iPhone share of U.S. traffic hits 69%

On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:09:23 -0400, News wrote in :

Is it any wonder Usenet is dying? [sigh]

it may not be as clear cut with an iphone as you seem to think, but the real question is are they bothering to look.

oh silly me. i guess i can't read my own calling statement. this issue has been discussed on hofo before and exactly matches my usage patterns. in other words, it's correct.

On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:54:32 -0400, nospam wrote in :

AT&T has made it clear that traffic is being monitored and analyzed.

Maybe you can, but you clearly don't know the differences between infrastructure, backend, and billing systems.

I'm reminded of how illicit filesharers used to boast they could never get caught.

No skin off my nose. Do whatever you want.

Generally, with software support from the phone (the phone "squealing" to the MO that it's tethering) operators have to make educated guesses based on the types and amounts of data transfered. With smartphones that's much harder- they are perfectly capable of using most any type of data- VoIP, streaming, peer to peer filesharing, NNTP- virtually anything a laptop itself would use, and in large enough quantities that being absolutely certain if a phone or a computer were doing the usage would be nearly impossible.

Since iPhone users don't get a choice, that's immaterial. The current cachet of the iPhone allows AT&T to force a $30 data add-on that they might not be able to get away with on other phones.

I was pulling old data out of my head. A quick check of the 1Q 2009 report at

says AT&T postpaid ARPU is now over $59, and iPhone users' ARPU is 1.6x higher, or about $95.

Not too shabby.

I'll have to apologize to T-Mo later for dragging their ARPU down... ;)

cite?

that's also vague. that does not say whether they actually can tell if someone is tethering and if they can, whether they are going to take action against them. and as i said, it may not be as clear cut as you think. what are some of the 'dead giveaways' and how do they apply to the iphone?

on the other hand, they *do* know about all the gophone users and shut most of them down in 3.0.

what does that have to do with anything?

are you insinuating i'm doing something illicit? if so, you'd damned well better have some good evidence to back it up.

yep. what's the difference between an iphone app that does nntp, voip, ssh or whatever protocol and a tethered mac or windows app that does exactly the same thing?

Yeah, your "Motorola charging tips" really enhance its usefulness...

You're deluding yourself. AT&T could certainly "do something about it" if they chose to. Right now, they're probably happy to let it slide since it takes the pressure off "not being ready" for tethering, acts as a sort of beta test, since only the most fervent and desperate will bother kludging this, allowing AT&T to compile usage data on the effect of heavier than average users and lets AT&T later treat this a "free preview."

$55 (actually $59- I was off a bit) is the average revenue for all AT&T wireless users.

iPhone users pay the same price as voice/data smartphone users- they have the same priced data plan. The small difference in ARPU between iPhones and smartphones is other phone users have the choice to take voice-only or data-only plans. The higher ARPU iPhone users pay isn't "magic"- it's what happens when you forcibly bundle services. Those few just wanting an "iPod Phone" get to pay $30 for an unneeded data plab, and those that just want the iPhone as a data device get to pay $35 for unneeded voice service (AT&T offers a $35 unlimited data-only plan for smartphones.) If AT&T wants to brag average iPhone is $100 they can just forcibly add texting to new iPhones users. They'll pay.

Since you started singing that song two years ago, I have even a harder time finding "free" WiFi outside of libraries and coffee shops than I did in

2007. Back then, of the six or seven WiFi nets visible from my house, three were open. Now we're up up to nine- all closed.

Where is this "revolution" you're expecting, and if it were coming, shouldn't we see even a _little_ progress in that area, rather than it going the other way? There's less free "borrowed" (stolen) WiFi available than ever, and muni-WiFi is still stagnant or imploding. Consumers have wised-up and protected their wireless connections far more often than not. (Or, more likely, it's the one-two punch that ISPs aren't as negligent as they used to be and don't leave their customers' wireless networks open by default any longer like they used to, and WiFi devices include setting up encryption as part of their installation "wizards" rather than defaulting to open and telling you to consult the manual if you're interested in securing them after installation.)

