Like the Exaflood, the 'Spectrum Crunch' Wasn't Real Monday Jan 27 2014 10:48 EDT Remember the "exaflood"? The idea that Internet video bandwidth demands were simply unmanageable and that we'd all be crying over clogged tubes by now? It never arrived, because it wasn't real. It was a bogeyman created by hardware vendors selling network gear. It was a phantom crafted by think tankers and carrier lobbyists, eager to convince politicians that unless they got what they wanted (less regulation, no net neutrality laws, no price controls, huge subsidies and tax credits, less consumer protection, metered billing) the Internet would implode. While there certainly is limited spectrum the "spectrum crunch" wasn't all that dissimilar, with prognostications that wireless networks would collapse if giant carriers weren't given what they wanted. AT&T warned we faced spectrum crunch if they weren't allowed to buy T-Mobile. Verizon plays up the spectrum crunch any time they need a regulatory favor. Even the FCC joined the fun when eager to make money at spectrum auction. Except like the Exaflood, data suggests these chicken littles were quite hallucinatory in nature. According to a report by the Summit Ridge Group, wireless growth projections from government and companies like Cisco have been quietly slashed repeatedly in the last few years, with well-run networks more than able to handle the load posed by an explosion in mobile video use: quote:
In 2011, the spread got wider, 1090 billion MB projected vs 890 billion MB actually carried. And in 2012, the FCC projected 2219 billion MB was even further from the actual traffic of 1468 billion MB. Extrapolating these actual numbers to 2015 suggest the current allocation of 608 MHz of spectrum for mobile broadband will be close to actual demand levels in major metro areas. Of course traffic will continue to grown past 2015, but the "crisis" does not appear to be nearly of the proportions projected a few years ago.
The firm continues: quote:
As we approach 2015, it’s become obvious the spectrum crunch is not as severe as once projected. Large swaths of mobile spectrum remain undeveloped – including prime sub-1 GHz spectrum in the 700 MHz band auctioned over six years ago. The difference between the lower wireless network traffic today and earlier higher projections largely comes from two primary: 1) Increased Wi-Fi offloading from 15% in 2009 to over 40% today; and 2) the phasing out of unlimited data plans in the US.
Though it should be noted that unlimited data doesn't really appear to be quite the growth killer Summit Ridge suggests; in fact recent data suggests that LTE users consume four times the data that 3G users did, and AT&T and Verizon earnings reports clearly illustrate that users aren't being scared away from paying more under shared data plans. So what happened? Smart engineering, hardware improvements and intelligent network adaptation happened, just as it always does when capacity issues raise their head on any network.We as an industry don't seem to be learning that capacity Armageddon is one of the first things any broadband sector lobbyist pulls out of his toolbox when trying to get government and the press to buy into frequently bad ideas. With both the exaflood and spectrum crunch deceased, only wonders what the next broadband infrastructure capacity bogeyman will look like. |
 YDC
join:2007-11-13
Hewlett, NY
1 recommendation |
YDC
Member
2014-Jan-27 10:58 am
Oh we know..It will look just like your favorite cable, phone or wireless company. No doubt innovation is still ripe at the top. How can we get even more money from these poor people? We need to show profit at an enormous rate or Wall Street will punish us. | |
|  guppy_fish
Premium Member
join:2003-12-09
Palm Harbor, FL |
Because there are caps and costsWireless is in check due to the incentive pricing, gorge on video and streaming all you want, just you have to pay for it. Nothing wrong with that
Oh my Electric and Water bills work the same way | |
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Re: Because there are caps and costsNot quite. If you don't use much water or power in a month, you're only charged a minimal amount to service the account. If, however, you don't use much data, you still pay the full subscription fee.
If the ISP's really were interested in per-byte billing, then your base monthly bill would be something like $5.00, and you'd pay for each byte, beginning with the first one. Maybe around $0.10 per gigabyte. | |
| | | KearnstdSpace Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ |
Kearnstd
Premium Member
2014-Jan-27 1:01 pm
Re: Because there are caps and costssaid by ISurfTooMuch:Not quite. If you don't use much water or power in a month, you're only charged a minimal amount to service the account. If, however, you don't use much data, you still pay the full subscription fee.
If the ISP's really were interested in per-byte billing, then your base monthly bill would be something like $5.00, and you'd pay for each byte, beginning with the first one. Maybe around $0.10 per gigabyte. Exactly why they will stick to business models that are cap and overage. If they went purely to metered they would always be facing that specter of having to prove their meter to the weights and measures of every state and possibly a few cities. I imagine the executive boards of the ISPs do not want the expense of that when they can get away with the robbery of cap and overage and only sometimes accurate metering. | |
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Re: Because there are caps and costsOf course, all of this may unravel if someone sues them, claiming that their meters are inaccurate. Naturally, they'll try to force them into arbitration, but then I'd wait for the lawsuit that claims that the arbitration is rigged in favor of the company. | |
| | | | | KearnstdSpace Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ |
Kearnstd
Premium Member
2014-Jan-27 2:58 pm
Re: Because there are caps and costsI have always figured the whole reason arbitration existed was because its rigged in favor of the company.
After all there as to be a reason their legal department is scared of juries. | |
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Re: Because there are caps and costsWell, when the company gets to decide who the arbitrator is, there's going to be some favoritism there. It may not be written down anywhere, but the arbitration company knows who's paying them now and who will (or won't) be paying them in the future.
