
Is Throttling Smartphones Pointless? Study Suggests So - pg
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/data-throttling-validas/?hp
======
ChuckMcM
Seriously?

TL;DR version the 'unlimited guys' use the same total bandwidth as the
'limited' guys.

This is extreme proofiness[1]. You notice that the 'average' is much higher in
unmetered plans while the median is the same? If you know your maths you will
recognize that data hogs hog a _lot_ which results in a higher average. AT&Ts
throttling on the other hand keeps the 'median' about the same.

The real issue for the carriers is that they have a fixed amount of bandwidth
within their system which is difficult (read expensive) to increase.

Network bandwidth is one of those commodities that exists all the time,
whether or not it is being used.

People don't predictably use the bandwidth so its hard to sell "all" of it for
money.

So you end up with bandwidth that is sitting there unused and losing money (it
has a constant cost of ownership which is an amortization of maintenance,
depreciation, and licensing fees)

Their solution was to offer an 'unlimited' plan which, for an extra fee, lets
folks go over the max tiered plan. This allows them to 'sell' bandwidth that
might have otherwise gone unused. But if they drive the total use over their
hard stop EVERYONE runs out of juice.

So their 'fix' is that if you're pushing the average up they clip your usage.
That keeps the median in line with their highest rate plan while allowing them
to sell the excess bandwidth they have for those cases when everyone asks at
once for it.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Proofiness-Youre-Fooled-Numbers-
ebook/...](http://www.amazon.com/Proofiness-Youre-Fooled-Numbers-
ebook/dp/B0042VJ1OE)

~~~
revelation
This isn't about price. In a business where you can consistently sell 160
bytes of data for >10c over a span of many many years, the problem is flawed
antitrust laws or enforcement and no competition.

~~~
forgotusername
You're not selling 160 bytes, you're selling >1 second of airtime in two
geographical locations in licensed spectra for which licenses cost billions,
with support infrastructure costing millions.

See e.g.
[http://www.cwta.ca/CWTASite/english/pdf/Ovum_SpectrumFees.pd...](http://www.cwta.ca/CWTASite/english/pdf/Ovum_SpectrumFees.pdf)

~~~
throwaway64
SMS utilises control messages that get sent/recived anyways, it quite
litterally cost nothing and takes zero extra resources.

~~~
forgotusername
If they were "sent/received anyways", your phone's battery would last about
half an hour between charges. In reality the phone is powered off most of the
time, using neither battery or network capacity. A high precision timer wakes
its receiver at specific intervals to check if the network is paging.

In GSM, something like the following happens:

1) User submits SMS to their mobile phone.

2) Phone starts paging on a random access channel (no synchronization, lots of
phones trying to talk at the same time - limited resources for phones to
transmit, and limited chance for base station to receive an intact message).
Increased load on these channels require operator to have increased capacity,
and thus increased spectrum, increased hardware to handle peak throughput
(even if network is idle most of the time - one reason prices may not drop as
the network's popularity increases)

3) Base station manages to hear an intact access request, allocates a
dedicates timeslot on a control channel (a timeslice of spectrum dedicated
entirely to one particular handset - the number of available slices in a given
area is more likely measured in the 10s, not the 100s), uses yet more spectrum
to inform phone of allocation.

4) Phone indicates desire via dedicated control channel to start SMS
transaction.

[half a second of allocated time on a licensed band elapses]

5) Phone transmits message.

6) Phone retransmits message due to poor network visibility.

7) Network signals SMS received, closes transaction.

[resources used within network to route, store and forward message, payment
made to peering network to which the target phone is connected to]

8) Remote network begins paging target handset on a camping timeslot it shares
with a bunch of other phones, on frequencies covered by a second billion
dollar spectrum license.

9) Remote phone wakes up, begins placing load on random access channel.

[lots of retries and corrupting of other users' random access requests later]

10) Remote network allocates control timeslot, and begins attempting to inform
target phone of its allocation.

[another few second of allocated spectrum go here]

~~~
dkersten
_[resources used within network to route, store and forward message, payment
made to peering network to which the target phone is connected to]_

I spent two years working on carrier software for this section of the SMS
transmission procedure and there are plenty of things here which cost the
carriers money. SMS is definitely not free to the carrier.

Also, from my understanding, they don't actually piggy-back on the control
messages, at least not after they have entered the wired part of the system (I
never worked in the over-the-air part of the system, so have no knowledge of
what happens there). That is, even if the control messages were sent
constantly, SMS messages don't get a free ride, but rather they share the
bandwidth with the control messages, since those messages do not require near
as much bandwidth as the voice channels do.

As an aside, one carrier we installed our system in could only handle a
thousand or two messages per second tops, after that, messages were dropped
(well, TCAP transactions meant they were re-transmitted later), so there isn't
some magical unlimited bandwidth available to SMS messages.

------
revelation
It obviously is. Just mobile companies thinking they can still gouge prices
and corner people. But this time people have an comparison; they know that
they can download 5GB over their home line in a matter of an hour.

And that is food for thought when your provider is giving you 5GB or otherwise
limited plans _for a whole month_ while marketing phones with transfer rates
well above (or on par) with most home connections.

~~~
dsr_
As usual, assuming that corporations are competent but lying about their
motivations is helpful.

In this case, the observed effects of throttling are: \- customers paying more
money for overages \- customers with grandfathered unlimited plans sticking
around even if they might be better off elsewhere \- customers reducing usage
\- customers paying more for higher limits \- customers at the right edge of
the graph looking elsewhere

------
pixelcort
The last part about purpose-based pricing is what really scares me.

~~~
AlexandrB
This is already being used in some places:

[http://www.movistar.co/Personas/Internet_Movil/Planes/Paquet...](http://www.movistar.co/Personas/Internet_Movil/Planes/Paquetes_de_internet/)

