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Is Throttling Smartphones Pointless? Study Suggests So

32 points by pg 15y ago

revelation 15y ago
It obviously is. Just mobile companies thinking they can still gouge prices and corner people. But this time people have an comparison; they know that they can download 5GB over their home line in a matter of an hour. And that is food for thought when your provider is giving you 5GB or otherwise limited plans _for a whole month_ while marketing phones with transfer rates well above (or on par) with most home connections.
- dsr_ 15y ago
  As usual, assuming that corporations are competent but lying about their motivations is helpful. In this case, the observed effects of throttling are: - customers paying more money for overages - customers with grandfathered unlimited plans sticking around even if they might be better off elsewhere - customers reducing usage - customers paying more for higher limits - customers at the right edge of the graph looking elsewhere
ChuckMcM 15y ago
Seriously? TL;DR version the 'unlimited guys' use the same total bandwidth as the 'limited' guys. This is extreme proofiness[1]. You notice that the 'average' is much higher in unmetered plans while the median is the same? If you know your maths you will recognize that data hogs hog a lot which results in a higher average. AT&Ts throttling on the other hand keeps the 'median' about the same. The real issue for the carriers is that they have a fixed amount of bandwidth within their system which is difficult (read expensive) to increase. Network bandwidth is one of those commodities that exists all the time, whether or not it is being used. People don't predictably use the bandwidth so its hard to sell "all" of it for money. So you end up with bandwidth that is sitting there unused and losing money (it has a constant cost of ownership which is an amortization of maintenance, depreciation, and licensing fees) Their solution was to offer an 'unlimited' plan which, for an extra fee, lets folks go over the max tiered plan. This allows them to 'sell' bandwidth that might have otherwise gone unused. But if they drive the total use over their hard stop EVERYONE runs out of juice. So their 'fix' is that if you're pushing the average up they clip your usage. That keeps the median in line with their highest rate plan while allowing them to sell the excess bandwidth they have for those cases when everyone asks at once for it. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Proofiness-Youre-Fooled-Numbers-ebook/dp/B0042VJ1OE http://www.amazon.com/Proofiness-Youre-Fooled-Numbers-ebook/...
- revelation 15y ago
  This isn't about price. In a business where you can consistently sell 160 bytes of data for >10c over a span of many many years, the problem is flawed antitrust laws or enforcement and no competition.
  - forgotusername 15y ago
    You're not selling 160 bytes, you're selling >1 second of airtime in two geographical locations in licensed spectra for which licenses cost billions, with support infrastructure costing millions. See e.g. http://www.cwta.ca/CWTASite/english/pdf/Ovum_SpectrumFees.pdf http://www.cwta.ca/CWTASite/english/pdf/Ovum_SpectrumFees.pd...
    - throwaway64 15y ago
      SMS utilises control messages that get sent/recived anyways, it quite litterally cost nothing and takes zero extra resources.
      - forgotusername 15y ago
        If they were "sent/received anyways", your phone's battery would last about half an hour between charges. In reality the phone is powered off most of the time, using neither battery or network capacity. A high precision timer wakes its receiver at specific intervals to check if the network is paging. In GSM, something like the following happens: 1) User submits SMS to their mobile phone. 2) Phone starts paging on a random access channel (no synchronization, lots of phones trying to talk at the same time - limited resources for phones to transmit, and limited chance for base station to receive an intact message). Increased load on these channels require operator to have increased capacity, and thus increased spectrum, increased hardware to handle peak throughput (even if network is idle most of the time - one reason prices may not drop as the network's popularity increases) 3) Base station manages to hear an intact access request, allocates a dedicates timeslot on a control channel (a timeslice of spectrum dedicated entirely to one particular handset - the number of available slices in a given area is more likely measured in the 10s, not the 100s), uses yet more spectrum to inform phone of allocation. 4) Phone indicates desire via dedicated control channel to start SMS transaction. [half a second of allocated time on a licensed band elapses] 5) Phone transmits message. 6) Phone retransmits message due to poor network visibility. 7) Network signals SMS received, closes transaction. [resources used within network to route, store and forward message, payment made to peering network to which the target phone is connected to] 8) Remote network begins paging target handset on a camping timeslot it shares with a bunch of other phones, on frequencies covered by a second billion dollar spectrum license. 9) Remote phone wakes up, begins placing load on random access channel. [lots of retries and corrupting of other users' random access requests later] 10) Remote network allocates control timeslot, and begins attempting to inform target phone of its allocation. [another few second of allocated spectrum go here]
pixelcort 15y ago
The last part about purpose-based pricing is what really scares me.
- AlexandrB 15y ago
  This is already being used in some places: http://www.movistar.co/Personas/Internet_Movil/Planes/Paquetes_de_internet/ http://www.movistar.co/Personas/Internet_Movil/Planes/Paquet...

