Worst of the Week: Byte me!
Dan Meyer
Story
posted: August 20, 2010 - 11:17 am ET
Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the
Week. There's a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this
industry, so this column is a chance for us at
RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us
the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
One of the wonders of so-called “4G” networks is their
ability to efficiently transport data traffic that for a
spectrum-constrained industry like the mobile industry is
seen as an increasing necessity. This is of course due to
a customer base that does not seem to be losing their
enthusiasm for streaming high-definition cat videos to
their mobile devices.
In talking with dozens of people way smarter than me on
this topic, I have learned that these networks can do this
because they convert all of the information to be
transmitted into bytes of data that somehow travel
unabated along all-IP networks.
Whenever I hear this described my mind always pictures a
Popsicle stick flowing unimpeded down a river of water. I
know it’s a lot more complicated than that, but I am a
simple man and this is how I understand it.
One downside to all of this high efficiency mumbo-jumbo is
that this information, which in the future will include
both voice and data traffic, leaves carriers with no real
easy way to count the traffic in a manner that simple
people, like me, can understand. The easiest way from a
network perspective is to track this information in byte
form. However, in order to make this whole plan work
customers need to be educated as to what a byte is. (And
by educated I mean they must know that a byte is not like
a bite and will not turn them into a vampire.)
Unlike minutes, which people reference to on a daily basis
and waste endlessly watching movies in which people are
turned into vampires, or “unlimited,” which people
reference to when going to a buffet, trying to teach them
that 1 gigabyte equals 1,024 megabytes, or 1,048,576
kilobytes, or 1,073,741,828 bytes seem a difficult
exercise. (And yes, I had to look those up.)
I mean just look at the decimal system. People could not
get their heads around one meter equaling 100 centimeters,
equaling 1,000 millimeters. (And yes, I also had to look
up all of that.)
I blame all of this on the fact that once numbers get
beyond the triple digits, people in general start looking
for something else to learn about, or better yet a movie
to watch in which people turn into vampires. Think back to
when you were in school. Math was a pretty sweet class
until they started making you multiply stuff together that
resulted in numbers that you just knew you would never
encounter at any time in your life. (This excludes Bill
Gates, Warren Buffet and Steve Jobs.)
Carriers have tried to educate people on this whole byte
issue by providing handy guides that show how many bytes
some standard Internet processes require. Verizon Wireless
notes on its handy-dandy converter thingy that a text-only
e-mail message is the equivalent to 20 kilobytes (or
20,480 bytes), while one minute of streaming video is
equal to four megabytes (or 4,194,304 bytes). They even
provide a very handy data calculator to further inform
consumers of data usage.
AT&T Mobility, which recently “updated” their mobile
data packages by downgrading the amount of data available
per dollar, said it would also send reminders to consumers
when they are getting close to their capped data
allotment. Seems nice enough.
But, all of these “solutions” are flawed in their
execution by my previous premise that they rely on numbers
greater than 999. Sure, consumers may look at those
numbers and think they understand what they are seeing,
but in reality we all know that 95% of them will probably
sprain a pinky finger trying to delete the message as
quickly as possible.
So, is there a solution to this quagmire?
I say
we just open up the spigots and let the water run free.
Sure, this will likely crash networks and make the current
“my iPhone doesn’t work” syndrome seem like a pleasant
memory, but this is the only way for people to understand
that wireless is really not something that can just be
neutral to all network traffic. There will of course
plenty of hemming and hawing as people are unable to make
a phone call because everyone just has to see the latest
preview for some vampire flick, but I think this will be
the only way for them to learn.
Harsh and unrealistic? Most definitely. But until carriers
can come up with a solution that most people can
understand, or a new numbering system that does not exceed
999, I think it’s the only answer.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week's Worst of the Week
column. And now for some extras:
--In a move that could only be seen as rubbing salt in an
open, festering wound, Bloomberg late last week came out with its rankings of the
worst merger and acquisitions in recent years. The telecom
world was well represented on the list by Sprint Nextel
Corp., which garnered the No. 3 spot with its formation
following Sprint Corp.’s $35 billion acquisition of Nextel
Communications Inc. way back in 2005.
The story noted the combination led to hundreds of
thousands of customers defecting to competitors, a stock
price pushed 47% lower than its peers and a company that
is now valued at around one-sixth the $70 billion it was
worth when the deal was announced. Those facts do seem to
indeed back the story’s claim.
While many (most) would concede that the deal was indeed a
head scratcher when it was announced, it’s hard to fault
the uniting of the 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings of each
company has done for their future plans. Sure, that
spectrum has been offloaded onto Clearwire Corp., but
Sprint Nextel still owns a majority stake in that venture,
which has a spectrum depth to deploy next-generation
services that dwarf their competition. Heck, they have so
much spectrum that Clearwire’s CEO has said the company
was looking at possibly selling some off. A bold statement
for any established wireless carrier.
The selling off of some of those spectrum assets may be
the only way to show the real value the combination of
Sprint and Nextel. Sure, it likely won’t bring back those
hundreds of thousands of customers or even embiggen the
carrier’s market capitalization to its previous heyday.
But, it could at least show that the deal was not made in
vain.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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