Are we ever going to get a substantial raise in data cap?

[mikegg]

Remember email providers pre-Gmail? 25MB was what you got. Then Gmail came along and knocked the industry on its head with a 1GB offering. People were going crazy for Gmail accounts.

Soon after, everyone else started offering 1GB accounts, 2GB, and some even 1TB accounts.

After Gmail, we knew email providers were just holding back on us and they could have provided so much more storage if they wanted to.

Will one of the existing carriers say "f it, I'm going to raise the cap to 200GB" and be the Google of carriers?

Or will we actually have to wait for... Google itself to bring competition?

 

[BrightCandle]

Google wanted access to the contents of your emails so it could read them all and use it to market to you. Giving more space that almost nobody needed and a modern Javascript based interface was all it took for most people to hand over the access to their modern day letterbox.

A company that can work out how to exploit all your mobile traffic legally and to its own profit would absolutely be willing to offer a higher data cap to entice customers to give them that access, but right now I don't know of a business model that makes that viable. Do you? So far they make money on markup on the bytes and as a pipe provider with value add services.

 

[Brian Stirling]

The problem is the carriers are bandwidth constrained so even if they want to offer a lot more data for data mining purposes they don't have a big enough pipe to do so. Over time there are things they may be able to do to increase bandwidth by a good bit but going forward you're probably looking at a micro-cellular system not all that different than wifi.

So, they might wish to offer more data but in many/most places the network is already bogged down to an uncomfortable degree so upping your data cap ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

Overtime there will be fewer and fewer people with grandfathered unlimited plans and we're probably looking at a system where you pay for the data you use much as you pay for the electricity you use. That is, you pay a bunch of fees and such just to get and stay connected then you pay so much per GB -- that's the future...


Brian

 

[s44]

LTE and LTE-A are massively increasing over-the-air bandwidth capabilities, but the carriers are still restricted by backhaul.

 

[paperwastage]

LTE and LTE-A are massively increasing over-the-air bandwidth capabilities, but the carriers are still restricted by backhaul.

i understand that LTE-A has max theoretical bandwidth of 300mbps with 20 mhz band and 4x4 antenna

http://lteuniversity.com/get_traine...8/how-to-calculate-peak-data-rate-in-lte.aspx

what is the theoretical max physical data that we can transfer with a 20mhz band? is LTE-A just giving us more throughput because it can connect to more instances with a 4x4 antenna?

 

[Brian Stirling]

LTE and LTE-A are massively increasing over-the-air bandwidth capabilities, but the carriers are still restricted by backhaul.

Backhaul is relatively easily fixed but over-the-air bandwidth is not. LTE is much better than 3G system but the data usage of the average customer is also increasing as is the number of people with smartphones and high data appliances.

There are many places I go where even my LTE connection is pathetic because I'm not the only one eating bandwidth. Try doing anything data intensive just after you land in an airplane when many others are connecting back after the flight and eating bandwidth -- not fun, even with LTE. And in many urban areas there are so many users that LTE feels slower than dialup if you can get any data at all.


Brian

 

[bearxor]

Unlimited data will be back. The carriers will just have to free up frequency to use with LTE. Once VoLTE starts moving nationwide, the strain on frequency should greatly ease up.

 

[mikegg]

Google wanted access to the contents of your emails so it could read them all and use it to market to you. Giving more space that almost nobody needed and a modern Javascript based interface was all it took for most people to hand over the access to their modern day letterbox.

A company that can work out how to exploit all your mobile traffic legally and to its own profit would absolutely be willing to offer a higher data cap to entice customers to give them that access, but right now I don't know of a business model that makes that viable. Do you? So far they make money on markup on the bytes and as a pipe provider with value add services.

Yea but everyone else followed shortly. Even providers with no email reading capabilities gave 1Gb+ in storage.

 

[openwheel]

only if consumers are smart enough to switch carriers and stop blindly "upgrading" their phones with 2 years contract and miserable data caps. FCC and cell carriers will react to supply and demand to free up spectrum. I rather my money spent on infrastracture than those dbags working at Verizon stores. Carriers make way too much money to be moaning and B3%$ing.

2 gigs of data per month? That's just pathetic.

 

[s44]

There are many places I go where even my LTE connection is pathetic because I'm not the only one eating bandwidth. Try doing anything data intensive just after you land in an airplane when many others are connecting back after the flight and eating bandwidth -- not fun, even with LTE. And in many urban areas there are so many users that LTE feels slower than dialup if you can get any data at all.

What device do you have? I felt like this until I got on Verizon AWS with my S4.

