MacDailyNews Take: Layin’ the groundwork for something? 
Bartash continues, “Chief Technology Officer Dick Lynch said current data plans, which allow unlimited Internet access for a flat monthly fee, encourage overuse of wireless networks, mainly by a small number of ‘bandwidth hogs,’ or individuals who send and receive lots of large files.”
“Lynch said wireless companies will be able to handle increasing Internet usage over the next few years by upgrading to the next generation of wireless technology. But in the longer run, he said carriers will need additional spectrum and new ways of billing that encourage more efficient use of wireless airwaves,” Bartash reports. “‘We will end up billing differently in the future,’ said Lynch, repeating his long-held view that carriers should charge on a metered basis just like water and power companies.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn W.” for the heads up.]
Just another excuse to overcharge customers and retard the growth of wireless internet use for things like video or VoIP.
If it’s just “a small number” of bandwidth hogs, why not just go after them, instead of punishing everyone?
Metering is not an issue if I can use email only and pay $10 or less when the dude Torrenting 1000s of files pays $300-400 month.
Oh and we need to chare a minimum as well because you under users cost us money to maintain your account, we have to have it both ways in order to extract as much money from you as possable!
He’s right, IF, as Tommy Boy has mentioned, the metering goes both ways. I cannot START at current prices and simply go from there. Bill it like any utility. A very low base price, just for the hook up and overhead of having an account, and then pay for usage after that.
The problem is that “overuse” is about to be re-defined as data usage over wireless moves farther and farther away from checking your email and even web-surfing. Video, for one, is going to become commonplace over the next few years.
Verizon, AT&T;, and others – better to buckle your seat belt and prepare for how to serve and encourage this new market, rather than lay down tire-shredders across the width of the wireless web.
Well my next two year subscription will be with whichever company has unlimited we pay our money we should use just because some people don’t use that much shouldn’t affect me I pay and I will use currently I use over a gig a day I listen to my fav radio morning show then at night go to bed with dragnet archive I couldn’t imagine nor want a iPhone without unlimited. Use our money to build a better network pretty simply
The telcos are in a commodity service business.
Their customers determine what they buy by how much they can get for as little as possible, so… they’re in the mess they’re in because they oversold and underdelivered on what they offered.
So here’s a suggestion to the telcos. Build more infrastructure to fix your problems and stop trying to gouge consumers.
I think we’re coming to a point where the following will happen:
1) Apple will come forth with a carrier-agnostic iPhone: either with a dual-band radio (CDMA/GSM), or with carrier-specific models. But somehow, they will solve the problem of identical user experience, regardless of carrier.
2) Once Apple makes the carrier a non-issue with regard to the user experience, then the carriers will differentiate themselves with the only thing they can – access plans. Maybe it will be ATT with “all-you-can-eat” and Verizon with “pay-as-you-go”. Who knows, but this is exactly where Apple wants them.
In this scenario, notice the absence of the old dynamic of the carrier dictating to the manufacturer what features they want, or how the phone should operate. This won’t just apply to Apple, but all other manufacturers are going to have the same expectations going forward.
At that point, Apple will have successfully changed the landscape of a huge marketplace, rightfully re-defining the carriers as simply “dumb-pipes”.
And it can’t come a moment too soon….
I have to agree to some extent. It makes no commercial sense that a few, maybe 2% of users will use 30% of the bandwidth.
I suggest, charge the abuser and leave everyone else alone.
With utility companies, consumers typically don’t have any choice. You only have one company that you buy power, water or whatever from.
No choice.
In most areas, consumers have some choice of who serves their telco needs.
The telcos aren’t public utilities and shouldn’t be treated as such, nor given the kind of monopoly authority/power that most public utility companies have over their customers.
