Fixed vs Mobile Data Pricing

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › Fixed vs Mobile Data Pricing

overloaded

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#166145 4-Mar-2015 09:41

Data is Data - whether it be delivered over a mobile or a fixed network.

I can get a fixed broadband plan with unlimited data on Vodafone from $99 (which includes a phone line and some calling).
On mobile, my $99 gets me a miserly 5GB (Red+ without handset but including some calling and text).

The cost of building a new fixed network (or even an extra connection) is much more expensive than a mobile one - look at what UFB is costing all of us in tax - and with only 80% coverage.

Therefore - the price of mobile data "should" actually be cheaper than fixed - instead of the other way around.

While 2Degrees has brought "some" competition to the telco market, it seems to me we are all still being rorted by Vodafone (and Spark) on mobile data pricing/included allocations!?.

NonprayingMantis

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#1250780 4-Mar-2015 09:44

No.

the cost of building a fixed network might be more expensive initially, but adding more capacity to a fixed network is much much cheaper

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chewster

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#1250781 4-Mar-2015 09:48

Important points being missed: capacity/noise floor and other technology limitations. Also, look what happens when you make mobile data unlimited and/or extremely cheap, it gets unbearably slow, case in point is the US where recently data caps have been re-added to many mobile plans because of these limitations.

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#1250784 4-Mar-2015 09:53

Mobile networks are limited by the amount of spectrum / bandwidth they can use.

Think of mobile data networks as a garden hose, There is only so much water which can flow down this pipe, If you start connecting multiple devices (Think sprinklers etc) to the pipe the amount of water each device reduces to a point where it is only a dribble.
The same thing happens with mobile networks, While mobile datacaps are low (Still much higher than 2-3 years ago) the speed that you get over our mobile networks are world class. If they were to give everyone unlimited 3/4G the speed each users gets would crawl to a halt and we would turn out like the USA carriers where they can't believe we can get 100mbit in a real word test on all of our 4G networks

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#1250798 4-Mar-2015 10:01

Sticking everyone one on mobile data would be worse than a Conklin!

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raytaylor

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#1250808 4-Mar-2015 10:08

I almost deem thee a troll!!!

Think of it this way.

A cell tower in say a 20mhz piece of spectrum might be able to transmit 40mbits of data across a 5km radius at any one time.
Now there is only about 150mhz of spectrum avaliable in an area - depending upon how much blocks of spectrum each cellular operator has, and different chunks of spectrum need to be assigned to different towers so they dont interfere with each other.
So tower 1 may have 60mhz, tower 2 may have 40mhz and tower 3 may have 50mhz

Thats a total of 300mbits in a single area or small town. The only way is to add more mini towers at costs of hundereds of thousands of dollars, with smaller antennas so the channels can be reused, or buy more spectrum when it becomes available for millions of dollars.

Now if everyone could choose wired or wireless for the same price, they would choose wireless.
Which is a problem.
Because the airwaves are only able to transport 300mbits over an urban area.

If you have 3,000 devices in the coverage area of the shared airspace, then
300mbits = 64800gb per month to share (16 hours per day x 30 days)
or 21gb per month.

Except no one wants to use all that data at once so you have to base the plans so that in peak times, the network still performs fast. So if you were to remove all the dull air time between midnight and 6am, and extend that out to maybe 8am, then remove 11-12am, and 2pm to 3pm, and 11pm to midnight again suddenly that airtime is only capable of carrying much less data.

A single 100mbit fibre connection is quite capable of delivering 6000gb (16 hours per day x 30 days) down each strand.
So instead of having a shared space the size of a small city, all that capacity is compressed down into a single strand of fibre. And many billions of strands of fibre can fit into that same city-size airspace. But of course you only need to run one to each household.

So its a matter of physics.
Data pricing is coming down, as cellular operators buy more bandwidth as the old tv bands are gradually released from the digital switchover. But buying this radio bandwidth costs millions.
And you can fit more in a single fibre than you can fit in the airspace within a small city.

