
Pokémon Go data usage draws attention of House Energy and Commerce Committee [pdf] - envy2
https://democrats-energycommerce.house.gov/sites/democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/files/JohnHanke.Niantic.%20Pokemon%20Go%20Letter.2016.07.19.pdf
======
stanmancan
Those questions seem a bit loaded; since when does a business have any
responsibility to "make the customer whole" in the event they exceed their
data cap?

Yes, they could be more transparent about how much data is being used. Maybe
display it in the settings somewhere. However, I can't see how a customer
being slapped with a large bill falls on anyone other than the customer. Does
Google have a plan to make me whole when I watch too many youtube videos? Or
Apple when I stream too much Apple Music? Instagram when it pre-loads movies
as I scroll through the app?

~~~
brianpgordon
One time on a road trip years ago I downloaded the Guitar Hero mobile game to
my Razr to kill time. It turns out that the game downloads song data
repeatedly when you play different songs. An hour or so of playing ended up
costing me almost $100. I didn't understand how much data was being used, and
I didn't ever want to use mobile data again (on my feature phone) after that
point.

I can definitely see regulators being concerned about this kind of predatory
pricing. Carriers should price data close to what it costs them to offer it,
not at outrageously high prices to milk as much money as possible out of their
customers before they realize what they're spending.

~~~
ehnto
Regardless of the pricing, the onus is still on the customer to understand the
service they are using in my opinion.

If I go to the gym and drop 100kg on myself then it is my fault for not
understanding the risks, where it is reasonable to do so.

It is reasonable to expect you as a customer of the internet service to
understand the service you are using and the costs involved. It really falls
on no one elses shoulders.

I do agree that it tends to be over priced and the pricing structure is often
confusing but I still think it's within the grasp of most to understand it.

~~~
tempVariable
What the hell are you talking about? The weights are clearly labeled and you
know what's up before you even attempt it. With data, not only are there
multiple abstractions away from the consumer which all play in using and
controlling the data used, the phone companies purposely don't provide a data
cap lock in some cases. And then you get singled out and have to grovel for
forgiveness. Having software metering at device level and and phone company
level should be mandatory.

It's pretty much like not giving you the car speedomoter, and then the city
places speed trap cameras all over the city and then after a month, you get a
bill for $200 because you went over 4 times.

This business make money first mentality is pretty bonkers.

~~~
ehnto
Yeah the gym analogy didn't work. My point was simply that the gym isn't
responsible should you do something stupid, because there is plenty of ways to
educate yourself on avoiding that.

The internet provider offers a service with certain penalties that are
typically made clear enough if you read the contract. It is up to you, through
whatever means you have available, to not use it in a way that gets you excess
charges.

I like your speed trap analogy but I still don't think it is the ISP at fault.
If you can't afford the overage and your phone has no metering then there are
plans and pre paid plans available to suit that need. You are still the one
signing up to the service and using it, you don't have to if you think the
situation is unfair.

------
lettergram
I feel like this isn't really the House Energy and Commerce Committee's job...
Like, people choose their plan(s) and should be able to be responsible for
themselves.

~~~
malcolmgreaves
Exactly. They have absolutely no reason to even give this a moment's
consideration. This letter is an example of the US government overreaching its
powers and meddling with an organization that's doing nothing wrong.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Overreaching perhaps. _Probably_. Doing nothing wrong however…

If this game is consuming more bandwidth than is necessary to deliver its
experience, then they _are_ doing something wrong. Both in the technical sense
and the moral sense.

Developers have a moral obligation to not waste their user's resources,
dammit.

~~~
Trundle
Would you care to share the premises that lead to such a stance? I can't think
of how such an obligation would be occurred or why. To me use indicates that
the value the end user gets is greater than the costs. Why would creating
something valuable but not perfect be immoral? If those that create value are
acting immoraly when failing to achieve perfection, are those that don't
create value likewise held to the same standard?

