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

[TakeNoPrisoners]

that doesn't surprise me. i see people in the mobile forums here bitching that 2gb isn't enough for them to use in a month, when most people i know who are 'everyday regular users' hardly use 300mb a month.

i would think the same (or close to it) goes for home internet as well.

It really isn't enough when you have LTE or ATT's amazing 3G network.

In a week I ate through 1.2GB of data.

For the rest of the month I'm stuck with wi-fi.

Those "everyday regular users" must not stream video, browse the web or download any apps.

 

[Texashiker]

3g bandwidth was always sold per device and to be used by that device only

You dont think wired ISPs can change their terms of service?

What I see happening, wireless service will be going through some growing pains over the next decade or so.

Smart phones and tablets are advancing faster then the wireless backbone can keep up. This is going to be especially difficult in rural areas where service is already hit and miss.

Its a lot easier for a tablet manufacturer to increase the devices bandwidth, then the provider to upgrade their service.

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

Nigerians stealing free Internet makes up for 0.9 percent of that total

 

[Gunbuster]

Why dont they all do like T-mobile and just reduce your speed once you hit the monthly cap you paid for? I think T-mo could bump up the speed they cut you down to but I have no issue with that setup otherwise.

 

[darkewaffle]

Stream sports games? Youtube? Netflix? Hulu? Dropbox? There's plenty of reasons why someone would use up a lot of data.

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.

 

[Texashiker]

Yea, but I have to wonder why on the phone?

You do not have a teenage daughter, do you?

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

In Africa there isnt much of hardlines. Fastest about 4Mbit and is more expensive than Albert Einsteins sperm. So thats your way to get onto the internet. From surfing to spamming half the worlds mailboxes full.

But mobile broadband is fake internet anyway. Emulate some of the protocols, use arp proxies and the ISPs sent ack even before a connection is establish. They compress contents as well. Then theres the online gaming. Online gaming with a HSPA or "4G" I say "4G' because under 20 to 30Mbit is still not 4G. You wait ages on to get a spot when you get it the fucking thing goes to a different 3G HUSPA or HSPA. Connection breaks.
After that you start googling how to blow up a cell transmitter station

 

[alent1234]

You dont think wired ISPs can change their terms of service?

What I see happening, wireless service will be going through some growing pains over the next decade or so.

Smart phones and tablets are advancing faster then the wireless backbone can keep up. This is going to be especially difficult in rural areas where service is already hit and miss.

Its a lot easier for a tablet manufacturer to increase the devices bandwidth, then the provider to upgrade their service.

it's not really the backbone since almost everyone will have direct circuits to google and netflix is CDN based where the data is inside the ISP network. cell sites can support limited numbers of concurrent users.

 

[Texashiker]

it's not really the backbone since almost everyone will have direct circuits to google and netflix is CDN based where the data is inside the ISP network. cell sites can support limited numbers of concurrent users.

Once the wireless traffic hits the tower, where does it go from there?

Is it transmitted via wireless to another tower, converted to something like a T1, or converted to light and sent over fiber?

From where I live to the next routing hub is almost 100 miles. SBC has done a terrible job of keeping the lines upgraded for DSL and T1. I can not even get DSL where I live. If companies like DSL do not want to upgrade the backbone, how are wireless providers supposed to upgrade their connection to the net?

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

it's not really the backbone since almost everyone will have direct circuits to google and netflix is CDN based where the data is inside the ISP network. cell sites can support limited numbers of concurrent users.

its still fake internet

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

Once the wireless traffic hits the tower, where does it go from there?

Is it transmitted via wireless to another tower, converted to something like a T1, or converted to light and sent over fiber?

Wireless router then down the hard lines

 

[MotF Bane]

#OccupyMobile

 

[alent1234]

Once the wireless traffic hits the tower, where does it go from there?

Is it transmitted via wireless to another tower, converted to something like a T1, or converted to light and sent over fiber?

all the towers are on fiber at this point. i haven't done traceroutes in a while but AT&T used to route all their 3g internet traffic to kansas before it went outside their network

netflix goes to amazon for authentication and the data is on Level 3's servers which are inside everyone's ISP network so it's not like you're streaming over the internet. they detect where you are coming from and point you to a local server. Apple uses akamai for itunes which was the granddaddy of content delivery

from what i've read the actual towers can only support a few dozen users at a time so if someone is streaming 24x7 it means they are preventing someone else from using their phone

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

It really isn't enough when you have LTE or ATT's amazing 3G network.

In a week I ate through 1.2GB of data.

