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Mobile movement to clouds...

B

BigRedNole

Well-Known Member
With Apple and Google pushing this cloud initiative, why are carriers not doing the same? What I mean by this is if much of our data is to be stored on the cloud, we will be constantly downloading and chewing up our data. Fortunately, I have unlimited data on VZW. However, those with 2GB limits will start paying through the nose for this.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?
 
People want lots of data and have shown they are willing to pay through the nose for it. Carriers have got a good thing going on for themselves right now.
 
You wont be constantly chewing out your data. The data sent is only in a few kb total. Furthermore, you can do it over wifi, or even not use cloud at all by turning off autosync. Also you can just manually sync it yourself when you get home and connect to wifi at night.
 
Easy to burn through a lotta data of you upload/download large files (documents, music, photos). More and more, that's what users will expect to be able to do - upload and sync everything . But of course that will conflict with carrier's desires to cap data or charge out the wazoo for unlimited privileges.

At some point something has to give or for most users cloud services will never reách full potential.
 
chanchan05 said:
You wont be constantly chewing out your data. The data sent is only in a few kb total. Furthermore, you can do it over wifi, or even not use cloud at all by turning off autosync. Also you can just manually sync it yourself when you get home and connect to wifi at night.
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I'd like to comment, though. A lot of folks' home internet also have bandwidth caps. :p
 
The cloud thing is likely a big challenge to many wireless providers. Unless things have changed in the wireless industry, cell towers communicate wirelessly with each other. Certain towers within each group provides Internet access to the group of towers.

Many, but not all, of these Internet-enabled cell towers get Internet connectivity through the use of T1 circuits (1.544 mb). As bandwidth needs increase the carriers start adding T1's and bonding them together. After about 6 or 8 T1's it becomes more cost effective for them to swap out their existing routing hardware to support the installation of a T3 circuit (45mb). If they over-run their T3 circuits then they have to start looking at some serious connectivity using multiple T3 circuits or OC3 circuits (155mb). As these circuits continue to get larger, however, they typically move from copper connections to fiber optic connections.

In a lot of places, access to higher speed circuits simply isn't available yet. My employers try to sell a lot of MOE (Metro Optical Ethernet) circuits to the wireless carriers. Unfortunately to use MOE (like OC3's), there needs to be fiber in the street near the cell tower that can cost effectively be extended to the tower.

Oh and as the amount of bandwidth increases the network devices in the climate-controlled vault next to the tower gets replaced with bigger and much more expensive equipment. A single Cisco router than can adequately support a couple of T1's may cost the carrier about $5k. A single Cisco router than can adequately support an OC3 may cost $75k. With MOE it gets even more interesting because all ethernet router interfaces are not alike. Even though a router has a Gigabit ethernet (1000mb) interface doesn't mean that it can handle a Gigabit of traffic without a lot of buffering. Buffering causes latency and gamers (as an example) hate latency...

As companies like Google and Apple push to move things towards the "cloud" they force wireless carriers to start dumping lots of money into Internet connectivity. And since these carriers, like most for-profit businesses, like being profitable... they do the logical (to them) thing and raise their rates. And that's when we consumers get to scream and yell over why our monthly bills are growing faster and faster. :eek:
 
Martimus said:
Oh and as the amount of bandwidth increases the network devices in the climate-controlled vault next to the tower gets replaced with bigger and much more expensive equipment. A single Cisco router than can adequately support a couple of T1's may cost the carrier about $5k. A single Cisco router than can adequately support an OC3 may cost $75k. With MOE it gets even more interesting because all ethernet router interfaces are not alike. Even though a router has a Gigabit ethernet (1000mb) interface doesn't mean that it can handle a Gigabit of traffic without a lot of buffering. Buffering causes latency and gamers (as an example) hate latency...
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And how much would the equipment to support T1 or T3 have cost them 10 years ago?
 
rui-no-onna said:
And how much would the equipment to support T1 or T3 have cost them 10 years ago?
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10 years ago the equipment to support T1's and T3's was more expensive... and the T1 and T3 circuits were also more expensive. I think it was about 9 years ago when Verizon released it's first 1X CDMA data network.