I'm honestly a little offended at the notion that developers owe anything
beyond what's contractually agreed to their users. That something can be
accessed and enjoyed for free, that it can be preferable to any other
alternative activity the user could be doing, and still not be enough on the
part of the supplier to avoid moral condemnation seems like the height of
entitlement.

~~~
pdkl95
> failing to achieve perfection

This is a straw man - nobody expects perfection. For some reason there is a
lot of resistance to _educating_ the use and _asking their permission_.

I suspect that this game simply needed a clear warning before download and on
startup that includes an estimate of the bandwidth needs. Perhaps only the
first startup with an acknowledgement from the user. It may not be possible,
but if there is a way to estimate the remaining data plan limit it, including
an estimate that "This game will use X% of your data plan per hour" would be a
very good way to let the user manage the own usage.

> offended

Welcome to the club. I'm offended every time a developer user resources
(including data) without specific informed consent. "Free" is rarely without
cost, and the user is rarely informed in detail. This lack of respect for the
user has grown in recent years with the paternalistic attitude that users
shouldn't/can't understand technology and the developer should manage the
software for the user. Often this is claimed to be for dubious security
reasons.

You complain that the developer shouldn't have to do anything beyond what they
promised in a contract. They can have that level of interaction if-and-only-if
they inform the user properly so the user can make informed choices, and they
leave the user alone. If, however, the developer wants to retain any amount of
control such as data gathering, forcing updates, or using any user resources
without informed consent, then the developer is the responsible party. Let the
user _actually_ manage everything for themselves in a responsible manner, or
accept liability for any problems derived from your software.

> height of entitlement

The height of _improper_ entitlement are the developers that think they have a
right to spy on users, take actions on the user's system without their
permission, or otherwise do anything behind the user's back.

The user, however, _is_ entitled to business interactions free of any
dissembling or obfuscation.

~~~
Trundle
>This is a straw man - nobody expects perfection. For some reason there is a
lot of resistance to educating the use and asking their permission.

The person I responded to specifically said _waste_. As in the part they find
morally unacceptable is that if a developer had spent more of their time
optimising their product they could have got the data use down from 20mb/hour
to something less but chose not to.

If not perfection then they're still setting the bar for morally acceptable
actions to be somewhere between benefitting others and perfection. So my
question there would still remain. If someone developing a data wasteful
product that people enjoy using is immoral, what exactly is me sitting on my
couch eating doritos and watching tv? It's benefiting others far less than
creating pokemon go is.

>I suspect that this game simply needed a clear warning before download and on
startup that includes an estimate of the bandwidth needs.

Why this game? Or do you think all internet using apps should do this? If so
why would this not be on the operating system rather than every app rolling
their own version? Note that they already do measure data use and allow for
restriction. If pokemon go is using between 10 and 20 mb of data per hour as
the paper suggests then I'd be very surprised to learn that this is in excess
of most peoples data useage per hour of internet use. Facebook, instagram,
snapchat, reddit, pinterest, youtube, spotify, browsing around on ad and large
header image infected news sites is standard internet use no?

>Welcome to the club. I'm offended every time a developer user resources
(including data) without specific informed consent.

I don't see why informed is their responsibility and not yours. They aren't
choosing to run their work on your device.

>This lack of respect for the user has grown in recent years

Why does the user of a free service deserve anything from the developer,
including either the service or respect? Why does the developer owe the user
respect? Where did they earn that? If they are paying for the product, why do
they deserve anything more than is listed that they're paying for, of which I
know at the very least for pokemon go 'respect' is not a listed item.

>They can have that level of interaction if-and-only-if they inform the user
properly so the user can make informed choices, and they leave the user alone.

Why is the default that they owe the user something unless stated otherwise?
Were they born with this responsibility? Was it bestowed upon them when they
learned to develop? When they wrote the code? When they put it on a public
accessible site? When they marketed it? I can't see at which point they start
to owe complete strangers something if not at the point of contract signing.

~~~
loup-vaillant
> _The person I responded to specifically said waste. As in the part they find
> morally unacceptable is that if a developer had spent more of their time
> optimising their product they could have got the data use down from 20mb
> /hour to something less but chose not to._

Scale matters.

Let's suppose they reduce the data use down to 19mb/hour, saving just one
little megabyte. Let's assume the average user's data plan cost about 1$ per
gigabyte. Apparently, users spend about 5 hours per week on this app, let's
say 20 hours per month. So we're saving 20mb/month, or 0.02 (two cents). Let's
assume there are a million such users. Total, this would save 20.000 dollars
per month.

Okay, now let's suppose a developer's time is worth about 100$ per hour. It
would take 200 hours worth of development for the development cost to exceed
the savings, or about 5 weeks.

One little megabyte for a month is worth more than a _month_ of developer
effort. And of course this is just one megabyte. If the sibling threads are
any indication, a proper caching mechanism would likely save over 15Mb.

15Mb means the users are losing over 3 _million_ dollars per year.

------
djent
I've been playing Pokemon Go since the day of release, and my cellular
settings report the app has only used 230MB of data out of my 5GB per month.
I'm not too concerned about data usage - I'd rather Niantic cache more to
reduce load on servers.