For the rest of the month I'm stuck with wi-fi.

Those "everyday regular users" must not stream video, browse the web or download any apps.

You know, for me to get 50MB of data on 3G I have to pay $6. Most people here, including those working at telcos, probably haven't even heard of LTE.

 

[cheezy321]

We are the 99%!

 

[Fritzo]

But they're not.

This is why I'm not exactly opposed to bandwidth caps on home internet, so long as they give the option to subscribe to a higher cap if I need it.

Yep, same here. I work for a large ISP and we have 15 home users that use 80x more bandwidth than anyone else (average use is around 4GB per person).

You KNOW they're not doing anything legal with that much usage.

 

[Texashiker]

all the towers are on fiber at this point.

I seriously doubt that.

Maybe the towers in your area are on fiber. In rural areas where we do not even have DSL, the towers must be using something besides fiber.

The town I live next to, we got T1 downtown just 1 - 2 years ago. Places like the courthouse, police department, fire department,,, are all using DSL.

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

all the towers are on fiber at this point. i haven't done traceroutes in a while but AT&T used to route all their 3g internet traffic to kansas before it went outside their network

netflix goes to amazon for authentication and the data is on Level 3's servers which are inside everyone's ISP network so it's not like you're streaming over the internet. they detect where you are coming from and point you to a local server. Apple uses akamai for itunes which was the granddaddy of content delivery

from what i've read the actual towers can only support a few dozen users at a time so if someone is streaming 24x7 it means they are preventing someone else from using their phone

When you phone you use GSM not UMTS normally. Thats why UMTS 900 became such a good "Marketing" thing where they boasted better reception and blah blah blah. But in fact its 10000000 cheaper converting GSM 900 base stations to UMTS 900 ones cause its just a areal swop done. UMTS 2100 is a new base station almost
Then they re use cells by using two methods. 1 is to assign all the customers 1 IP and the other is on UDP re using data streams of other users.
Then what people dont know is to find a server you have to send out two roundtrips most of the times to find a server. To keep that connection on a faster broadband like HSPA and HUSPA you need to send out more and bigger ping packets. Thats why the data can fly so fast on a mobile connection as a lot of data get wasted for network usage. The other thing is you have to use a ARP proxy to get onto the internet in the first place. You cant actually set any size of the receive window or anything cause its not actually TC/IP. It emulates some of the protocols from the suite like HTTP and UDP

 

[HumblePie]

Save the Gigabytes before we run out!!!! What will our children do if we use all our Gigabytes up now?

 

[dud]

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.

Arieso, a company in Newbury, England, that advises mobile operators in Europe, the United States and Africa, documented the statistical gap when it tracked 1.1 million customers of a European mobile operator during a 24-hour period in November

The gap between extreme users and the rest of the population is widening, according to Arieso. In 2009, the top 3 percent of heavy users generated 40 percent of network traffic. Now, Arieso said, these users pump out 70 percent of the traffic.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/t...e-half-of-worlds-wireless-bandwidth.html?_r=2

If these people want/need so much bandwidth then make them pay through the nose for it. They would help subsidize the rest of us ...

 

[alent1234]

I seriously doubt that.

Maybe the towers in your area are on fiber. In rural areas where we do not even have DSL, the towers must be using something besides fiber.

The town I live next to, we got T1 downtown just 1 - 2 years ago. Places like the courthouse, police department, fire department,,, are all using DSL.

if you have HSPA+ or LTE in your area then the requirement is that the tower has to be on fiber

 

[kyrax12]

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.

 

[coloumb]

I could easily see someone using up a lot of bandwidth [on their iphone or android phone] from downloading apps, streaming videos, etc if they weren't anywhere near a wifi spot [either free or at home]. It would be interesting to see what age group uses up the most bandwidth [I'd guess it's the 15-21 year olds].

I'm probably in the lower bracket of the 99% as I have a crapberry that work provided for mobile office reasons - the screen is too damn small to do much of anything else and it's not an ideal gaming/video streaming platform.

 

[spidey07]

INEQUALITY! We need to come together and protest these people that are using up our bandwidth! We need to have sit-ins at AT&T, Verizon, et al and demand that they distribute this bandwidth more equally! Why should the top 1% consume HALF of the resources?! HALF I tell you!

Full on lulz.

 

[Gunslinger08]

Yep, same here. I work for a large ISP and we have 15 home users that use 80x more bandwidth than anyone else (average use is around 4GB per person).

You KNOW they're not doing anything legal with that much usage.

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.