Publish the caps. Let people know how much is "too much". Give them the ability to easily see their utilization. Keep the prices affordable for the 99% and then add an (affordable) surcharge for exceeding the cap. This crap where you have a secret limit and then a punishingly excessive fee for going over is ridiculous.

God forbid you use what you paid for.

If they cut the 1% top users each month, eventually they'll solve their problem.

I'd just hate to be their last customer, though. Having some goon come out every 30 days to lop off 1% has got to suck.

Pelvic Splanchnic Ganglion: Publish the caps. Let people know how much is "too much". Give them the ability to easily see their utilization. Keep the prices affordable for the 99% and then add an (affordable) surcharge for exceeding the cap. This crap where you have a secret limit and then a punishingly excessive fee for going over is ridiculous.

1. Reasonable? Check.
2. Easily Implemented? Check.
3. Doesn't do anything to get the company in the news? Check.
4. Not gonna happen do to 3? Check.

Pelvic Splanchnic Ganglion: Publish the caps. Let people know how much is "too much". Give them the ability to easily see their utilization. Keep the prices affordable for the 99% and then add an (affordable) surcharge for exceeding the cap. This crap where you have a secret limit and then a punishingly excessive fee for going over is ridiculous.

Isn't that pretty much what all the US carriers did when they moved to 2 or 5 GB plans instead of unlimited? There was a lot of biatching and moaning about that, too, even though the new plans personally saved me $5 a month.

I'm just curious to know what these people are doing with their phones that sucks up so much data.

What language is that? Tennar, taking the biscuit -- all these gang phrases, no wonder their customers are burning terabytes.

Mad_Radhu: Pelvic Splanchnic Ganglion: Publish the caps. Let people know how much is "too much". Give them the ability to easily see their utilization. Keep the prices affordable for the 99% and then add an (affordable) surcharge for exceeding the cap. This crap where you have a secret limit and then a punishingly excessive fee for going over is ridiculous.

Isn't that pretty much what all the US carriers did when they moved to 2 or 5 GB plans instead of unlimited? There was a lot of biatching and moaning about that, too, even though the new plans personally saved me $5 a month.

No. They started off with caps that are too low to begin with, and then if you go over it the fee is crushingly huge. If you have realistic prices for realistic data usage and then charge a realistic extra fee for people who want or need more, then you might actually be providing a service that people like for a change. The carriers seem to all want to go to one extreme or the other. The answer isn't to kick off people who are using a disproportionately large amount of data.

As an example, on Sprint, you have an "unlimited" data plan that's really more like 5GB before they'll start dinging you. If you want to tether your laptop, you'll pay an extra $30/month even if you don't go over the 5GB soft cap. That makes no sense. Data is data. Set a realistic hard cap of 5GB, allow free tethering, and then charge an extra $30 for an extra 5GB over the cap. People will still be able to do all the things that they do now and the people who use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth will be able to pay for it instead of cheating the system through creative loopholes.

Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: I'm just curious to know what these people are doing with their phones that sucks up so much data.

Not a great deal. GiffGaff aren't a full on carrier in their own right, it's using someone elses network (O2 in this case). They'd much rather you didn't use any data whatsoever. Their website makes them out to be this hippie people run thing but it's just O2 selling off it's excess voice capacity by another name.

My understanding is a few youtube videos whilst on the bog would be sufficient to get them irked at you.

Pelvic Splanchnic Ganglion: No. They started off with caps that are too low to begin with, and then if you go over it the fee is crushingly huge.

Most of the new plans I seen have done away with the stupidly expensive overage charges ($0.25/MB for example) and instead just tack on a little extra for the extra data usage (AT&T, for example, charges you $10 per additional GB over their 2 GB cap, which is not what I would describe as crushingly huge. I agree that the up charge for enabling tethering is bullshiat, but the new plans are quite a bit better than the crappy smartphone data plans that were available 5-6 years ago which were more expensive per GB and had some nasty overage fees.

Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: I'm just curious to know what these people are doing with their phones that sucks up so much data.

Let's see. If I wanted to stream music from the cloud to my phone, which is what the wireless carriers are saying I can do, and assuming 1 minute of music is 1 meg of data (That seems a good estimate based on eyeballing my music files), and knowing based on my usage of my iPod that I listen to music probably 35 of the 40 hours a week I'm at work...

That's 140 hours of music a month, which is 8400 minutes, or 8400 meg. Or 8.4 gig, which blows even the 5 gig plans out of the water.

And I haven't even streamed any high-def movies yet, which they also tell me is great to do in their advertisements.

Yotto: Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: I'm just curious to know what these people are doing with their phones that sucks up so much data.

Let's see. If I wanted to stream music from the cloud to my phone, which is what the wireless carriers are saying I can do, and assuming 1 minute of music is 1 meg of data (That seems a good estimate based on eyeballing my music files), and knowing based on my usage of my iPod that I listen to music probably 35 of the 40 hours a week I'm at work...

That's 140 hours of music a month, which is 8400 minutes, or 8400 meg. Or 8.4 gig, which blows even the 5 gig plans out of the water.

And I haven't even streamed any high-def movies yet, which they also tell me is great to do in their advertisements.

But how many of those minutes are in a wifi cloud that will not eat any of your cap? Hell I mow my lawn listening to pandora and use ZERO data because my wifi extends out into the yard.

