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Three years ago, our local Spanish operator Movistar deployed the 4G mobile network and started offering an impressive 75 Mbps download speed and 25 Mbps upload

Three years ago, our local Spanish operator Movistar deployed the 4G mobile network and started offering an impressive 75 Mbps download speed and 25 Mbps upload speed. At that point, the largest data plan you could get from them was 1 Gb per month (now I think you can get 2 or 3 Gb, not more). This meant that if you used the connection to its capacity, you would hit the monthly cap in around 1 minute 50 seconds. With the current data plans it may last you 5 minutes or so, not more. With other operators you may get up to 8 Gb, i.e., around 15 minutes. With the current pricing, this is the most useless technology ever. I don't know why they even bother (well, it suppose it probably has some advantages at their end as well).

tzs 9y ago
For most people once their connection is fast enough that any given thing they try to do is not noticeably annoying due to slow download speed, their download speed and their monthly data usage are largely independent. For example, over the 12-17 years I've had Comcast they increased my download speed from 8 mb/sec to 20 mb/sec, then to somewhere around 40 mb/sec, then to 60 mb/sec, then to 90 mb/sec, and now it is at 120 mb/sec. I don't remember what my monthly usage was back when it was at 8 mb/sec, but from 40 mb/sec onward, and I think maybe at 20 mb/sec, my monthly usage has stayed about the same, varying between 20 to 40 GB/month. I've always appreciated the faster speed, even though I don't use it to download more. I appreciate it because it means it takes less time to download. For instance, if I'm working at home and realize I need a big file from work to continue it might be 5 minutes to download at 120 mb/sec. It would have been 30 minutes at 20 mb/sec. The former means I can grab it while I take a bathroom break and a refill on my water, with almost no disruption to my work day. The later means a big disruption.
rubber_duck 9y ago
Around here they started offering unlimited uncapped traffic (up to 1 TB) - BUT - after you go over 5GB daily your connection is disabled and you have to send an SMS to enable extra 2GB - you can do this unlimited ammount of time (up to theoretically 1TB). So this makes streaming, torrenting and stuff awkward but for daily internet use it's a decent option (it's a relatively inexpensive plan) - for eg. I could work remotely on this plan.

tzs 9y ago

For most people once their connection is fast enough that any given thing they try to do is not noticeably annoying due to slow download speed, their download speed and their monthly data usage are largely independent. For example, over the 12-17 years I've had Comcast they increased my download speed from 8 mb/sec to 20 mb/sec, then to somewhere around 40 mb/sec, then to 60 mb/sec, then to 90 mb/sec, and now it is at 120 mb/sec. I don't remember what my monthly usage was back when it was at 8 mb/sec, but from 40 mb/sec onward, and I think maybe at 20 mb/sec, my monthly usage has stayed about the same, varying between 20 to 40 GB/month. I've always appreciated the faster speed, even though I don't use it to download more. I appreciate it because it means it takes less time to download. For instance, if I'm working at home and realize I need a big file from work to continue it might be 5 minutes to download at 120 mb/sec. It would have been 30 minutes at 20 mb/sec. The former means I can grab it while I take a bathroom break and a refill on my water, with almost no disruption to my work day. The later means a big disruption.

rubber_duck 9y ago

Around here they started offering unlimited uncapped traffic (up to 1 TB) - BUT - after you go over 5GB daily your connection is disabled and you have to send an SMS to enable extra 2GB - you can do this unlimited ammount of time (up to theoretically 1TB). So this makes streaming, torrenting and stuff awkward but for daily internet use it's a decent option (it's a relatively inexpensive plan) - for eg. I could work remotely on this plan.