5 ms·

These days with 4G i do find that it is not the technology that is the bottleneck. It is the carierers trying to hold on to their business model. I would prefe

These days with 4G i do find that it is not the technology that is the bottleneck. It is the carierers trying to hold on to their business model. I would prefer if we aimed our research on increasing coverage.

rhino369 10y ago
The technology is still a bottleneck, but the business model just isn't tightly fitted to the limitations of the bottle neck. 4G cannot viably stream 1080p netflix into the number of homes in America that use it at any given time (unless you use an unrealistic number of cell sites). Some sort of rationing has to occur otherwise cells would be overrun. Carriers should bring back free nights and weekends.
- zanny 10y ago
  Free nights and weekends is exactly anti-net-neutrality. I have always been an advocate for more, open, spectrum, and simple laws to outlaw intentional interference. We are not operating dumb radios - we can dynamically change or allocate spectrum channels to load balance congestion and avoid making it worse. To legally cordon off everyone into separate silos is a hatchet solution to a nuanced problem with much better solutions if you could just incentivize good behavior and punish bad in commons. I do not believe for a second we cannot technologically transfer h265 video via radio to every individual in even the highest population densities if we had full access to building infrastructure around all of the spectrum of light we use for communications.
  - rhino369 10y ago
    I can't think of a reason why free nights and weekends would be anti-net neutrality.
    - roninb 10y ago
      One simple example would be Verizon only allowing free nights and weekends to certain services. For example, Verizon allows free night and weekend data usage for Hulu but not for any other streaming video services. This is a huge loss to Netflix, Amazon Video, YouTube and any other streaming services, including those whom don't yet exist since it would be harder to gain users due to the newer service "using more data" than using Hulu (read: the Verizon subsidized alternative). At least, I'm assuming that's what OP meant. Not simply that "free nights and weekends" would be anti-net neutrality on its own, but that it could very easily be made more proprietary than it initially sounds. And we've seen it done in the past when free nights and weekends were were restricted to those within your telco, the x-amount of people within your network that are free to call[I believe AT&T made it 10?], the free mobile to mobile that was eventually restricted to free mobile to mobile only within the same telco again, etc., etc.
    - untog 10y ago
      "Net neutrality" is a problematic term because it seems to mean different things to different people depending on their perspective/motive. For instance, I've seen arguments that T-Mobile not charging for SD video streams is net neutral because any company is allowed to get into the program. In its strictest (and IMO, most useful) sense, "net neutrality" is the concept that data is data is data. It doesn't matter whether it's carrying video or whether it's carrying text, whether that comes from Google or whether it comes from the server in your basement, or whether it's being transferred at 11am or at 11pm. IMO that definition is the most useful because it's the clearest - anything else ends up getting into some debate about why this applies and that doesn't. I'd very much like to keep my neutral internet connection - the creeping preferentialism on my cellphone connection is not welcome.
    - Rumudiez 10y ago
