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Comment by nuclear_eclipse | Hacker News Reader

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.

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>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.

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