~~~
revelation
I'm curious they seem to have so many problems, given that at it's heart the
game is rather .. decentralized.

They have access to this vast swath of cloud technology and a few Moores law
iterations to boot yet they seem to perform worse than even WoW did on launch,
with a game that is extremely forgiving to latency.

~~~
dom96
Indeed. In addition to this their outages have, over the past few days, been
very predictable. There is one happening right now [1], and one happened at
the same time yesterday and the day before. As far as I can tell that should
make it easy to decide when they should deploy new servers to handle load
better.

1 - [https://pokemongostatus.org](https://pokemongostatus.org)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yup. The load usually starts to happen when kids leave school, and then the
servers blow up when adults leave work. Until this week, the game literally
stopped working for me every day at 17:00.

------
BillTheCat
Some Senator's kid maxed out their data plan in a few days and now they're
writing an angry customer service letter.

I really hope the outcome is that cell companies are forced to get rid of caps
but we all know how much money telecom companies donate to prevent this kind
of regulation.

~~~
vermontdevil
It's the House so it'll be a Congressperson not Senator.

Usually that's what these committees do - check on variety of issues that
impact their voters back home. Sometimes it can be inane, sometimes not.

But usually nothing will result from this as no bills will be proposed till
after the election.

------
byandyphillips
The real question is, why aren't the mobile carriers giving us more data? 5GB
per month seems unreasonable for a $100 mobile plan.

~~~
MrJagil
For less than 20$ i get 40GB here in Denmark

EDIT: this one
[https://www.oister.dk/mobilabonnement/taletidsabonnementer/o...](https://www.oister.dk/mobilabonnement/taletidsabonnementer/oister-
fritale-20gb/) and then I took advantage of a "double your data" offering they
had. It's 120DKK for 20GB, usually.

~~~
sleepychu
For 20$ I get unlimited everything in the UK

~~~
alexdumitru
Most likely your speed will decrease to something like 128kbps after a cap.

~~~
onion2k
That's true on every network except Three. Unlimited data on Three genuinely
does mean unlimited without any restrictions (well, one actually, data used
tethering your phone as a wifi hotspot isn't included). You could download a
terabyte of stuff for £20/month (about $25).

~~~
sleepychu
I'm 15GBP/month with Three for unlimited data, 4GB tethering which is fine for
the occasional train journey of email/twitter.

------
ultramancool
Pokemon Go is fairly low data usage, 10-20 MB per hour of play (which this
document lists) is nothing compared to the hundreds of megabytes you can blow
in 10-20 minutes streaming video.

Few other apps go out of their way to make similar warnings, instead they rely
on the OS to do this for you, Android at least allows you to set both a
warning and a stop point for your data consumption very easily. Many mobile
providers prevent surprises to their customers by sending a text at 50%, 75%,
90% and then stopping unless they reply at 100%.

~~~
xanderstrike
And 10-20MB/hr is a massive overestimation. I've been playing virtually
nonstop for a week and Android calculates its usage at 193MB...

~~~
ultramancool
Yeah, on the other hand I had a buggy weather app that managed to use 2 GB of
data in a period of a few hours, while I wasn't even looking at it.

------
nilved
This is what the term "nanny state" was invented for, right? Why is your data
usage the govt's, Niantic's, or a telco's responsibility?

~~~
troebr
This is the state making sure that uninformed customers are not taken by
surprise by a gigantic data bill. Sounds like the state trying to protect its
citizens. They're not bullying Niantic, just raising a concern. If anything
this could prevent backlash from users against Niantic.