Another reason to use wifi…
OK, except don’t force us to guess how much we’ll use in advance then hit us with huge overages if we’re wrong, No packages or tiering, just $10/month for the connection and x¢/Kb for all comers. No discounts for large users or exponential rate plans. The current scheme of forcing people to pay for more than they’ll use for fear of huge overages is a scam. I have 12000 ATT rollover minutes, because of that fear. The other carriers are worse. They just keep the minutes you paid for and laugh all the way to the bank. So go for it, if you dare.
It’s not just the bandwidth hogs – what about all the people who might want an iPhone but don’t know how or don’t care to use data? There should be a $10/month data plan for folks like my mother, who might get a second hand iPhone from me or my father, but probably wouldn’t use more than 10MB / month. The $40 tier seems fair for “normal” use, which is up to say 250 MB / month. Any more than that should be charged at something like $10 / 100MB.
When Verizon gets the iPhone, its just a means for Verizon to limit iPhone data hogs from crashing Verizon’s touted and vaunted network! And to prevent AT&T;from creating a tv commercial laughing their a$$ off as the Christmas Island of Misfit Toys gets a newcomer… The Verizon 3G Coverage Map!!!
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Part of the problem is the difficulty in getting a handle on how much data bandwidth you are using. We all understand “minutes” of voice bandwidth, but “GB” of data is much more nebulous.
People can buy their own T1’s for less than that $400 a month stuff. As far as metered bandwidth and video on demand via the internet which everyone thinks is the next big thing.. yeah right. Start charging for the downloads and all of a sudden those 30GB BluRay movies sitting on the shelf at Frys looks a LOT more attractive.
Talk is cheap. If Verizon gets the iPhone, Apple will have a lot to say about it’s rate plan. Ask AT&T;. Otherwise T-Mobile or perhaps Apple can save Nextel
from the abyss. Whoever sells and services iPhones will improve, AT&T;is just a slow learner.
@ Dave Smith re “Another reason to use wifi…”
And who do you expect to pay for it?
You have an amount established for unlimited use. If you use less, you should pay less. Simple.
Too bad carriers want to talk about bandwidth as if it was something where the “unlimited” plan is the floor and some to-be-determined cap and charge is the ceiling.
Horseshit. You people have been making money on the 95% of the people who use almost nothing. The rate for “unlimited” is the ceiling, and we scale down from there. If not, GFY.
Reading between the lines Verizon’s getting the iPhone.
I agree that the “hogs” should pay more. But only if the customers who voluntarily use less bandwidth can have a plan that costs less than the current “unlimited” plans.
SO let’s see … they sell you a highspeed service based on bandwidth (up to 5Mbps) and then call you a bandwidth hog if you actually use it? Makes perfect sense! Clearly these “hogs” should be punished as they most certainly must be PIRATING and ultimately costing American Telco workers their jobs. Oh the travesty!!
In the end it’s all about one thing: separating you the customer from the freebies you now enjoy so greedy companies can offer those same features later at jacked up rates and line their pockets. Every home one earth today *should* have free communication to anywhere on the planet as part of their pre-paid internet package, but free doesn’t make enough money.
Hog Czar!!!
all the users who pay for unlimited yet use hardly any bandwidth
all the users who buy plans with minutes that go unused and vanish
they must think we are stupid.
@TimD I’m sorry but that’s not going to happen til LTE gets in place. Who’d want an iPhone that can’t surf and talk at the same time?
I just got back from Germany where you can buy a pay-as-you-go USB data modem for $45, with daily rates costing around $5, or $30 a month. Verizon offers the same thing for $130 for the modem, and $15 a day. What a difference! Germany also offers a much greater range of tiers for customers than here. It all really brought home to me just how much the US cellular providers are ripping us off here, it’s really too bad we can’t do anything about it. Instead of paying $40 or even $50 for Internet, why couldn’t we have a rate for, say, $20 for 5GB? This would solve the “hogs” problem, and would make the prices more reasonable for most of us.
So we get charged for text messages – which run on the control channel and cost the networks nothing – and now we need metered data pricing too?
