Top 1% of Mobile Users Consume Half of World’s Bandwidth

[alent1234]

how much can you possibly download on Steam? do you download the same games over and over every night?

 

[Wyndru]

Here come the bandwidth caps.

 

[Kadarin]

The world’s congested mobile airwaves are being divided in a lopsided manner, with 1 percent of consumers generating half of all traffic. The top 10 percent of users, meanwhile, are consuming 90 percent of wireless bandwidth.[/url]

Since when is "bandwidth" a finite resource that is "consumed"?

 

[bignateyk]

This is why bandwidth needs to be charged in a linear fashion similarto electricity. No more data caps, no more outrageous overage fees. You pay a reasonable amount per MB or per GB for what you use.

 

[lord_emperor]

Carriers are getting much more agressive in monitoring/finding tethering users. ATT & Verizon have been sending out nastygrams for close to a year on phone users hijacking the hotspot function on their phones without a subscription.

What business is it of theirs what I do with my phone?

 

[bignateyk]

Since when is "bandwidth" a finite resource that is "consumed"?

Not sure if serious or just doesn't know anything about communications. :'(

 

[HumblePie]

Since when is "bandwidth" a finite resource that is "consumed"?

Read my post.

 

[Gunslinger08]

I don't use much mobile data (about 200MB/month), but I don't really try to conserve it. I have wifi at any of the places that I spend much time.

However, I do know some people who use a lot of data. Stuff like Pandora/Spotify while commuting, streaming Netflix for kids, etc. can eat up your data.

I'm fine with tiered rates (or reasonable consumption rates, not $0.20/KB) on both mobile and wired data plans. Higher bandwidth utilization does actually cost your ISP more money. Do people not remember the days of x minute/month dial up plans? I just want rates to be reasonable and actually tied to the real escalation in bandwidth prices - not that I have much faith in that happening, given the crazy precedent of text messaging plan prices.

 

[Gunslinger08]

how much can you possibly download on Steam? do you download the same games over and over every night?

Install 10-15 fairly recent games (especially Valve or indie games) and see how frequently you get updates. I think Dungeon Defenders and TF2 have updates every time I turn on my computer.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

What business is it of theirs what I do with my phone?

Well you're using THEIR network.

 

[bignateyk]

What business is it of theirs what I do with my phone?

Everything about it is their business. Bandwidth is a finite resource.

That's like saying "What business is it of the electric company if I turn on a 10GW load during peak hours?"

 

[KeithTalent]

Not surprising; It's pretty easy to use data on the new phones. Going from my old Blackberry to my new Android, it has jumped immensely, though I have yet to get anywhere close to the 6GB I'm allowed as I do a lot of my stuff on wi-fi when I'm at home.

KT

 

[Gooberlx2]

If the daughters laptop needs internet, she uses something like pdanet. If she wants to watch youtube or get on facebook, she does it on her phone,,,,.

The Arieso survey found that 64 percent of extreme users were using a laptop, a third were using a smartphone and 3 percent had an iPad.

Looks about right. Makes sense that the heaviest users are tethering or using mobile adapters. I'd bet many of them are on LTE as well. At the same time, at least in the US, don't most of the carriers charge consumers for going over their bandwidth caps? So it's not like they're not being reimbursed for the heavy use. Tmobile, and Sprint I guess, throttle the extreme users.

 

[PingSpike]

Since when is "bandwidth" a finite resource that is "consumed"?

Wireless bandwidth is actually quite finite within a single area. You can always lay more fiber but there's only so many things you can do with a piece of spectrum.

I can't blame users for wasting tons of wireless bandwidth though, even though its not really going to fly. Look at the fucking commercials the cellphone companies put out: "Buy out new data sucking smart phone and stream all your video and applications over our shitty network! Here's all this data stuff you can do! Now don't use any of it because that's actually not technically a very feasible thing for everyone to do but we're not going to come right out and say that because we still want you to pay for it!"

 

[Phoenix86]

Here come the bandwidth caps.

Which will impact far more than the 1%.

