In my last blog post, I wrote about the rampant and extensive acquisition of spectrum by cellular carriers. In this post, I’m going to talk about a closely related topic that hits much closer to home for most of us: mobile data limits.
Whenever you buy a Smartphone, USB data modem, data-enabled tablet, or mobile hotspot it requires a data plan to access the Internet and those plans usually have a limit. The plans can be pre or post-paid and are constantly changing. Verizon currently offers a standard 2GB/month plan for Smartphones (doubled if you bought an LTE phone around the holidays and asked for the extra data). AT&T offers 3GB and 5GB plans while both T-Mobile and Sprint claim “unlimited” data.
But even “unlimited” doesn’t really mean unlimited. You may have seen the Sprint commercials claiming they offer the only “truly unlimited” data (since T-Mobile will “throttle” (i.e. slow down) your connection speed if you use a lot of data in a month). Ironically, after running those commercials for a month Sprint had to admit that even they throttle data speeds for the top 1% of data “abusers.” Up to 17 million AT&T smartphone users may have legacy unlimited plans, but many people (especially in high congestion areas) are seeing their data speeds greatly reduced after using a couple GB of data. Pre-paid carriers like Virgin Mobile sell data modems with pre-paid plans that have their value deducted. When the limit is reached, the usage is cut off. The user can then add money to their account to continue use. Most carriers also offer USB data modems and hotspots with slightly higher data limits (usually 5GB standard) for use with laptops and other portable media devices.
So, how much data do you need?
Most people have a limited understanding of how much data is used for typical applications and what 2GB is. Information on the Internet is measured in bits and bytes. There are 8 bits in a byte and a thousand bytes in a kilobyte (KB), a thousand KB in a megabyte (MB), and a thousand MB in a gigabyte (GB). That explanation doesn’t help the average user much. To actually use the information a person needs to know that an average text-only email is about 20KB of information, with an attachment about 200KB. Average point and shoot camera images are about 4MB and an hour of video streaming is 200MB for low definition, 500MB for standard definition and 1,500MB for high definition. This means with a standard 2GB plan you could send 100,000 emails, 10,000 emails with attachments, download 500 pictures, watch 10 hours of low definition video, watch 4 hours of standard definition video or watch 1 hour 20 minutes of high definition video. You’re never going to send 100,000 personal emails in a month but a person sure could blow through a 2GB plan trying to watch a single high definition movie.
The thing is most people don’t use more than 2GB of data on their Smartphones. For most of us, the standard 2GB Smartphone data plan is enough for our web-browsing, email checking, occasional video clip viewing needs. We’ve all heard about the unfortunate customer who racks up several thousands of dollars in “overage” fees. It’s usually because they didn’t understand how much data they were using. The biggest culprit for data usage these days is video streaming. During peak hours, Netflix accounts for about 1/3 of ALL Internet traffic in the United States. So long as you’re not trying to watch a season of “House” on your Smartphone or you aren’t watching the latest HD movie releases every week on your tablet, you’ll probably be okay. Downloading the entire photo album of your niece could also put you over your limit but you’ll be alright for standard email, web browsing and occasional YouTube clip viewing. Many phones now have the ability to tell you how much data you’ve used in the cycle and your carrier can also provide this information.
I’ve mostly talked about data for personal use but there’s also a huge market for business applications. Remote Kiosks, retail pop-up stores, and presidential campaigns all need Internet access. M2M (machine-to-machine) data plans are generally much less bandwidth intensive since they only have to send small amounts of data to authorize credit card transactions and get updated information from their home servers. Carriers offer reduced rate plans, sometimes with limits as low as 1MB/device/month for these applications that use CradlePoint routers in deployments around the United States and the world. Some M2M applications like video surveillance use significantly more data but in remote sites wireless is still the preferred option and customized plans are often offered to accommodate their needs.
Whatever the application, data needs will continue to rise as consumers demand more and more content delivered to their location. Carriers will continue to buy more spectrum and build out faster networks starting now with LTE and moving soon to LTE Advanced which will provide more bandwidth, lower costs per bit sent, and will be designed to handle the traffic businesses and consumers will continue to demand. The 5GB data limit today will soon be the minimum plan offered in the future.