12 ms·

Something I've noticed is that a phone is actually usable at a stadium or concert when 3g or 4g felt essentially useless at that density.

by jayd16 14d ago

LeoPanthera 14d ago
AT&T has figured out a way to monetize that. If you have a "Turbo" plan or add-on, your phone will work in crowded cells. If you don't, good luck with that.
- Atotalnoob 14d ago
  Net neutrality would have prevented this kind of pay to win
  - cortesoft 14d ago
    How would it have helped? Net neutrality doesn’t mean you can’t sell your customers different bandwidth guarantees. Net neutrality is only about the connections between a provider and external networks, not about how a company handles bandwidth contention amongst its customers. Net neutrality would fix a problem like “only Facebook is accessible inside crowded stadiums” not “AT&T customers who pay more get better connections in crowded stadiums”
    - deleted 13d ago
      [deleted]
  - MisterMunchkin 14d ago
    [flagged]
    - chowells 14d ago
      People still believe this? Google pays their ISP. I pay my ISP. Google does not pay my ISP. Why is my ISP's response to the amount of traffic I use demanding to bill someone other than me? To be clear, Google was doing this out of self-interest. Paying user ISPs for access to those users is not a cost they want to pay. But it's the same as any other protection racket. A local shopkeeper has personal reasons to not want to pay off the mob, but that doesn't mean their position is wrong.
    - majormajor 14d ago
      ISP's spent $$$$$ against net-neutrality cause they wanted to get paid twice (Google already was paying for their side of the bandwidth as the source). When you add the second line---pretending that that nobody funding all the anti-net-neutrality let-big-ISPs-do-what-they-want stories that pro-legacy-company Republicans ate up---it makes me think this is some astroturfing, since it goes from "maybe this person fell for the ISP claims" to straight-up dishonest intentionally-misleading-fallacy. Google was obviously on the side of "don't get charged twice" but ultimately net-neutrality was a tech enthusiast consumer position that came out of a desire to avoid getting charged more on the basis of what sites you did or didn't want to watch, and ISP's trying to influence where you visited by cutting deals to get paid to prioritize A vs B. (Hell, ISPs were already getting paid "twice" for the bandwidth in some ways, e.g. when your "100Mb" plan only works at that speeds if your neighbors aren't using it much. That's a different sort of incomplete-advertising trickery that helped create the whole "too many people using Youtube are saturating the network!" "problem" in the first place.) (And high-bandwidth publishers already were making private peering/colo-of-servers deals with ISPs and CDNs that I don't believe would've been prohibited by net neutrality, so the 'protection racket' aspect of the ISP's game was maybe more arguably wanting to be paid thrice? Or wanting to be paid without providing that colo service?)
  - majormajor 14d ago
    Net neutrality as generally understood says nothing about being able to pay more for a higher service tier from your ISP. It's entirely on the publisher side: net neutrality was an attempt to avoid ISPs getting paid extra---costs that would be passed onto you---in exchange for making your experience on site A be better than your experience with site B (or service, vs site). Think: "Oh, yeah, Netflix 4k works great on your new Comcast plan! But if you want Hulu 4k, you're gonna need to pay us more, because Netflix pays us to make their shit work better than Hulu's if you don't!"
  - GuB-42 13d ago
    Net neutrality means that providers don't discriminate based on the kind of traffic, that you get internet access, not just access to particular services. They can absolutely meter and limit your connection as long as one byte is one byte, no matter its origin. They can also discriminate based on the technology they provide (4G, 5G, fiber...). Net neutrality is not about preventing "pay to win", obviously, you can get a better connection if you pay more. It is about fair competition between online services.
- Founderarcstone 13d ago
  you know AT&T will be there first in line with a plan.
seb1204 14d ago
I thought that's why many large venues offer free WiFi.
- ricardobeat 14d ago
  5G outperforms wifi in crowded situations. With wifi you get increasing collisions and backoff intervals until everything stalls; with 5G you just get less bandwidth (time sliced) but no collisions, and its frequency spectrum is free of interference.
deleted 14d ago
[deleted]
devilbunny 14d ago
I've seen an interesting corollary: 4G on an airplane at the gate is much faster than the 5G microcells inside the terminal. If I'm downloading podcasts for a flight, I do it on WiFi beforehand or on 4G on the plane. 5G in the terminal is really useful at getting you some service, but it's slow. Probably a side effect of not enough backhaul speed.
- Grombobulous 13d ago
  That has not been my experience at all although that’s just another anecdote.
  - devilbunny 13d ago
    Seen it at several, though DFW has been the worst. DFW is generally a terribly-run airport, though.
- deleted 13d ago
  [deleted]
carlob 13d ago
and that has definitely improved everybody's experience at concerts /s
sandworm101 13d ago
That is a very effective use case, but until we live in hive cities, stadium-level device densities are an edge case. Developing a new generation to service the 0.01% of time phones spend inside stadiums seems inefficient.
- tim333 13d ago
  They struggle a bit on Oxford Street which as stadium like densities much of the time. I changed networks to O2 as Three became pretty much unusable in that area. Three sell a lot of unlimited data packages which their hardware seems inadequate to serve.
- magarnicle 12d ago
  If you have a season ticket to a Premier League team you're going to be in that density once a week or once a fortnight. Whatever the percentage of time that might be, that seems frequent enough to not be an edge case.
  - sandworm101 12d ago
    Lol. Season ticket holders are maybe 0.001% of phone users. Even if they are all whales, it isn't a sufficient market.
    - magarnicle 12d ago
      How much do you think they cost?

