[Jack_Wilson2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonmorris

I don't see it being good for Three to ditch AYCE data anywhere, as it should be able to use TrafficSense to manage things effectively.

There's no need to simply stop data being consumed, just manage it when a lot of users are consuming it. Just as any other broadband provider would/does do.

AYCE data is a selling point. It's about not having to worry about bill shock, and I bet the vast majority of people who get it aren't heavy users and might even consume amounts well within that of similarly priced tariffs elsewhere. They just don't want to have to worry about going over their allowance and being stung (and when you can be charged 10p a MB, that's going to hurt).

EE at least imposes a hard cap to stop that happening, but not all do. Indeed, even Three doesn't on the tariffs that are limited (unless you call and ask for a cap).

Ultimately, few people can tell how much data they're using or going to use, especially consistently from day to day, month to month. Go away for a weekend break and you might now use mobile data a lot more, perhaps streaming iPlayer or Netflix, thus surging your data usage - and how big is a 90 minute film anyway? Does the consumer know? Of course not, especially if there's adaptive streaming and they have a device with a nice HD screen and a good connection.

Totally agree TrafficSense can manage things. Three UK already manage it during peak times as in accordance to Three UK's Traffic Management Policy which includes optimising video streaming and throttling P2P are in operation during 3pm-midnight.

According to Netflix's Official website a hr stream of a HD movie can use anything up to 3GB.

[Thine Wonk]

TrafficSense doesn't magic capacity from nowhere you know. If you are downloading movies all day long or whatever you're using to use 1000GB, it only takes so many customers doing that before you either a) have to end unlimited data or b) install £60,000 worth of new equipment to meet the capacity needs of an area of your cell coverage, at at £15 a month that takes over 300 customers paying £15 just to pay for the new equipment, not even including the maintenance, bandwidth, sales, tax, support and other costs or without taking out any profit. .

TrafficSense is good, but it isn't the answer to everything.

[Jack_Wilson2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thine Wonk

TrafficSense doesn't magic capacity from nowhere you know. If you are downloading movies all day long or whatever you're using to use 1000GB, it only takes so many customers doing that before you either a) have to end unlimited data or b) install £60,000 worth of new equipment to meet the capacity needs of an area, at at £15 a month that takes over 300 customers paying £15 just to pay for the equipment, not even including the maintenance, bandwidth, sales, tax and other costs.

TrafficSense is good, but it isn't the answer to everything.

But spending £60,000 worth of new equipment also means that that area has optimum capacity and wouldn't need upgrading for ages. Why don't Three UK make all Cell Sites future proof and make them all maxish capacity I.E make every Cell Site support 1000 people? (It would cost loads but it would mean a future proof network)?

Surely it would out great in the long run?

[Thine Wonk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jack_Wilson2

But spending £60,000 worth of new equipment also means that that area has optimum capacity and wouldn't need upgrading for ages. Why don't Three UK make all Cell Sites future proof and make them all maxish capacity I.E make every Cell Site support 1000 people? (It would cost loads but it would mean a future proof network)?

Surely it would out great in the long run?

The backhaul is the easy part, but the technology of delivering data relies on mobile spectrum which is limited in quantity by Ofcom, auctioned every few years in limited amounts for billions of pounds, and you must compete with other networks to get it.

The other option is to add extra smaller cell sites to an area at a huge cost as detailed above. The technology isn't designed for 1000GB users, it isn't costed for that, it isn't capable of delivering that, certainly not at £15 price points. Do you know how much EE would charge you for 1000GB of data?

I repeat, TrafficSense is good, but it's not magic.

[omnidirectional]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thine Wonk

The other option is to add extra smaller cell sites to an area at a huge cost as detailed above. The technology isn't designed for 1000GB users, it isn't costed for that, it isn't capable of delivering that, certainly not at £15 price points. Do you know how much EE would charge you for 1000GB of data?

I repeat, TrafficSense is good, but it's not magic.

