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20 meg limit over 3G whose fault?

C

coochiekuta

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 6, 2010
258
2
here and there
the 20MB limit for a single download over 3G is AT&Ts thing or apples? im going with att being the reason. if so, whats the limit on verizon? of course i could just google it but why bother when im already here. :D

last question, what does this limit mean for the icloud stuff? thx
 
wordoflife said:
both the carriers and Apple
Click to expand...

if that is true, that sucks. we see more and more cellular able tablets out there. that limit wouldnt seem to be very good for a tablet. phone, maybe. a tablet? no way.

well if apple has something to do with it, maybe they will have it upped for cloud usage. then again im not sure if facetime has gone 3G yet so it may be a while.
 
On verizon...this isn't a huge deal. I can't even imagine downloading that large of a file on their 3g network...sound slow to me!


AT&T would be more reasonable, but I connect to wifi when I download all apps anyway. (I am a verizon user, btw)



I think this probably started as a way for AT&T to save network bandwidth, which sounds reasonable to me. In larger cities, there isn't enough bandwidth to go around with that limitation. It would be worse if the limitation was removed.
 
coochiekuta said:
the 20MB limit for a single download over 3G is AT&Ts thing or apples? im going with att being the reason. if so, whats the limit on verizon? of course i could just google it but why bother when im already here. :D
Click to expand...

This limit applies globally, regardless of the carrier. It is due to the poor 3G performance still seen in most places.

However, it most likely will increase over time, as it already did in the past (from 10 MB up to 20 MB).
 
a quick google search says its not global.

really im not here to try to make sense of why they did it. im sure we can guess at it all day.
 
I dont think its just the 3G speed they took into consideration for the Download limit.

Downloading data over 3G requires a lot battery consumption. Most of the Chips in your phone is active while retrieving/downloading data from a connected server.

- :apple:
 
coochiekuta said:
the 20MB limit for a single download over 3G is AT&Ts thing or apples? im going with att being the reason. if so, whats the limit on verizon? of course i could just google it but why bother when im already here. :D

last question, what does this limit mean for the icloud stuff? thx
Click to expand...

Not "fault". Apple saves people with expensive contracts from having to pay shedloads of money if they don't watch out. At the wrong place, at the wrong time, you might pay $1 per MB. Myst is about 400 MB, that would be $400. Can you imagine the screaming that would go on if people pay hundreds of dollars for a "free" upgrade of an application?
 
JohnForte said:
This limit applies globally, regardless of the carrier. It is due to the poor 3G performance still seen in most places.

However, it most likely will increase over time, as it already did in the past (from 10 MB up to 20 MB).
Click to expand...

That is inaccurate. I have downloaded large files in the field with all four major carriers (Sprint, Verizon, ATT, and T-Mobile) so it definitely isn't global.
 
coochiekuta said:
the 20MB limit for a single download over 3G is AT&Ts thing or apples? im going with att being the reason. if so, whats the limit on verizon? of course i could just google it but why bother when im already here. :D

last question, what does this limit mean for the icloud stuff? thx
Click to expand...

The download cap over 3G used to be 10MB but was upped to 20MB around Feb 2010. I am guessing the cap was requested by AT&T to try and reduce the traffic load on their network. Here is an old thread about it...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/866652/
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A5274d Safari/7534.48.3)

On vzw when I ha my droid incredible I would download entire 100-150mb+ ROMS for my phone. Usually only took about 30min Max. But it seemed to have much higher download speeds than my iPhone:-/
 
The limit is entirely up to Apple. They write the firmware - not AT&T, Verizon or any other carrier.

The level Apple chooses to set it at might be influenced by carriers, but IMO it simply shouldn't be there.
 
coochiekuta said:
a quick google search says its not global.

really im not here to try to make sense of why they did it. im sure we can guess at it all day.
Click to expand...

I believe it's gobal as far as using an iPhone's mobile/cellular data to download apps from the app store, regards of which world carrier you use. It's not a physical limit of the 3g technology or the carriers... just a limit Apple have put in place.
 
JohnForte said:
This limit applies globally, regardless of the carrier. It is due to the poor 3G performance still seen in most places.
However, it most likely will increase over time, as it already did in the past (from 10 MB up to 20 MB).
Click to expand...
It applies to Bell in Canada as well, even though if I'm in a good service area I can get a constant 5 Mbps down (640 kB/s) which will download a 20 MB file in 32 seconds. Performance of 3G on Bell is quite good.
http://www.speedtest.net/iphone/134876468.png
EvilSmiley said:
I dont think its just the 3G speed they took into consideration for the Download limit.
Downloading data over 3G requires a lot battery consumption. Most of the Chips in your phone is active while retrieving/downloading data from a connected server.
- :apple:
Click to expand...
I guess it depends on your network speed, but even downloading a 100 MB app over 3G won't take that long/have a huge hit on battery life. Things like streaming video over 3G, 3D gaming with 3G network connectivity etc. are much more demanding as far as battery goes since when downloading an app your screen can be static or locked. I'd say it's more likely that since 100 MB would eat up 1/5 of some people's data plans (I have 500 MB monthly data allotment) they restrict it.
gnasher729 said:
Not "fault". Apple saves people with expensive contracts from having to pay shedloads of money if they don't watch out. At the wrong place, at the wrong time, you might pay $1 per MB. Myst is about 400 MB, that would be $400. Can you imagine the screaming that would go on if people pay hundreds of dollars for a "free" upgrade of an application?
Click to expand...
Indeed. I'd tend to think that over usage of data = $1/MB is a little high if you have a data plan and you're downloading from your own network, but even at $0.05/MB - my personal overage rate for data usage - 400 MB is still $20 if all of it is over usage. IMO it'd be nice if you could configure the limit yourself, but Apple is taking the safe side since many people don't know details of their plans and thus can't blame Apple because they downloaded a 400 MB free update that ended up costing them between $20 and several thousand dollars. (On Virgin Mobile in Canada if you have NO data plan and you use data, the PPU charge is $51.60/MB)
 
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