3 ms·
Not really; data passing from the general internet onto the carrier's network (or any wired network) is much much cheaper than that data passing over the limite
by ploxiln 12y ago
Not really; data passing from the general internet onto the carrier's network (or any wired network) is much much cheaper than that data passing over the limited and contested cellular airwaves. Even if t-mobile has their own cdn servers for the streaming services, the data still has to make the much more expensive hop.
It's really just a marketing technique. Even though music streaming can use a significant amount of data, it's at a safely capped rate. It's probably a lot more effective to market "unlimited music streaming" to the general populace than "500mb more data".
- rayiner 12y agoMobile links are in fact quite often backhaul limited. Especially as you make cell sectors smaller (and in particular with T-Mo, which uses higher frequencies and needs to deploy smaller cells), getting data off the cell sites can become a significant bottleneck: http://www.pcworld.com/article/251838/analyst_mobile_networks_will_need_10x_fatter_backhaul_pipes_by_2016.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/251838/analyst_mobile_network...
- ploxiln 12y agoyeah, but do you think T-Mobile puts CDN servers that have most of the popular content of all the supported streaming services at each cell site?
- toomuchtodo 12y agoNot yet, but with SD cards now at 512GB capacity, its not out of the realm of possibility to do caching of popular content at-scale across your tower infrastructure.
- rayiner 12y agoI don't know if T-Mobile does it, but it's certainly the way forward: http://www.saguna.net/news-events/press-releases/saguna-and-akamai-showcase-the-world-s-first-content-delivery-network-operating-from-the-mobile-base-station; http://www.saguna.net/news-events/press-releases/saguna-and-... http://blog.advaoptical.com/is-cache-king-in-mobile-networks http://blog.advaoptical.com/is-cache-king-in-mobile-networks.