My Cellphone My Terms

Cellular Net Neutrality Issues Affect Your Costs

Nobody likes to see the dreaded message, “Your bandwidth usage has exceeded the allocated cap.” It never bodes good things for the mobile user. Additional data above cap often costs $0.05 per MB.

You will remember, from one of my recent articles, just how expensive that really is. There has been a lot of demand for unlimited data plans. Canadian mobile carriers, following suit with the policies they set for high speed Internet access, have adamantly refused to institute unlimited data plans for cell phones. They have set cap limits of 5-6 GB, which is fine, if all you want to do is e-mail.

But I have had customers who wanted to use smartphones to be able to show video demonstrations to business clients on the fly. A 6 GB data plan, if used for absolutely nothing else, allows for 13.6 hours of video playback. Of course, if you are a digitally driven business person using your 4G device to the full extent of its capabilities, for business, you aren’t going to be limiting yourself to just one way of using your cellphone. Furthermore, if you are working every day and giving an half-hour long video presentation every day that you work, you can easily going over your cap every month.

In the United States, many carriers have bowed to market pressure and have begun offering cell phone plans (both corporate and consumer) that include unlimited data. And, to an extent, it would appear that this means they are caving to popular pressure. However, many carriers, including mobile giant AT&T have recently begun discussing alternate measures for limiting data use, including throttling of unlimited package users.

Throttling and Net Neutrality

So what does all of this have to do with net neutrality? What is throttling anyway? With a name that is based around a synonym for ‘to strangle’ you can bet it’s nothing good. Throttling is a technique employed by Internet service providers to attempt to shape Internet usage patterns. In a nutshell, if the ISP thinks you have used ‘too much’ Internet, whether you have reached your cap or not, they will cut back your download speed.
Keep in mind that throttle points are not contained in contracts and are entirely at the discretion of an ISP. They sometimes also throttle users if they have had ‘suspicious’ bandwidth usage. Although these policies were put in place to add a barrier to illegal file sharing, more often than not, they end up punishing people using Netflix and playing WOW.

Both throttling and bandwidth caps are issues of concern for net neutrality advocates. The position of these people is that attempts of large telecommunication companies to control usage patterns on the Internet are counter-productive to the atmosphere of innovation and exploration that have turned the Internet into one of the fundamental economic driving forces of the 21st centuries.

Simply put – unless you are AT&T, throttling, bandwidth caps and other Internet usage shaping attempts are bad for business.

Optimizing Your Data Usage

It’s unfortunate, but the situation is not likely to improve in Canada any time soon. Our three major carriers, to varying degrees, all want to participate in increased Internet usage shaping through download caps, throttling and other methods.

There are things you can do to minimize the impact of throttling without having to change your mobile experience.

1) Use wifi at home or in the office. Many homes and an increasing number of offices have wifi networks and your smartphone CAN access them. When in a wifi enabled area use it and surf all you like at no additional cost.

2) Track your data usage. Most cell phone carriers will include an app on your smartphone that lets you check how much of your download cap you’ve used over the month. Check these services once a week to keep track of where your data usage is.

3) Make sure you understand your wireless needs. A half-gigabyte data plan may be enough for some people, but don’t necessarily believe the hype when carriers tell you that 95% of cell phone users use under that level. These figures are skewed by the inclusion of non-data users.

You need to understand not how 95% of cell phone users use their cellular phones but rather how you intend to use your phone.

At myCELLmyTERMS, our wireless consultants can help you determine the data plan that meets your needs, we will help you devise a mobile service solution designed not around what 95% of the market might have but on what you want.

Contact us today to help take the sting out of data usage fees.