6 ms·

Why do carriers care if I'm accessing my paid-for data via the phone's interface or a tethered computer? It makes no sense to me.

justincormack 15y ago
Because they havent got nearly as much capacity as they sell.
- michaelcampbell 15y ago
  I think that's secondary to them not wanting you to do something for free that they would like to be charging you to do.
hammock 15y ago
Combination of two factors. A) the obvious one, that they are overselling their network capacity; and B) that given A, it is much better to reclaim bandwidth by fucking over the 0.1% of tetherers by discriminating against them at the margin than it is to fuck over 100% of normal users by throttling/changing pricing plans/etc. The carriers have put themselves into a corner where they have to make someone unhappy. All customers are paying the same $30/mo. Given the choice what would you rather do, make 10 of them unhappy or 1000 of them? Subscriber volume is your lifeblood, it's a numbers game.
- TillE 15y ago
  > they are overselling their network capacity Seriously? Two lousy gigabytes a month is "overselling"? That's, say, three hours at 200KB/s. Per month. I find that difficult to believe, except in the very most crowded areas.
  - tzs 15y ago
    Oh man, imagine the consumer confusion if they tried to tier data prices by how crowded your area is. So, someone in the middle of nowhere gets cheap data, but someone in a crowded area does not. Now in addition to voice roaming, we'd have to worry about data roaming as we move around between city, suburbs, and rural areas.
    - nooneelse 15y ago
      It would be great to have the networks offer service to devices in small units of time, and have the phone decide which plan on offer to go with automatically based on the user's preferences, then we could have an efficient market for this resource. But entrenched companies seldom like playing in an well functioning market when they can be rent collectors instead.
guelo 15y ago
The real reason is that for years they have overcharged corporate customers for tethering plans and they don't want to lose that revenue. Same reason why sms is so expensive per GB, basically because they can.
- dspillett 15y ago
  Actually while SMS messages are overcharged for, especially messages that pass between international boundaries, on pre 3G networks they are far more of a burden on the network than you would imagine which means the networks have a vested interesting in keeps the numbers being sent down a little. See http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/10/sms_denialofser_1.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/10/sms_denialofse... for some details on a theoretical DoS attack based on this limitation. While I believe this has been addressed with newer transmission protocols like UMTS there are still a lot of phones out there using the 2G infrastructure either because the phone is old or because they are being used in an area that has no good 3G availability.
  - guelo 15y ago
    Thanks for the details but I think it backs up my contention, as the networks are all upgraded the companies are trying to maintain the old sms prices without technical justification.
    - dspillett 15y ago
      I'm not disagreeing with you as such (SMS pricing is definitely OTT, especially cross-border given that the transmission between countries and providers is not limited by the 2G per-cell control channel bandwidth), but they currently have account for the fact that a chunk of their subscribers will be sending via the older (limited throughput) method rather than the newer one(s). My phone is capable of everything that is commonly "out there", but right now it is playing at being a 2G handset as the 3G signal is lousy out here.

justincormack 15y ago

Because they havent got nearly as much capacity as they sell.

michaelcampbell 15y ago
I think that's secondary to them not wanting you to do something for free that they would like to be charging you to do.

hammock 15y ago

Combination of two factors. A) the obvious one, that they are overselling their network capacity; and B) that given A, it is much better to reclaim bandwidth by fucking over the 0.1% of tetherers by discriminating against them at the margin than it is to fuck over 100% of normal users by throttling/changing pricing plans/etc. The carriers have put themselves into a corner where they have to make someone unhappy. All customers are paying the same $30/mo. Given the choice what would you rather do, make 10 of them unhappy or 1000 of them? Subscriber volume is your lifeblood, it's a numbers game.

TillE 15y ago
> they are overselling their network capacity Seriously? Two lousy gigabytes a month is "overselling"? That's, say, three hours at 200KB/s. Per month. I find that difficult to believe, except in the very most crowded areas.
- tzs 15y ago
  Oh man, imagine the consumer confusion if they tried to tier data prices by how crowded your area is. So, someone in the middle of nowhere gets cheap data, but someone in a crowded area does not. Now in addition to voice roaming, we'd have to worry about data roaming as we move around between city, suburbs, and rural areas.
  - nooneelse 15y ago
    It would be great to have the networks offer service to devices in small units of time, and have the phone decide which plan on offer to go with automatically based on the user's preferences, then we could have an efficient market for this resource. But entrenched companies seldom like playing in an well functioning market when they can be rent collectors instead.

guelo 15y ago

The real reason is that for years they have overcharged corporate customers for tethering plans and they don't want to lose that revenue. Same reason why sms is so expensive per GB, basically because they can.

dspillett 15y ago
Actually while SMS messages are overcharged for, especially messages that pass between international boundaries, on pre 3G networks they are far more of a burden on the network than you would imagine which means the networks have a vested interesting in keeps the numbers being sent down a little. See http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/10/sms_denialofser_1.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/10/sms_denialofse... for some details on a theoretical DoS attack based on this limitation. While I believe this has been addressed with newer transmission protocols like UMTS there are still a lot of phones out there using the 2G infrastructure either because the phone is old or because they are being used in an area that has no good 3G availability.
- guelo 15y ago
  Thanks for the details but I think it backs up my contention, as the networks are all upgraded the companies are trying to maintain the old sms prices without technical justification.
  - dspillett 15y ago
    I'm not disagreeing with you as such (SMS pricing is definitely OTT, especially cross-border given that the transmission between countries and providers is not limited by the 2G per-cell control channel bandwidth), but they currently have account for the fact that a chunk of their subscribers will be sending via the older (limited throughput) method rather than the newer one(s). My phone is capable of everything that is commonly "out there", but right now it is playing at being a 2G handset as the 3G signal is lousy out here.