To me it looks like these people are doing their job.

~~~
nilved
The onus is on the uninformed customers to inform themselves.

~~~
it_learnses
yes, let's get rid of the FDA too. The Onus is on customers to inform
themselves of the quality and origin of their food. Buyer Beware baby!

~~~
nilved
I am glad we're in agreement.

~~~
loup-vaillant
You know, if we're going to go full Libertarian on this issue, a number of
people is going to die. They will buy poison and ingest it because they didn't
properly inform themselves. Others are going to trust the ads, then die all
the same.

When people are sick of dying, some form of regulation, or at least a trusted
communication channel, will likely take root. In the mean time, lots of people
are going to die.

This is a heavy price. So I wonder: is this issue worth all those deaths?

~~~
thaumasiotes
You know perfectly well that the FDA kills a lot of people already. You need
to argue that having it is better than not having it, not that there are
undesirable consequences to not having it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's not either/or, if you're honest about the issue you can also argue
scaling down (or up) some regulations.

That said, it's ridiculous to assume that if you do away with enforcing food
safety and quality standards things will be peachy. That's not how free market
works. You or your kids will likely die of poison. Because quite a lot of
entrepreneurs are assholes and the only thing that stands between you and
painful death are those regulations.

(Don't believe me? Do some shopping on eBay. Or better, go work for a week in
a grocery store and see the shit they pull off while _still_ staying within
regulations. I'm a chatty person so I quickly make friends with people at
stores, and a side benefit of that is that I get told when _not_ to buy meat
from them...)

~~~
thaumasiotes
> the only thing that stands between you and painful death are those
> regulations

Obviously, that is not actually true. Those regulations are a recent
phenomenon. But before we had them, very few people suffered painful death
from their lack.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Before we had them, the world was much less complex. Think of it this way -
regulations allow societies to grow bigger. A village of 100 people can handle
everything through interpersonal relations. A town of 10 000 will need a
mayor. A country of 10 000 000 requires a government to exist.

------
drbawb
I can get 30Mbit/s (3.75MB/s) to my handset and they're worried about _10-20MB
per hour?_ The problem here isn't the data usage by Niantic: it's the carrier
rate plans.

~~~
srtjstjsj
> 30Mbit/s

sustained?

burst capacity and total capacity are different.

~~~
CydeWeys
Obviously it varies wildly based on distance to nearest tower and how
saturated the band is with other users. "Burst/sustained" doesn't even capture
the main variables that would reduce his speed.

------
CognitiveLens
I know it's from big, scary government, but why would they ask a few yes/no
questions without requiring any sort of detail? A high school newspaper could
do a better investigation.

Dear Congresspeople Pallone, DeGette, and Schakowsky,

Thank you for reaching out to us. I hope this response reaches you before the
August 9, 2016, deadline.

1\. Yes 2\. No 3\. No 4\. No

Kind regards, Niantic.

------
protomyth
"A recent survey found that the average user spends 43 minutes on Pokémon Go
per day, compared with 30 minutes on WhatsApp, 25 minutes on Instagram, and 22
minutes on Snapchat."

How is this even a useful statement? I'm thinking that 22 minutes of video is
going to be a lot more data than 43 minutes of playing a game.

side note: I hope an irritated group of howling howler monkeys shadow every
speech of any politician that distributes a PDF that cannot be selected from
because its a friggin image file.

------
Sylphine
A better question would be: Why US carriers have overpriced data plans and/or
outdated infrastructure when my third world country provides me with better
price/performance that makes the Americans look like they are being ripped
off?