Not really a comment on the story, but a question for the wisest of Fark. I was in Afghanistan when apparently Verizon switched to a tiered data plan. I had my account on hold while I was deployed, so I am still on my original contract from a few years ago. I just checked my Verizon billing page, and my data usage says I have Unlimited. Was there some grandfather clause to the new data billing that I don't know about?

taurusowner: Not really a comment on the story, but a question for the wisest of Fark. I was in Afghanistan when apparently Verizon switched to a tiered data plan. I had my account on hold while I was deployed, so I am still on my original contract from a few years ago. I just checked my Verizon billing page, and my data usage says I have Unlimited. Was there some grandfather clause to the new data billing that I don't know about?

It should have been grandfathered in. I still have my unlimited from before the change.

Tashakur.

Mad_Radhu: Pelvic Splanchnic Ganglion: No. They started off with caps that are too low to begin with, and then if you go over it the fee is crushingly huge.

Most of the new plans I seen have done away with the stupidly expensive overage charges ($0.25/MB for example) and instead just tack on a little extra for the extra data usage (AT&T, for example, charges you $10 per additional GB over their 2 GB cap, which is not what I would describe as crushingly huge. I agree that the up charge for enabling tethering is bullshiat, but the new plans are quite a bit better than the crappy smartphone data plans that were available 5-6 years ago which were more expensive per GB and had some nasty overage fees.

$10/GB is too high.

I have Tmobile, and I watch Netflix on the bus/train every work day. Standard def, not HD. I exceed the 5 GB cap every month, and get throttled for the remainder. Throttled so bad that I can't watch Netflix anymore.

I essentially use my phone the way commercials encourage me to use my phone. I don't tether at all, and I use wifi when I'm at home.

Two Dogs Farking: Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: I'm just curious to know what these people are doing with their phones that sucks up so much data.

Tethering, probably - downloading all the torrents and warez while saving the cost of a landline DSL.

Or, just watching Netflix on the bus. It's easy to consume 5 GB/month.

Can someone translate this into American for me?

Mad_Radhu: Pelvic Splanchnic Ganglion: No. They started off with caps that are too low to begin with, and then if you go over it the fee is crushingly huge.

Most of the new plans I seen have done away with the stupidly expensive overage charges ($0.25/MB for example) and instead just tack on a little extra for the extra data usage (AT&T, for example, charges you $10 per additional GB over their 2 GB cap, which is not what I would describe as crushingly huge. I agree that the up charge for enabling tethering is bullshiat, but the new plans are quite a bit better than the crappy smartphone data plans that were available 5-6 years ago which were more expensive per GB and had some nasty overage fees.

Um...I have AT&T and it's a $15 charge if I go over 200MB....so if you only have to pay $10 that's a hell of a deal.

If I had unlimited or a high cap I'd be in the 1% because I have a 30 minute drive and can connect my phone to my car's audio player. Or...I don't know...used any of these awesome features my smartphone has when I'm not sitting in front of my router and trying to save my data.

Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: I'm just curious to know what these people are doing with their phones that sucks up so much data.

Downloading Linux ISOs. That 30% of total internet traffic that is BitTorrent. 's those Linux dudes. Downloading their totally legitimate Linux ISOs.

narkor: Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: I'm just curious to know what these people are doing with their phones that sucks up so much data.

Downloading Linux ISOs. That 30% of total internet traffic that is BitTorrent. 's those Linux dudes. Downloading their totally legitimate Linux ISOs.

Or your parents are still on "not much better than dialup" internet, and even 3G is a good order of magnitude faster than the home internets.

Or your parents have hard caps with overage charges(150 GB on ATT DSL), and you don't want them to be charged.

/Used 124 GB in 3 weeks just doing normal usage when I went home.
//It didn't help that I needed to reinstall my OS during that period.
///But I didn't grab Steam games until I got back to school.

Frow: Mad_Radhu: Pelvic Splanchnic Ganglion: No. They started off with caps that are too low to begin with, and then if you go over it the fee is crushingly huge.

Most of the new plans I seen have done away with the stupidly expensive overage charges ($0.25/MB for example) and instead just tack on a little extra for the extra data usage (AT&T, for example, charges you $10 per additional GB over their 2 GB cap, which is not what I would describe as crushingly huge. I agree that the up charge for enabling tethering is bullshiat, but the new plans are quite a bit better than the crappy smartphone data plans that were available 5-6 years ago which were more expensive per GB and had some nasty overage fees.

Um...I have AT&T and it's a $15 charge if I go over 200MB....so if you only have to pay $10 that's a hell of a deal.

If I had unlimited or a high cap I'd be in the 1% because I have a 30 minute drive and can connect my phone to my car's audio player. Or...I don't know...used any of these awesome features my smartphone has when I'm not sitting in front of my router and trying to save my data.


That's because you are on the cheap 200 MB $15 data plan, which is designed for people that want to save some money if they aren't doing anything data heavy. Spend $10 more for the $25 plan, you get 2 GB, plus $10 per additional GB, which is a little more reasonable if you are doing a modertae amount of streaming. It's still kind of sucks compared to data prices in the rest of the world, but it is worlds better than the bad old days when you could accidentally wind up with a thousands of dollars in data overages if you weren't signed up for the right plan.