10 years ago MOE was still in it's infancy and wasn't yet offered as a viable alternative to the wireless carriers.
 
Martimus said:
10 years ago the equipment to support T1's and T3's was more expensive... and the T1 and T3 circuits were also more expensive. I think it was about 9 years ago when Verizon released it's first 1X CDMA data network.
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Exactly. Costs have gone down. Whatever they spent years ago for GPRS/1xRTT is probably similar to what it's costing them for the 3G/4G roll out. While I do believe "unlimited" data plans are untenable, I think carriers should at least offer more reasonable data caps.

Heck, if carriers abolished the equipment subsidy system, they'll probably see plenty of bandwidth available while still being able to lower rates. People are gonna think twice about buying an iPhone if it costs them $649 instead of just $199. Carriers want people to buy smartphones so they can tack on expensive data plans. However, they're not improving their network fast enough for those new smartphone users. So what do carriers do to decrease network load? They increase rates to prevent users from using cellular data.
 
rui-no-onna said:
I'd like to comment, though. A lot of folks' home internet also have bandwidth caps. :p
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Ok, I'll finally say that internet providers in the US are really weird. Or maybe ours are. For home internet, the only available options here are pay as you go, or unlimited, with the unlimited rates differing only with regards to speed provided (1mbps is cheaper than 10mbps, etc.)
 
chrlswltrs said:
I didn't know there was a such thing as not unlimited home broadband :eek:
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FiOS is still unlimited (I believe). Comcast has a 250GB monthly cap. AT&T has a 100GB cap for DSL and 250GB cap for U-Verse (with $10/50GB overage). Charter's is tiered both for bandwidth and monthly: 1~12Mbps - 100GB, 18~25Mbps - 250GB, 60Mbps - 500GB.

Time Warner's initial proposal, however, takes the cake:
40GB for $55 per month: Time Warner bandwidth caps arrive

Barring Time Warner's proposal, though, I find the bandwidth caps for Comcast, AT&T and Charter to be fairly reasonable. That's considering we've cancelled cable TV service and are relying on OTA, Amazon, Hulu and Netflix for entertainment. According to Tomato, our daily bandwidth use is 5GB on average with 20GB spikes during the weekend.
 
rui-no-onna said:
FiOS is still unlimited (I believe). Comcast has a 250GB monthly cap. AT&T has a 100GB cap for DSL and 250GB cap for U-Verse (with $10/50GB overage). Charter's is tiered both for bandwidth and monthly: 1~12Mbps - 100GB, 18~25Mbps - 250GB, 60Mbps - 500GB.

Time Warner's initial proposal, however, takes the cake:
40GB for $55 per month: Time Warner bandwidth caps arrive

Barring Time Warner's proposal, though, I find the bandwidth caps for Comcast, AT&T and Charter to be fairly reasonable. That's considering we've cancelled cable TV service and are relying on OTA, Amazon, Hulu and Netflix for entertainment. According to Tomato, our daily bandwidth use is 5GB on average with 20GB spikes during the weekend.
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I guess the caps are so high I just never paid attention (I am on Comcast). That Time Warner cap for home internet is completely rediculous!!
 
chrlswltrs said:
I guess the caps are so high I just never paid attention (I am on Comcast).
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Not exactly high but they are reasonable - for now. With cloud back-up (can you imagine if you have 60GB worth of photos on your iPhone/iPod/iPad to be backed up to iCloud?), game downloads, software updates, etc, the caps will probably start to pinch soon.

Ugh, I hate having to update Starcraft and WoW. A fresh install after formatting? It's a nightmare what with the gigabytes of patches.

chrlswltrs said:
That Time Warner cap for home internet is completely rediculous!!
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Indeed. It caused a major public outcry and even scrutiny from politicians that TWC doesn't currently implement bandwidth caps at the moment. :p
 
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