7$ per month assures me of download speed 300mb/s 100mb/s upload speed and
unlimited traffic on fiber. Do you have better deals guys?

~~~
dspillett
There are three issues here that I can think of.

First is the obvious one that your loaded question alludes to: a resistance to
change because that costs so companies won't do it until it would give them a
relatively easy advantage (that lasts more than a week) over their
competitors.

Second: creating new infrastructure can be a lot easier than upgrading. You
don't have to worry about supporting existing devices and userbase.

Third: In developing nations infrastructure projects like that are often in
significant part funded by internal government funds and external aid rather
than there being an expectation that commercial entities will foot the entire
bill.

------
downandout
Was a similar inquiry conducted with Snapchat? I've read several stories of
4-figure data bills having been run up by teenagers addicted to the service,
but have not read about Congressional investigations into that issue. This
letter seems like a desperate attempt by its authors to ride the wave of
publicity currently surrounding Pokemon Go - it's clickbait for
Congresspeople.

------
ramblenode
I don't pay anything for Pokemon Go but I pay way too much for self-righteous
grandstanding from lawmakers.

------
GauntletWizard
The house should be asking questions. But it shouldn't be of Niantic; it
should be of the carriers, who are treating a not-very-scare resource as if it
were far more valuable than it is, thanks to their poor management of a
government-granted monopoly.

------
LargeCompanies
When are all the other GO apps going to be released?

Mario Kart GO (ok that's a risky proposition)

Super Smash Bros Go

Zelda GO

Silent Hill GO or Resident Evil GO

Augmented reality after many years I think will change video games and how we
play them. Virtually reality for me no thanks .. bulky and uncomfortable in
it's current form.

Now if you could wear sun like glasses in which augments reality (see &
explore a new world via these lightweight sunglasses) that would be cool!

------
nraynaud
I have completely secondary questions related to the politics of it: why is
"democrats" in the URL, don't they de-politize the working groups? isn't the
majority of the congress Republican? What about the "ranking member" in the
signatures? wikipedia doesn't really explain what it means.

On a side note, I'd like to add that this is an initiative from the
legislative power, not the government, and that this is a discussion and not
an enforcement. One of the big job of the legislative power is taking the
pulse of the world to try to inform their voting on law matters. If I were
libertarian, I would be really pleased to have a heads up before any law is
moved in my field of activity, and knowing the move has been made after at
least an enquiry has been made.

------
fweespeech
3 Democrats. :|

But yeah, this is silly. People have to be responsible for their own choices
after some point.

------
NamTaf
Never mind the data usage, how about the House _ENERGY_ committee focus on the
woefully inefficient battery usage the app has? I mean, that directly impacts
their area by way of forcing heaps of people to charge devices far more often.

~~~
vortico
A 5W charger is negligible compared to other things like 1000W+ air
conditioners. And you don't have to cool a house if you're outside playing
Pokemon...

------
vortico
It seems the consensus here is that data plans from US cell providers are more
expensive than they should be for their little amount of data. I'm curious
what the technical constraints of allowing more data for consumers would be.
If increasing everyone's data amount is _free_ for providers, then what's
stopping providers from getting in a battle for the largest data amount for a
given fixed price? Since this isn't the case, there must be some actual
cost/constraint for serving data ofer 3G/4G/LTE.

------
pkaeding
Isn't asking content-providers to subsidize the cost of data for the users of
their app contrary to network neutrality (which all three of the
representatives signing this letter voted in favor of)?

------
Kenji
State, this is none of your business! Focus on real issues! What are we,
infants who cannot keep track of our data usage? What are the cell phone
carriers, imbeciles who cannot maintain infrastructure at high loads? This is
an example of how the state poisons harmless interactions between consenting
parties by making up problems to grow and gain more legislative power.

------
Sektor
These numbers are flat out wrong, there's no way that the game uses '10 to 20
megabytes of data per hour' jpmorgan must have fucked that up somehow. I can't
be bothered typing out the whole url referenced in (5) but that's just wrong.

~~~
CydeWeys
Maybe if you click on a LOT of PokeStops, and expand the description to see
the larger photograph ...

And anyway, even if it were true, 10 MB/hr is nothing. That's 100 hours of
playing until you reach 1 GB, which is the lowest cap I've ever heard of.
Randomly browsing reddit will eat up a lot more than 10 MB/s if you're
clicking on image links. Hell, there are individual gfys that are larger than
10 MB.

------
peterkelly
Isn't monitoring of data usage of apps an OS-level issue/responsibility of the
user or their parents? Why is it the fault of Niantic? Any game could easily
use loads of data, and 10-20Mb/hour doesn't seem that much given what it does.

------
ticviking
I now wonder if the "server issues" are more an overloaded local cell network.

~~~
Consultant32452
I tend to have the opposite problem. Any public places with wifi like malls
and such are completely overloaded. It's not perfect, but I do much better on
my cellular data.

