A World Without Wi-Fi Looks Possible as Unlimited Plans Rise | Hacker News Reader

A World Without Wi-Fi Looks Possible as Unlimited Plans Rise

bloomberg.com

38 pointsdx03454 comments

> Customers will get full LTE speeds until they reach 22GB of usage, after which they’ll be subject to reduced data speeds and de-prioritization.

> Hotspot tethering — up to 10GB at LTE speeds — is included, as are calls and texts to Mexico and Canada.

That's certainly an alternative take on the definition of "unlimited" than the one I'm accustomed to.

Curious: What's the reduced speed? Is it less than 1Mbit/s? If so, good luck doing anything other than reading/checking mail/look at a map. And yet the articles are discussing "watching videos" without connecting to wifi.

Carriers have been using this particular definition for years. I used to have a plan that included 5 GiB of HSPA+ traffic, followed by an all-you-can-eat 50 KiB/s buffet. Technically unlimited!

T-Mobile's 10G plan says it reverts to 3G speeds after you hit your data cap. (This is the plan I'm on.)

Their "unlimited" plan doesn't seem to have that clause, but it does say that after 30GB you'll be prioritized behind other customers and might see a drop in speed.

The "reduced speed" is whatever it takes to prioritize customers on the same tower who are not over the limit so they get full speed. If you aren't on a congested tower, your speed isn't impacted.

Seems fair to me. Unlike wired internet, wireless carriers can't just throw money at the problem and get more bandwidth. A certain spectrum can only carry a certain amount of data.

Even building more towers and having each tower serve a smaller radius won't help in a really congested area like a football stadium.

> The "reduced speed" is whatever it takes to prioritize customers on the same tower who are not over the limit so they get full speed. If you aren't on a congested tower, your speed isn't impacted. Seems fair to me.

I'm not saying it isn't fair, I'm saying it's false advertising.

I also know the technical limitations on the radios on the towers (worked in the industry). But suggesting that it's unlimited, both from the ISP side and the Bloomberg side, is disingenous at best, and suggesting it can replace wifi in that implementation, even more so.

That said: You can get unlimited 4G in both Tokyo and Seoul, and those are pretty dense. Again it technically couldn't work if everyone got it and used it as much as they could, but arguing that the US ISPs can't do better is patently false.

How is it "false advertising"?

1. It is "unlimited" - not "unlimited full speed"

2. They tell you about the deprioritization.

On an anecdotal note, my family was in an extended stay for a few months while we were waiting to get our house built. The hotel wifi was abysmal. We were tethering our phone to our AppleTV - Binge On allowed us unlimited video tethering - we were using 80-100Gb per month successfully without a noticeable slow down. We were not in a congested area.

But part of the problem isn't the carriers fault. It takes years to get approvals from cities to build towers sometimes.

  It is "unlimited" - not "unlimited full speed"

It doesn't say "unlimited full speed any day any time any location" either.

I'm planning an internet service that provides unlimited 600 Mbit/s wireless internet. But it'll only be available from 3pm-4pm on the day of the first full moon of every month in one building, in the basement, inside a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying beware of the leopard.

I think we can both agree that calling my product "Unlimited" would be false advertising.

Where are these unlimited LTE plans the author speaks of? I haven't seen any except for from a few lucky folks who are grandfathered into truly unlimited data plans.

Typing this from my home wifi which tops out at 1.8Gbps connected to a unlimited 100Mbps ISP data connection. 14 wired and wireless devices are currently connected. Try that with any current wireless plan.

T-Mobile is offering unlimited LTE if you upgrade to their "T-Mobile ONE" plan, which starts at $110/month for two lines, $100 if you set up automatic payments.

The fine print also mentions that speeds will "reduce" when you hit 30GB, but doesn't say if that means you're kicked down to 4G like they used to do, or they just throttle your LTE bandwidth.

They aren't reduced when you hit 30Gb. They are temporarily reduced when you hit 30Gbs and you are in a congested area so others can get full speed. If you aren't in a congested area your speed isn't reduced.

Tops out at 1.8Gbps??

802.11ac is capable of 1800Mbps. Which is only possible if you have a single device using all 3-4 antennas, no interference or competing devices on the same spectrum. I regularly get 800Mbps from my 2015 MBP.

It is theoretically possible to go that fast. I've never done it.

Feels more like we're going backwards here in the UK. I was on an unlimited LTE plan for £17 per month for a couple of years.

Last year, out of the blue, they told me they were capping it at 2GB.

After much argument they agreed to raise it to 4GB plus unlimited calls/sms for £14, which is enough for me but not really the same.

