Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

I am a data pig. I average between 1.5 and 2 gigabytes a month over the last 6 months. AT&T hates me, apparently, though they are happy to take my money.

I'm not sure how that helps the point the author is trying to make, as he/she will actually be paying less now than they were before, even as a self-proclaimed "data hog".

A few more random points that I thought were misguided:

1. Not everyone should be attached to their phone like many of us are. Perhaps Apple and AT&T have done some market research and concluded that some people just aren't going to pay more than $15 / month for data, because they just wouldn't use it much. Better to offer those people a path to becoming customers than mindlessly trying to turn them into consumers of a service they don't want or need (expensive unlimited bandwidth).

2. It will apparently be possible to retroactively upgrade from the 250 MB plan to the 2 GB plan if you're going to be over, so the fears of forgetting that you left Pandora running and paying hundreds seem to be a bit unfounded.

3. The part where the author rants about how the entire wireless infrastructure should be overhauled so he/she can avoid paying for metered bandwidth really goes off the deep end. Like this gem:

And yes I know the wireless protocols are not super-amenable to this sort of thing, the way a wired router or switch might be, but that is again just your poor engineering. Fix it already.

What?

I think you are missing the key point: Apple wants people to use their fancy devices more, not less.

You spend this money on this awesome device that does awesome things, Apple makes money when you use it (via iAds, via google searches, via many things) and AT&T is saying to their customers "don't use your device too much!"

I'm betting Steve is totally pissed off at AT&T right now.

Wouldn't poor 3G speeds also be a good reason for someone to use their iPhone less? If AT&T's policy changes skim off the top 2% of heavy users the remaining 98% are going to end up with a better experience and possibly use their iPhone more. It's hard to frame it only in terms of bandwidth too. Apple must make more revenue off the person who buys a $10/20MB game than they do from another user downloading the free Netflix app and streaming 1GB/month of data.

I've never understood the argument that capping data plans will improve the "experience" for the non-heavy users. Capping doesn't change the fact that AT&T does not have the tower capacity to support as many iPhone users as they already have, so even if they can curb the 2% of heavy users, the other 98% are still overloading their towers and receiving poor service.

The only thing data caps do is generate more money for the provider by charging heavy users for the excess data they use. Whether they actually use that new money to improve their towers is a completely different topic; they certainly haven't been improving capacity well enough for the past three years, when they already generate plenty of revenue. Why will it be different with caps in place?

Edit: I saw the same thing happen with Time Warner Cable in Rochester, NY. Just s/AT&T/TWC/ and s/towers/copper/ and it's the exact same situation.

>I've never understood the argument that capping data plans will improve the "experience" for the non-heavy users.

It isn't a difficult concept. A very small number of people contribute significantly to the network load. Yeah, ideally there's more capacity than anyone can ever use, but back here in reality that would be remarkably expensive to fulfill.

It's the same thing with crime, btw: A very, very small percentage of people are responsible for the overwhelming bulk of crime.

You are implying that a few heavy users are the cause of everyone else's poor experience (a non-obviois fact), and you compare this to frequent offenders placing a high burden on police forces (a somewhat more plausible fact). I agree that it may make intuitive sense that if I use 10x the bandwidth as you that I use 10x the capacity, but I am not convinced this is a fact. Do you have any support for this claim?

> It's the same thing with crime, btw: A very, very small percentage of people are responsible for the overwhelming bulk of crime.

Is there a study that shows this? Intuitively, it makes sense, but I'm curious. Of course, we must be talking about serious crimes, as pretty much everyone breaks some sort of law almost every day.

Slippery slope. What profiles do you break it down to? Race? Age? Education?

I'm sorry, I'm confused as to what you're talking about. I was speaking in large generalities, not refined ones...

But this is exactly my point. Caps will not stop all (or even most?) heavy users from being heavy users, and there is no data (that I've ever found) to show that caps do anything other than generate more revenues, which may or may not actually be spent on improving the network.

When other major countries are investing huge amounts in their infrastructures to support higher and higher capacities and bandwidth for lower and lower prices, our ISPs are instead capping bandwidth and increasing prices without investing that higher revenue into better service.

Changing the plans so that people get charged for data over 2GB will certainly curb unlimited usage. It's the basics of economics.

Especially when you pay $25 per GB, and it costs an extra $10 per GB. People will probably stop streaming Pandora over the cell network, and heavily watching movies.

Canada has had data limits the entire time, and Blackberry has been constantly cautioning US providers about offering unlimited data plans in the name of providing better service to their customers.

This kind of limitation for regular ISPs is ridiculous, because the cost of bandwidth is actually cheap, but it's different and much more expensive with cell phone networks.

> I'm betting Steve is totally pissed off at AT&T right now.

You think Steve just found out about it now? You think AT&T didn't consult with him?

Personally, I think Steve probably knew a while back, was pissed off then, and is still pissed off.

So we should force iPhone users to pay for unlimited bandwidth so that we can try to force them to "do more awesome things" with their phone?

What this argument is not taking into consideration is that some people don't use their device as much as others, and they do so by choice. Plenty of people will take a $10 discount to cut their phone usage a bit, and be happy that someone offered them the choice. Personally, I'm a data-crazed maniac who uses my iPhone constantly (and uses around 900MB/month) but that doesn't mean everyone is (or wants to be).

I'd also argue that there are only a few applications that consume large amounts of bandwidth, such as streaming/downloading audio and video. You can still take full advantage of your phone (with the exception of those two things) and not use much bandwidth.

Offered tiered pricing. $5/mo for 100MB, $10/mo for 250MB, $20/mo for 1GB, $30/mo for unlimited.

That's what they're doing, although not with the exact tiers you mentioned.

As for the $30/mo unlimited, I believe part of the reason why AT&T removed the unlimited option in the first place is because a disproportional amount of bandwidth is spent by people who jailbroke their iPhone and use 100+GB/month using it as a 3G modem.

As if anyone can actually get a good enough signal to pull 100GB off the AT&T network. You have to be masochistic to use a AT&T 3G exclusively.

Also, you don't need to jailbreak to tether. I forget the details, but basically you go to a web address and install a new carrier profile and thats it.

If AT&T want to be the big boys on the block they have to invest in their network, end of story. The reason they got rid of the unlimited option is because they want to make all the money and not do a thing to improve their network.

Exactly.

A lot of startup activity is centered around the internet. Limiting internet usage that will mean that people won't be able to use our web services just because their monthly bandwidth quota is up. This is a barrier to the web-centric view that Google/Facebook/Twitter/etc have been propounding. This is not a step in the right direction.

I agree with you.

The truth is, there's simply not enough bandwidth, especially not to stimulate "unlimited" data use and motivating people to become "data hogs." And it's not easy at all to increase the resources. There are real physical and technical limitations for providing more bandwidth which are hard to overcome in many areas.

The unlimited data plan was designed for much less devices in the wild.

> The unlimited data plan was designed for much less devices in the wild.

The unlimited plan is and always was a marketing ploy to make the plan look like a deal. It's just too bad that AT&T (or at least one of the other major telcos) haven't been brought to task for their deceptive marketing practices.

That's probably because they use their extra revenue to bribe the people whose job it is to take them to task for their deception, rather than investing that money in infrastructure upgrades.

> 2. It will apparently be possible to retroactively upgrade from the 250 MB plan to the 2 GB plan if you're going to be over, so the fears of forgetting that you left Pandora running and paying hundreds seem to be a bit unfounded.

Well... In one of the initial discussions someone did the calculation that if you leave Pandora playing for 40 hours/week, it amounts to 5+GB of data, and that's on the low quality stream.

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