It's Time to Stop Buying the Capacity Crisis Myth > Siri is causing capacity problem on wireless networks

Paul Farhi covers media for The Post.

Siri’s dirty little secret is that she’s a bandwidth guzzler, the digital equivalent of a 10-miles-per-gallon Hummer H1.

To make your wish her command, Siri floods your cell network with a stream of data; her responses require a similarly large flow in return. A study published this month by Arieso, an Atlanta firm that specializes in mobile networks, found that the Siri-equipped iPhone 4S uses twice as much data as does the plain old iPhone 4 and nearly three times as much as does the iPhone 3G. The new phone requires far more data than most other advanced smartphones, which are pretty data-intensive themselves, The Post has reported.

Arieso says that the Siri-equipped iPhone 4S “appears to unleash data consumption behaviors that have no precedent.”

Cell and data networks are like any common resource; they have limits. And once they hit their limit, regardless of which group is using its share and then some, there’s no more to go around.

This means that Siri’s data-hogging ways are a problem for more than just those willing to foot the bill. As networks become congested, everyone’s service deteriorates. Private desire becomes a public issue. Calls are dropped or never completed; Internet access slows.

no matter how many cell towers we throw up, sooner or later we’ll bump up against the rigid limits of the electromagnetic spectrum, the invisible frequencies over which all electronic communications move. And building new capacity isn’t cheap. Everyone — not just the first-class passengers — ends up paying for it. So prepare for higher cellphone bills.

And in the meantime? Prepare to sit and wait. That call to Grandma might not get through until the congestion clears.

The government’s top airwaves cop, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, has long warned about a looming “spectrum crunch.” If the United States can’t free up more bandwidth for mobile uses, more people than just cellphone users would be inconvenienced, he warns. The lack of new capacity, he says, would threaten U.S. jobs in the telecom industry and stifle technical progress.

The only way to free up some now is to reshuffle the lineup, moving older users (say, over-the-air TV and radio stations and government agencies) to another part of the band in favor of the up-and-coming hot shots. Of course, that kind of change is disruptive. A massive political battle looms, pitting the haves against the want-mores.

If you use Siri 2-3 times per day at an average of 63KB per instance, you might expect to use 126KB to 189KB per day, or 3.7 to 5.5MB per month. For 4-6 times a day, that might come out to 252KB to 378KB per day, or 7.4 to 11MB per month. If you use it 10-15 times per day, you might end up using 630KB to 945KB per day, or 18.5 to 27.7MB per month.

Good thing only one person owns a iPhone. Imagine what would happen if millions had one and used it at the same time.