8 ms·

When did you last get 100Mbit+ speeds with 4G? In a real world scenario, I would max out my data cap in 5 minutes.. Telcos will never give up their guaranteed

When did you last get 100Mbit+ speeds with 4G? In a real world scenario, I would max out my data cap in 5 minutes.. Telcos will never give up their guaranteed profits by throttling speeds even with unlimited speed/capacity.

wyldfire 9y ago
The cap that they set is a function of their capacity. If we use spectrum more efficiently, prices can drop or caps can go up.
- jhayward 9y ago
  This is an unsupported assertion. Most caps are not sensitive to the environment they are consumed in, whether bandwidth tight or bandwidth plenty.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> I would max out my data cap in 5 minutes Counterargument: there are fundamental reasons for data caps. To provide service at a high speed to lots of people at a reasonable price, edge-case data users must be throttled. Increasing capacity reduces the number of users who must be throttled.
- metalliqaz 9y ago
  That might make sense IF the caps only applied during times of congestion.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  Then they should apply caps or throttling during hours when capacity is a concern and let me download 100 GB of games from Steam between 4 and 7 AM when the Netflix watchers have gone to bed.
  - Analemma_ 9y ago
    They do, or at least T-Mobile does: their unlimited plan throttles you once you exceed X gigabytes in a month (I believe X is 25), but only when the cell is congested.
  - Stratoscope 9y ago
    That's a bit like how T-Mobile does it. You get 50GB/month that is always at full speed, and then after that you get deprioritized if you're on a busy tower. So it doesn't depend on time of day, but how many other customers are sharing your tower. https://www.t-mobile.com/customer/mydatausage.html https://www.t-mobile.com/customer/mydatausage.html > Data prioritization will only be noticeable when you access a congested tower and have used over 50GB of data in a particular billing cycle. You will continue to get unlimited high speed data on your smartphone when you aren’t accessing a congested tower. In that way it’s different from data throttling, which slows you down for the remainder of your bill cycle regardless of network conditions, all the time.
    - kzrdude 9y ago
      That's a very good deal. Is that a standard or expensive subscription?
      - ac29 9y ago
        It's their standard ONE plan: $70/month for 1 line, but much cheaper with more (for four lines its $160/month). Tmobile does have some prepaid plans and older grandfathered plans, but the ONE plan is pretty good, especially at the multi-line rates.
        wlesieutre 9y ago
        Any carriers do better pricing for a single line with high caps? $840/year on service for a single phone feels crazy to me.
        9y ago
- mbruce 9y ago
  Counter - counter argument: data caps fundamentally help segment users and make more $$$ from those who value more data. This doesn’t directly relate to capping download rate. Related: Growth on total users and downloads is far far greater than improved spectral capacity in 5G and hence more cells are needed to improve capacity. So costs not only to refresh, but to build more cells are significant.
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    If you were going to make bandwidth costs actually based on costs to provide service, you would probably end up with something similar to the way that electricity is priced. A connection fee plus a metered rate that varies to be higher during periods of high demand and lower during periods of low demand. The data cap model is pretty clearly designed just to extract extra money from customers, not as a genuine way of fairly allocating costs.
- Rjevski 9y ago
  This can be solved by selling plans by speed instead of data caps; ie, you pay for a guaranteed speed (like 1Mbps) and can use it as much as you want. The more speed you buy the more expensive it gets, with the full LTE speed being crazy expensive as you'd essentially be buying out the entire tower in that case (but then again, who needs 150Mbps+? I'd be happy with a stable 10Mbps to be honest, for mobile there is rarely a need for more).
nickysielicki 9y ago
What are you suggesting? If it's that there's some market-wide conspiracy to provide worse service for the sake of long-term profits, there's zero evidence to back that. Cell phone plans have gotten significantly better in the past decades, and most people are able to pay less and get a better level of service. Things have gotten better and cheaper, because there is competition, and there is always going to be market pressure that pushes them to provide better service at lower costs than their competitors. Or are you suggesting that you think there is going to be a new development of a price-fixing conspiracy among telecoms in the next few years? Alternatively, are you suggesting (on a website that is ostensibly about venture capitalism) that the entire foundation of economics and markets is shakey? I hate when these anti-market socialist/communist type comments pop up. Everyone hates their ISP/cellular provider and mindlessly upvotes nonsense like this. There's zero truth to what you're saying!
- topmonk 9y ago
  I had a thought that the left tries to divvy up what value already exists, and the right tries to create an environment where new value can be created. In order for the left to justify their agenda, they try to make it seem that it's pointless to try to create new value because of things like cartels, monopolies, etc. They then present the conclusion that the only way for a person to improve their financial position is to take from others.
- daveburstein 9y ago
  Author here. There's no conspiracy, just an incredible amount of 5G hype. Note that the source of the comment is the CEO of the largest manufacturer, and I have similar from CTOs of Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica.
roenxi 9y ago
This claim just seems ... unlikely and counter to economics. Prices dropping isn't about business owners deciding they feel nice, it is about the fact that consumers reward cheap producers. If the producers refuse to drop prices when thy can, then the first person to break into the market doing something different will get crazy profits. I would liken the situation to 2007 in Australia. Sending instant messages was basically free from the telco's perspectives - but they charged 20c or something to the sender. Insane margins. The first company that I remember challenging that was Apple, who bypassed the whole business and enabled essentially free text messages with iMessage. 10 years later, the markup on using text messages seems to have been completely wiped out. Apple also happened to be the most profitable company in the world through that period. Sure, iMessage isn't linked directly to the profits, yet somehow the invisible hand seems to have been working.
- CountSessine 9y ago
  If the producers refuse to drop prices when thy can, then the first person to break into the market doing something different will get crazy profits Market entry is difficult because it's gated by spectrum availability. It's hard for new competitors to offer wireless services. The market for wireless services in most countries is very cozy - it's usually one or two incumbent carriers that are about the same size, own about the same amount of spectrum, and don't work very hard to take market share from each other. I would argue that in a lot of cases, wireless services markets are stuck in a Nash equilibrium. Smart regulation that might fix this would be to outlaw service contracts and cancellation fees to allow consumers to exploit pricing 'mistakes' (which is how you'd break a Nash equilibrium), and maybe force the carriers to re-bid on their spectrum every 5 years. Unfortunately another common problem with wireless services is regulatory capture - in my country, all the regulators who watch the wireless industry also end up working for it.
  - Rjevski 9y ago
    My dream startup is a next generation telco (without the usual data cap bullshit) but I have yet to crack the spectrum problem. Spectrum is auctioned off by the government and it's hard to compete with the existing players; we're talking amounts close to billions here, and that kind of money is not easy to come by, even from VCs.
sanmon3186 9y ago
>I would max out my data cap in 5 minutes.. It is important to note that data is not consumed at the same speed it is downloaded at.

