By
Tim Young
For some time now, we at Pipeline have been discussing the trend of the ever-increasing volumes of data consumed by end-users, especially in the wireless domain (See "Confronting the Capacity Crunch" from our January 2010 issue, and our entire December 2009 issue).
It's a complicated issue. On one hand, user behavior has evolved as the capabilities of devices and applications have evolved. At home, users are streaming video, using over-the-top VoIP lines, and, in some cases, engaging in P2P file sharing that clogs the networks and creates a need for additional bandwidth to be made available.
On the other hand, users (especially in the North American market) generally bristle when they're given usage caps or per-MB/GB pricing. Some do, anyway. Back when Sprint's 5GB cap on certain plans made news almost two years ago, the crowd who complained the loudest was, of course, the crowd that was most likely to violate that cap. Many of the complaints I heard personally and read in various "talkback" sections were users that were tethering their mobiles to their laptops, or otherwise engaging in extremely bandwidth-intensive use. These customers are expensive to carry, and Sprint was far
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Meanwhile, on the demand side, consumers are ever-adept at getting their hands on new ways to chew bandwidth. |
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Routers are capable of carrying more and more data. Just a few weeks ago, Cisco unveiled a router capable of delivering 322 terabits per second. This router, designed to be used by CSPs on the internet backbone side, is just one indication of the substantial capacity for delivery capability being expanded. That's on the supply side.
Meanwhile, on the demand side, consumers are ever-adept at getting their hands on new ways to chew bandwidth. Those in the
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from the only carrier to cap usage. The lesson, in the end, is that either A) customer expectations have to be managed, or B) carriers open themselves up for bandwidth access to be used to its fullest by a small set of hyper-users.
If A is the case, then it's access, as well as expectations, that must be managed. If B is the case, the whole network needs to be managed. Either way, management is the key.
The Sprint example aside, even casual users have become accustomed to getting more for less. And providers have created that situation and fostered its growth by offering cheaper and cheaper all-you-can-eat plans.
Furthermore, the hardware is keeping up in the realm of massive bandwidth enablement.
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communications industry are quick to identify smartphones (and any device that begins with an "I") as the primary culprits in massive data consumption. Reuters reported last month that RIM had taken aim at Apple, especially, for manufacturing smartphones that used data unscrupulously, which may ignore the fact that the increase in bandwidth usage is a cumulative effect of more and more users getting accustomed to using smartphones rather than less bandwidth-hungry traditional handsets. More efficient smartphones are a good idea, but if every user started using one of those tomorrow, we'd still have a bandwidth usage problem.
However, in that same report, RIM mentioned a figure we've reported in Pipeline, as well. While smartphones may consume some 30 times the bandwidth of a
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