The UK's 5-Minute 4G Data Cap 261
Barence writes "The tariffs have been announced for Britain's first 4G network and they include a data cap that customers will break within five minutes. EE's high-speed data service will start from £36 a month — or £21 a month SIM-only — although the lowest package's 500MB download limit might put data-focused early adopters off. With EE claiming average network speeds of up to 12Mbits/sec, that means users could theoretically exceed their cap in just over five minutes of full-speed downloads — or a little over ten seconds a day. There are no unlimited data deals."
Re:Mobile bandwidth (Score:5, Informative)
Here in my part of Canada, there is no competition. Oh there are companies that are theoretically competing with each other, but they seem to have agreed that charging outrageous prices is working for all of them so why fuck with it. No one is offering cheap, efficient service to the masses. Competition does not work when the service or item in question is more or less essential, and the barriers to entry are significant.
The CRTC here in Canada just seems to rubberstamp what the industry tells them to do.
Re:Mobile bandwidth (Score:5, Informative)
In this case, UK English, tariff is not referring to a tax. The "tariff" is what americans would likely call a cell phone "plan".
Re:Mobile bandwidth (Score:2, Informative)
Competition is fundamentally limited by the combination of very high start up costs (infrastructure becomes a sunk cost) and very low marginal cost (once the towers are all built, running them is cheap). Railroads, power lines, and wire/fibre based telecommunication share these traits and historically demonstrate a tendency towards monopoly/duopoly structure.
Re:Mobile bandwidth (Score:5, Informative)
"The tariffs have been announced for Britain's first 4G network and they include a data cap"
I tend to agree that human life and welfare and critical infrastructure shouldn't be left to the ravages of greed but tariffs are normally levied by government not free market.
In the UK a 'tariff' in this context means what you guys would call a 'plan'. From Wikipedia: The word comes from the Italian word tariffa "list of prices, book of rates," which is derived from the Arabic ta'rif "to notify or announce."
Re:Mobile bandwidth (Score:5, Informative)
You're jumping to conclusions about a language you don't speak. In British English a tariff is a list or schedule of prices for such things as rail service, bus routes, and electrical usage (electrical tariff, etc.). I was unfamiliar with other uses of the word until seeing your comment and doing a 2 second google search to find that it also means a fee, not a tax, on imports or exports (trade tariff) in and out of a country, which I assume must be the main American English use of the word.
Re:Did anyone look at the cost of the plans? (Score:5, Informative)
Considering I'm already a customer of EE paying less than that for unlimited data (constrained only by the 3G bandwidth), yes, I think the price is unreasonable.
£40 for unlimited and they'd have got me upgrading.
£30 for unlimited would be reasonable.
£36 for 500MB is laughable.