Comment on Why do cell phones have a data limit but home internet doesn't?
I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
For cell / mobile phones, you’re sharing the capacity of the cell among multiple people.
In this example, a rural cell tower can provide up to 395Mbps.
It would only take 40 people watching Kayo at high definition (or any high definition video service) via their phone or a 4G router to saturate this tower.
For everyone else at this time, it’ll still work but even though they might have a strong radio signal (lots of bars), the internet will become slow.
SupraMario@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There aren’t going to be 40 people using that tower if it’s truly a rural tower. If it isn’t a rural tower then they can update it to handle more throughput. The issue isn’t the towers, it’s the companies wanting to keep using old tech to squeeze out as much profit as possible.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Both of you can be correct. The policy is prevalent to squeeze money out or consumers. However, there it’s also easy to imagine more than 40 people in a rural area using their phones for media purposes during PM times. There’s less to do, internet availability might not exist for some or all residents, and people use their phone for everything now. Casting from a phone is a larger percent of viewing TV now.
SupraMario@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
In a rural area the population density is a lot less than that of suburbs or the city. We’re talking about 40 people or less using a single tower, this also takes in account of the 3 carriers. If each carriers tower can handle 40 people, that’s potentially 120 users total in a few mile radius, which is normal for rural populations.
I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This tower has about a 20km radius on average due to topography, covers a stretch of the New England Highway and also covers the nearby village of Black Mountain. A good few hundred phones will be in range I expect.
The tower also has cells for Optus and Vodafone, but they are a significant minority of customers in this area.