Will the US ever offer unlimited data as a standard?

[athenian200]

I think metered connections are here to stay, and I think they will start seeing metered connections on more residential ISPs as well. In the long run it is the only model that make sense.

You're probably right. I have to say, though. I think that when unlimited broadband is completely gone on both residential ISPs and mobile, it's going to be a pretty painful reality check for anyone who doesn't have a good paying job.

I mean, websites these days waste a lot of bandwidth with full-page ads and videos that load without your permission. No one really worries about it now, it's considered to be a mere nuisance. But when you have to pay for every single sound bite and video an ad-filled page loads... it changes your perspective quite a bit.

As smartphones became more powerful, people were just salivating over the concept of being able to stream videos anywhere, listen to their music on the go, store everything in the cloud, digitally download movies, games, and music. But then the providers found they couldn't handle the number of subscribers, and we got data caps on mobile broadband.

Now, we're reaching a point where not only do we have to be careful about using it on mobile devices, we may have to worry even at home on a wired connection.

We've gone from a world where all of this very liberating technological stuff was possible and taken for granted, to a world where a lot of those things will be an expensive luxury. The actual cost of all the technological goodies we've been enjoying for the past 14 years is about to come due, and it's going to be extremely tough on everyone who came to rely on it.

If it gets to the point that our bill is based on exactly how much we use, that's really going to change the way we think about using the Internet. Let's just say I imagine there would be a lot less refreshing and random searching, and a lot more purposeful, business-like use. It would start to feel more like sending something via mail, or driving somewhere in the car. You'd feel at least momentarily compelled to calculate the fuel/postage cost in your head to ask yourself if it's really necessary, before making a single click.

I know exactly what I would do if I know I'm being billed for every bit of data I used. I'd ditch Skype for IRC, modern forums for USENET, disable images and scripts, rely heavily on browser caching, and make judicious use of old-fashioned ASCII e-mails. If anyone sent me a YouTube link or a photograph, I would just tell them that I won't look at it unless they pay me to do so. In other words, goodbye Web 2.0, hello 20th century bandwidth-savers. Hehe.

 

[devman]

You're probably right. I have to say, though. I think that when unlimited broadband is completely gone on both residential ISPs and mobile, it's going to be a pretty painful reality check for anyone who doesn't have a good paying job.

I mean, websites these days waste a lot of bandwidth with full-page ads and videos that load without your permission. No one really worries about it now, it's considered to be a mere nuisance. But when you have to pay for every single sound bite and video an ad-filled page loads... it changes your perspective quite a bit.

As smartphones became more powerful, people were just salivating over the concept of being able to stream videos anywhere, listen to their music on the go, store everything in the cloud, digitally download movies, games, and music. But then the providers found they couldn't handle the number of subscribers, and we got data caps on mobile broadband.

Now, we're reaching a point where not only do we have to be careful about using it on mobile devices, we may have to worry even at home on a wired connection.

We've gone from a world where all of this very liberating technological stuff was possible and taken for granted, to a world where a lot of those things will be an expensive luxury. The actual cost of all the technological goodies we've been enjoying for the past 14 years is about to come due, and it's going to be extremely tough on everyone who came to rely on it.

If it gets to the point that our bill is based on exactly how much we use, that's really going to change the way we think about using the Internet. Let's just say I imagine there would be a lot less refreshing and random searching, and a lot more purposeful, business-like use. It would start to feel more like sending something via mail, or driving somewhere in the car. You'd feel at least momentarily compelled to calculate the fuel/postage cost in your head to ask yourself if it's really necessary, before making a single click.

I know exactly what I would do if I know I'm being billed for every bit of data I used. I'd ditch Skype for IRC, modern forums for USENET, disable images and scripts, rely heavily on browser caching, and make judicious use of old-fashioned ASCII e-mails. If anyone sent me a YouTube link or a photograph, I would just tell them that I won't look at it unless they pay me to do so. In other words, goodbye Web 2.0, hello 20th century bandwidth-savers. Hehe.

I don't know if it will be the doom of Web 2.0. Metered electricity isn't the doom of fun uses for electricity (people still power up their Plasma TVs and 1KW quad SLI boxen). I would hope that techniques learned for designing mobile sites will translate (like no auto-play videos!)

I think a lot of it depends on what costs settle at $0.10-0.20/GiB wouldn't significantly change my habits from what they are today. On the other hand $1-2/GiB would have me thinking about usage a lot more.

As everything becomes packet switched (VoiP, IPTV, etc) there is no reason that the infrastructure provider needs to be involved at all in higher level services. Over-the-top services could provide broadcast TV, telephony, on-demand, etc , the physical provider simply bills for bits. This is a pipe dream without more effective regulation though and would require breaking up or otherwise better regulating the vertical consolidation that is occurring in the industry.

 

[athenian200]

I don't know if it will be the doom of Web 2.0. Metered electricity isn't the doom of fun uses for electricity (people still power up their Plasma TVs and 1KW quad SLI boxen). I would hope that techniques learned for designing mobile sites will translate (like no auto-play videos!)

Yeah, but the electric company only charges $0.08 per kilowatt hour, and most things don't use anywhere near a kilowatt. Even so, I do make a point to build my computers in a somewhat power-efficient manner and use LCDs. I even replaced all my lightbulbs with LED bulbs. I don't go as far as using an Atom, but I definitely don't overclock or use multiple GPUs. The more heat you generate, the harder your A/C has to work to cool things down.