Yeah, you have to stay on the cutting edge of frequency deployment before everyone else gets there.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Shrug. Verizon is terrible in a lot of places now. Their LTE is just overloaded, and their 3G is unusable. TBH I find AT&T to be quite usable as long as they've upgraded their 3G. I've never had LTE congestion yet, and even if LTE is not available, 3G is plenty fast.

I say this as someone who carries both a Verizon and AT&T phone.

 

[Brian Stirling]

What device do you have? I felt like this until I got on Verizon AWS with my S4.

Yeah, you have to stay on the cutting edge of frequency deployment before everyone else gets there.

I have an ATT HTC One on LTE and an iP5S also on ATT LTE. I've had Verizon LTE and Sprint's 4G network which I forget what it was called.

Data usage and the degree to which a given network in a given area is bogged down is really time and place dependant. There are times that data rates are actually pretty good in areas where it's often pretty bad it really depends on how many people are hammering the towers at any given moment. And, the more people that have unlimited plans and eat more data the more likely the network will be bogged down.

The bottom line is that there's only so much the carriers can do to provide additional bandwidth in heavily congested areas like major cities until they have micro cellular and deploying that will take a lot of time and money.

Openwheels fantasy of a return to unlimited is just that -- a fantasy. With each passing day the number of people grandfathered into unlimited plans decreases and the carriers have ZERO incentive to bring it back. The networks that offered unlimited longer than others were terrible -- who would want to rely on a network that's so heavily over-subscribed...

But, even if unlimited plans did make a comeback, and they won't, the technical limits make that an undesirable thing if you actually want to have a usable connection.


Brian

 

[openwheel]

What device do you have? I felt like this until I got on Verizon AWS with my S4.

Yeah, you have to stay on the cutting edge of frequency deployment before everyone else gets there.

True. Any Verizon phone with AWS band 4 LTE gets unbelievable speed without congestion (at least for now). It is a big part of why I am carrying a Note 3. No problem from DC, O'Hare, Houston, La La Land and anywhere in between.

 

[mikegg]

I have an ATT HTC One on LTE and an iP5S also on ATT LTE. I've had Verizon LTE and Sprint's 4G network which I forget what it was called.

Data usage and the degree to which a given network in a given area is bogged down is really time and place dependant. There are times that data rates are actually pretty good in areas where it's often pretty bad it really depends on how many people are hammering the towers at any given moment. And, the more people that have unlimited plans and eat more data the more likely the network will be bogged down.

The bottom line is that there's only so much the carriers can do to provide additional bandwidth in heavily congested areas like major cities until they have micro cellular and deploying that will take a lot of time and money.

Openwheels fantasy of a return to unlimited is just that -- a fantasy. With each passing day the number of people grandfathered into unlimited plans decreases and the carriers have ZERO incentive to bring it back. The networks that offered unlimited longer than others were terrible -- who would want to rely on a network that's so heavily over-subscribed...

But, even if unlimited plans did make a comeback, and they won't, the technical limits make that an undesirable thing if you actually want to have a usable connection.


Brian

Not impossible - just a different corporate mindset. Amazon could be making a butt load of money right now but it chooses to spend every dime that it makes to build out even better infrastructure. Amazon doesn't care what shareholders think.

AT&T and Verizon are all about profits and slowly build out the backend. If they actually pulled an Amazon and reinvested their profits into their network, we might have had 100mbps unlimited by now.

I also think that "more coverage and faster speeds" sells more as an advertisement message so that's what AT&T and Verizon are gunning for.

 

[openwheel]

I have an ATT HTC One on LTE and an iP5S also on ATT LTE. I've had Verizon LTE and Sprint's 4G network which I forget what it was called.

Data usage and the degree to which a given network in a given area is bogged down is really time and place dependant. There are times that data rates are actually pretty good in areas where it's often pretty bad it really depends on how many people are hammering the towers at any given moment. And, the more people that have unlimited plans and eat more data the more likely the network will be bogged down.

The bottom line is that there's only so much the carriers can do to provide additional bandwidth in heavily congested areas like major cities until they have micro cellular and deploying that will take a lot of time and money.

Openwheels fantasy of a return to unlimited is just that -- a fantasy. With each passing day the number of people grandfathered into unlimited plans decreases and the carriers have ZERO incentive to bring it back. The networks that offered unlimited longer than others were terrible -- who would want to rely on a network that's so heavily over-subscribed...

But, even if unlimited plans did make a comeback, and they won't, the technical limits make that an undesirable thing if you actually want to have a usable connection.