Something I've noticed is that a phone is actually usable at a stadium or concert when 3g or 4g felt essentially useless at that density.

by jayd16 14d ago

Something I've noticed is that a phone is actually usable at a stadium or concert when 3g or 4g felt essentially useless at that density.

LeoPanthera 14d ago

AT&T has figured out a way to monetize that. If you have a "Turbo" plan or add-on, your phone will work in crowded cells. If you don't, good luck with that.

Atotalnoob 14d ago
Net neutrality would have prevented this kind of pay to win
- cortesoft 14d ago
  How would it have helped? Net neutrality doesn’t mean you can’t sell your customers different bandwidth guarantees. Net neutrality is only about the connections between a provider and external networks, not about how a company handles bandwidth contention amongst its customers. Net neutrality would fix a problem like “only Facebook is accessible inside crowded stadiums” not “AT&T customers who pay more get better connections in crowded stadiums”
  - deleted 13d ago
    [deleted]
- MisterMunchkin 14d ago
  [flagged]
  - chowells 14d ago
    People still believe this? Google pays their ISP. I pay my ISP. Google does not pay my ISP. Why is my ISP's response to the amount of traffic I use demanding to bill someone other than me? To be clear, Google was doing this out of self-interest. Paying user ISPs for access to those users is not a cost they want to pay. But it's the same as any other protection racket. A local shopkeeper has personal reasons to not want to pay off the mob, but that doesn't mean their position is wrong.
  - majormajor 14d ago
    ISP's spent $$$$$ against net-neutrality cause they wanted to get paid twice (Google already was paying for their side of the bandwidth as the source). When you add the second line---pretending that that nobody funding all the anti-net-neutrality let-big-ISPs-do-what-they-want stories that pro-legacy-company Republicans ate up---it makes me think this is some astroturfing, since it goes from "maybe this person fell for the ISP claims" to straight-up dishonest intentionally-misleading-fallacy. Google was obviously on the side of "don't get charged twice" but ultimately net-neutrality was a tech enthusiast consumer position that came out of a desire to avoid getting charged more on the basis of what sites you did or didn't want to watch, and ISP's trying to influence where you visited by cutting deals to get paid to prioritize A vs B. (Hell, ISPs were already getting paid "twice" for the bandwidth in some ways, e.g. when your "100Mb" plan only works at that speeds if your neighbors aren't using it much. That's a different sort of incomplete-advertising trickery that helped create the whole "too many people using Youtube are saturating the network!" "problem" in the first place.) (And high-bandwidth publishers already were making private peering/colo-of-servers deals with ISPs and CDNs that I don't believe would've been prohibited by net neutrality, so the 'protection racket' aspect of the ISP's game was maybe more arguably wanting to be paid thrice? Or wanting to be paid without providing that colo service?)
- majormajor 14d ago
  Net neutrality as generally understood says nothing about being able to pay more for a higher service tier from your ISP. It's entirely on the publisher side: net neutrality was an attempt to avoid ISPs getting paid extra---costs that would be passed onto you---in exchange for making your experience on site A be better than your experience with site B (or service, vs site). Think: "Oh, yeah, Netflix 4k works great on your new Comcast plan! But if you want Hulu 4k, you're gonna need to pay us more, because Netflix pays us to make their shit work better than Hulu's if you don't!"
- GuB-42 13d ago
  Net neutrality means that providers don't discriminate based on the kind of traffic, that you get internet access, not just access to particular services. They can absolutely meter and limit your connection as long as one byte is one byte, no matter its origin. They can also discriminate based on the technology they provide (4G, 5G, fiber...). Net neutrality is not about preventing "pay to win", obviously, you can get a better connection if you pay more. It is about fair competition between online services.
Founderarcstone 13d ago
you know AT&T will be there first in line with a plan.

seb1204 14d ago

I thought that's why many large venues offer free WiFi.

ricardobeat 14d ago
5G outperforms wifi in crowded situations. With wifi you get increasing collisions and backoff intervals until everything stalls; with 5G you just get less bandwidth (time sliced) but no collisions, and its frequency spectrum is free of interference.

deleted 14d ago

[deleted]

devilbunny 14d ago

I've seen an interesting corollary: 4G on an airplane at the gate is much faster than the 5G microcells inside the terminal. If I'm downloading podcasts for a flight, I do it on WiFi beforehand or on 4G on the plane. 5G in the terminal is really useful at getting you some service, but it's slow. Probably a side effect of not enough backhaul speed.

Grombobulous 13d ago
That has not been my experience at all although that’s just another anecdote.
- devilbunny 13d ago
  Seen it at several, though DFW has been the worst. DFW is generally a terribly-run airport, though.
deleted 13d ago
[deleted]

carlob 13d ago

and that has definitely improved everybody's experience at concerts /s

sandworm101 13d ago

That is a very effective use case, but until we live in hive cities, stadium-level device densities are an edge case. Developing a new generation to service the 0.01% of time phones spend inside stadiums seems inefficient.

tim333 13d ago
They struggle a bit on Oxford Street which as stadium like densities much of the time. I changed networks to O2 as Three became pretty much unusable in that area. Three sell a lot of unlimited data packages which their hardware seems inadequate to serve.
magarnicle 12d ago
If you have a season ticket to a Premier League team you're going to be in that density once a week or once a fortnight. Whatever the percentage of time that might be, that seems frequent enough to not be an edge case.
- sandworm101 12d ago
  Lol. Season ticket holders are maybe 0.001% of phone users. Even if they are all whales, it isn't a sufficient market.
  - magarnicle 12d ago
    How much do you think they cost?