Submitted 5 weeks ago by lousyd@lemmy.sdf.org to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Why do cell phones have a data limit but home internet doesn’t? I understand bandwidth limits, but how can home internet get away with giving users all the data they can use, but cell phone providers can’t?
My previous home line had a hard cap at 1TB per month. That seemed like a lot at the time, but I think as the internet grows and requires more bandwidth these “sky high” caps will feel smaller and smaller.
Limits on home service used to be more common, but some plans still have caps. My home internet has a cap, it is just really, really high and they charge you more for exceeding it instead of cutting off access.
My phone also has a cap, but the cap means the connection is throttled instead of charging more.
I have had a home plan in the past woth no limit, but they didn’t offer service to my new house when I moved.
What you’re up against:
Home internet providers have high-speed lines that run through population centers and into every neighborhood. The backbones are fiber, so adding more capacity isn’t all that expensive. If they run a 2.5-gigabit line to your neighborhood and it gets stressed, they can upgrade the local aggregate. Wired internet has enough bandwidth to service an incredible number of people.
Wireless internet needs towers and faces challenges like exposure, interference, and balancing power so everyone doesn’t try to reach the wrong tower. Each tower has to have it’s own network backhaul to service everyone in that area. Each tower has limited bandwidth and time to slice up the connections. It’s hard and expensive to expand cellular tech.
Data caps let IPS’s handle capacity planning. Charging more for overages makes money and dissuades users from making them upgrade prematurely.
Mine Internet at 500gb, but it’s only an extra $10 for unlimited data. My cell data is unlimited but I know they throttle speed after a certain amount. At least I don’t get charged extra.
Some home Internet plans do. I’ve seen AT&T had in their terms that if you hit 99GB, they would throttle your speeds.
This was years ago, so not sure if that changed or not.
Satellite plans often had limits too because they didn’t want to encourage lots of usage on their satellites. I haven’t checked in a few years, but last I checked, these weren’t throttle limits either, sometimes they had hard limits where you just couldn’t connect anymore once you hit the limit.
Home internet did happen to have a limit in most places prior to the pandemic (at least in California). It was one of the big quiet changes that occurred. For example, ATT used to have 150GB limit about 5 years ago but it kept getting bumped up.
That is exactly the reason.
Those caps also prevent the small percentage of people who would abuse the system from having as much of a negative impact on other users.
Back when the company I used to work for offered an unlimited voice calling deal (we’re talking 25 years ago on the old analog cell system) there were a few people who decided it would be a good idea to use their phone as a baby monitor, which tied up a voice channel for days at a time. There being only a dozen or less voice channels on most towers at the time made that kind of thing a signifigant cause of congestion.
Yep. And to add to your statement, its probably to make torrenters/massive downloaders pay or curtail their activities. Then streaming came along, voice chat, etc… that both helped us entertain ourselves and work within the home from the pandemic. If people didn’t have unlimited plans, they would switch ASAP because it was no longer a want, it became a need.
Steve@communick.news 5 weeks ago
They convinced the FCC cellular is different than landline, and should have different rules.