Unfortunately, companies can force you to take arbitration if it's in your contract, but, to my knowledge, no one has sued on the basis of the arbitration being unfair. Sooner or later, a lawyer is going to try that approach, and the results will be interesting. | |
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| | intok (banned)
join:2012-03-15 |
to ISurfTooMuch
If they are going to bill me by the byte then it damn well better be over a symmetrical 1GBit FTTH line.
Coincidentally, doing this also solves network congestion and helps with latency. | |
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to guppy_fish
Well they should be regulated like like water and electric, no? | |
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Re: Because there are caps and costsThey use public rights-of-way and the public airwaves (for wireless), so they should have some oversight, yes.
Also, if they're going to charge for specific amounts of data, then the tools used to measure this data should be inspected and certified by a regulatory agency. We do the same for other goods, so data should be treated no differently. | |
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to guppy_fish
Yeah, nothing wrong with that...except that even when I use on the low end of the "average" monthly data usage for a household, I am facing a bill close to $1,000 USD. There are no alternatives, because Comcast can't be bothered to run the cabling anywhere in the county, AT&T wants to keep all of the fiber lines for cell towers, and AT&T won't bother removing the damned loading coils(used to help improve telephone lines in rural areas for decades) from the POTS lines to make DSL a potential option. Yeah, I am so thankful I can prop up some executives cocaine habit.
While some services have had a slightly increased cost in rural areas, $1,000 for data access(made far worse by the fact that that $1,000 provides far fucking less data use than the average wired Internet connection) is extremely offensive. So, you can spare the discussion the same tired, useless comparisons that you are attempting to entertain us with today.
If you would like to know why I am paying Verizon Wireless $1,000(and more, depending; $1,000 USD is now average for my data-only line, each month), it is because AT&T requires my girlfriend(an employee on the wireless side) to have Internet access at home. Given how much work she has to do from home, on top of what she does at the office space she drives to five days a week, plus me checking my email sparingly, 100 GB does seem low. AT&T refuses is even activate the LTE equipment already installed in the cabinets in nearby towers(we just got UMTS a year ago, but I know for a fact that LTE transceivers are installed in the towers around our home). I also doubt AT&T will provide my girlfriend with a company line if and when LTE is active around our home, since it refused to do so when the requirement first came up.
The ironies abound in this one situation. | |
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Areyouinsane
Anon
2014-Jan-28 10:14 pm
Re: Because there are caps and costsYou do realize that people are selling unlimited Verizon Wireless data lines for around $200, right? You just assume liability. Then you can cut your $1000 monthly bill down to around $100. I'm not sure why anyone would pay them that much. | |
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silbaco
Premium Member
join:2009-08-03
USA |
silbaco
Premium Member
2014-Jan-27 11:50 am
ExafloodI don't know. The Exaflood seems pretty real for a number of Windstream customers.  | |
| |  tshirt
Premium Member
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA |
tshirt
Premium Member
2014-Jan-27 11:53 am
Re: Exafloodawful lot of Netflix customers seem to have clogged tubes too. | |
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 SimbaSevenI Void Warranties
join:2003-03-24
Billings, MT ·StarLink
1 recommendation |
Let's see here..In 2011, the spread got wider, 1090 billion MB projected vs 890 billion MB actually carried. And in 2012, the FCC projected 2219 billion MB was even further from the actual traffic of 1468 billion MB. 1090 billion MB = 1090 million GB = 1090 thousand TB = 1090 PB = ~1EB transferred. So, around an EB of data was projected. Why do they just say that instead of using billions of MB's? Oh ya, billions sounds like more so we *MUST* use it to make it sound worse and prove our point instead of using real numbers. Truthfully, the worlds pipes can handle that traffic with ease. I don't know what everyone is freaking out about. Maybe if every ISP in the world was using a couple T1's or OC3's as their entire backbone, I could see it happening. *BEWARE OF THE EXAFLOOD* That's why we're capping your internet instead of throttling it. "Makes perfect sense to me", says the executives lining their pockets. | |
| Bengie25
join:2010-04-22
Wisconsin Rapids, WI |
Wired vs WirelessI never thought we were going to have an "Exaflood" for wired because technology has been keeping up for the past 50+ years. What I'm not sure about is if wireless can handle it.
Wireless inherently has a lot of interference to deal with, which makes it much harder to scale than fiber, or even copper. With 1600p and soon 4k displays somehow getting packed into 3" screens, it doesn't take a lot for the many mobile users to suddenly consume more data than a fixed line network, and ISPs are already having issues with using copper handling this kind of demand.
I think fiber is the way for fixed line and bandwidth will be a non-issue, but all of the bandwidth issues copper has, wireless has it much worse and copper can't keep up with demand.
I'm not saying it can't be done, but I do think an "exaflood" for wireless is a real possibility and could have growing pains unless we get a magic bullets for wireless bandwidth. | |
| | intok (banned)
join:2012-03-15 |
intok (banned)
Member
2014-Jan-28 3:54 am
Re: Wired vs WirelessSimple, at the next network upgrade rollout the cell company uses more, lower power/range antennas, you know, the pico/micro/femtocell variety that can be put on utility poles. This has the added benefit of being able to fill in dead zones created by objects in between the users and the high power wide area antenna up high. | |
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Remember?Remember? How could we forget, you opine about it at least once a week. | |
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