4 ms·

Both, to varying degrees. And of course carriers are going to tailor their cell gear to their benefit in ways unknowable to customers without enterprising inves

Both, to varying degrees. And of course carriers are going to tailor their cell gear to their benefit in ways unknowable to customers without enterprising investigators conducting some seriously-dedicated SDR packet capturing and N carrier x M handsets x P locations x Q time-of-day testing. 0. Even assuming lossless/infinite backhaul capacity, it gets messy when guessing about what's deployed in terms of packet prioritization of tower -> handset. 1. Once deployed and maintained, the marginal cost of data is much closer to zero than what customers are being overcharged. Even if it's going from a cell tower to cheap dark fiber or trenched in, it's still nearly the same amortized cost. Also, there is plenty of spectrum channel capacity.. the "bottleneck" is the backend of the towers or their backend upstream in the region. 2. Xfinity (optical, fixed-premises "cable") has a 1 TB limit for certain US states but not others, where they have unlimited data allowances. So it's not about infrastructure or data transit costs, it's about making money from relatively richer people. It would be a good requirement for internet-providing carriers to be required to publish their effective channel capacity oversubscription ratio (for upload & download) for each internet-connecting plan that is offered in each ZIP code.

yspeak 7y ago
>. Once deployed and maintained, the marginal cost of data is much closer to zero than what customers are being overcharged. I think one of the primary tasks of proper pricing is to recover costs of deployment and maintenance, isn't it ? Deployment and maintenance aren't free you and can't ignore those costs. Providers must build those in both to recover past costs and to build a reserve for future deployment. It makes sense that those who need more bandwidth should pay more. This emcourages more bandwidth to be deployed. The more deployment the more supply. The more supply comes on line, the quicker prices go down (or depending on demand, the slower the price increase). This has been so clearly seen in gas prices, where price caps have never worked except to choke supplies and artificially pump up denand. Allow prices to float freely according to use, and prices go up if demand goes up. Higher prices encourage suppliers to bring more online, and/or discourage inefficient uses (gas guzzling vehicles) and prices go down. Price caps always distort markets. Net neutrality functions as a price cap that slows deployment of more bandwidth, increases inefficient use, leading to slow internet for all greatly impeding innovation

yspeak 7y ago

>. Once deployed and maintained, the marginal cost of data is much closer to zero than what customers are being overcharged. I think one of the primary tasks of proper pricing is to recover costs of deployment and maintenance, isn't it ? Deployment and maintenance aren't free you and can't ignore those costs. Providers must build those in both to recover past costs and to build a reserve for future deployment. It makes sense that those who need more bandwidth should pay more. This emcourages more bandwidth to be deployed. The more deployment the more supply. The more supply comes on line, the quicker prices go down (or depending on demand, the slower the price increase). This has been so clearly seen in gas prices, where price caps have never worked except to choke supplies and artificially pump up denand. Allow prices to float freely according to use, and prices go up if demand goes up. Higher prices encourage suppliers to bring more online, and/or discourage inefficient uses (gas guzzling vehicles) and prices go down. Price caps always distort markets. Net neutrality functions as a price cap that slows deployment of more bandwidth, increases inefficient use, leading to slow internet for all greatly impeding innovation