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There's still no technical reason why costs are so high, speeds are so slow, and caps exist at all. Some blame can be put on the FCC, tower owners, cities regul
by th0ma5 9y ago
There's still no technical reason why costs are so high, speeds are so slow, and caps exist at all. Some blame can be put on the FCC, tower owners, cities regulating towers, but the carriers themselves have very little incentive to make any radical cost reductions or service upgrades.
- zip1234 9y agoCompetition is certainly part of it. Up until T-Mobile got aggressive it seemed like services kept getting worse and prices kept getting higher. Now, even Verizon seems to be lowering prices. Hooray for T-Mobile! Edit: just realize you said technical reasons. Yes I agree there is no technical reason. :)
- gok 9y agoThere's a very technical reason why caps exist: using more data requires more spectrum, and there's a limited amount of spectrum, so it doesn't make any sense to charge every user the same amount regardless of how much data they use. There's no carrier in the world that can sell you truly unlimited access without applying traffic shaping at some point.
- th0ma5 9y agoWrong. I mean, you're right, but you're ignoring various other aspects that affect the connection of a single device to a single base station... directional antennas, channel use, channel spread spectrum, tower height, noise floor, obstructions, etc... The point is, they want you to believe that it is spectrum, but really it is tower owners and tower licensing. And even that I don't think justifies caps. How does limiting speed affect the spectrum when your phone has already negotiated with the towers the amount of channels in use? There is a lot of FUD spread around on this topic.