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

[sygyzy]

Totally. For example, tomorrow I am going to sit in the airport for maybe 45 minutes to wait for a flight. If I get really bored after reading some of my RSS feed, I can see myself streaming Spotify for that time. But oh wait, I just downloaded a bunch of playlists (over wifi), and enabled them for offline access. Yeah, that's what smart people do. Now I won't be using any data at all when I am listening to these songs. Just an example of how it's possible to not consume ridiculous amounts of data.

 

[KeithTalent]

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.

Internet radio is great on the phone. I've been using TuneIn Radio for a bit now and uses a good chunk of data, but it's great for listening to things from all over.

I'm not much for watching video on my phone, but I do watch some here and there and I've been using the free trial of NBA.TV to stream some games while out and about.

KT

 

[kyrax12]

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?

I am more curious if people bring their battery charger with them when they leave home for a couple of hours.

 

[Fritzo]

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.

Actually, Netflix and Google Video on my Galaxy Nexus with 4G is full of win. I watched two movies during a trip to Chicago on it with headphones and really enjoyed it.

 

[kyrax12]

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?"

Except there are Unlimited data plans and no unlimited electricity plan..

 

[sygyzy]

Full of win? What the heck are you talking about? I have the same phone/service as you do and would never watch two movies on a plane. Just the thought of holding it (do you have some special stand?) for four hours is enough to turn me off.

 

[Fritzo]

Full of win? What the heck are you talking about? I have the same phone/service as you do and would never watch two movies on a plane. Just the thought of holding it (do you have some special stand?) for four hours is enough to turn me off.

I have a silicone cover for it, so it rested nicely on my lap. Yeah, it would be too slippery without the case though.

 

[Golgatha]

My take on this situation is if the top 1% of customers are costing you more money than you're making. Drop them because you can't provide a service without making a profit. If not, then STFU! God forbid customers use the bandwidth they've paid good money for.

 

[Red Storm]

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.

On AT&T yes, but Verizon's LTE covers ~200 million Americans. I am always under LTE service and I commute between 3 areas (Maryland, Virginia, and DC) during a typical week.

I'm not much for watching video on my phone, but I do watch some here and there and I've been using the free trial of NBA.TV to stream some games while out and about.

It works for you?! League pass won't work for me at all (Galaxy Nexus). I get audio but no video. I would love to pay for it, but since the NBA doesn't seem to care I have to resort to streaming them on flash sites.

 

[jlee]

I have no idea what someone does with their phone that much.

I'm still 22 days away from my next billing cycle and I'm at 1037Mb. I used 3Gb last month. Mostly Pandora/Slacker, with occasional (rare) Netflix usage and Amazon MP3 download.

 

[lord_emperor]

Well you're using THEIR network.

So my phone is using their network to pass data, pretty sure I've paid them for that service.

It's my business if I want to connect my laptop, or my 10 friends' laptops to my phone. Especially when enabling that feature is nothing but a menu setting on the phone which they think they should have control over somehow.

It's like Ford dictating that I have to pay for more than one passenger when there are clearly three unoccupied seats in the back.

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?"

Bandwidth is not finite in the same way as electricity.

To generate electricity you need to burn more coal, react more uranium or dam more rivers. We can eventually run out of coal, uranium and rivers.

To open more bandwidth, the carrier has to upgrade their network or stop massively overselling and committing to unrealistic speeds. The only restriction on bandwidth is how many billions of dollars profit the carrier wants this quarter.

 

[HybridSquirrel]

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.

isn't there a way around that now?