32 points by pg 15y ago

It obviously is. Just mobile companies thinking they can still gouge prices and corner people. But this time people have an comparison; they know that they can download 5GB over their home line in a matter of an hour. And that is food for thought when your provider is giving you 5GB or otherwise limited plans _for a whole month_ while marketing phones with transfer rates well above (or on par) with most home connections.

dsr_ 15y ago
As usual, assuming that corporations are competent but lying about their motivations is helpful. In this case, the observed effects of throttling are: - customers paying more money for overages - customers with grandfathered unlimited plans sticking around even if they might be better off elsewhere - customers reducing usage - customers paying more for higher limits - customers at the right edge of the graph looking elsewhere

ChuckMcM 15y ago

Seriously? TL;DR version the 'unlimited guys' use the same total bandwidth as the 'limited' guys. This is extreme proofiness[1]. You notice that the 'average' is much higher in unmetered plans while the median is the same? If you know your maths you will recognize that data hogs hog a lot which results in a higher average. AT&Ts throttling on the other hand keeps the 'median' about the same. The real issue for the carriers is that they have a fixed amount of bandwidth within their system which is difficult (read expensive) to increase. Network bandwidth is one of those commodities that exists all the time, whether or not it is being used. People don't predictably use the bandwidth so its hard to sell "all" of it for money. So you end up with bandwidth that is sitting there unused and losing money (it has a constant cost of ownership which is an amortization of maintenance, depreciation, and licensing fees) Their solution was to offer an 'unlimited' plan which, for an extra fee, lets folks go over the max tiered plan. This allows them to 'sell' bandwidth that might have otherwise gone unused. But if they drive the total use over their hard stop EVERYONE runs out of juice. So their 'fix' is that if you're pushing the average up they clip your usage. That keeps the median in line with their highest rate plan while allowing them to sell the excess bandwidth they have for those cases when everyone asks at once for it. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Proofiness-Youre-Fooled-Numbers-ebook/dp/B0042VJ1OE http://www.amazon.com/Proofiness-Youre-Fooled-Numbers-ebook/...

revelation 15y ago
This isn't about price. In a business where you can consistently sell 160 bytes of data for >10c over a span of many many years, the problem is flawed antitrust laws or enforcement and no competition.
- forgotusername 15y ago
  You're not selling 160 bytes, you're selling >1 second of airtime in two geographical locations in licensed spectra for which licenses cost billions, with support infrastructure costing millions. See e.g. http://www.cwta.ca/CWTASite/english/pdf/Ovum_SpectrumFees.pdf http://www.cwta.ca/CWTASite/english/pdf/Ovum_SpectrumFees.pd...
  - throwaway64 15y ago
    SMS utilises control messages that get sent/recived anyways, it quite litterally cost nothing and takes zero extra resources.
    - forgotusername 15y ago
      If they were "sent/received anyways", your phone's battery would last about half an hour between charges. In reality the phone is powered off most of the time, using neither battery or network capacity. A high precision timer wakes its receiver at specific intervals to check if the network is paging. In GSM, something like the following happens: 1) User submits SMS to their mobile phone. 2) Phone starts paging on a random access channel (no synchronization, lots of phones trying to talk at the same time - limited resources for phones to transmit, and limited chance for base station to receive an intact message). Increased load on these channels require operator to have increased capacity, and thus increased spectrum, increased hardware to handle peak throughput (even if network is idle most of the time - one reason prices may not drop as the network's popularity increases) 3) Base station manages to hear an intact access request, allocates a dedicates timeslot on a control channel (a timeslice of spectrum dedicated entirely to one particular handset - the number of available slices in a given area is more likely measured in the 10s, not the 100s), uses yet more spectrum to inform phone of allocation. 4) Phone indicates desire via dedicated control channel to start SMS transaction. [half a second of allocated time on a licensed band elapses] 5) Phone transmits message. 6) Phone retransmits message due to poor network visibility. 7) Network signals SMS received, closes transaction. [resources used within network to route, store and forward message, payment made to peering network to which the target phone is connected to] 8) Remote network begins paging target handset on a camping timeslot it shares with a bunch of other phones, on frequencies covered by a second billion dollar spectrum license. 9) Remote phone wakes up, begins placing load on random access channel. [lots of retries and corrupting of other users' random access requests later] 10) Remote network allocates control timeslot, and begins attempting to inform target phone of its allocation. [another few second of allocated spectrum go here]

pixelcort 15y ago

The last part about purpose-based pricing is what really scares me.

AlexandrB 15y ago
This is already being used in some places: http://www.movistar.co/Personas/Internet_Movil/Planes/Paquetes_de_internet/ http://www.movistar.co/Personas/Internet_Movil/Planes/Paquet...