We look at it another way too....

It costs us $X amount to run our network last month.
Its fair that customers that gain more benefit from the network should pay more, since they used the network more.
Therefore the easiest way to determine a fair share of what each customer should pay is based on the data they use.
If the network cost $XX and delivered YYYgbs then it makes sense to create plans where customers are placed into simple categories or tiers based on the number of gigabytes they used to represent their fair share of the network running cost.

As the network delivers more data, it then makes sense to revisit those plans and readjust them to keep the pricing fair.
And at the same time there are external forces like competition, and other factors that can go into it.

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#1250810 4-Mar-2015 10:10

coffeebaron: Sticking everyone one on mobile data would be worse than a Conklin!

Hey... you be nice to those conklins.
They are keeping me and you employed!

As far as i am concerned, they can live on forever :-P

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wellygary

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#1250819 4-Mar-2015 10:19

While this data is a little out of date, the ratio are probably still relavent:

In 2013 the average NZ mobile connection consumed 132MB of data. The average fixed BB connection consumed 26GB , thats around 200 times greater.....

The OP think a mobile network is cheaper to build that a fixed line one, how about building a mobile network 1-200 times as large, because that is what would be needed to replace the fixed line network ( even assuming that spectrum bandwidth was no limitation, which it is)

wasabi2k

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#1250830 4-Mar-2015 10:40

I came here to write a pithy response - but others have already responded with intelligent and well thought out explanations of the issue.

spoil sports.

I think we will potentially see prices/allocations continue to improve as technology makes more effective use of spectrum - but that is tied to generational technology shifts - 3G, 4G, 5G, 6G etc - which are then tied to provider infrastructure rebuilds and handset capabilities.

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#1250832 4-Mar-2015 10:44

wellygary:
In 2013 the average NZ mobile connection consumed 132MB of data. The average fixed BB connection consumed 26GB , thats around 200 times greater.....

Personally I don't use my mobile for data that much because I'm paranoid I'll blow through my tiny data allowance and then not have it when I need it, or get a big bill. If my data was unlimited I would use it a crapload more. Average a few hundred mb a month presently, if It was unlimited I'd probably use 200 times greater..

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#1250857 4-Mar-2015 11:06

raytaylor:
Now if everyone could choose wired or wireless for the same price, they would choose wireless.
Which is a problem.
Because the airwaves are only able to transport 300mbits over an urban area.

If you have 3,000 devices in the coverage area of the shared airspace, then
300mbits = 64800gb per month to share (16 hours per day x 30 days)
or 21gb per month.

When you start looking at the numbers like this, it really does come down to being alot more simpler to see how viable mobile data is.

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sbiddle

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#1251312 4-Mar-2015 20:21

Mobile is not and never will be a replacement for fixed broadband and cost will always be higher. There will never be an exception to this unless the laws of physics are changed.

Lets put this one simple way - Nokia Network's goal is to engineer mobile networks capable of supporting 1Gb per user per day by 2020. We're still a number of years away from reaching that goal, something that we've already surpassed in the fixed line space.

quickymart

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#1251372 4-Mar-2015 21:42

overloaded: Data is Data - whether it be delivered over a mobile or a fixed network.

I can get a fixed broadband plan with unlimited data on Vodafone from $99 (which includes a phone line and some calling).
On mobile, my $99 gets me a miserly 5GB (Red+ without handset but including some calling and text).

The cost of building a new fixed network (or even an extra connection) is much more expensive than a mobile one - look at what UFB is costing all of us in tax - and with only 80% coverage.

Therefore - the price of mobile data "should" actually be cheaper than fixed - instead of the other way around.

While 2Degrees has brought "some" competition to the telco market, it seems to me we are all still being rorted by Vodafone (and Spark) on mobile data pricing/included allocations!?.

Data is data, but the cost of delivery is what comes into it, hence why mobile data is much more expensive. The copper network has been around for many years, whereas mobile networks are (usually) a lot newer and therefore costs more to setup/maintain.