Why don’t networks use the money they’re gouging from consumers text-messaging to subsidise the data “costs” …?
actually they are talking about exactly what you are. raising the price for those that are junkies and very likely lowering it for those that use very little to none
@Brau, leodavinci, Powers, Gabriel
“In 2008 and through Q3 of 2009, AT&T;invested approximately $19 billion toward wireless…”
That’s B for billion not million.
Then after they do that, look at the network analysis to see how much extra bandwidth you have and see every bit get used up right away.
That has got to be a bit overwhelming.
No one. Absolutely no one had any idea how much of an explosion the iPhone was going to be. Everyone thought Apple was insane predicting they would sell 8 million iPhones by a certain date. They totally crushed it. Now on the 3rd version, the iPhone is still growing exponentially.
Once again, all the experts and competitors said it would not happen.
You have to put yourself in the position of an engineer trying to guess how much money to ask from higher ups to double wireless capacity in certain areas. How quickly will it grow?
Apparently all the experts were wrong.
Plus many users probably have no idea the bandwidth difference of ethernet vs. 3G. Your work network can easliy be 1000baseT, that’s Gigabit ethernet, or 1,000Mbit. The iPhone 3G is 3.6Mbit at best. That means your work network is 277 times faster moving data and video from servers to workstation.
The 3G wireless is not as fast as a 20 year old network standard of 10BaseT.
Apple and Google should team up, yeah yeah I know they’re supposed to be enemies, and buy Sprint, and turn their bandwidth into all data, free to users of Apple and Google phones.
Over @ PixoBeBo recently Kateie Mac opined that the cell companies are selling gym memberships- not service and have gotten away with inadequate networks because most didn’t use what they were paying for and as smart phone usage increases, the cracks are showing. Otherwise, it’s not so much a technology program as it is an undercapacity network.
Of course they need to shift to tiered pricing, especially for the top 5% heaviest users. A the high usage hogs need to get a grip–if we want a decent network, either you pay for it or the rest of us half to subsidize you. So get a grip, the rest of see right through your lame attempt to blame the telcos. Oh, and if any one of the telcos does try to rip us off, we’ll just switch to one of the others. No stupid comparisons to high density countries that are more easily serviced (eg, Germany) is going to fool us. No they’re not all “conspiring” against us. Peddle your free lunch for yourselves somewhere else.
No one seems to understand. It’s all so simple.
If I want it, it should be free. If you want it, it should be very expensive, so that mine will be free.
The logic is perfect.
Don’t you get it?
I once owned a business. I lost money on every transaction, but people loved me so much that I made up for it in volume. Until I could not do it any more.
You do see how that works, don’t you?
Why don’t they just stop putting out things like VCast and not allow smartphones with data centric usability allowing other companies that encourage mobile device evolution to deal with that? All of our data bandwidth is a small fraction of what other countries provide on a Mb/s rate. They are just showing that they want to milk the current system instead of upgrading to what people really want to do with their devices. So bottom line, Verizon should leave smartphones and other mobile media capable devices to networks that give a damn like Sprint and ATT.
Here in HK, I thought I use lots of bandwidth and subscribe an unlimited data plan vs the less expensive 500MB / month plan. It turns out I didn’t even consume 500MB after 3 months. So I agree they should charge less for those using less.
Macguy said: ” I have to agree to some extent. It makes no commercial sense that a few, maybe 2% of users will use 30% of the bandwidth.
I suggest, charge the abuser and leave everyone else alone.”
—————————————————
I think if given the chance, the telcos like Verizon will lower the bar and define bandwidth hogs as people who download a few iTunes movies to their Apple TV or iPhone every month. If you give them an inch, the telcos WILL take a mile……
Wireless technology has been grooming for last few years. It’s really a great revolution in E world.
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The question, of course, is how Verizon defines “bandwidth hogs”? It’s very hard to believe that Verizon would pass up any opportunity to put the screws to its customers.
Sorry for my last comment it was by mistaken. Wireless technology has been grooming for last few years. It’s really a great revolution in E world.
