How the pursuit of leisure drives internet use
economist.com
economist.com
Whenever there's a big file to download/upload the app will not download it unless I'm connected to a WiFi network. There's often a hidden settings that can disable this but I never understood why WiFi was considered a better choice for big file downloads.
Very often my 4G network is faster than the WiFi I have access to and with 100Go of data (for 20€) each month it's basically unlimited.
But from the map 100Go would be $1237 in the US ?
[0]: https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/640...
So people were careful with using mobile internet, there were stories about people who forgot to turn off mobile internet and had to pay hundreds extra, or people who used a lot of mobile internet by accident abroad, racking up bills in the thousands. Apps that had bigger downloads would often be on the arse end of complaints about high data rates, so it became a UX pattern to warn or disallow big downloads over mobile internet.
4G / higher bandwidth and government legislation (the latter notably in the EU) finally put a stop on that, only two odd years ago (if that). But, there's still plenty of countries without 4G, good internet backbones, and who still do metered connections. Even wired connections, notably in the US which seems years behind in terms of internet infrastructure in some areas.
It's gotten better. The plan I usually get for a couple weeks of travel gives me 1GB these days. But not that long ago it was 200MB or so.
You can argue that the user should be able to choose but any of those settings, per my example, can then be configured incorrectly by accident (or you just forget to change them).
There's no reason to make this a personal comment.
Regarding your actual point, I've had a 100GB limit for the past 5 years (since I got an iPhone 6), with a 4G connection.
Meanwhile Google Amp has existed for less than 3 years and already has massively widespread adoption. Technological change happens so rapidly that it's rarely a technical issue when something like this exists.
Congratulations. Almost every other person does not.
Unfortunately, those switches aren't easily configured at times.
Practically I have always had all the mobile internet I could use from at least 2010 onwards. There have always been a cap but it have been way above even my somewhat heave mobile use (my current cap is 1 terabyte a month).
It would hit the cap if I was using it as my only internet but for use on my phone I dont reach it, even with occasional tethering.
A few years ago, I switched to T-Mobile partly motivated by their unlimited plan, which felt like some kind of luxury.
(And, of course, "unlimited" is a lie. Downloading my ~200 GB music library through a hotspot, and I got throttled and charged extra per GB over some cap.)
It's partially the population distribution; we have a paltry 35mil people in the 2nd geographically largest land area in the world. Now, much of the population is clustered, but still - infrastructure is spread out, expensive, and the cost gets passed down. Plus the competition is sparse and companies like their profit if they can get it.
In short, none of us would historically dream of downloading large stuff through mobile data. My data roaming is permanently off, and I only download through wifi. Some people even have phones with no data plans, or a paltry 50MB. 1GB was considered extra large data plan until recently.
(As a tangent, it's also been a historically painful process just to get started here too; in Europe, I'd land, go to the nearest shop, get a SIM card for $20, and I'm off to the races. In Canada, you need to sign a long term contract with 3 years of obligations, go through a credit check, give ethem all sorts of personal info, and pretty much blood and DNA samples... ;-( )
It's a discrepancy people have been waking up to last couple of years and starting to exert pressure, so it's getting better - but very very very slowly.
Turns out it would have been a waste of money anyway. Turns out 90% we went with the motorhome you couldn't even get an FM radio signal :)
I wish there was some way I could share the privilege I had to do so with more people here.
The overwhelming profitability of Canadian télécoms suggests some other factors are at play.
The initial infrastructure build may be expensive, but it is in other countries too. Canada at least allows telcos to throw up a big ugly tower wherever they please. Try finding one in Paris. The marginal costs of bandwidth are practically zero. Yet we still see vast portions of the population on 1 or 2gb plans.
There’s massive amounts of excess OTA capacity, but enabling it may cause grandma to cancel their home internet, and we can’t be having that.
My beef is how app developers just assume I have massive amounts of data to spare.
The NPR app decided to pre-fetch 500mb over data when I turned it on for a 30 minute car ride while trying to preserve data.
The economist apps just plain fail to background download over wifi.
Part of testing really needs to be over bandwidth constrained networks. Just because it seems great on some dev's gigabit connection doesn't mean it actually is great.
It's stereotyping. How would you and others feel if I were to rephrase that to something along the lines of "Almost no one really needs wired Internet except for all those teens and twenty-somethings who do nothing but watch video on their phones 20 hours a day"?
A lot of older people have a heck of a lot more hands-on experience with using computers than those whose experience is mostly limited to smartphones and tablets.
My overall point is that broad brush generalizations about age groups are often not useful.
Entirely neutral emotionally and in agreement.
Demographics who grew up with the internet use it more and for higher bandwidth things. Seems pretty intuitive and non offensive to me.
My grandfather in particular has had home computers since the 70s. There are exceptions. But that doesn't invalidate the point being made. My mother for instance, is slightly ahead of the average for her age technologically. (In some ways at least.). But she's literally done exactly what the post that started this describes. When I moved out and stopped paying the internet bill a few months later, she had no interest in starting her own. Hasn't had anything but mobile since.
I would just prefer that discussions here avoided casual stereotypes about "grandmas" or, for that matter, Millennials. A comment along the lines of "Many casual Internet users--which includes quite a few older people--don't need wired Internet if they have or could get good mobile service" would be totally unobjectionable.
It'll take video-capable unmetered cellular data to the NA market to reign in the out-of-control pay TV/CATV industry. Can't happen fast enough.
I have (really) unlimited 4g data. But I can't download a system update until I'm on wifi?
Thanks Motorola...
Couldn't agree more. Privacy is defined by each person based on what they'd like to do but can't.
Compared to other virtual worlds you could walk around with friends?
It's not clear to a new user that something as simple as a website could become addictive and begin to take huge amounts of time, concentration and patience away from you. Or even that it could be a bad thing. It seems to catch even disciplined people off guard. But I have noticed that they often self-regulate eventually anyway.
There does seem to be a certain desire to be productive in many people, and so I'm not particularly worried about an entire society totally consumed by social media/entertainment.
> The urge driving people to pay a monthly fee for something they do not themselves consume is self-expression, which may be a key to coming up with new sustainable business models for the low-income internet.
So interesting how seemingly the same technology evolves or gets used differently around the world.
Also anyone else find this article annoying to read?
The poor do not see it that way. Years of fieldwork across the globe have led Ms Arora to conclude that when it comes to getting online, “play dominates work, and leisure overtakes labour.” Where people planning development strategies imagined, metaphorically at least, Blackberries providing new efficiencies and productivity, consumers wanted the chat, apps and games of the iPhone. Worthier uses tend to follow. But they are the cart not the horse.
Annoying in what way?