Verizon wants 25% more money for 1000% less service

[someone_else]

The reason they give here for the mobile internet contracts to suck so much is that people downloads lots of stuff, and I'm not talikg of P2P, but of videos and images from youtube and social networks, and the mobile net was not designed to sustain the weight.

This does not explain why they rise prices of ancillary stuff as well, though.


Then again, here most cities do have wifi hotspots with nominal or really affordable fees (that have connection speeds that blow any contract you could get for your home or for a mobile out of the water), so lots of industrious people I know built or bought a long-range directional antenna to connect to a hotspot at multiple kms of distance from their homes.

They don't cost a lot if compared to internet contracts, but they aren't very portable (they may not be huge, but they require more power to work and the batteries run dry faster).

[Guardsman Bass]

Video is the big killer, although music can add up surprisingly fast as well. AT & T's data usage calculator says that you can get about 42 hours of SD video and 16 hours of HD video out of 5 GB, although that assumes you don't use your phone for anything else. That's about 1 1/2 hours a day - not an issue if you're just watching youtube videos or the occasional TV episode, but a big limit if you watch a ton of Netflix movies.

[Pendleton]

Just wait until the spectrum crunch takes hold. This will be looked upon as the good old days.

I have a plan with Three for £25/month rolling contract with unlimited data, tethering and 3000 minutes and unlimited texts.

[Sephirius]

$51.20/MB - 4G LTE price from Virgin in Canada for pure data on a tablet etc.

yeah fuck wireless companies.

[Zinegata]

Speaking as someone who actually works for a telco...

Most of the wireless internet technologies simply didn't perform as advertised from a cost perspective, and to a large extent the cheap internet rates people were enjoying earlier were effectively subsidized (which includes revenue from voice, texting, and other services).

People should really expect a gradual increase in wireless internet costs (with the possible exception of WiFi, which is really a wired solution extension anyway), particularly in countries that have huge or difficult to traverse land areas.

[Lord Relvenous]

Yes, this announcement states rather clearly that they're no longer going to grandfather in the unlimited plans.

The options available to you will depend on your customer status as of June 28.

•New customer: A new customer must select from an option in the "Share Everything" plan or either of the two voice-centric packages ($40 or $80).

•Tiered-pricing customer: A tiered-pricing plan customer can upgrade by selecting either a "Share Everything" plan or an option in the current tiered plans.

•Unlimited data customer: If you're one of a dwindling number of customers who retained the grandfathered $30-a-month unlimited data plan, you must choose either a "Share Everything" plan or a tiered pricing plan when upgrading. Verizon dropped the unlimited plans for new customers last year.

Emphasis mine.

Oh shit, I somehow missed that. Fuck that noise. Well, at that point I guess I'm cutting down on my phone use outside of wireless networks. Shitty somewhat, but I've got access to wifi at home, school, work, and friends' places so most the time I'll be on one of those anyways, and none of the local internet providers throttle bandwidth.

[Col. Crackpot]

I'm not defending Verizon here, but how the hell do you get through forty gigabytes in a single month?

Did you miss the part where I said I was using my phone to provide tethering services for my laptop? IE when I'm out and about I use my phone to provide broadband internet for my phone. I'm in a hotel and que up a movie on Netflix in HD and that's two gigs right there. If I download a database onto my laptop while traveling that's 500 megs to four gigs there. And when I'm not using it to tether I'm using Pandora... constantly. If I'm in the car my phone is streaming Pandora to the speakers. That's 36 megs an hour which over a month is another gig.

Where is this hotel that doesn't have WiFi? Rural Mongolia? Seriously in a world where you can get free wifi at every corner gas station, grocery store and fast food joint how is this the travesty it is being made out to be?

[cosmicalstorm]

They used to make tons of money of calls and SMS. Now everyone is trying to figure out how to continue making money when everything is carried out over the internet. I wonder how it will work out.

[Mr Bean]

Where is this hotel that doesn't have WiFi? Rural Mongolia? Seriously in a world where you can get free wifi at every corner gas station, grocery store and fast food joint how is this the travesty it is being made out to be?

See there's this part of America called "middle America" where entire countries still are on dialup, not of choice but because of the fact the network was built in the 1950s and some of the Junction boxes are original equipment. As for free Wifi, lots of hotels in states like Montana, Nebraska, Kentucky, Missorui, Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, the Dakotas and the other ten states I could name that make up the "mid-west" still have places where if you break down it literally is 41 miles to the next Gas station. And when you get to that gas station, maybe a McDonalds and some chain Hotel or Motel they are not going to have Internet but they will have a cellphone tower.

[Col. Crackpot]

Where is this hotel that doesn't have WiFi? Rural Mongolia? Seriously in a world where you can get free wifi at every corner gas station, grocery store and fast food joint how is this the travesty it is being made out to be?

