I may be a bit naïve when it comes to corporate business practices, but I find myself thoroughly confused by the punishing policy of throttling which seems to be rearing its ugly head in the mobile space.
Over the past year and a half I’ve attended dozens of mobile conferences and seen many a slide threatening “data tsunamis” and all kinds of other unnatural disasters. “how will we cope? How will we manage? How can we make our customers happy?” the mobile mad men ask repeatedly, clicking their slide clickers nervously?
Obviously, building out coverage and capacity seems to make the most sense, resulting in the whole room nodding sagely and muttering approval, until one miserable sod (yes, you, operator lackey) gets up and publicly asks whether throttling wouldn’t be a better idea.
Whenever I hear this, two things happen. First, my brain automatically plays me this clip:
And then I forcibly stop myself from actually physically throttling the guy who said it. Usually, he’s weedy looking. I could totally take him. You want throttling? Fine, I’ll give you a throttling, you little….!
Ok, so why all the rage, Sylves? Seriously, operators have to make money, and these bandwidth hogs are seriously killing carrier buzz. You can’t have a small minority of users using up all the bandwidth resources, it’s unfair, and what about all that illegal downloading? Sheesh…
Yes, schizophrenia, I hear ya loud and clear… BUT, let me tell you why the whole throttling issue really, truly gets my goat. Why it seriously hacks me off. It’s because AFTER the slide about the impending data tsunami (a really sensitive term, FYI) comes the slide on how to make mobile video take off and how to capitalize on it.
Yes. Operators, want to know how, just how, to get you to watch bandwidth clogging videos on your phone, get you to pay for video subscriptions to your phone, glut out on YouTube videos and congest their newly built LTE networks with Netflix. They really want that. Just so long as they can keep complaining about how much data you’re using and making plans to throttle the crap out of you.
So, to be clear, carriers want to sell you pricy data packages, subscriptions to mobile TV, offer you mobile video-on-demand, and then proverbially choke your cellular chicken. They really want you to pay for an expensive large-screened smartphone with the expensive magic of 4G just so they can spoil your fun by whacking the wireless weasel right on the head.
Take AT&T’s recent announcement – timed perfectly before it starts flogging you the insanely expensive iPhone 5 – that it will be “taking steps to manage exploding demand for mobile data.”
Yes, AT&T is happy to cash in on your “exploding demand” (and imploding wallet) when it comes to selling you a phone designed to consume oodles of data, as long as you stop being a pig, and agree to take that cap in your stride. You data digesting scum.
Of course, I’m just being unreasonable here, because AT&T is only planning on throttling “a very small minority of smartphone customers who are on unlimited plans.” Oh wait, hang on, that really small number of elite customers who actually have enough money to buy a crazy expensive phone AND an unlimited data plan, those are the super users you want to strangle, AT&T? Also, isn’t it technically lying if you offer someone an unlimted plan and then go ahead and limit it? Just saying.
That’s sort of like Ferrari saying “a very small number of people who actually buy our amazing and mind-blowingly expensive cars actually use them to drive really fast because we told them they could, but we’ve decided that’s wrong, so we’ll just slam the brakes on them and make them drive at the same speed as people who own Ford Fiestas. An imposed mobile socialism of sorts. Anyway, no one likes a show-off.
“This step will not apply to our 15 million smartphone customers on a tiered data plan or the vast majority of smartphone customers who still have unlimited data plans,” says AT&T. Well, what a relief, until Netflix comes along and AT&T goes back on that promise too.
Helpfully, too, we’re told “using Wi-Fi doesn’t create wireless network congestion or count toward your wireless data usage.” Translation: “get off our fricking network and use pipes someone else pays for instead!”
Of course, you could always try to use AT&T’s wireless hotspots, but seeing as there simply aren’t enough of them and that the speeds on them are abysmal, I fail to see how that will lead to improved customer satisfaction, AT&T. Then again, as I mentioned above, I’m really naïve.
“The bottom line,” says AT&T, is that “customers have options.” Yes, AT&T, you are totally right about that. Customers do have options. Just be careful that after throttling your best, most fanatically mobile customers, those options don’t come back and bite you on the ass.
