We believe in the long term value of Apple hardware. You should be able to use your Apple gear as long as it helps you remain productive and meets your needs, upgrading only as necessary. We want to help maximize the life of your Apple gear.
According to an article posted on
AppleInsider this morning, iPhone 4 users and Android users on
average consume a lot more bandwidth than iPhone 3 users - and European
telcos want Apple, Google, and others to help pay for network
improvements necessary to support the growing bandwidth demands.
That's right, the telcos want Apple, which makes and sells the
iPhone, and Google, which helped bring the free Android
OS to market, to help pay for the telco's wireless
infrastructure.
I have to say that I don't understand this at all. Maybe it's my
North American mindset, but the best analogy I can come up with would
be the federal and state governments asking Ford, Chrysler, GM, Toyota,
and other car makers to help pay for the interstate highways and local
road system because car owners have been making increasing demands on
their capacity.
Does that make sense to you?
It doesn't to me.
Telcos can say what they want to about capacity and bandwidth costs,
but in the end it is the smartphone user - not the handset maker - who
makes demands of the system. It isn't Apple's fault or Google's problem
if AT&T, Verizon, France Telecom, Telecom Italia Spa, Vodafone
Group, and others haven't developed sufficient capacity for today's
users, let alone next year's demands on their networks.
It is also disingenuous for them to argue that their wireless data
networks are fundamentally different from Internet data networks. Data
is data, and if the telcos can't figure out how to develop the capacity
their users require at a fair cost to those users, perhaps it's time
for other competitors to provide what they cannot.
Asking Apple, Google, and Facebook to help fund network improvements
is the same as asking them to pay for improvements to the Internet
infrastructure. The problem isn't the amount of bandwidth iPhones,
Google services, or Facebook use; the issue is that users are already
paying for this bandwidth.
What the telcos are proposing amounts to double-dipping, charging
end users for the bandwidth they use and charging for that data a
second time by billing Apple, Google, Facebook, etc.
Wireless users are accessing online services exactly as they do on
the Internet, so the same rules should apply. You bill the end user for
mobile phone minutes and data bandwidth, not the websites they
visit.
It is the telco's responsibility to build sufficient capacity, not
to oversell (such as AT&T installing U-verse with only a single
high definition stream - and never mentioning that to the end user -
when it promotes three HD streams in all of its advertising), and to
develop a billing structure that works. AT&T took a big step in
that direction earlier this year when it stopped offering unlimited
wireless data plans, forcing consumers to choose one of two service
levels.
If iPhone 4 and Android users are consuming more bandwidth, the fair
thing is to charge them for bandwidth. Asking Apple, Google, Facebook,
and other "content providers" to cover those costs is unfair and
unreasonable.
This would be a step in the wrong direction, and if the telcos ever
bill us for the bandwidth used by visitors to lowendmac.com - the
ultimate outcome of charging content providers instead of content users
- we will not pay.
Dan Knight has been using Macs since 1986,
sold Macs for several years, supported them for many more years, and
has been publishing Low End Mac since April 1997. If you find Dan's articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.
Links for the Day
Mac of the Day: Performa 630, introduced 1994.07.01. The first desktop Mac with an IDE hard drive could accept a TV or radio tuner.
