What is the point of these high speed data networks?

[SAWYER]

With all these phone companies putting ridiculous caps in place?

 

[dguy6789]

The network attracts the customer, the cap leaches them dry of $

 

[sonambulo]

The faster to hit overage charges with, my dear.

 

[Oyeve]

The faster to hit overage charges with, my dear.

Bingo.

 

[shortylickens]

The network attracts the customer, the cap leaches them dry of $

Exactly. They dont actually want you to use the cool shit they advertise cuz they'd have to invest resources to make it work properly. The 5GB limit was always a lie. If you ever got anywhere near it they'd accuse you of tethering and threaten to cut you off.

Home service is similar. They want you to be attracted by having 10's of megabits of bandwidth but god help the son of a bitch who actually tries to use it all the time.

 

[Deeko]

Just because you have fast service doesn't mean you HAVE to use a lot of it in total. I use 1.5-2.5GB a month and I would love for that to be LTE-fast. Doesn't mean I'll use more, just that I'll better enjoy what I'm using.

 

[dguy6789]

The problem is faster service inherently promotes more use. People will use it more and find ways to take better advantage of it. It's no coincidence that as the transition from dial up to broadband and even faster broadband happened, more and more data gobbling usage began to surface like video and huge software downloads.

 

[Anubis]

Exactly. They dont actually want you to use the cool shit they advertise cuz they'd have to invest resources to make it work properly. The 5GB limit was always a lie. If you ever got anywhere near it they'd accuse you of tethering and threaten to cut you off.

sorry but no ive averaged 4-6 GB a month for 18 months now and VZW has never said shit to me

 

[boomhower]

It's only going to get worse. It's really a kick in the face when technologies like LTE make it cheaper for them to provide the data and they raise the prices.

 

[gsaldivar]

It's only going to get worse. It's really a kick in the face when technologies like LTE make it cheaper for them to provide the data and they raise the prices.

Like everything in technology, it's a cycle. Early adopters on any new technology pay a premium price. Once competition heats up, prices will drop again. When carriers are done with their 4G rollouts, and they are forced to compete on price, I have no doubt that we'll see unlimited data back again...

 

[vshah]

sorry but no ive averaged 4-6 GB a month for 18 months now and VZW has never said shit to me

same here. I've used up to 8gb a month on tmo without a whisper from them.

 

[ImDonly1]

Like everything in technology, it's a cycle. Early adopters on any new technology pay a premium price. Once competition heats up, prices will drop again. When carriers are done with their 4G rollouts, and they are forced to compete on price, I have no doubt that we'll see unlimited data back again...

We can hope. If anything they can charge whatever they want on their LTE networks, but give us back unlimited 3g.

 

[Pliablemoose]

My record was 32 gigs before Verizon stopped the free tethering.

And yeah, they're going to kill consumers with those caps. You blow through them with LTE in nothing flat.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Same reason home ISPs are constantly increasing speeds while simultaneously introducing bandwidth caps. I doubt I've ever gotten close to 250 GB on my home internet connection, but this month I bought a lot of Steam games and streamed a ton of Netflix, and the month's not even half over.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Exactly. They dont actually want you to use the cool shit they advertise cuz they'd have to invest resources to make it work properly. The 5GB limit was always a lie. If you ever got anywhere near it they'd accuse you of tethering and threaten to cut you off.

Home service is similar. They want you to be attracted by having 10's of megabits of bandwidth but god help the son of a bitch who actually tries to use it all the time.

nope. i had friends hitting 20gb all the time on AT&T.

 

[lupi]

they used to get good overage $$ from regular calls, then as competition cause path towards high/month or unlimited minutes the texting $$$$$$ started. Now the texting cycle has followed calls and can get high/month or unlimited rather cheap. So we are at the next plane of expansion, the data $$$$$$$. Unfortunately competition thanks to the FCC has just about disappeared so this one may be around a good bit longer.

 

[jersiq]

It's only going to get worse. It's really a kick in the face when technologies like LTE make it cheaper for them to provide the data and they raise the prices.

How is it cheaper?

 

[ImDonly1]

How is it cheaper?

They move everything to VoIP and it gets easier to manage, etc. from what I've read.