Yes, most iPhone users are greedy, self-absorbed, band-width wasting freaks of humanity. Most of them probably sporting an Obama and Go Green sticker too the damned hypocrites!

I'm in the .00000001% of cool iPhone users. It's a good phone for keeping tracking of your favorite sports team.

On Fri, 26 Jun 2009, nospam posted:

One easy way is to analyze the IP traffic to determine the kernel implementation that generated it. Datagrams from a kernel other than iToy are a dead giveaway of tethering. The really good tools can distinguish between variants, e.g., Darwin in Mac OS X vs. iToy, or even different release version of the kernel.

Another is that the device itself tattles.

This is all ancient technology, and there are counter-measures if you jailbreak; but by itself these are enough to catch the vast majority of illicit tethering.

There are other means to clamp down on illicit tethering that are far more sophisticated than these.

Now, with this all said, I agree with those who feel that there is no moral difference between tethering and other data use. Entirely too many service providers oversell their capacity and use such terms as "unlimited", then get upset when they are taken at their word. Their business model is based upon selling data plans in the assumption that the vast majority of the customers will only use a pittance of what they are allocated, and thus rake in effectively $1/MB or more. iPhone stretches this model, hence mandatory iPhone plans and aggressive pushing of WiFi -- you won't hear Verizon pushing people to use WiFi! -- and tethering makes the situation worse.

-- Mark --

is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

On Fri, 26 Jun 2009, Todd Allcock posted:

A very small price for AT&T to pay for some very valuable market research.

Careful - Oxford/David Moyer and the other silly fanboys will accuse you of living in a "technologically backwards area"!

Open WiFi networks were ubiquitous in Seattle 8 years ago; you could go almost anywhere and get on the Internet for free. Those days are long past. There are many more WiFi networks, but most are hidden and those which aren't are encrypted and often also MAC address filtered.

Anyone who thinks that the USA is going to be covered with free WiFi networks is living in a fantasy world. There may well be national public WiFi networks, but they won't be free.

-- Mark --

is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:38:57 -0700, Mark Crispin wrote in :

Yep. That model is fundamentally broken.

Agreed. The reality is that only a few people "abuse" data, so building sophisticated mechanisms to catch them probably just aren't economical. It's easier to use loosely-worded "fair use" policies and reserve the right to terminate the "abusers'" accounts, or create a TOS so tight that virtually everyone will break it, (like Verizon's old one that limited internet use to web-browsing, e-mail, and intranet only- watching a YouTube video was probably a violation!) and then you can choose only to enforce it against those you actually want to get rid of. (According to our records, Mr. Jones, among the 234 GB of data you used on your "unlimited" plan in April, we noticed you made a 12-second VoIP call. VoIP is against our TOS. I'm sorry, it was nice having you as a customer, but we're closing your account...)

I still think T-Mo has the right idea, (borrowed from the satellite ISPs like Hughes)- allow "unlimited" usage, but throttle bandwidth after you hit a certaint point. With T-Mo, it's 10GB/month. Once you hit 10GB, they "reserve the right" to throttle your speed to 50kbps for the rest of that month. I'm not sure they've actually done it to any of the 17 people using their 3G network yet, of course, but they "reserve the right..." Thismakes it all so much easier to administer without caring HOW the customer uses the data. Tether, streaming, VoIP, torrents, whatever- you get to "abuse" the first 10GB, then you're poking along in the slow lane until next month.

Those who need high speed data all month will learn to nurse their data "drink", rather than gulp it.

Yeah, the WiFi on the interstate is excellent.

Why does iPhone make up such a high percentage? Because it is the only phone on the market that has a REAL web browser. The others just have cheap shit.

it's going the same way as the song he sang about verizon and blackberry dying "quarter by quarter" and att and iphone taking over all their business.

huh? The Mac community is a corporation-loyal as any others, just to a different corporation.

"Real browser" on diminutive screen = SVE "Shit Viewing Experience"

And the handoffs so seamless...