See there's this part of America called "middle America" where entire countries still are on dialup, not of choice but because of the fact the network was built in the 1950s and some of the Junction boxes are original equipment. As for free Wifi, lots of hotels in states like Montana, Nebraska, Kentucky, Missorui, Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, the Dakotas and the other ten states I could name that make up the "mid-west" still have places where if you break down it literally is 41 miles to the next Gas station. And when you get to that gas station, maybe a McDonalds and some chain Hotel or Motel they are not going to have Internet but they will have a cellphone tower.

Shhessh.. and that's why i have not and will not move out of New England.

[Edi]

You guys are basically just being fucked over by the telcos when they slap that kind of costs on.

I work for the biggest telco in Finland and the consumer data packages go as follows:

• 1 Mbps speed cap, unlimited data (within those parameters) is €9.90 per month
• 16 Mbps speed cap, unlimited data is €13.90 per month
• 4G (including 3G Dual Carrier and actual LTE) with speeds up to 50 Mbps, unlimited data, will set you back €19.80 per month
• 4G (including 3G Dual Carrier and actual LTE) with speeds up to 80 Mbps, unlimited data, will set you back €39.80 per month

Those are with a separate 3G USB modem. If you want a data plan for your phone (unlimited amount of data within the speed limit) on top of the voice and text, the prices are as follows:

• up to 512 kbps €4.90
• up to 2 Mbps €9.90
• up to 21 Mbps €13.90
• up to 42 Mbps (4G) €19.80

Given that Finland has the fifth biggest land area in the EU (only Spain, France, Germany and Poland are bigger) and fairly spread out population yet we get 3G coverage in most of the country and the company turns a not insignificant profit, I'm not buying for one second that American telcos couldn't do the same. Fact of the matter is that they are used to gouging a captive customer base because there is no legislation in the US that mandates allowing competitors to actually compete in your area (such as having the base stations of several different telcos in the same mast).

We have the exact same challenges with low population density, old and deteriorating PSTN networks in outlying areas and mobile the only option to provide any kind of high speed services, yet it has not been a problem. If you look at the 3G availability in Finland five years ago and today, the difference is fucking staggering.

There are two ways of characterizing the US situation and this shit Verizon is pulling and one is giving an opinion. The other is giving an honest opinion, which is actually possible here but in most venues would have perhaps one word in three not blanked out.

[The Jester]

If I recall correctly, the US handles spectrum licenses very differently from Finland which factor into higher costs for the end user. I wouldn't have a clue about collocation rules in the US, since that would come under town planning but it would seem strange if operators could completely block other operators from occupying their towers.

[phongn]

If I recall correctly, the US handles spectrum licenses very differently from Finland which factor into higher costs for the end user. I wouldn't have a clue about collocation rules in the US, since that would come under town planning but it would seem strange if operators could completely block other operators from occupying their towers.

Spectrum in the US is handled in such a way that phone portability is very, very difficult. The Big Four (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile USA) have a hodgepodge of different spectrum that are mostly incompatible with each other - particularly T-Mobile, whose 3G spectrum is mostly on a band used only in North America. They also use different technologies (Verizon uses CDMA and LTE, Sprint uses CDMA and WiMAX with transition to LTE, AT&T uses GSM and LTE and T-Mobile uses GSM and is praying they have money to move to LTE).

The US consumer is also used to phone subsidies and the "true" cost of the plan is generally hidden. Most people won't do the math to determine if subsidy+higher monthly cost is less (over time) than an unlocked phone + lower monthly cost. Worse, the big telcos generally will not reduce your price (T-Mobile being the big exception) if you want an unsubsidized plan. Even then, some people just don't want to pay $600 for an iPhone upfront.

The rise of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs, e.g. Virgin, Boost, Simple Talk, etc.) is altering this situation slowly, though.

You guys are basically just being fucked over by the telcos when they slap that kind of costs on.

We are being fucked over - but the situation in the US is also somewhat complicated and not as simple as you put below.

Given that Finland has the fifth biggest land area in the EU (only Spain, France, Germany and Poland are bigger) and fairly spread out population yet we get 3G coverage in most of the country and the company turns a not insignificant profit, I'm not buying for one second that American telcos couldn't do the same. Fact of the matter is that they are used to gouging a captive customer base because there is no legislation in the US that mandates allowing competitors to actually compete in your area (such as having the base stations of several different telcos in the same mast).

With due respect, Finland's land area is puny by American standards, even with a spread-out populace.

Even if you mandate various sorts of tower-sharing agreements, the spectrum problem comes into play. Then there's the issue that you have to run fairly beefy fibre to each tower (which costs a fortune) and enough backhaul to run the whole thing.

