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by 0xffff2 2930 days ago
Are these providers actually going to compete with landline ISP's? My landline ISPs over the last couple of years have had monthly data caps ranging from 256gb to 1tb. My cell plan currently throttles me after I exceed 6gb... That's two orders of magnitude that my wireless provider would have to increase the cap in order to compete with the landline ISP.
3 comments
rayiner 2930 days ago
The plan appears to be, yes: https://www.pcmag.com/news/357374/verizon-no-4g-level-data-c.... Verizon execs are throwing around 5G caps in that ballpark.
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JustSomeNobody 2930 days ago
That's a tiny ballpark:

> During a roundtable, VP of network support Mike Haberman, some other Verizon folks, and the assembled journalists agreed that an average data cap in the vicinity of 180GB/month would satisfy the average consumer.

> "That shouldn't be a problem with 5G. What does 4K video use? Think about how many 4K TVs you can put on a service that's a true 1 gigabit to your house," Haberman said.

I don't see that 180GB lasting long at all...

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rayiner 2930 days ago
The average Netflix user watches 40-50 hours per month, and its going down: https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/11/netflix-users-collectively.... Netflix says 7GB/hour for 4K (~350 gigabytes), but HEVC will halve that number. That's under 180GB, and that's assuming all streaming is 4K, which is far from the case.
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0xffff2 2930 days ago
That's also just for one person on Netflix. Now add a roommate, Youtube, Twitch, general overhead (email, web browsing, app updates, etc).
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rayiner 2930 days ago
That is per account not per person. For a typical household, all other bandwidth usage pales in comparison to Netflix. Youtube, etc., streaming at HD or lower resolutions isn't going to move the needle much compared to the 4K streaming in the calculation above.
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DenisM 2930 days ago
T-Mobile soft cap at 50gb, that’s on LTE. With 5g speed going up 10x I wouldn’t be surprised caps going 10 x as well. We’re nearly there.
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0xffff2 2930 days ago
Hmmm. I'm on T-Mobile, but I share the plan with my brother and he's the one who actually cares about this stuff. Maybe I don't get throttled at 6gb, but I just lose a discount. Either way, I'm definitely incentivized to stay under 6gb on T-Mobile.
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jedberg 2930 days ago
Verizon really really wants to be your main provider. Once they can provide you with a 1gbps wireless service, they will compete on price and data caps with your local wireline ISP to win your business.
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karpodiem 2930 days ago
We will see. Would be a first for wireless in a metropolitan area.

(WISPS in rural areas are a bit different)

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