It's also worth pointing out that EE's business tariffs work out at about £8 per gigabyte.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...ta-bundle.html

Those who are using 100 or even 1000+ GB for £15 on Three are getting an absolute bargain, but are probably costing the network a fortune.

[Jack_Wilson2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by omnidirectional

It's also worth pointing out that EE's business tariffs work out at about £8 per gigabyte.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...ta-bundle.html

Those who are using 100 or even 1000+ GB for £15 on Three are getting an absolute bargain, but are probably costing the network a fortune.

EE are bloody stupid if they think any business is going to give them £8mil.

[jonmorris]

EE will of course negotiate rates with businesses, and I'm sure some of the data is confidential for the benefit of both parties.

I am sure TfL isn't paying much for all of its buses to send data 'back to base' and more likely gets it for a flat rate based on an estimated level of usage.

Networks can cope with more data than some members on here suggest, but at the same time it's obvious that no network could cope with loads of users consuming 1000GB per month. I doubt even fixed line broadband services could either.

However, nobody has suggested many people consume this much. Indeed, I doubt many people use more than 50GB in a month. Yes there will be those using One Plan contracts and tethering with P2P on 24/7, but that can be controlled, and everyone else is probably a lot more conservative.

I don't know what the average usage is on a home broadband service (and how much it varies when someone goes from ADSL to FTTC speeds) but even there I can't see that many people using many hundreds of gigabytes per month.

Networks need to cope with a percentage of heavy users, not everyone being a heavy user. And Three will of course have more spectrum next year, and is yet to use any of its 800MHz spectrum, so I don't think we're at the point where Three is going to have to start clamping down on data. It knows as well as anyone that most of its users want and use data. Start to change things, and people will leave.

Three wants to make more money, sure, but it has to find a good balance. Get too close to EE, and people will start to think that EE is only a 'bit more' expensive for a far better 4G service. It's clear that EE's 4G service is unrivalled by anyone, but also accepted as being pretty expensive - especially for the heavy users that don't have many choices of tariff with large amounts of data, and expensive add-ons to top up.

[Thine Wonk]

I agree, I am not suggesting like some members have that Three can only cope with users downloading a few gigabytes average a month, or trying to suggest 2009 3G HSDPA only based white papers are a good resource like some members have in the past.


There's that end of the argument (silly) and then there's the other end of the argument that 1000GB should be available for a big chunk of the user base or 100s of gigabytes per user is realistic. Even Trafficsense wouldn't make that happen, it could only stop the heavy users by preventing them and grinding them to a halt.

I think the middle ground is realistic though.

[wavejockglw]

AYCE was always an unsustainable proposition. It was a 'land grab' that suited other networks as it attracted all the most expensive to service customers to 3. There was no way 3 could attract customers without a unique selling point and AYCE was chosen. Was that a good idea? Perhaps it was when only a few needed data but now with smartphones lots do, so maybe the competition have the upper hand with more bandwidth and paid for consumption. 3 have the customers who demand and consume the most data and pay the least for it. Not a good prospect for 3 really.

Playing the longer game, it was perhaps a good thing for the others to let 3 blaze ahead and provide AYCE as that meant the least profitable customers were attracted to the network offering something that was too costly and unsustainable to provide. The door was opened to EE to offer a premium 4G service with price control and that seems to be working with more than 5 million on-board now paying realistic prices for high speed mobile data.

The winners and losers in terms of 4G have yet to be decided but presently 3 are not a front runner by any measure.

[d123]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wavejockglw

AYCE was always an unsustainable proposition. It was a 'land grab' that suited other networks as it attracted all the most expensive to service customers to 3. There was no way 3 could attract customers without a unique selling point and AYCE was chosen. Was that a good idea? Perhaps it was when only a few needed data but now with smartphones lots do, so maybe the competition have the upper hand with more bandwidth and paid for consumption. 3 have the customers who demand and consume the most data and pay the least for it. Not a good prospect for 3 really.