wyldfire 9y ago

The cap that they set is a function of their capacity. If we use spectrum more efficiently, prices can drop or caps can go up.

jhayward 9y ago
This is an unsupported assertion. Most caps are not sensitive to the environment they are consumed in, whether bandwidth tight or bandwidth plenty.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> I would max out my data cap in 5 minutes Counterargument: there are fundamental reasons for data caps. To provide service at a high speed to lots of people at a reasonable price, edge-case data users must be throttled. Increasing capacity reduces the number of users who must be throttled.

metalliqaz 9y ago
That might make sense IF the caps only applied during times of congestion.
wlesieutre 9y ago
Then they should apply caps or throttling during hours when capacity is a concern and let me download 100 GB of games from Steam between 4 and 7 AM when the Netflix watchers have gone to bed.
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  They do, or at least T-Mobile does: their unlimited plan throttles you once you exceed X gigabytes in a month (I believe X is 25), but only when the cell is congested.
- Stratoscope 9y ago
  That's a bit like how T-Mobile does it. You get 50GB/month that is always at full speed, and then after that you get deprioritized if you're on a busy tower. So it doesn't depend on time of day, but how many other customers are sharing your tower. https://www.t-mobile.com/customer/mydatausage.html https://www.t-mobile.com/customer/mydatausage.html > Data prioritization will only be noticeable when you access a congested tower and have used over 50GB of data in a particular billing cycle. You will continue to get unlimited high speed data on your smartphone when you aren’t accessing a congested tower. In that way it’s different from data throttling, which slows you down for the remainder of your bill cycle regardless of network conditions, all the time.
  - kzrdude 9y ago
    That's a very good deal. Is that a standard or expensive subscription?
    - ac29 9y ago
      It's their standard ONE plan: $70/month for 1 line, but much cheaper with more (for four lines its $160/month). Tmobile does have some prepaid plans and older grandfathered plans, but the ONE plan is pretty good, especially at the multi-line rates.
      - wlesieutre 9y ago
        Any carriers do better pricing for a single line with high caps? $840/year on service for a single phone feels crazy to me.
        9y ago
mbruce 9y ago
Counter - counter argument: data caps fundamentally help segment users and make more $$$ from those who value more data. This doesn’t directly relate to capping download rate. Related: Growth on total users and downloads is far far greater than improved spectral capacity in 5G and hence more cells are needed to improve capacity. So costs not only to refresh, but to build more cells are significant.
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  If you were going to make bandwidth costs actually based on costs to provide service, you would probably end up with something similar to the way that electricity is priced. A connection fee plus a metered rate that varies to be higher during periods of high demand and lower during periods of low demand. The data cap model is pretty clearly designed just to extract extra money from customers, not as a genuine way of fairly allocating costs.
Rjevski 9y ago
This can be solved by selling plans by speed instead of data caps; ie, you pay for a guaranteed speed (like 1Mbps) and can use it as much as you want. The more speed you buy the more expensive it gets, with the full LTE speed being crazy expensive as you'd essentially be buying out the entire tower in that case (but then again, who needs 150Mbps+? I'd be happy with a stable 10Mbps to be honest, for mobile there is rarely a need for more).

