AT&T planning to let developers pay for users' smartphone data usage

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  • Reply 61 of 67
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post


    You don't understand how the system works.



    The system can never handle 100% of its theoretical capacity. It would break down completely. As you get closer and closer to the theoretical capacity, performance gets worse and worse - latency increases and the requirement to resend data increases. So, for example (these numbers are made up, but they demonstrate the issue):



    If the system is operating at 10% of theoretical capacity, latency might be 10 ms and only 0.1% of packets must be resent.



    If usage increases to 50% of capacity, latency might increase to 30 ms and 2% of packets must be resent.



    At 80% of capacity, latency might be 100 ms and 10% of packets resent.



    At 90% of capacity, latency might be 300 ms and 20% of packets resent or rejected (this 20% must obviously be included in the 90% of capacity figure).



    At no point can one say that there is no more available capacity. But clearly, the data usage that drives usage to 90% of capacity is causing a significant degradation of service.



    AT&T's position (and the other telcos, AFAIK) is that the system is getting up to a utilization level that causes degradation of performance. Allowing a few ultra-heavy users to continue without limitation will cause even more severe degradation for the other users. And when you consider that the top few percent of users use a huge percentage of total data, it can have a serious impact.



    Maybe they sold to too many people. Like when a company over-books an event (airline seats comes to mind). If you can't produce the product you're selling, you don't belong in business. It's consumer fraud, in many States, to sell something you don't have. Eventually the government will get around to regulating this abusive practice or some hot competing company will steal the show from under the telcos noses.
  • Reply 62 of 67
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ljocampo View Post


    Maybe they sold to too many people. Like when a company over-books an event (airline seats comes to mind). If you can't produce the product you're selling, you don't belong in business. It's consumer fraud, in many States, to sell something you don't have.



    Good, finally someone else understands this.



    Quote:

    Eventually the government will get around to regulating this abusive practice or some hot competing company will steal the show from under the telcos noses.



    No, they won't.
  • Reply 63 of 67
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ljocampo View Post


    Maybe they sold to too many people. Like when a company over-books an event (airline seats comes to mind). If you can't produce the product you're selling, you don't belong in business. It's consumer fraud, in many States, to sell something you don't have. Eventually the government will get around to regulating this abusive practice or some hot competing company will steal the show from under the telcos noses.



    Once again, you're not paying attention. They didn't sell something they don't have - they have plenty of capacity. It's just that at high levels of utilization, the efficiency drops.



    BTW, your example is a good one. It's perfectly legal to overbook airline seats or hotel rooms.
  • Reply 64 of 67
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post


    Once again, you're not paying attention. They didn't sell something they don't have - they have plenty of capacity. It's just that at high levels of utilization, the efficiency drops.



    BTW, your example is a good one. It's perfectly legal to overbook airline seats or hotel rooms.



    When we talk about capacity or limits we don't mean some theoretical maximum but the real-world limit that is sustainable for a decent user experience. If that limit is 80% of the theoretical limit, 70%, or whatever else, makes no difference. Users expect to be delivered reliable and fast service. If AT&T can't provide it, despite their advertising it, then that is probably because they over-booked their lines and went beyond what we are calling the limit (the real-world limit that users deem acceptable service).



    For you to come in and keep chime "but that's not the limit" they could provide much more bandwidth is simply to muddy the discussion with technicalities for no good reason. Address the core arguments or move along. Stop obfuscating the discussion.
  • Reply 65 of 67
    gwmacgwmac Posts: 1,807member
    Apple likes simplicity so I don't think they would go for this in the App store. Imaging two prices for an app depending on your carrier.



    XYZ app for Sprint/Verizon .99

    XYZ app for AT&T $4.99
  • Reply 66 of 67
    sick man. Did they get a brain damage over there?



    On the other hand, I like it, I buy a car and the government, owner of the roads, let the gas-station pay the gas because I create road-traffic.
  • Reply 67 of 67
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by johndoe98 View Post


    When we talk about capacity or limits we don't mean some theoretical maximum but the real-world limit that is sustainable for a decent user experience. If that limit is 80% of the theoretical limit, 70%, or whatever else, makes no difference. Users expect to be delivered reliable and fast service. If AT&T can't provide it, despite their advertising it, then that is probably because they over-booked their lines and went beyond what we are calling the limit (the real-world limit that users deem acceptable service).



    For you to come in and keep chime "but that's not the limit" they could provide much more bandwidth is simply to muddy the discussion with technicalities for no good reason. Address the core arguments or move along. Stop obfuscating the discussion.



    Once again, you obviously don't understand how it works - and are belligerently refusing to educate yourself.



    There is no hard 'sustainable' limit. What constitutes 'decent user experience'? Is it a 10 ms latency? 30 ms? 100 ms? Or maybe it depends on time of day. Perhaps when you're doing personal things, you can live with a 100 ms latency, but when you're doing business things, 25 ms is all you can handle.



    What is 'reliable and fast' service? 3 Mb per second with 10 ms latency? 2.5 Mb per second with 15 ms latency? Who gets to decide?



    And, more importantly, these things change over time. Maybe your personal wish is 50 ms latency. It is OK if your latency is under 50 ms 80% of the time? 95% of the time? or must it be 100% of the time?



    There is a continuum. Adding extra users does not make you hit a wall. There is a gradual degradation of service that occurs as more users are added. There is no way to draw a line as to when the system is 'oversold' because there's no such thing.



    In the end, it comes down to user choice. If you're happy with your provider, you keep using them. If you're not happy, you change. if one provider takes on enough users so that many users are unhappy, they will lose subscribers to telcos who do not take on as many customers.
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