I posted this in
another thread not long ago, but it bears repeating again in this thread.
^^^That is total BS!
From my other post earlier...
This whole US cellular market of data usage is a bunch of bunk. 1GB, 3GB or unlimited, it's all irrelevant. The quantity of data a person uses has no affect on the network of AT&T, Verizon, et al. What matters and affects the network and it's users is the number of people on the network at a given time, in a given area and how many it can support. That's where the slow downs occur and congestion takes over. This is true whether a person uses 1MB or 10GB; it's all the same.
Imagine a highway with 2 lanes and 100 cars on it driving 55mph. Traffic should run fairly well. Now triple the amount of cars on the same road and traffic is going to get congested and the speed overall is going to drop significantly. If you widen the same road by 1 or 2 lanes, those 300 cars should be able to drive 55mph again and be fine. This is the same principle of the way the networks work.
The bottom line is the cellular companies are taking us for a ride and not a high speed one. They're cashing in on these "data plans" and restricting us the use of the road. We're only allowed to drive 3 miles on the unlimited length of the road each month. That is without regard to how many lanes are available and the amount of cars on the road. You could be the only car on a 3 lane road, but you're only allowed to drive 3 miles per month, or they're going to penalize you for driving further.
Then there is the text messages. Texting costs them next to nothing to accommodate as they insert that data in between regular telephone calls on the same network. Again, charging us all this money for these plans is uncalled for.
They are bringing in the cash hand over fist, yet their networks lag behind in capacity and speed. What are they doing with all this money? Perhaps they need to streamline their corporate & company structure and become more cost-effective.
Ok, two points to make.
First, you claim this is BS, but your analogy actually demonstrates why it's *not*. (I agree it's the wrong decision.)
Second, yes, they're 'bringing in the cash hand over fist". Yes, the networks are lagging behind in capacity and speed. (True regardless of the network in question.) What are they doing with all this money? Maintaining the existing network and expanding it as fast as all the various levels of bureaucratic red tape they have to deal with allows. It can take anywhere from 6 months to upwards of 6 *years* to get the permits necessary to add antennas and towers which are needed to expand network capacity. This part of the time-frame isn't something that AT&T (or Verizon, or Sprint) can control, and it varies by state, county, township, etc. as each has their own zoning (and other) requirements to be dealt with.
The reason our cellular networks suck so bad compared to most of the rest of the civilized world has to do with how they were built out in the first place. The federal government didn't want to pick a cellular standard, so they decided to 'let the market choose'. This meant that each provider chose their preferred technology, and had to build an independent network. As a result, we currently have 3 *incompatible* cellular networks in the US. All of which are attempting to provide coverage to as much land as possible.
To make fast build-outs possible, the providers *universally* decided to place towers as far apart as practical so that each tower would cover as much land as possible, with as little overlap as possible. As demand increases, there are often *no* other towers close enough to share that demand. The long, and unpredictable, lead times in getting the permits to build new towers makes the process of fixing *this* issue painful for everyone involved.
For the record, once those permits are in place, new tower/antenna builds often take as little as a month or a week depending on the details. This includes running wired bandwidth to the tower (the back haul), *building* the tower (where needed), and installing/configuring the antenna.
The tiered bandwidth plans are an attempt by the networks to get people to self-police their moment-to-moment bandwidth usage, and it works to varying degrees. We've had people here *brag* about how they were sucking down 20+ of GB of data every month on their unlimited plan. That kind of consumption, if it becomes even remotely common, will result in complete network congestion 24x7.
Back when the unlimited plans were originally offered, a 'bandwidth hog' was someone who used a few hundred *MB* of data bandwidth per month. Now, with smart phones having usable browsers and various music and video sites becoming popular, that's a low-usage scenario for the networks. Bandwidth consumption has increased by better than two orders of magnitude on the networks since the iPhone was released. Given that doubling the capacity of the network takes on the order of 3-4 years, it's no wonder why the networks are having issues keeping up. They had updates in the pipeline to handle the expected increases, but those increases were completely blown out of the water.
Again, I think they've made the wrong decision here, and they're using some seriously nit-picky, twisted logic to justify it. That doesn't mean their bandwidth concerns are 'BS'.
