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jfulmer
EVDO Junkie
Joined: 30 Jun 2007
Posts: 155
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 Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 9:53 am Post subject: |
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| herlien wrote: |
I'm one of those that lives in the boonies, and EVDO is my best choice for a decent connection. But I realize that it's not DSL or cable. Take jfulmer's numbers, for example. Yes, you're only getting the equivalent of 7.5 hours per month. But it's 7.5 hours of the entire cell's capacity. If you assume that the cell gets that kind of use for 16 hours per day (you're not using your 5GB at 3AM are you?), then that usage would only support 64 users on a tower. At $60/user, that's less than $4K per month. I'm not in the business, but I'll bet it costs them more than that to keep a tower in service.
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1500kbs is not the total amount of data handled by a cell tower (although it is frequently the bandwidth of the t1 used to link the towers to the network, but that's common enough). It's the maximum PER SUBSCRIBER, but the tower itself uses multiband channel hopping and multiplexing to support a lot more bandwidth than that. And that's in addition to voice data, which EVDO is generally maintained as a separate part of the tower's service, eg, the data portion cannot cannibalize the voice part of the service.
In addition, towers are generally shared, so no one vendor bears the brunt of all the tower fees. Sprint, mostly likely only has the equipment costs (which are already there for the voice portion of the service), the network local loop (~$150/mo in many locations, higher or lower depending on local tarrifs, and already there for management of voice equipment), and tower rental. Even so, kicking users off towers means there's fewer users to support the tower's costs, when viewed as a network whole.
So, I would say the following:
1) Sprint has ADVERTISED EVDO as a broadband solution.
2) In the boonies, most towers are likely highly underutilized.
3) $70 a month is a premium for a low end, broadband solution.
4) No other solution was offered than 'either barely use the service, or get offen my network'.
5) If they can't make the towers pay at $70 per user, then they need to figure out what does make it pay. Offering me an unusable service (to me) isn't the way to make me a happy customer.
As has been said before, there's a very large suspicion that this is linked to the rollout of the Samsung Instinct on Sprint's network as an 'iPhone killer', and wanted to clear the EVDO networks to support it.
Read http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/09/12/sprint-nextel-wireless-techsolutions08-cx_ew_0912hesse.html for some maddening double-speak from Sprint's CEO. |
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Sally
EVDO Heavy User
Joined: 19 Jun 2006
Posts: 111
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| Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 10:13 am Post subject: |
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Am I the only one that was around during 2003-2006or7 when we were paying $80 a month for unlimited? And that was before EVDO came out?
Am I really supposed to believe that these companies dropped the price out of the goodness of their hearts?
Or was it a little rougher to sell at $80 a month? (but there were still people like me paying it and we were thrilled with the service!)
So drop the price by 25% and then bring on even more users... all the while knowing that if people really used the service in the way that it was sold that there would be problems?
I just find it very interesting that there isn't a truly "unlimited" plan being sold at a higher price. |
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ralphthemagician
EVDO Newbie
Joined: 25 Jun 2008
Posts: 9
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| Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 1:36 am Post subject: |
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It is not the entire cells capacity. It's about half. EVDO Rev A is capable of speeds up to 3.1Mbps. Sprint starts off by limiting everyone to around 1500-1800Kbps. The marginal cost to Sprint of you using 10GB vs 5GB is damn near zero.
What Sprint really wants to do is actually discourage people from using it all together. That's the goal. They want to cut down on congestion as much as possible, so that they can continue to add new users without upgrading infrastructure. How much you use really isn't important, it's how long you are online and when. Sprint, Verizon and AT&T have created an anti-competitive marketplace where users an forced to pay a fee and then encouraged not to use the service. |
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ralphthemagician
EVDO Newbie
Joined: 25 Jun 2008
Posts: 9
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| Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 1:39 am Post subject: |
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| Sally wrote: | Am I the only one that was around during 2003-2006or7 when we were paying $80 a month for unlimited? And that was before EVDO came out?
Am I really supposed to believe that these companies dropped the price out of the goodness of their hearts?
Or was it a little rougher to sell at $80 a month? (but there were still people like me paying it and we were thrilled with the service!)
So drop the price by 25% and then bring on even more users... all the while knowing that if people really used the service in the way that it was sold that there would be problems?