 

[Red Storm]

Yea, but I have to wonder why on the phone? I guess if you're tethering all the time I could see it, but short of that, personally the instances where I only have access to my phone and time for any of that are pretty limited. Like when I only have my phone I'm out to dinner or outside working out or in a meeting or generally occupied with 'something'. Maybe the difference is my phone is my 'last resort' and other's treat it with more preference.

Anytime I'm out and about with time to kill. I don't play games on my phone to pass time, I stream media. I take public transportation every day for work, so that right there is an hour everyday that I use to watch/listen to media. When I'm at home I have my phone hooked up to my TV.

Thanks to the advances in mobile and wireless technology, I was able to sell off my laptop and desktop (still have a desktop at work of course), as well as my home TV and internet services ($80/month thanks to Comcast not having any competition in our apartment complex). I use anywhere from 5GB-10GB a month, and it's been working great for me. It's also saved me quite a bit in monthly electric bills with all those previous devices no longer present.

 

[Kadarin]

Wireless bandwidth is actually quite finite within a single area. You can always lay more fiber but there's only so many things you can do with a piece of spectrum.

You mean that you an only transmit X amount of information at any given time over a given range of spectrum given current technology. That bandwith can be fully utilized at any given time, but not "consumed" in that it's not something that once used, it's gone forever like oil.

 

[ElFenix]

really?

I would wait to use my home wifi to download any apps, movies, music..etc,

I don't get why people would use their mobile data to download crap when they can go home and do it.

when at work my wimax connection is as fast as my dsl at home so...

 

[Red Storm]

really?

I would wait to use my home wifi to download any apps, movies, music..etc,

I don't get why people would use their mobile data to download crap when they can go home and do it.

You must not have an LTE capable phone.

 

[kyrax12]

You must not have an LTE capable phone.

Nope.. A Samsung Galaxy S2 with AT&T.

Plus, LTE locations are really in the big cities like the San Francisco and what not. When I went to the ATT store to check out the skyrocket, the rep told me LTE isn't available in my city.

 

[kyrax12]

when at work my wimax connection is as fast as my dsl at home so...

Ok well what I meant is why people would use mobile data to download stuff when they can just go to a place with wifi and do it.

Of course my post was aimed at the people who aren't on an unlimited data plan. Those peeps can do whatever the heck they want with their mobile data.

 

[Fritzo]

I'm taking your numbers at face value, so let's say your top users are transmitting 320GB/month. I don't torrent or stream intellectual property and I average about 75GB/month, but I could probably use 300+ pretty easily. Stuff like online gaming, Steam downloads, Netflix HD streams, Remote Desktop, etc. could use a whole lot of data, if I had the time. Just wait until your TV and phone become all IP based. I see a big fight coming between content providers and service providers, with the consumer probably losing.

Routers compress a lot of that data. I have 4 people in my house using XBox Live, Netflix, Amazon Video, and browsing all day, so I'm a heavy user, but I rarely go over 30GB/month.

You probably don't use as much bandwidth as you think. We have companies of 150 people that hardly use 50GB/month.

 

[sygyzy]

I simply cannot comprehend how someone uses that much bandwidth on phone. I mean, yes, you can rattle off "Stream Pandora for 10 hours a day, watch 3 Netflix movies, etc" but just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. If I wanted to watch Inception, I would watch it in my home theatre or at least on a LCD monitor. In what situation are you watching a Netflix movie a day on your phone?! Why would you want to?

 

[GoPackGo]

The real question is how much is total capacity? If max load, for example is 75 percent of capacity, whats the problem?

 

[PingSpike]

I simply cannot comprehend how someone uses that much bandwidth on phone. I mean, yes, you can rattle off "Stream Pandora for 10 hours a day, watch 3 Netflix movies, etc" but just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. If I wanted to watch Inception, I would watch it in my home theatre or at least on a LCD monitor. In what situation are you watching a Netflix movie a day on your phone?! Why would you want to?

Yeah, I don't much get the appeal of that either. Watching a video on my phone seems more like something I'd end up doing out of desperation maybe twice a year...certainly not anything I'd actively choose to do.