      Smaller or up-and-coming carriers can't always afford to give away their service for free, whereas larger carriers can offset the losses more easily. Edit to clarify, it's more "anti-competitive" than "anti-net neutrality"
  - rusk 10y ago
    > To legally cordon off everyone into separate silos is a hatchet solution to a nuanced problem I have a sneaking suspicion that it's been done this way so that it can be treated like "property" legally protected and commoditised as such. The bottleneck here is the law, which as everyone knows "is an ass" (by which I mean in all seriousness it has difficulty dealing with such nuance)
  - wbl 10y ago
    The Shannon-Hartley theorem is a harsh master. You cannot squeeze more then bandwidth times log 1+S/N through a radio link. You cannot have antenna gain beyond the diffraction limit. Power amplifiers have limited bandwidth.
    - zanny 10y ago
      Which is exactly why the law is the limiting factor rather than physics. We have the ability to programmatically build radios that can adjust bandwidth channels on demand, in fairly broad ranges. But because spectrum is treated as a commodity to be owned by private entities, nobody can utilize the potential of load balancing across all possible radio spectrum (both immediately and in macroscopic economic trends). If we are stuck with the ~800mhz combined spectrum openly available today, of course we will continue to see incredible bottlenecks in congested wireless environments. But in practice there is about ~10ghz of practically usable spectrum for wireless data transfer, and you can fit a lot more channels in the low end.
- marasal 10y ago
  4G has been my only connection at home since 2013. I pay 20 euros a month for unlimited 50Mbit/s 4G connection and I can watch two Netflix 1080p streams and do other things at the same time easily. ISP also provides public IPv4 address so I can run servers at home. I live in Finland.
  - jbergens 10y ago
    I think Finland is the exception, almost all other countries including Sweden has data caps.
the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
> These days with 4G i do find that it is not the technology that is the bottleneck. It is the carierers trying to hold on to their business model. 5G is for more countries than just the US. Plenty of countries are very happy with the local carriers.
- glasz 10y ago
  you're funny.
artursapek 10y ago
I think the software is also often a bottleneck. Specifically bandwidth-greedy websites.
wyager 10y ago
Carriers do max out the capacity of many cell towers. Remember that it's you and dozens of other people (at least) concurrently downloading stuff over the same tower. Scarcity is a fact of life, and the bandwidth has to be allocated somehow. I do wonder how it would work if we did some sort of high-speed dynamic bidding for bandwidth, rather than a constant fee. It could actually be very helpful; it would incentivize carriers to appropriately allocate bandwidth for an area (maximizing profit would coincide nicely with maximizing customer utility) and it would allow customers to directly "feel the pain" of bloated downloads and websites, leading to more market feedback for wasting bandwidth by making 8MB webpages or whatever. Here's a really cool idea; no SIM card, no network attachment. Your phone uses some technology like Bitcoin micropayment channels (high-speed off-network secure micro payments, great protocol) to automatically buy bandwidth from whichever regional cell tower is offering you the best deal.
- lallysingh 10y ago
  > allow customers to directly "feel the pain" of bloated downloads and websites We already do, because our transfer speeds suck under congestion.