I just find it very interesting that there isn't a truly "unlimited" plan being sold at a higher price. |
It's collusion. We went from several carriers offering different speeds at different prices with no usage cap, to all carriers offering the same speed service at the same price with the same arbitrary usage cap. There is no reason for customers to move between services, as there is no incentive. AT&T, Verizon and Sprint are no longer even competing with each other in the 3G broadband marketplace. |
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Sally
EVDO Heavy User
Joined: 19 Jun 2006
Posts: 111
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| Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 7:46 am Post subject: |
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Now I'm gonna sit back and wait for one of the geniuses here to tell us the difference between EVDO & 3G.  |
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berriferous
EVDO Newbie
Joined: 18 Sep 2008
Posts: 3
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| Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 9:03 pm Post subject: Thanks |
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| I too am in the "boonies". If you call 30 miles outside a major metropolitan center "boonies". I was planning to make a jump from satellite to evdo with sprint, but I was leary of the limited "unlimited" plan. I currently am capped at 1G/wk. I spend a lot of my time trying to keep my kids from watching funny cat videos on youtube or keeping windows or security software from unleashing a 100MB+ "update". Sounds like sprint isn't an answer to my problem. It looks like the only difference is that I will get another 0.25G/wk. I'm thinking the only way out of the digital divide is to force legislation, much like the rural electrification. The connections in high population densities just keep getting better and better, while we in wireless and satellite are trending toward less and less options. I just wanted to say thanks for posting this and saving me the money I'd lose making the jump to evdo, only to be cancelled due to unlimited funny cat videos. |
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Markgc
EVDO Heavy User
Joined: 14 Sep 2005
Posts: 107
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| Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 2:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | I'm thinking the only way out of the digital divide is to force legislation, much like the rural electrification. |
I think that you are right. The cable company refused to run 1/2 mile of cable up the road. DSL is in the next street 1/4 mile away but I have been waiting for 9 years now and I don't expect it to ever come here without legislation. |
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Markgc
EVDO Heavy User
Joined: 14 Sep 2005
Posts: 107
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berriferous
EVDO Newbie
Joined: 18 Sep 2008
Posts: 3
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| Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 4:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Markgc wrote: | You might want to take a look at these guys. I have just transferred from Sprint to here
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Mark, are there any indications they might limit the bandwidth. I would assume since they are using Sprints network they would eventually fall under the same bandwidth limit. |
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Markgc
EVDO Heavy User
Joined: 14 Sep 2005
Posts: 107
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| Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 4:56 pm Post subject: |
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| No indications right now. Keeping my fingers crossed. I am hoping that they are more hungry for customers than Sprint is. |
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Sally
EVDO Heavy User
Joined: 19 Jun 2006
Posts: 111
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| Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 5:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Markgc wrote: | | No indications right now. Keeping my fingers crossed. I am hoping that they are more hungry for customers than Sprint is. |
Again, I don't pretend to understand the contracts that must exist between the newly-popular-reseller and Sprint... but I gotta wonder how the reseller gets billed for the data its customers consume.
I wonder if there is any chance they run certain "averages" to determine whether or not a cap needs to go into effect. If this could possibly be the case, then you'd think that the same could have been said for Sprint being that 1-2% of heavy hitters wouldn't be enough to throw off the averages for the service to be worthwhile to sell at $60 / mo per account.
Just call me stoooopid for trying to figure out the sense behind any of this.
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Markgc
EVDO Heavy User
Joined: 14 Sep 2005
Posts: 107
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| Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 5:30 pm Post subject: |
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| M may not get billed for data quantity but I expect Sprint takes a monthly cut for every subscriber that M signs up. |
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jfulmer
EVDO Junkie
Joined: 30 Jun 2007
Posts: 155
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| Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 12:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Sally wrote: |
Again, I don't pretend to understand the contracts that must exist between the newly-popular-reseller and Sprint... but I gotta wonder how the reseller gets billed for the data its customers consume.
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See, unlike with consumers, when two business make a contract, there are usually penalties that go both ways. I'm sure this reseller has a contract to resell Sprint's bandwidth, and that at this point, it would be VERY expensive for Sprint to break it.
They may at some point, which may be the point of this reseller... Make it so painful so that Sprint wants to buy out the contract, and everyone retires... |
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Markgc
EVDO Heavy User
Joined: 14 Sep 2005
Posts: 107
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| Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 2:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | They may at some point, which may be the point of this reseller... Make it so painful so that Sprint wants to buy out the contract, and everyone retires... |
Good points but I will ride the wave until then |
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jfulmer
EVDO Junkie
Joined: 30 Jun 2007
Posts: 155
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| Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 2:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Markgc wrote: |
Good points but I will ride the wave until then |
Oh, I'm not trying to talk you out of it. I would have went with them, if I hadn't signed up with Alltel first.
jf |
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