nickysielicki 9y ago

What are you suggesting? If it's that there's some market-wide conspiracy to provide worse service for the sake of long-term profits, there's zero evidence to back that. Cell phone plans have gotten significantly better in the past decades, and most people are able to pay less and get a better level of service. Things have gotten better and cheaper, because there is competition, and there is always going to be market pressure that pushes them to provide better service at lower costs than their competitors. Or are you suggesting that you think there is going to be a new development of a price-fixing conspiracy among telecoms in the next few years? Alternatively, are you suggesting (on a website that is ostensibly about venture capitalism) that the entire foundation of economics and markets is shakey? I hate when these anti-market socialist/communist type comments pop up. Everyone hates their ISP/cellular provider and mindlessly upvotes nonsense like this. There's zero truth to what you're saying!

topmonk 9y ago
I had a thought that the left tries to divvy up what value already exists, and the right tries to create an environment where new value can be created. In order for the left to justify their agenda, they try to make it seem that it's pointless to try to create new value because of things like cartels, monopolies, etc. They then present the conclusion that the only way for a person to improve their financial position is to take from others.
daveburstein 9y ago
Author here. There's no conspiracy, just an incredible amount of 5G hype. Note that the source of the comment is the CEO of the largest manufacturer, and I have similar from CTOs of Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica.

roenxi 9y ago

This claim just seems ... unlikely and counter to economics. Prices dropping isn't about business owners deciding they feel nice, it is about the fact that consumers reward cheap producers. If the producers refuse to drop prices when thy can, then the first person to break into the market doing something different will get crazy profits. I would liken the situation to 2007 in Australia. Sending instant messages was basically free from the telco's perspectives - but they charged 20c or something to the sender. Insane margins. The first company that I remember challenging that was Apple, who bypassed the whole business and enabled essentially free text messages with iMessage. 10 years later, the markup on using text messages seems to have been completely wiped out. Apple also happened to be the most profitable company in the world through that period. Sure, iMessage isn't linked directly to the profits, yet somehow the invisible hand seems to have been working.

CountSessine 9y ago
If the producers refuse to drop prices when thy can, then the first person to break into the market doing something different will get crazy profits Market entry is difficult because it's gated by spectrum availability. It's hard for new competitors to offer wireless services. The market for wireless services in most countries is very cozy - it's usually one or two incumbent carriers that are about the same size, own about the same amount of spectrum, and don't work very hard to take market share from each other. I would argue that in a lot of cases, wireless services markets are stuck in a Nash equilibrium. Smart regulation that might fix this would be to outlaw service contracts and cancellation fees to allow consumers to exploit pricing 'mistakes' (which is how you'd break a Nash equilibrium), and maybe force the carriers to re-bid on their spectrum every 5 years. Unfortunately another common problem with wireless services is regulatory capture - in my country, all the regulators who watch the wireless industry also end up working for it.
- Rjevski 9y ago
  My dream startup is a next generation telco (without the usual data cap bullshit) but I have yet to crack the spectrum problem. Spectrum is auctioned off by the government and it's hard to compete with the existing players; we're talking amounts close to billions here, and that kind of money is not easy to come by, even from VCs.

sanmon3186 9y ago

>I would max out my data cap in 5 minutes.. It is important to note that data is not consumed at the same speed it is downloaded at.