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@kenh
Yep. Exactly.
Me, me, me, me, me…..
God help these idiots if we ever have another great depression.
“smartphones with data centric usability “
heh, that’s a hoot…spoken like a true government tit-sucker.
Before I had a smart phone, my monthly cell phone bill was $40/month. With my iPhone that doubled. I think $80/month is plenty for the phone company and I don’t want to be told I have to pay more.
Of course, Verizon is the company that lost the iPhone because Steve Jobs wouldn’t allow them to disable features a la carte? He wanted unlimited data for a set fee and Verizon told him to stick it.
And Verizon doubled their cancellation fee to over $300. Why anyone stays with Verizon is beyond me.
Logical: infinite bandwidth doeasn’t exist.
Can you imagine any other industry in which the people who use the service the most are villified and called names by the supplier? What if Domino’s called their biggest customers “pizza hogs”?
The telcos made a deal with us, gave us a contract and now they don’t like it that people are actually using what they promised – i.e. unlimited data. Fine. Put in a new deal for new customers. Offer cheaper plans for people who use less data, put in metered charging, whatever. It’s a free market. Just don’t go around insulting and alienating your customers.
I have never understood the arrogance and animosity with which the telcos treat their customers. They may not often have much of a choice, but usually there is at least some choice and they will go elsewhere just as soon as they have a chance.
@montex
“And Verizon doubled their cancellation fee to over $300. Why anyone stays with Verizon is beyond me.”
Well, I would guess that people stay with them ’cause the cancellation fee is $300+. What I do not understand why anyone would sign up with them now.
And I really don’t get why people keep wanting to get the iPhone on Verizon. wtf? Verizon seems like the worst telco around. T-Mobile maybe, but Verizon? no thanks.
You can do metered. AFTER you lower the prices to the quarter of what they are today. And then add $0.007 for each text message because it costs you probably half of that. Music as a sound can not be that expensive either because it’s just a sound as voice is. So at last video. You can charge for that $0.30 per movie. Now go meter!
“…”Chief Technology Officer Dick Lynch said current data plans, which allow unlimited Internet access for a flat monthly fee, encourage overuse of wireless networks, mainly by a small number of ‘bandwidth hogs,’ or individuals who send and receive lots of large files…”
“…I have to agree to some extent. It makes no commercial sense that a few, maybe 2% of users will use 30% of the bandwidth.
I suggest, charge the abuser and leave everyone else alone….”
—
NO, NO, NO!
These broadband customers who actually use the “unlimited” service for which they pay and already are downloading a large amount of video and photo data are NOT bandwidth hogs! They merely are at the forefront for the type of usage all Internet customers soon will engage in. DO NOT fall for this type of telecommunications industry misinformation. Fight this.
Besides, if carriers really wanna’ charge based on usage, they also should be forced to issue comparable credits for leftover bandwidth that is NOT consumed used each month.
In other words, it all balances out.
It’s true some people use a ton of bandwidth all the time. I’m one of them. By wired Internet is always downloading or uploading something. AT&T;has never said anything about it. Ever. I probably moved 10 gigs today of data. I live AT&T;that way.
Wireless, i think as we move to 4g and other technologies, the strain on networks will diminish. A lot of the problem is not so much people using data, but that they are waiting for the data to arrive….and in the mean time, someone else gets on the 3g network and requests a page…etc etc
I think if they made it faster, things will improve a lot more overall and this whole metering thing will go away
AND BANDWIDTH CONSERVERS SHOULD PAY LESS. Greedy bastards.
“bandwidth hog” “abuser” – these are loaded terms meant to set the terms of the discussion in a manner favorable to the telcos.
Don’t let them get away with it.
We all signed a contract that allows for, AND CHARGES for, unlimited usage.
If they want, they can offer contracts that cap out at lower limits – but they’ll have to charge less for them, otherwise, people will not go for it.
