For those who are curious, let's talk and philosophize about mobile data for a few minutes in a pretend little fireside chat, shall we?
Providing wireless mobile internet access can be expensive, doubly so providing streaming media; and the majority of bandwidth used by people, smartphone or no, is from streaming video in this country, because we love our bread and circuses. You take streaming video out of the equation, most of the data used month to month isn't much for the average Joe, and getting mobile optimized web content is even leaner still.
Now, it's important to note that T-Mobile and T-Mo based MVNOs like Mint who offer "unlimited" data plans, usually have statements along the lines of, "streaming video is throttled to 480p." Ask yourself how they do that.
Do you know how? Proxies. Proxies and CDN peering agreements with video content providers. There's a reason why T-Mobile touts a mess of streaming video partnerships... it's because it's literally cheaper to set up a CDN for the streaming entertainment provider in your own rackspace in your own network and mirror their content that way while paying for the electrical pixies to keep the lights on than pay for the Tier1 bandwidth to fetch it externally. It also means you can optimize that content for the network you're pumping it out on. 480p on a smartphone is plenty due to screen size, and by removing the option to go with an HD stream by cramming those requests through your own proxy, that's that much less load on individual cell towers and even on the internal network, and gives the end user more data to use while simultaneously allowing more customers to use the finite resources available.
Those CDN peering partnerships and video throttling are a pretty big part of the reason why T-Mobile's mobile data rates are some of the cheapest in the country. It's also why AT&T tries to sell people on or even give away HBOMax (or whatever the crap they're calling their streaming service this month) to their postpaid mobile customers, because it's streaming media that's way cheaper for them to deliver than, say, Netflix or Youtube, since AT&T owns Warner Media. Or why some mobile data plans can offer "free" data that doesn't go against your data cap using Facebook/Whatsapp/Instagram. Assume that if the mobile plan is bundling a streaming service for free or discounted, there's CDNs of that content internally on that mobile network specifically optimized to a tiny mobile screen on a wireless mobile network.
And why 480p, specifically? Because it's 9MB of data a minute, or less. It delivers hours of content for a fraction of the bandwidth per gigabyte. You can get nearly two hours of video out of each gigabyte of data used. 720p uses about 20-25% more bandwidth, and 1080p uses twice that of 480p.
Now I'm all for network neutrality myself and don't feel it appropriate to have access restricted or de-prioritized to independent content, but I understand why they're having to do this all the same. The loss of neutral peering agreements has hastened this problem and accelerated this sort of draconian network traffic shaping, but a big part of why those neutral peering agreements died in the first place was due to the rise of streaming media throwing the give-and-take of the original peering agreements all akimbo. When 90% of your traffic through the backbone is only flowing one direction...
These proxies and CDN servers are why so many people on these forums keep getting tripped up with permabanned IP addresses. This is also why when you browse a website with geolocation customization on a smartphone with your GPS location data turned off and they base it off your IP address, or you just look up your mobile IP address physical location on your phone, you usually wind up geolocated to another city or even state from where you actually are. Take for example, you live in Lubbock, but your phone's IP address says you're in Dallas.
And here's the real kicker, most mobile streaming, even with stuff like Youtube, is audio streaming... music, not video. Why? Because video streaming for any real amount of time is an absolute battery killer keeping those screens lit up, just like turning on a WiFi hotspot is a killer given how much harder all the radios are suddenly working as a data middleman. However, most people also aren't going to stream a ton of video anywhere but home, and that's likely to be done over WiFi from their home's ISP near a power outlet.
And suddenly, we see an interesting market driving force potentially behind the larger smartphone screen movement with smaller batteries in the flagships than the mid-range phones beyond just the need to shove a dozen fractal antennas into the case as a way to counteract battery and processing efficiency gains. This can handicap and discourage heavy mobile video users through psychological manipulation with charge anxiety. This makes sense since most of the people who stream a lot of video on their phones are typically using larger screen, higher end phones to begin with. Even if it's not a deliberate design decision, it's certainly a convenient benefit.
It's also worth noting that it can be really difficult to use even anywhere close to 5GB of net neutral data in a month on a heavily used smartphone when you take media streaming and internal CDN supported social media out of the equation.
Unfortunately, raw internet access breaks this savings trick, because it can bypass the network proxies and CDN servers of the mobile network on top of now requesting the really bandwidth hungry regular desktop internet version of websites. Like I've said before, they've tried really hard to make mobile data different than regular wired internet data, and they succeeded. It's all optimizations and numbers tricks to try and make the networks appear more robust and your data plan bigger than it really is for the money... and part of that is just about basic physics there on the last mile. There's only so much spectrum bandwidth available to go around.