Brian

I think at least two of the 4 big carriers still offer unlimited data (Sprint and TMo). I use 120gb a month on Verizon. I don't think unlimited data is going anywhere. I see everyone cutting price on tier data plans, so as long as people are willing to pay premium for unlimited, the supply will be there. Of course there is incentive to bring it back, the incentive is good ol' $$$.

 

[openwheel]

Not impossible - just a different corporate mindset. Amazon could be making a butt load of money right now but it chooses to spend every dime that it makes to build out even better infrastructure. Amazon doesn't care what shareholders think.

AT&T and Verizon are all about profits and slowly build out the backend. If they actually pulled an Amazon and reinvested their profits into their network, we might have had 100mbps unlimited by now.

Words of wisdom.

 

[Brian Stirling]

I think at least two of the 4 big carriers still offer unlimited data (Sprint and TMo). I use 120gb a month on Verizon. I don't think unlimited data is going anywhere. I see everyone cutting price on tier data plans, so as long as people are willing to pay premium for unlimited, the supply will be there. Of course there is incentive to bring it back, the incentive is good ol' $$$.

Yes, and Sprint sucks big time -- I know because I used to be with them.

I'd guess that the average smartphone user eats about 500MB/month and definitely less than 1GB/month so with unlimited users like you eating 120GB/month you're consuming data at a rate at least 100X times what others do -- it wouldn't take many folks like you to kill a network. Seriously, if even a small percentage of a carriers customers ate data like you the network will implode and be unusable...

The idea that the carriers could solve bandwidth problems by spending more money to build more towers is ... naive! Freeing up additional spectrum will help a bit but the growth in data demand is faster than the growth in bandwidth.

And, with many users in plans with 2GB/month allotments, if they'd used as much data per month as you claim then they'd be paying about $1770/month in addition to the basic plan costs. I have a 5GB plan and have only once gone over 3GB even with tethering though I am careful ... if I tethered everyday I could easily hit 20GB/month but that would cost me another $225/month.

The only way short of some as yet unheard of new wireless technology for data capacity per customer to increase substantially is the use of micro cellular system that put small, wifi router like system, within busy buildings so as to offload bandwidth from the basic cellular network. Imagine large office building in NYC for example with such micro setups on every other floor to satisfy that floor and perhaps the one above and below.


Brian

 

[QueBert]

At least in my city, T-Mobile's "unlimited data" is a damn scam. It takes about 45 seconds for my phone to open ESPN after I press the load button on Chrome. Safe to say I don't think I could use more than 400 megs a month if I tried my absolute hardest.

 

[IeraseU]

The average user consumes less than 1gb a month, but there are also a small percentage of people using programs to (unofficially) tether and run their entire home network off their smartphone data plan.

In answer to the OP's question, yes I think data allotment will go up in time, but I don't expect it to happen overnight.

 

[Dulanic]

At least in my city, T-Mobile's "unlimited data" is a damn scam. It takes about 45 seconds for my phone to open ESPN after I press the load button on Chrome. Safe to say I don't think I could use more than 400 megs a month if I tried my absolute hardest.

No LTE?

 

[QueBert]

No LTE?

My phone says 4G right now, but these aren't even 4g speeds. Sometimes simply opening Google.com takes 15 seconds. I probably am remembering incorrectly, but I remember Verizon 3G being a bit faster when they introduced it in my area 14 years ago.

 

[mikegg]

My phone says 4G right now, but these aren't even 4g speeds. Sometimes simply opening Google.com takes 15 seconds. I probably am remembering incorrectly, but I remember Verizon 3G being a bit faster when they introduced it in my area 14 years ago.

T-Mobile 4G isn't the same as T-Mobile 4G LTE. T-Mobile's 4G is actually HSPA+ which is actually still very fast in my city.

 

[Dulanic]

My phone says 4G right now, but these aren't even 4g speeds. Sometimes simply opening Google.com takes 15 seconds. I probably am remembering incorrectly, but I remember Verizon 3G being a bit faster when they introduced it in my area 14 years ago.

Sucks. Must be your area. Even with LTE off I get great speeds. Most people I've seen, see good speeds with tmobile.

While their coverage can be lacking, when in their network I've always seem good speeds.

 

[gmaster456]

It will still be a few more years before we see a raise in Data allowances. Most average users I know personally are lucky to touch 1gb a month. Sure there's those that go out of there way to use as much data as they can but they are the minority and it wouldn't take many users like that to cripple a network.

 

[Brian Stirling]

It will still be a few more years before we see a raise in Data allowances. Most average users I know personally are lucky to touch 1gb a month. Sure there's those that go out of there way to use as much data as they can but they are the minority and it wouldn't take many users like that to cripple a network.

Exactly!


Brian