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.
While I hate AT&T for this and their stupid technicalities they think make it "okay" for them to do, your analogy actually isn't quite accurate. It's not like an X number of lane highway at all. If anything, it's more like a water line; there's a reason why your internet connection is commonly referred to as a "pipe."
Nearly everyone I'm sure has experienced the frustratingly annoying phenomenon of trying to take a shower while the clothes washer is going and not have any water pressure. Or while you're showering, someone else turns on a sink or flushes a toilet and your pressure/temperature changes and you pretty much have to stop showering until things go back to normal. This is because water pipes can only handle so much water at any given moment and can only handle push a certain amount of water through at a time without bursting the pipes. Buildings with a poor plumbing infrastructure due to old/shoddy construction or location (being on the outskirts and far away from the main pump has an effect).
Similarly, your internet connection can only handle pushing so many bits at a time. The more faucets that are turned on (devices connected to the internet) and using some pressure (bandwidth), the less pressure there is for everyone else.
Now imagine if you had a water system with some sort of priority capability where the first person to turn on their shower gets all the pressure, that would make things worse; if they liked taking 3 hour showers, everyone else would suffer for extended periods. Upgrading your plumbing with bigger pipes and pumps can be expensive and time consuming. People like to avoid doing this for as long as they can and try to just live with the problem, or find ways of deterring the water abusers.
Some try to charge for the amount of water used, so if you want to use all your water in one shower you can but then you have to pay more money for each additional shower after that. Others put pressure limiters on individuals' pipelines so they can decrease your pressure anytime they feel you're using too much water.
I hate when internet companies try to impose these sorts of limitations as it's not in my best interest as a customer, even when I understand the technical reasons behind their decisions. But I try to deal with it and move on because that's that and isn't likely to change anytime soon (rather than reinvesting into their infrastructure and aggressively building out their pipes to accommodate more bandwidth, they're just concerned about making more money than they have before every 3 months, can't even sit still for a year while they get healthy).
The
major problem for me comes when they try to tell you what you can and can't use the water for. You can have a shower in one apartment but you're not allowed to pump that water next door and shower there. You can wash your clothes but you can't wash your car.
Who freaking cares what I'm using the water for if I'm paying you for the water? What does it matter to you, especially if you have the water usage discouragement tactics in place mentioned above?
Saying that that irks me would be an understatement.
T-Mobile's new $20 unlimited plans are SOOO tempting. If they get the new iPhone this fall, I'm switching. Easy as that.
Anyway, sorry for the long post but I couldn't let that broken analogy get so many up votes without a correction in the thread.