------
theseatoms
Tip: Download an Offline Area in your Google Maps settings for your local
region.

~~~
cheeze
Debunked as false. Source was somebody who works in the Google Maps org.

------
puaI
The only thing more infuriating than the fact that this letter was sent
out...is that taxpayer money went to some incompetent person who couldn't be
bothered to use a proper small-caps font.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
> recent reports suggest that playing Pokemon Go could exhaust a consumer's
> available monthly mobile data.

Well, I'll be. Poor consumers.

Ranking members Frank, Diana and Jan might be exhausting your tax dollars.

------
srj
I've been playing this game quite a bit (level 20) and my data usage is a mere
122MB since July 1. It ranks 4th among apps in my overall data usage.

------
khnd
i feel like they're trying to stay ahead by focusing sights on niantic before
the public shows up at the telcos with pitchforks. lame overall.

------
dforrestwilson
Wow the report that I published was cited in the letter! Kinda cool!

Two questions:

1\. How did Congress get our note? 2\. Why is Congress spending time doing
this?

------
andybak
Gosh. Do you still not have unlimited data plans in the US?

    
    
         love, Europe
    
    

(EDIT - I was rather expecting downvotes for that glib post but there was a
serious intent. You guys should be angry about your mobile and cable data
situation. Very angry. It's pretty much the most expensive in any country I'm
aware of. No doubt there are countries with a worse story on data charges but
I've not been there)

~~~
gleenn
We did and then they took them away.

~~~
goodplay
Capitalism and Free Market :)

------
arrty88
Is the app uploading pictures all day?

------
morgante
Give me a break.

This is yet another reminder that Serious People hate anything which is fun.
If you're playing the game for hours of time, it of course uses data. Per
minute, its data usage is actually rather minimal.

------
Zikes
If Pokemon Go results in legislation mandating reasonable rates for mobile
data I will buy a Wii U and several shares of Nintendo stock.

~~~
jaggederest
No, they're going to punish Niantic for using so much data, not make rates
reasonable. Remember, the shareholders in US Senators are the large
businesses.

------
dewiz
3 good things could come out of Pokemon Go and similar games/apps/trends:

1\. smartphones will finally have decent batteries (e.g. lasting at least 1
day for the avg PokemonGo player, aka days/weeks for the rest of the world)

2\. through healthy competition, carriers hopefully stop charging ridiculous
amount of money for data

3\. convergence of home wifi and carriers, i.e. you can use and share your
home wifi within miles from your home

</tooOptimistic>

~~~
jsmthrowaway
> 1\. smartphones will finally have decent batteries (e.g. lasting at least 1
> day for the avg PokemonGo player, aka days/weeks for the rest of the world)

This is blocked upon a breakthrough in battery technology, not any (in)action
on the part of handset manufacturers as you are lightly implying. Drones are
more my wheelhouse but phones and automobiles are similar; we've reached
roughly the top end of energy density with current known technology and
chemistry. The fact that your phone can talk for several hours while operating
multiple radios is already quite impressive given battery size, so I'm not
sure why you classify phone batteries as anything but "decent."

Pokémon Go isn't going to revolutionize our understanding of chemistry and
physics, unfortunately. If you want a phone the size of an old brick you can
have longer battery life, with the risk that a battery of that size will react
very violently to being punctured or abused and swells frequently. Even
current ones do.

(You should see my drone's LiPos after I pull them out of a particularly
demanding run [i.e., sport mode]; they're often hot to the touch and swelling,
and this is somewhat expected depending on circumstances. Battery health is
something you have to take seriously with drone batteries because they're
surprisingly sensitive and don't have a long useful life. "Invent a better
battery" is a meme among drone folks.)

~~~
xanderstrike
The answer is literally bigger batteries. I'd rather have a phone that lasts
all day than one that's a millimeter thinner than it was last year. I carried
around a 14oz 1" deep Cassiopeia Pocket PC in my pocket for years, a
smartphone half that size would last days... so where is it?

~~~
jsmthrowaway
Keep in mind that the larger you make lithium-ion batteries, the scarier they
get.

~~~
onetwotree
> the more fun they get

FTFY

