cause instant 'memory holes'?
Have had tethering capability with my phone for a number of years now.
And it's saved me literally THOUSANDS in hotel Internet costs.
But, is it ready for prime time yet?
No.
Locational issues affecting signal strength still play heavily on it's utility.
Latency can also be an issue. I was an early adopter for Clear (which is now just Sprint) and had massive issues.
I had a tower less than a quarter mile from my location that'd give me 3 bars. Unfortunately, I was on the south face of an 8-story brick, concrete and steel building.
So even if they could FORCE it to that tower, it'd disconnect within 30 minutes and I'd connect to a tower directly south of me, almost 5 miles away, and get a single bar.
Now, I use an IP phone. So latency is kinda important. The latency with Clear was HORRENDOUS. Correspondingly, my IP phone connection quality was equally horrendous.
It's possible, after everything moves to 5G, that we could see WISP be something more than a "make do".
But not until.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I'm already seeing Verizon 5G micro-towers going up in my area, Although they haven't announced availability in our area as of yet. Supposedly it's launching in Houston and LA in October.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/...
So far, they're claiming 300Mbps with a 1Gbps Peak, and no data caps at $70/month. Although they're not saying anything about no throttling, but I'm sure they'll have something in place to throttle heavy users at peak times or at a certain data cap.
If they can truly deliver those speeds, especially with a light to zero touch throttling policy similar to Verizon FIOS, they will give cable serious competition and pretty much own the rural market with little to no competition other then other future 5G carriers. If they run it like Verizon Wireless and cap/throttle, it's lip service.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Isn't the video game industry huge right now (and its real-time, online component)? Mobile latency/ping will never compare to that of wired in quantity or consistency.
In case you weren't just making a pedantic joke about imprecise colloquial language:
Satellite Internet providers tend to pause the meter from midnight to 6 AM local time or thereabouts. This window is intended for subscribers to download operating system updates, purchased downloadable games, and the like, so that they move these activities out of the most congested periods of the day.
So my mobile data plan costs me about $20/month, truly unlimited (huge optional cap), but most would be $40-50. My home (fixed) data plan is $50/month.
A do it all mobile plan at $80 would combine both, save a little for most users, and as 4G-5G becomes even more capable (and it will, Band 71 anyone?) it will be a savings. Until the cable co. jacks the price of TV, since they will lose the revenue form selling the last mile twice as TV and Internet, and that has to be made up.
Than the mobile plan will include a wireless set top box, probably as a gateway that your mobile devices flip to when home, and all of this on one account, one plan. And the cable cos will get competitive.
It's not that cell service or Internet service in America aren't competitive, for they are not - they are different things. TV/Internet cable cos have no equivalent in the mobile space, though TMobile is coming on with Layer 3, others will have to try, and that makes the whole space truly competitive.
Then the blood will flow, as the content owners will be coerced by the incumbents to deny the usurpers. Disney on Layer 3? Mmmm, that would be one of disruptive events.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It seems like I'm paying double for just internet. Once through Spectrum, the second through Sprint. I don't really use the internet at home though when I'm not there (other than Dropbox pulling down photos from my phone). What would be awesome is if there was a device that I drop my phone into when I get home that would use it to provide internet to my computer network and possibly even power up land line phones. I guess I could use a Raspberry Pi to wireless gateway my lan using my phone's hotspot.
Try checking to see if the carriers servicing your area offer fixed wireless service. Basically, it's an LTE hotspot designed to be used in one place
Verizon's LTE Internet (Installed) has what I would consider an unusably high cost per gigabyte. $80 ($10 for the line and $70 for the data plan) for the first 10 GB in each month and then $15 for each GB thereafter.
My mobile operator in the U.S. doesn't limit anything. But they actually expect me to pay for what I use.
If the price of a computer game is $40 for the game itself and $250 for the data plan to download it at $10-$15 per GB, how do either game publishers or ISPs expect customers to afford that?
Are you kidding? They allowed 3G networks to brand themselves as 4G for marketing purposes. They are even more owned by telecoms than the FCC is.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Seems to me that 40Mbps is plenty for most people
On a 10 GB/mo plan, you can transfer only 80,000 Mbit per month without hitting punitive overages. 40 Mbps will finish that off in 2,000 seconds, or just over a half hour. What size plan were you envisioning?
When a video game is in the tens of gigabytes, 'not being wasteful' would involve shipping the game on physical media (instead of as a download) and planning for not being able to release ongoing updates, or at least releasing them as expansions sold separately. But with optical drives becoming less common on PCs, I don't see how that can be made practical. BD burners were never nearly as common as DVD burners were. Or am I missing something fundamental about allowing video games to bloat to tens of gigabytes in the first place?
Sure, and all the Ford Rangers can easily replace the F150/250/350s that people have.
200 * 50 = 10000, not 1000. Math is hard.
> You'll probably get faster than 200 Mbps at 90% of the day.
If there are 10 of "you", not 200.
If the FCC were actually a consumer watchdog they would tell the AT&T and Verizon, "You want us to consider wireless a suitable replacement for wired broadband? Fine. Everywhere you don't offer wired you must have the capacity to provide unthrottled and unlimited data at wired broadband speeds and costs." If they can do that, than it is indeed an adequate replacement.
> Mobile carriers impose even stricter limits on phone hotspots, making it difficult to use mobile services across multiple devices in the home
That seems so fucking ass-backwards to me. My *router* is my central access point (it's its *job* and is much better suited at it than anything else) and every device in the house accesses it, including my phone--*especially* my phone, considering the outrageous amount of money mobile providers want. My devices certainly aren't configured so they get their internet access through the *phone*. Piss off already.