My problem with...data

A while ago I wrote a piece on how the internet will become more important in our lives. Today I'm going to rant about how this future is being denied to us by the providers. Back when we got broadband in 2003, the standard package was 512kbs (9 times faster than dial up and 1/20th the speed of our uni connection). A few months later, BT enabled speeds of up to 2mbs (1/5th uni speeds). To get this though, not only did you have to live close to your telephone exchange, but you had to shell out £40/month. Speed came with a price, but if you were happy to have a (still quick) slower service you could still get all the data you wanted. Now times have changed, 8mbs is standard in the UK and local loop unbundling has seen the start of adsl2+ and speeds of upto 24mbs. ISPs are now quite happy to give you as much speed as you want, but it comes at a price. They have set caps on how much data you can access. Some of the most stingy limits are only 2gb (including most of the so called "free broadband schemes that have appeared). That sounds like a lot (especially to a dial-up user), but consider that you can download this amount in a little over half an hour with an 8mbs connection and it starts to look small. Things like graphics rich sites have become more prevelant as speeds increased and once things like Skype and streaming video and music are factored in, 2gb is pointless. When ipTV launches, it's going to be pretty costly.

One of the biggest revolutions that will happen in the next few years is mobile internet access on mobile phones. Back in 2000, the mobile companies launched WAP to much hype. Internet on the move - amazing! until you realised that the low rez screens, stupidly low amount of content and slow access rates made it all pointless. Now we're have proper access - smartphones integrate full web browsers that allow access to all the internet, operators are obliged to get over 80% of the UK fully covered by 3G by the end of next year and HSDPA (3.5G) has already been launched allowing speeds of upto 3.5mbs (T-mobile have pledged to increase this to 20mbs by 2010). Remeber that these phones can be plugged into laptops and used as modems, so getting your PC onto the web will be possible where ever 3G signal is available. This would make expensive city wide wifi or WIMAX networks pointless. Sounds fantastic right? Unfortunately, the mobile companies don't are limiting access (or at least making it very expensive) without adding a data package, the costs per mb are pretty rediculous - £4/mb on Orange! For 3G data access you're looking at £20/month on top of your line rental. On Orange, the unlimited 3G data package costs a whopping £75/month. Surely a better way to encourage people to use these services is to include a small allowence in the tarrif? T-mobile recently launched flext - a scheme where your rental buys you credit which can be spent on minutes, text and sms as you see fit - surely it would be easy to add data transfer to this so people could check their emails without getting ripped off? There are rumours that 3 are about to launch a rival tarrif makes me hopeful that they allow some data usage (I think their tarrifs allow 5mb/month anyway), but 3 still don't allow access to the full internet.
The biggest problem is that the mobile operators are still realing from the massive fees they paid out in 2000 to obtain their 20 year 3G licences. £22.4 billion was paid out (only about £4 billion was expected). Of course, the roll out didn't happen for years and in the meantime 2G prices went through the roof. Handsets at the time weren't capable enough to provide decent net access to 3G was launched around the idea of video calling - something that completely failed to catch on. nealy 1/3 of the contract has passed and 3G phones are still in the minority.

All in all, the future is within our grasp - the infrastructure is rolling out all the time and new HSDPA handsets are being launched. It's just whether we're prepared to pay for it or not.