Is throttling necessary?

Recently both Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile US have said that under certain conditions they will “throttle” some customers who are on unlimited data plans. Verizon’s announcement caught the FCC’s attention and the throttling issue is one we are all likely to hear more about in the months ahead.
RCR Wireless News spoke about the issue with Gerry Purdy, chief mobile analyst at Compass Intelligence. Purdy said that in a world of high demand and limited bandwidth, carriers may decide that they have to throttle some users.
“The drivers for this come about because we have demand going up and we want to be able to see people be able to get services that they want when they want them, and the question is how do you economically provide that and make it fair,” said Purdy.
Purdy said making more bandwidth available to wireless carriers is the only long-term solution, but in the short term more unpopular solutions may be necessary.
“In the short term the demand is so high that we’re going to have things happening that maybe not everybody’s going to be happy about, because you can’t instantly create more bandwidth, it’s going to take a long time,” he said.
Some throttling primarily affects “bandwidth hogs,” or those who use disproportionate amounts of mobile data. Some of these data users are not large customers, but individuals who use a mobile device for tethering or peering.
“If I am in charge of a network I’ve got to make sure I’m at least viable, particularly for the business customer, and if my consumers are hogging the entire network, what am I going to do?” said Purdy.
When some consumers take more than their share of mobile data, others may have a bad experience. Some carriers are already experimenting with solutions that let users pay extra to avoid this. This can take the form of paying to ensure that a certain piece of content is delivered without interruption.
“Consumers, I think, would be willing to pay a relatively modest amount if the content were important enough,” said Purdy. He also foresees payments to carriers from content providers, like the payments Netflix is currently making to Verizon and Comcast.
“If you have a big interest in the wireless network, I think that there’s going to be an economic bandwidth opportunity for you to sort of buy your way into the throttling prevention if you will, like the fees that Netflix has paid Comcast and other ISPs to make sure their content can get through,” he said.
Watch the full interview below.