rhino369 10y ago

The technology is still a bottleneck, but the business model just isn't tightly fitted to the limitations of the bottle neck. 4G cannot viably stream 1080p netflix into the number of homes in America that use it at any given time (unless you use an unrealistic number of cell sites). Some sort of rationing has to occur otherwise cells would be overrun. Carriers should bring back free nights and weekends.

zanny 10y ago
Free nights and weekends is exactly anti-net-neutrality. I have always been an advocate for more, open, spectrum, and simple laws to outlaw intentional interference. We are not operating dumb radios - we can dynamically change or allocate spectrum channels to load balance congestion and avoid making it worse. To legally cordon off everyone into separate silos is a hatchet solution to a nuanced problem with much better solutions if you could just incentivize good behavior and punish bad in commons. I do not believe for a second we cannot technologically transfer h265 video via radio to every individual in even the highest population densities if we had full access to building infrastructure around all of the spectrum of light we use for communications.
- rhino369 10y ago
  I can't think of a reason why free nights and weekends would be anti-net neutrality.
  - roninb 10y ago
    One simple example would be Verizon only allowing free nights and weekends to certain services. For example, Verizon allows free night and weekend data usage for Hulu but not for any other streaming video services. This is a huge loss to Netflix, Amazon Video, YouTube and any other streaming services, including those whom don't yet exist since it would be harder to gain users due to the newer service "using more data" than using Hulu (read: the Verizon subsidized alternative). At least, I'm assuming that's what OP meant. Not simply that "free nights and weekends" would be anti-net neutrality on its own, but that it could very easily be made more proprietary than it initially sounds. And we've seen it done in the past when free nights and weekends were were restricted to those within your telco, the x-amount of people within your network that are free to call[I believe AT&T made it 10?], the free mobile to mobile that was eventually restricted to free mobile to mobile only within the same telco again, etc., etc.
  - untog 10y ago
    "Net neutrality" is a problematic term because it seems to mean different things to different people depending on their perspective/motive. For instance, I've seen arguments that T-Mobile not charging for SD video streams is net neutral because any company is allowed to get into the program. In its strictest (and IMO, most useful) sense, "net neutrality" is the concept that data is data is data. It doesn't matter whether it's carrying video or whether it's carrying text, whether that comes from Google or whether it comes from the server in your basement, or whether it's being transferred at 11am or at 11pm. IMO that definition is the most useful because it's the clearest - anything else ends up getting into some debate about why this applies and that doesn't. I'd very much like to keep my neutral internet connection - the creeping preferentialism on my cellphone connection is not welcome.
  - Rumudiez 10y ago
    Smaller or up-and-coming carriers can't always afford to give away their service for free, whereas larger carriers can offset the losses more easily. Edit to clarify, it's more "anti-competitive" than "anti-net neutrality"
- rusk 10y ago
  > To legally cordon off everyone into separate silos is a hatchet solution to a nuanced problem I have a sneaking suspicion that it's been done this way so that it can be treated like "property" legally protected and commoditised as such. The bottleneck here is the law, which as everyone knows "is an ass" (by which I mean in all seriousness it has difficulty dealing with such nuance)
- wbl 10y ago
  The Shannon-Hartley theorem is a harsh master. You cannot squeeze more then bandwidth times log 1+S/N through a radio link. You cannot have antenna gain beyond the diffraction limit. Power amplifiers have limited bandwidth.
  - zanny 10y ago
    Which is exactly why the law is the limiting factor rather than physics. We have the ability to programmatically build radios that can adjust bandwidth channels on demand, in fairly broad ranges. But because spectrum is treated as a commodity to be owned by private entities, nobody can utilize the potential of load balancing across all possible radio spectrum (both immediately and in macroscopic economic trends). If we are stuck with the ~800mhz combined spectrum openly available today, of course we will continue to see incredible bottlenecks in congested wireless environments. But in practice there is about ~10ghz of practically usable spectrum for wireless data transfer, and you can fit a lot more channels in the low end.
marasal 10y ago
4G has been my only connection at home since 2013. I pay 20 euros a month for unlimited 50Mbit/s 4G connection and I can watch two Netflix 1080p streams and do other things at the same time easily. ISP also provides public IPv4 address so I can run servers at home. I live in Finland.
- jbergens 10y ago
  I think Finland is the exception, almost all other countries including Sweden has data caps.

the_mitsuhiko 10y ago

> These days with 4G i do find that it is not the technology that is the bottleneck. It is the carierers trying to hold on to their business model. 5G is for more countries than just the US. Plenty of countries are very happy with the local carriers.

glasz 10y ago
you're funny.

artursapek 10y ago

I think the software is also often a bottleneck. Specifically bandwidth-greedy websites.

wyager 10y ago

Carriers do max out the capacity of many cell towers. Remember that it's you and dozens of other people (at least) concurrently downloading stuff over the same tower. Scarcity is a fact of life, and the bandwidth has to be allocated somehow. I do wonder how it would work if we did some sort of high-speed dynamic bidding for bandwidth, rather than a constant fee. It could actually be very helpful; it would incentivize carriers to appropriately allocate bandwidth for an area (maximizing profit would coincide nicely with maximizing customer utility) and it would allow customers to directly "feel the pain" of bloated downloads and websites, leading to more market feedback for wasting bandwidth by making 8MB webpages or whatever. Here's a really cool idea; no SIM card, no network attachment. Your phone uses some technology like Bitcoin micropayment channels (high-speed off-network secure micro payments, great protocol) to automatically buy bandwidth from whichever regional cell tower is offering you the best deal.

lallysingh 10y ago
> allow customers to directly "feel the pain" of bloated downloads and websites We already do, because our transfer speeds suck under congestion.