Top 1% of Mobile Users use half of world's bandwidth

[rockymtnhigh]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/te...bandwidth.html

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Interesting story from today's NY Times.

[SkiKing]

Then the carries need to do something to meet the demand.

[rockymtnhigh]

Not necessarily. The fact that such a small number of users suck up so much bandwidth is rationale enough for them to impose caps. Ultimately I end up paying more because a small number horde massive amounts of bandwidth.

If you want to stream audio and video all day long, fine. Pay for it.

[SkiKing]

Not necessarily. The fact that such a small number of users suck up so much bandwidth is rationale enough for them to impose caps. Ultimately I end up paying more because a small number horde massive amounts of bandwidth.

Disagree. If they allow unlimited use of Data then they need to meet their obligation. Instead of placing a cap to bring the top down. They need to expand their infrastructure to allow more to reach the top without hindering others. Progress is made by increasing the resources to meet the demand, not by capping resources to hold everyone down to the same level.

If you want to stream audio and video all day long, fine. Pay for it.

I do agree here. If you want more then you should pay more. But where we may differ is if they are paying for more, including unlimited, then it is the responsibility of the carrier to fulfill their end of the contract as well.

[Pepper]

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[mike123abc]

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The article was pretty poorly written. It seemed like a phone company or perhaps some analyst pushing a phone company stock was trying to build support for caps. They even go as far as to try to tie in oil and gas usage to greedy countries as an example of this being bad behavior?

Yes 1%, but they were talking about all mobile users. Not just users with data plans. In fact they mentioned 87% of the worlds phones were not smart phones. So, in reality it looks like they are saying that 1/13 of smartphone users use half the data. This is a much different picture. Interesting that AT&T launched LTE in the NYC market yesterday, the same day this article ran...

I bet if you took Europe, the US and Japan less than 1/7 the world's population would use 95%+ of the mobile internet... How scandalous! Of course usage is where it is available and cheap.

Again it looks like AT&T had its fingerprints on this. If you notice in the article EU operators are talking extra measures including installing microcells near heavy users to off load the network. Do you hear the cries for caps? No, in the EU there is more competition, unlimited plans for $6.4/month. And the operators are investing to build market share and handle the load. In the US all they do is moan and cap, when in fact it is easier in the US. Our population is not as dense. Which means that there is much more potential bandwidth. Remember how much trouble AT&T had a couple years back with NYC and SF? Most big cities in the EU have densities like that, and their operators somehow manage to build more towers to split the load and handle it.