Statistically as well, about 1% of all mobile data users are the ones who use half of the world's global bandwidth, and the top 10% of mobile data users use 90% of the world's global bandwidth. This brings us to the trick some carriers try to do to increase profit margins by prepaying mobile service and trying to play the odds with that 10% of the user base that they can't nail for breaking TOS. They are not only optimizing your content delivery to use as little as possible, they are trying to prey on your own greed by overselling you on what you actually need, hoping the data/minutes/texts go unused, partly to cushion the cost of the people who actually try to use every last kilobyte of their high speed allotment for the month every month, and partly to try and increase profit margins. This is why you never see rollover data on these plans.
This brings us back to Mint, specifically. On Mint's monthly plans page, all of their plans are technically listed as "unlimited" plans, including data, no matter how low the high speed data cap. Their 3GB plan is 3GB of high speed LTE data with 128kbps throttled "unlimited" data after that point, same with the 8GB and 12GB plans. Then, there's the "unlimited" unlimited plan, where they even claim that the high speed data is "unlimited"... until you read the fine print. And what does the fine print say? "Unlimited Data: Unlimited means speeds will be reduced to a max of 128Kbps after >35GB/mo. or use of GB allotment for the remainder of the billing cycle. 1 month equals 30 days. Partial megabytes rounded up. Unlimited on handset and network only." So, the unlimited "unlimited" data is actually 35GB of data with the same unlimited 128kbps throttling (which effectively kills off media streaming), and it's only for handset use, exactly like the smaller data plans. Then we get to the really curious bit, which I said was worth paying attention to: "Tethering or hotspot data service for unlimited plan customers may not exceed 5GB/mo. in total usage per bill cycle."
I actually read it the right way the first time, because all their plans are their "unlimited" plans, and they're using marketing doublespeak to confuse the point by throwing around the word "unlimited" in deeply meaningless ways. It even tripped me up for a bit. But again, note that tethering and hotspot data is to not exceed 5GB/month on every "unlimited" plan with the exception of the 3GB plan, which self caps even lower. Even if you try to read that as applying to only the 35GB plan and not the 8GB and 12GB plans as well, that 5GB cap speaks volumes about what the real raw internet data capacity is on these mobile data plans with multiple internal peering and CDN agreements where you're being promised up to 35GB of data a month. Remember, it can be really difficult to use even anywhere close to 5GB of net neutral data in a month on a heavily used smartphone when you take media streaming out of the equation.
The top 10% and 1% of mobile users are the ones taking up 90% of the resources for themselves, and to hear a lot of them talk about how entitled they are to every last byte of data they pay for, you'd think they'd burn the world to get it as they defend every trick in the book, looking for every loophole, and advocating outright lying and violating the terms of service to play the odds as a war of attrition. You know, cheapskate behavior... not mindful frugality.
Accusing the MVNO industry of screw-you levels of greed and taking a let-'em-die-there'll-be-another attitude as a blanket statement with the razor thin margins they're working with when taken in a more holistic picture of what's actually happening in the entire industry and with the greater internet network? It comes off as a bit tone deaf, in a victim blaming sort of way. All of them are just trying to meet an under-served part of the market that the major carriers in this country have all but abandoned on mobile networks and infrastructure that have no neutral access protections - the poor and impoverished. I've known some absolute jerks in the MVNO industry, and you can usually identify who they typically work for based on which outfits the FCC have historically fined for abusing the Lifeline service to keep cash positive... I don't agree with it, but I can understand why some of them did it. Desperation can be just as horrible a motivator as greed. But I've also met a lot of mensches in the MVNO industry as well. People who sacrificed to help others in times of need and tried to work towards higher callings in how they conducted their business and not just virtue signaled... they're the ones that usually suffer and close shop from these sorts of crass attitudes not just from their peers, but their own customers as well.
I remember an old saying once about how it's 1% of the people who ruin it for the rest of us. That they're the ones who constantly drive more and more draconian laws, higher prices, etc., for the rest of us. I'll let you, gentle reader, figure out what that might mean in realistic terms beyond the mobile industry, in regard to the nature of the modern FIRE movement that's so obviously lost its way on Pete's original message about trying to leave the world a better place and deliberately consume less for the benefit of the greater good... and how that might relate to certain popular opinions expressed around these parts.
In closing, I just want to encourage you to treat others the way you want to be treated. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind... and it's really difficult to throw stones at the greedy nature of corporations when your response to that greed is to take as much as you can get away with instead of choosing to starve them out.
Neo, all the best on setting up the new provider for the kinfolk. As always, it's a pleasure trading words with you. I've nothing more useful to add to this thread as it stands.
