[article] T-Mobile says "download at home" after slashing data cap

oscarBravo

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/broadband/364237/t-mobile-says-download-at-home-after-slashing-data-cap

Mobile operator T-Mobile has unveiled a new fair use policy, raising a few eyebrows by telling customers to leave high-bandwidth downloads for home.
From the beginning of next month, the policy will limit customers to 500MB a month, down from 1GB or 3GB, depending on the contract. "If you want to download, stream and watch video clips, save that stuff for your home broadband," a document on the T-Mobile site said.

chicken fingers

500mb per month is disgraceful... that is early 90s shiit.
These days everybody has youtube etc on the cellphone.
Shows how backwards some companies are and how stretched their services are running.

cgarvey

Sign of the times, I guess. Mobile data being subsidised by declining voice revenue means less data, or more expensive data is on the way with nothing on the immediate horizon to fundamentally change that.

lomb

Basically they just want ten or fifteen a month more for unlimited data . Voice calls in the UK are shockingly cheap. How about 15 a month for 600 minutes and a gig a month on three ? Add in free 400 quid handsets and there is no money to be made in it so they have to do something. Heavy users will have to pay more.

lomb

chicken fingers wrote: »

500mb per month is disgraceful... that is early 90s shiit.
These days everybody has youtube etc on the cellphone.
Shows how backwards some companies are and how stretched their services are running.

The services are not stretched at all. Modern technology massively increases the bandwidth every day . It's just an antennae that has a broadband land connection costs little or nothing . They want us to believe they are stretched to create a value for a product. The fact that Vodafone can do 30 plus gigs for 30 a month values a gig at 1 euro only. Hardly stretched....

watty

More proof that Mobile is "Mobile Internet", Not Broadband.

Mobile can't support it. There isn't the capacity without quadrupling or more the number of masts or channels.

If all the Vodafone Data users using even 10G a month then speeds would drop below 1Mbps

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/01/10/t_mobile_fair_use_data_limit/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/12/t_mobile_caves/
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/01/12/virgin_mobile_us_mobile_broadband_clamp/

Mobile, even LTE simply can't compete with volume of data, speed or reliabilty with real Broadband.

The ONLY real contention/congestion control mechanism that Mobile has is to limit traffic. Over time that limits the proportion of time a user is connected and reduces congestion.

One Cable or Fibre connection/user has potentially 10 times or more the capacity of an entire Mobile Mast. One Average DSL connection has about the same capacity as one sector of a mobile Mast.

Also Mobile operators don't really make any money from data, unless the users don't use much. If users downloaded 15Gbyte a month for €15 that would cost the Mobile operator 150x more than 50mins + 50 texts on a €15 voice package.

oscarBravo

lomb wrote: »

Modern technology massively increases the bandwidth every day .

Sadly, that particular fallacy seems to be informing government policy. It's a pity that the Shannon limit doesn't inform policy to the same extent.

bealtine

oscarBravo wrote: »

It's a pity that the Shannon limit doesn't inform policy to the same extent.

You had to go and spoil it all with a mere fact...

oscarBravo

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/01/13/2234259/Virgin-Mobile-To-Start-Throttling-Broadband2Go

bealtine

oscarBravo wrote: »

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/01/13/2234259/Virgin-Mobile-To-Start-Throttling-Broadband2Go

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12176567