Comment by LeonM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LeonM | Hacker News Reader

I recently had a discussion with a colleague about this:

Wouldn't it be much more efficient to start a telco with just 1 plan: unlimited everything for a fixed price.

Literally just charge $30/month or so (I haven't done the math on what is economically viable) for a flat fee plan. No strings attached, except maybe rate limit after a substantial amount of data to prevent abuse (like 50gb/day).

Also: no contracts, let people cancel when they want. And don't sell devices, just the SIM card.

This way you'll have:

- no need for usage metering systems

- very simple billing systems

- minimal need for marketing

- much less support calls (at least no angry customers due to unexpected costs)

- a very simple self-service portal

Now, I know I'm being naive here, it'll be next to impossible to start a service like this because the physical infrastructure (the base stations) are owned by the ancient behemoth telcos that have roamed the earth for past century.

But just imagine how great a telco can be if you were just to trim the fat, legacy and greed away.

As you say, really unlimited will get abused. But in a functional market with unbundling, the "MVNO" virtual operators can exist. The UK has lots.

Here's a recent review of available unlimited plans in the UK: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/09/comparison-of-...

Now that I'm thinking about it: you could just limit a connection to ~30mbit permanently and remove any data limit.

30mbit is enough to stream 4K video, so there is currently no actual use-case for more bandwidth on mobile devices. Those who are 'abusing' the unlimited plan to replace their wired internet connection at home will now have a choice: 30mbit 'slow' internet from their mobile plan, or get a separate fiber/cable/adsl line for more bandwidth.

The base stations are very much capable of sharing their available bandwidth equally through TDM, so it wouldn't impact other users that much.

Again, I'm probably being naive here...

I think it's unreasonable to assume that streaming is the only use-case of a high-speed connection. If I need to download something large, there is no upper limit to the bandwidth I can benefit from.

More generally, I think claims that there's no valid use-case of X are essentially always wrong. It's fine not wanting to provide a service if you're upfront about it, but framing it as anyone who does this is doing something dodgy is just a way of diverting blame.

> there is currently no actual use-case for more bandwidth on mobile devices.

Well I typically only use ~1GB or so per month, but I want my webpages and RSS feeds to load at the fastest speed my device supports.

Page load speed is dominated by latency, not bandwidth.

30mbit is huge though. For plenty of people 30mbit would be faster than their home internet connection, especially if they're allowed to tether unlimited devices behind it.

To play devils advocate, a more fair system would charge you a flat fee to maintain the connection, and a price per gigabyte to use the pipes. The more that people use the pipes, the more money you can put toward investment in fatter pipes.

This is effectively what I have from Three Mobile here in the UK.

They seem to have stopped offering my plan, but I pay around £22 per month, SIM only. Ihave used in excess of 100GB per month a few times (we used it as our home internet while the cable line was being sorted out), and am very happy. I even get the "Feel At Home" package that means I can use up to 12GB a month in the US, Australia and a ton of other countries for no extra charge.

But as a small business customer I have no access to their web portal (!?) and they seem to have stopped selling this plan.

You have just described how a lot of MVNO operators work.

In France, you can get an unlimited subscription for 20€ / month.

As far as I remember, no strings attached, no phone either unless you want to, unlimited voice, texts and data. There is some kind of data cap, it is pretty high and if you reach it, you don't have to pay anything, your speed might just be limited for the month (although it has never happened to me afaik).

It is also unlimited in many other countries.

I think this will happen with the new wave of telecom companies that rely on satellites instead of ground towers (probably in the next decade or so)

> I think this will happen with the new wave of telecom companies that rely on satellites instead of ground towers

Maybe. If you look at the total available bandwidth of the satellite systems vs their potential subscriber base, I think metering will probably happen at a lower level than many people expect.

Perhaps they'll upgrade to much better radios in the future and the whole issue will be resolved.

If only that was technologically feasible...

That sounds like the T-Mobile One plan that they offered for a while, but it was $70/month and they were still struggling. The network is expensive and customer acquisition is really expensive.

I think they had a data cap of 23gb/mo before you'd get really slow speeds

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