All I know is I’m paying $175/month (with taxes) for the iPhone unlimited full balls out plan. That’s a hella lot of money. I should be able to do what I want for that price.
What ever happened to WiMax?
They ain’t called Verizon Worthless for nuthin’.
This isn’t really about the single user but about corporations, who are building their entire business-plan around cheap flat-rate data transmission.
Look at Apple for one. Everything is moving toward constant on-line and download.
Why doesn’t Apple subsidize their customers instead of trying to roll the load onto the providers?
If a company wants their clients to use huge amounts of bandwidth, build it into the price of the service, i.e. to the price of the song or movie download.
That’s like a company selling gas-guzzlers demanding a gas flat-rate, so the customers don’t get “penalized”.
One should also consider that this constant-on business is bad for the environment. All those servers are using huge amounts of electricity. Hidden CO2 monsters.
So, get off the “poor me, bad them” routine and consider, whether it might not be much sounder, to use bandwidth as sparingly as gas, electricity or any other consumable.
In Japan, 50Mbps broadband costs $15/month. In New York City, Time Warner charges $100/month. In Boston, another provider charges $50/month.
I’d say the ISPs have a lot of explaining to do if they want to talk about efficiency and rationality.
@Your Mom BluRay
‘All I know is I’m paying $175/month (with taxes) for the iPhone unlimited full balls out plan. That’s a hella lot of money. I should be able to do what I want for that price.”
Could you give us a breakdown of your bill? And where you are?
Dear Verizon:
Since the industry currently charges only $30/month for “infinity”, then all we have to do is to define what “infinity” is and then scale back from there.
Recalling the reality that “Economy of Scale” pricing appiles, what this means is if we define infinity as 1 PB (Petabyte):
1PB/month: $30/month data fee (current status quo).
1TB/month: $3/month data fee
1GB/month: $0.30/month data fee
These latter two are each following a scaling of 1/1000th the data for 1/10th the price…that’s a 100:1 “profit” opportunity for the carriers, to pay for the overhead of having to manage a lot of little user accounts instead of just one big one.
And what all of this boils down to is one very important message for the carriers: please try to remember that most of what you’re trying to sell is merely a lifestyle convenience product for the buyer.
Yes, this means that you’re a luxury product who needs us far more than we really need you.
-hh
Yep and after they go after the “Bandwidth” hogs, next will be the “Email Hogs” can’t wait for per email pricing how about you?
Yes, those ‘hogs’….you know, the ones that PAY for UNLIMITED access!!!!
Who torrents over cellular? isn’t that punishment enough?
This is such crap!
There needs to be a $15 tier on AT&T;first for those, like my wife, who use under 250MB/mo.
$60/mo for the .75-1GB/mo we use is ludicrous.
They should ENCOURAGE moderation and reward those who avail themselves of that opportunity.
If they make a fraking profit in 2010 and it still sucks here in SF, I’ll just keep making my monthly “how much ya gonna take off my bill this month” call.
I save about $300-$350/yr with my “credit me or cancel me” calls.
My cat likes to drink from the faucet.
I like my cat, he is cool!
For this reason, I want to leave my water faucet on all the time.
I WILL NOT ACCEPT A HIGHER WATER BILL BECAUSE OF THIS!
DO YOU UNDERSTAND? I WILL NOT ACCEPT IT!
Quick poll: How much bandwidth do you use a month?
I am not sure if I am a “hog” or not.
How’s about this:
An unlimited plan that doesn’t have limits, rather than an unlimited plan with limits.
come and live in australia for awhile. the ISPs go their way.. now you can’t download more than 6GB a month or you get kicked down to 12-30KBs.
don’t be a telco patsy and fall for their BS. why be a patsy anyways?
these people that buy the ISP/telco BS line about bandwidth hogs are the biggest dupes I have ever seen speak. just be quiet if you don’t understand what you are talking about. There is no such thing as a bandwidth hog.. just a shit service provider.