I gave up a grandfathered unlimited AT&T plan to take my phone number to T-Mobile, because I'd rather have unlimited* (with the asterisk) data that I can use abroad as well. Unlimited AT&T isn't worth the occasional, accidental $200 charge for checking the news in El Salvador or wherever.

There are caveats even for the grandfathered folks.

> With every major U.S. wireless carrier now offering unlimited data plans, consumers don’t need to log on to a Wi-Fi network to avoid costly overage charges anymore. That’s a critical change that threatens to render Wi-Fi obsolete.

Does anyone at Bloomberg understand data caps or throttling?

That statement sounds technically correct to me. You don't need to log on to a Wi-Fi network to avoid costly overage charges. You do need to log on to use the Internet usefully, however.

Updated my quote to include their claim within the next line, indicating, "That’s a critical change that threatens to render Wi-Fi obsolete."

Yes they understand and used the term correctly.

Throttling - your speed is reduced to a top speed of x when you go over a specified allotment until the end of your billing period.

Deprioritized - if the specific tower you are on is congested and you've gone over the "cap", your speed is temporarily slowed down to allow others who haven't gone over their allotment to get full speed.

Where in the article is any of that stated?

"Unlimited" marketing BS aside, the article is mostly a puff piece about deployment of LTE in the unlicensed 5.8ghz band currently used by wifi etc. So when they say "a future without wifi is possible", they mean it literally: you won't be able to use wifi in the 5.8ghz band in many places.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/11/hurricane-lte-u-dont-l...

It should also be noted that WiFi uses considerably less battery than mobile data does, so while convenient, this probably won't replace WiFi anytime soon unless there's a massive boost to battery technology.

I heard that for the first time, so I looked around and found this paper: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~lierranli/coms6998-7Spring2014/p...

Here the problem seems to be that the base power needed (beta in table 4) is way higher than for wifi.

I wonder if the numbers have changed since 2012 though.

Have fun not being able to update iOS (even if the iOS update is only 20mb), or downloading or updating the Facebook iOS app since it's bigger than 100mb! :)

This is a pain at the moment. Because I move around a lot I tend to use my iPhone hotspot rather than bothering with an ISP contract. It's fine except that I have to go to Starbucks to update my phone. I imagine that will change if it becomes more common to use mobile data for everything.

Also, have fun trying to use your "high-speed"data connection in buildings with terrible reception. Disclaimer: I've worked in many of these

We recently purchased a house 9km from Edinburgh with no mobile signal - fortunately the Vodafone signal booster device we got (which relies on broadband) appears to work really well.

What we hadn't noticed is that you get a decent signal in the garden but not in the house. Probably as we are right next to a small hill of solid volcanic rock that is between our house and the nearest mast.

> signal booster

I think the correct term is femtocell

One of these things:

https://www.vodafone.co.uk/shop/accessories/sure-signal/

One of these things : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtocell

Not a signal booster.

Yes, I know how it works and that its not literally boosting the existing signal but that's what the chap in the Vodafone shop called it and it does rather make things easier to explain to people who aren't bothered by technical trivia.

On HN

As per usual: Good job of extrapolating american circumstances to the rest of the world

I live in Lithuania, and here you can get unlimited LTE for €19.90/month from Telia. It's designed to be used at home for those who can't get fibre optic internet, but I guess it would work fine in a phone too.

Quite opposite. US is far behind and expensive. UK and Ireland had unlimited data plans 5 years ago for 20 euro/month. Today even Turkey or Vietnam have better data deals than US.

> Quite opposite. US is far behind and expensive.

The US isn't far behind. The US had over 90% 4G population coverage long before it was wide-spread across Europe. Europe lagged far behind the US in fact. [1] It is expensive. You're conflating two separate things. The US had unlimited data plans longer than five years ago. Some carriers briefly went away from them and are now going back to them due to competition.

The UK has a median income that is barely comparable to the poorest US states. [2] Why would it be surprising if our goods cost more? Despite that, our cost of household goods is almost universally lower than the UK, with a few exceptions like wireless.

[1a] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-phones/10288585...

[1b] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304914204579396...

Feb 2017: "UK trailing behind Europe and US in 4G usage"

[1c] http://www.vanillaplus.com/2017/02/25/25474-missed-connectio...

"Europe slow to adopt 4G mobile: sector execs"

[1d] http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-telecoms-idUKTRE78Q60W20110...

Mar 2016: "Stop whining, America: Your LTE makes Europe look slow"

[1e] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/10/twin_prime_global_n...

