From AppleInsider:

Netflix has been throttling video for AT&T and Verizon mobile subscribers for over five years, the streaming service has newly admitted, claiming it was in customers' best interests.

The company said it was trying to "protect consumers from exceeding mobile data caps," according to the Wall Street Journal. AT&T and Verizon wireless customers are still limited to streaming Netflix at 600 kilobits per second, which reduces video quality in the process.
...
Streaming two hours of Netflix video at HD quality could consume up to 6 gigabytes of bandwidth, easily blowing past many of the data caps imposed by U.S. carriers. [emph mfn]

It does surprise me how much people stream to their phones now. I mean, honestly, six gigs for a movie? That's a lot of cellular data. I was trying to figure out if I should buy the "Sprint" or "Other" model of iPhone SE (there are three models, apparently. The third is exclusively for China), and, well, the only difference for me, as I'm on a Sprint MNVO, seems to be that the Other model lacks one LTE band, so I can't get 100 Mbps.

Losing the "LTE Plus" band could be a big deal for many. In 2014, Sprint was insanely slow compared to the other major carriers, with under 5 Mbps for their LTE.

But at 100 Mbps? I'd blow through my RingPlus "free" monthly 500 megs in 500 / (100/8) = about 40 seconds. I don't think this matters a lot for me.

But by far the most interesting piece to me is AT&T's reaction.

AT&T's senior executive VP of external and legislative affairs, Jim Cicconi, claimed the carrier was "outraged" to learn Netflix was throttling its customers without their consent.

Oh, "outraged", is he? Seems like there are two possible reasons for this. Either he knew and needs to protect AT&T's rep with their customers (unlimited is unlimited!), or, more likely as the grandfathered unlimited plans disappear, he's counting the dollars lost to AT&T in overage fees from streaming.

(Disclosure, I guess -- I own trivial amounts of AT&T stock. And Apple & Amazon stock. Probably should put all that on the blog somewhere permanent, not that you care.)

Labels: att, business, netflix, wireless

I replied to a comment on 9to5mac that was embedded in a thread about Phil Schiller on the iPhone's paltry starting storage of 16 gigs. Here are a couple of bits:

Schiller will tell you ‘You can get iCloud storage which most people use these days’

As if mobile data is free and available everywhere

... followed by...

As if mobile data is free and available everywhere

It isn’t? I think it depends on where you live. In North America, South Africa and Australia, it seems to commonly have limited monthly usage and is paid per traffic transferred. In most other places, there are no transfer limits and you basically pay a flat monthly fee for a certain level of speed limit.

I'm not sure what places that comments is trying to say have these pie on the sky unlimited plans... I got the feeling that wasn't true in the UK and France, but could be conflating with overseas temporary SIMs. But this seemed to feed in fairly well with an older post of mine that said Apple wants you to stream tons, because it keeps iPhone use expensive.

I said more along those lines on 9to5, and figured I'd put that text here as well.

There's a close relationship between keeping iPhones as status items and linking them to expensive phone plans. I used mine with Ting, which is exceptionally low cost, but Apple would rather we kept shelling out for more expensive plans from the big four. Music streaming, cloud document storage, and, increasingly, video (esp cord cutters who have even cut the home Internet cord) mean iPhones users desire phatter data plans.

If people with money keep using iPhones, people will keep buying iPhones to look like they have plenty of money. Plans with lots of data is part of the cachet. Apple's going to continue to design phones to be used by those with enough expendable cash they keep expensive plans.

In other news, this is the first post made by my new Markdown editor. It's not even alpha yet, but we're getting close.

Labels: apple, business, iphone, wireless

Having used the hardware keyboard yesterday, though, it is clearly a secondary form of input. You cannot even vaguely drive the iPad interface by keyboard alone. It is almost entirely only for text input. The arrow keys really only work for text editing. Shift-arrow combos work for selecting ranges of text, and Command-arrow combos work for moving the insertion point to the beginning/end of lines. Option-arrow combos do not work for moving a word at a time, though.

Lastly, a thought regarding the iPad’s aggressive pricing. Apple is obviously leaving money on the table here. They could easily charge $999 as the starting price and have hundreds of people lined up outside every Apple Store ready to buy one on day one. Then they could drop the price later in the year, as the holiday season approaches.

You can only, which few exceptions, sell the same tablet once to a potential buyer. Sell it to those willing to pay too much first. If 30% of potential buyers would pay more, why leave the money on the table?

Labels: iPad, vim, wireless