[TronPaul]

I've never had a data plan, but I'm waiting for a beta phone from republic wireless. They are currently slowly adding customers to their program, which is $20 unlimited service: voice and data. The reason they can afford to charge so little is that they use VOIP when the phone is connected to a wireless network and the cellular network when the phone is not. By doing this they avoid paying for data using the cellular network, which is a lot more expensive than routing it over the internet. It's a rather interesting model and one that I think others companies (especially ones that rent infrastructure) may start to emulate. Though I wonder what the owners of cell networks would do if this was successful.

[phongn]

Though I wonder what the owners of cell networks would do if this was successful.

Copy it, co-opt it, etc.. T-Mobile does something similar already (with unlimited calling via wifi) and a few networks offer femtocells to cover cellular network gaps at home.

[The Jester]

The US consumer is also used to phone subsidies and the "true" cost of the plan is generally hidden. Most people won't do the math to determine if subsidy+higher monthly cost is less (over time) than an unlocked phone + lower monthly cost. Worse, the big telcos generally will not reduce your price (T-Mobile being the big exception) if you want an unsubsidized plan. Even then, some people just don't want to pay $600 for an iPhone upfront.

This reminds me that there is another advantage for consumers in how operator legislation works in Finland: operator can't have network locks on devices. Even if you get a new phone with a plan, there is no technological restriction to porting your phone to a new network whenever you wish (though there may be contractual issues).

Even if you mandate various sorts of tower-sharing agreements, the spectrum problem comes into play. Then there's the issue that you have to run fairly beefy fibre to each tower (which costs a fortune) and enough backhaul to run the whole thing.

Most backhaul between towers is done over microwave, not fibre. Although you still need to lease the spectrum for the link, the cost is significantly less than fibre.

[phongn]

The US consumer is also used to phone subsidies and the "true" cost of the plan is generally hidden. Most people won't do the math to determine if subsidy+higher monthly cost is less (over time) than an unlocked phone + lower monthly cost. Worse, the big telcos generally will not reduce your price (T-Mobile being the big exception) if you want an unsubsidized plan. Even then, some people just don't want to pay $600 for an iPhone upfront.

This reminds me that there is another advantage for consumers in how operator legislation works in Finland: operator can't have network locks on devices. Even if you get a new phone with a plan, there is no technological restriction to porting your phone to a new network whenever you wish (though there may be contractual issues).

Most operators will now unlock a phone once it is out-of-contract. You can go to an MVNO that supports your frequency (or another major provider, but there's likely to be frequency compatibility issues).

Most backhaul between towers is done over microwave, not fibre. Although you still need to lease the spectrum for the link, the cost is significantly less than fibre.

Not in the US. Most backhaul is fibre (and sometimes anticompetitively; e.g. AT&T or Verizon's wireline divisions run backhaul to a Sprint tower and charge different rates than they would to their own wireless divisions).

[Lonestar]

Most backhaul between towers is done over microwave, not fibre. Although you still need to lease the spectrum for the link, the cost is significantly less than fibre.

Not in the MidAtlantic. The DoD has rules that greatly restrict that sort of stuff, which is why it's mostly fiber.

[Sea Skimmer]

Using high power microwave to go all the way to the horizon might be restricted, but short range links between towers are all over the place in the Phily area.

[Lonestar]

I should modify that for "outside of urban areas".

[The Jester]

If that's the case, unless there's a conduit nearby, it would greatly increase the cost of building a new tower outside of urban areas.

[Edi]

With due respect, Finland's land area is puny by American standards, even with a spread-out populace.

Compared to the entire US, yes. Compared on a state by state basis, not nearly so. Our population of five million and change is also comparable to several US states.

Even if you mandate various sorts of tower-sharing agreements, the spectrum problem comes into play. Then there's the issue that you have to run fairly beefy fibre to each tower (which costs a fortune) and enough backhaul to run the whole thing.

I'm not disputing the fact that building a network that also covers outlying areas is expensive. It's expensive enough here when you get to the more sparsely populated regions. Especially if you need to run a lot of fibre a long way out.

I suspect a big part of things staying the way they are in the US is that the big telcos like it that way and there is no legislation to prevent them from using every anticompetitive trick in the book to maintain the status quo.


The Jester:

As far as network locks being completely prevented in Finland, this is not quite true. With regard to phones, it is more or less that way, though we regularly run into cases where a customer has a bundled phone from some other operator and has to order an unlock code for it. That's more of a rarity these days and the legislation was recently changed so that you can still switch operators in the middle of a contract and transfer your number over, but you must pay out the remaining obligations on it.

With the 3G USB modems, some operators do have locked devices, for example the current crop of USB modems from the biggest operator (Elisa/Saunalahti) are operator locked and will not function with another operator's SIM cards. Or more precisely, the connectivity software on them won't, but there is nothing to prevent you from using other software instead. That distinction just happens to be lost on some 95% of the customer base.