[2] https://mises.org/blog/if-sweden-and-germany-became-us-state...

Ok, lets put it in a different way. In Ireland I had cheap prepaid card and 40GB/month was not problem (this was on 3G).

I could not do that in US, I would have to sign for 1 year and pay over $1000 in total.

Seems a somewhat long bow to draw. I want wifi and wouldn't want mobile only.

Yeah, I think we're quite a ways off from this scenario. I went to a wedding a few weeks ago, and the house on the beach where they had the rehearsal dinner had no cell reception indoors. Somehow it was perfectly fine outdoors, though.

I had to fix their Wifi to stop from going nuts.

Even if mobile carriers introduce truly unlimited plans and excellent indoor coverage everywhere, they will also need to open extensive APIs to enterprises if they want to entice them away from Wi-Fi.

Enterprises (including businesses with public access areas such as shopping centres and stadiums) want the extra control and information (such as the location of consumers as they move through shopping centres) they have with their Wi-Fi networks that they can get today.

Conversely, the mobile carriers will probably be wanting to incorporate the Wi-Fi access into their mobile networks as another access type. Apart from the control aspect, having combined and coordinated access to both licensed and unlicensed spectrum allows a better infrastructure cost to capacity tradeoff.

I am pretty sure Bluetooth geoloc and NFC stacks provides better tools for marketing and tracking purposes.

Just because these unlimited plans are being offered doesn't mean they'll take off. The economics might work well for single people, but if you're a family of five, how many phones and unlimited plans are you willing to get? $500 can get you a good desktop that'll last for 5-10 years, that same amount gets you a mid-to-high range phone that will maybe last for four years.

Plenty of places still don't get a good signal either - every trip to the in-laws' place reminds me of this.

This world does look possible, but I don't think it's close yet.

That's a weird question to pose frankly. US family plans have almost always functioned by discount per phone added to the plan. They average out to being cheaper per person, not more expensive, which is the entire point of the family plans. That's the direction this will move for households, just as it did for each previous unlimited thing (minutes, texting, etc).

To answer it though, the plans will take off and will be extremely popular. This round of competition will be to push up data limitations and speeds, as infrastructure deployment is mostly saturated. Unlimited data will become nearly universal and the speeds will increase significantly.

I hope you're right! I'm not against the possibility; I just think the pricing isn't there yet for an average family.

Then again I only got my first smartphone in late 2014, so maybe I'm just looking at this differently.

I have a family plan on T-Mobile. Unlimited data, 14Gb tethering per line, of course unlimited voice, text and I get unlimited data in other countries. I went to Mexico last year and got 3G speeds.

I pay $200 a month for 5 lines. It will be 6 soon since they are running a get free line promotion.

Easy with that free line promotion. I got two free lines for Black Friday (4->6 lines) and my billing still hasn't been correct since then (being charged $20/month for each of my "free" lines). I had to escalate to John Legere's office, and it still isn't fixed ("next billing cycle we promise").

Otherwise, have been a happy T-Mobile customer for 16 years.

That's a lot of money compared to cable Internet. $50/month can get you unlimited wired access.

On my network, three it is £32/month for unlimited data. But, this is limited to 30GB for tethering which is why I'm still using FTTC.

http://www.three.co.uk/Store/SIM/SIM-size-select?step=confir...

I don't think the unlimited plans will last. I think the only reason they've appeared is because we're past the build out phase of 4G/LTE. I expect that when 5G comes around, unlimited plans will disappear as the carriers capital expenses rise during the build out and while their 5G network is underprovisioned.

I'm on a $30 unlimited data T-Mobile family/friends plan.

Since I'm not home a whole lot, I cancelled my ISP two months ago and have been tethering for two months. I can still work for home just fine, and watch Netflix in HD.

The speed is slowed down after 40Gb , and I get about 15-25Mb download speed.

The new "unlimited" plans slow down if you use more data.

People hate overage charges and that gets rid of them, but everyone is still going to prefer wifi at every opportunity to avoid invoking the slowdown.

The new plans are an improvement but in no way do they lead to the death of wifi.

I'm sorry but lately the websites are getting so heavy that soon we will need these 288GB of usage just to check daily news and weather.

neh how long would it take to upload a 4k youtube video from a phone LTE?

On average, probably less time than on wifi. Most consumer ISP services have abysmal upload speeds. For instance Comcast's 1Gbps plan has an upload limit of 35Mbs. Most of their other plans top out at 10Mbps upload.

With T-Mobile I can get up to 40Mbps upload.

Wifi will live as long as roaming charges are applied around the world.

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