I think a lot of it depends on what costs settle at $0.10-0.20/GiB wouldn't significantly change my habits from what they are today. On the other hand $1-2/GiB would have me thinking about usage a lot more.

Well, right now the going rate for 1GB is about $10 on mobile broadband. I'm thinking that it will probably settle around $0.50-$1.00 per GB for wired connections. I don't think it would go down to $0.10 unless people actually start using Terabytes of bandwidth on a regular basis and they're forced to upgrade their equipment enough that a Gigabyte is nothing. You have to remember, back in the old days, ISPs could offer unlimited data pretty easily, because 56K modems made it physically impossible to download more than 12GB per month even if you tried.

As everything becomes packet switched (VoiP, IPTV, etc) there is no reason that the infrastructure provider needs to be involved at all in higher level services. Over-the-top services could provide broadcast TV, telephony, on-demand, etc , the physical provider simply bills for bits. This is a pipe dream without more effective regulation though and would require breaking up or otherwise better regulating the vertical consolidation that is occurring in the industry.

Yeah, that might help quite a bit, but we would have to get people to think of the ISPs as utilities. Right now they're thought of more like cable companies or business partners.

 

[LTR]

I still have unlimited data with VZW on my Note 3. I just buy my phones full retail on launch day sell my year old one and keep my unlimited data and still have the latest phones. With the resale value being what it is I rarely end up pay more than what it would cost to sign a new 2 year contract, and get a discount on a new phone. I'm not sure how much longer this game plan is going to last but I plan on riding it as long as I can.

 

[Thuleman]

don't feed me this "One percent only use 6-10 gigs a month on their phones."
With all the new HD phones out there , this is getting easier to reach by the year.

I have had my S5 (1920x1080) for 2 months now and I use less than 300 MB of LTE data per month.

You couldn't pay me to watch a movie/podcast/w/e on the phone, I also don't do any gaming that constantly pulls data on it. It's purely a phone, email, and remote connection to work when needed device. Whatever data intensive tasks I may need to do happen on WiFi.

Carriers do have access to stats and I trust that carriers will do what's necessary to stay profitable. I don't see unlimited data as standard because it's a "communist" system where all users are equal. In reality not all users are equal in their data usage and I am fine with usage based fees because I have full control over my usage.

Those who use a lot should pay a lot. It's a pretty simple concept and the beauty of it is that each individual can control how much they are willing to pay.

 

[JaiWebb]

How did you use so much data? That's putting the unlimited back into unlimited!

I've been using my Note 3 as my only internet connection for over a year now as I no longer play online games and that was the only reason I ever really needed home internet (a fast ping). I just have my phone setup as a WiFi hotspot while home and almost always hooked to the charger and I let my other family members use it too. Plus, I torrent all my TV shows and everything else.

Here was my official usage for the month. It's a record for me, I usually do around 150-175GB a month and have never gotten a complaint for it by Verizon, yet!

At one point Verizon did offer me a free iphone 5s to upgrade my contract, but nope.
I'll be purchasing the Note 4 this fall at its retail price, too.

 

[mi7chy]

Unlimited Verizon data here also and paying $60 total every month. Most I've ever used is about 20'ish GB. Along with Foxfi WIFI tethering when on the road it also serves as backup internet connection when broadband goes down via wireless bridge to dedicated Linksys WRT54G running OpenWRT that feeds wireless and wired clients. Only drawback is you're suppose to pay full price for phone upgrades but I got the Note 3 as an upgrade without losing unlimited.

 

[Eshelmen]

and now it seems Verizon is pulling the plug sooner than later on you unlimited users.
Blah!

 

[Lunas]

and now it seems Verizon is pulling the plug sooner than later on you unlimited users.
Blah!

let them i just need to hold out till t-mobile comes here then verizon will loose a 12 year customer...

 

[munkle]

let them i just need to hold out till t-mobile comes here then verizon will loose a 12 year customer...

problem is they don't care, they know people who have no other choice but to go with verizon. At our house only option is verizon. Sprint, tmobile, and att have no service where we live. Alot of business people I know go with verizon as well because its the best coverage wise, they can't afford to be missing calls because of no service.

 

[Lunas]

problem is they don't care, they know people who have no other choice but to go with verizon. At our house only option is verizon. Sprint, tmobile, and att have no service where we live. Alot of business people I know go with verizon as well because its the best coverage wise, they can't afford to be missing calls because of no service.

Yep when I started this account my choices were verizon or alltel then they merged and att was basicly forced to take a state with nothing but CDMA towers. It took them 4 years after the alltel assets were sold to att before it became att and then it was just 2 years ago att put 4G coverage here verizon had it here 6 months before them.

Sprint and tmobile phones were not functional here at all.

 

[Trimlock]

problem is they don't care, they know people who have no other choice but to go with verizon. At our house only option is verizon. Sprint, tmobile, and att have no service where we live. Alot of business people I know go with verizon as well because its the best coverage wise, they can't afford to be missing calls because of no service.

Its really funny how often I see areas where ATT and Verizon switch as premier coverage.

Here on the island it seems like its every square mile it changes and dear god do not attempt TMO here...