Considering your general ignorance over most aspects of the mobile industry I doubt Three are all that worried by your suppositions.

They are actually quite well equipped to handle customers who want data.

[Gigabit]

Three have a network built for data, unlike some other networks, where 3G/4G is just tacked on - ahem *O2, Vodafone* ahem. They can handle the data.

[canvey]

I suppose there is nothing to stop someone from buying multiple £15 add-ons and they will then just run one after the other.

might be useful if someone thinks that three might go ahead and pull it rather than a 'mistake'.

I have also ordered an EE sim to try that network. I am just fed up with not getting data on Vodafone!!

[jonmorris]

If you wanted AYCE data every month, you'd have been better off signing up to the One Plan when it was £15 (or £18) a month.

Without looking, I'm not sure how much the cheapest SIM only tariff with AYCE data is now, but that would probably be more convenient than buying loads of add-ons (if you could actually do it). There would be no refunds if you bought loads you then didn't want.

[Daveoc64]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonmorris

Without looking, I'm not sure how much the cheapest SIM only tariff with AYCE data is now

... err it's £15.

Very little changed when "The One Plan" was scrapped.

The major change there was in terms of the tethering allowance.

"The One Plan" forced you to get a huge phone call/text message allowance to get AYCE data including tethering. The new plans let you get AYCE data without a huge phone call allowance if you don't need it.

[jonmorris]

Well there you go then. Get that and save getting loads of add ons. Of course the PAYG option does let you skip days/weeks/months without paying a bean - and you get that 150MB of free data with each £5 topup. Clearly you'd do that to get 450MB of data before buying the add on.

But if you needed unlimited data all the time it would seem unnecessarily time consuming to faff around like that, so you'd go on contract. Unless of course you couldn't pass a credit check.

[Old Endeavour]

The Government should privatise the whole mobile network and call it General Phone Organisation or GPO for short.

One organisation, one person to blame. (Did I mention the free unlimited data allowance for anyone over 50?)

[binary]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daveoc64

... err it's £15.

Very little changed when "The One Plan" was scrapped.
...

Err, up to a point... there was a rise in price from £12.90 (Ultimate Internet 200 SIM-only, one month commitment) to £15 for the 12 month AYCE plan, or £18 for the one month AYCE plan.

So a 39.5% price increase for the one month plan (or a 16% increase if one's willing to go for the 12 month commitment).

[jonmorris]

39.5% certainly sounds terrible doesn't it!!

[hmeister]

So has the All You Can Eat Data been pulled or hasn't it?

[binary]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jabbamk1

For the record. There are no plans that I'm aware of for Three to scrap "All You Can Eat Data"

Re the old price plans, where you can add AYCE data for £3 a month - might the possibility to take advantage of this add-on get pulled?

I ask because a friend is on such a plan (on my advice - in turn thanks to the advice received on this forum in the summer), but they're actually working abroad for a while (not in a Feel At Home country), and it seems like they're now going to stay on for somewhat longer than initially expected.

The whole point of their move to Three was for the cheap AYCE data, but they haven't yet activated the £3 AYCE add-on. I wonder if they should get their skates on and get said add-on, if it's possible it might be pulled - on the other hand, there's no point in throwing money away on something each month that isn't going to be used for a while (their work abroad is fascinating, but not very lucrative!).

[Jack_Wilson2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hmeister

So has the All You Can Eat Data been pulled or hasn't it?

No it hasn't being pulled and I doubt it ever will to be honest (Personal Opinion - as it's Three UK's major selling point AYCE), although once 4G advances and VoLTE/LTE-A comes I expect we can see the '50meg' cap gradually abolished (We are talking a few years ahead here) and TrafficSense operating a little bit more.

[Old Endeavour]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hmeister

So has the All You Can Eat Data been pulled or hasn't it?

No as I signed up for it only last Thursday.

I'm just waiting for Asda to port over my number to Three which by law should take 24 hours and I am past that already!

[B_W2]

Not strictly about the PAYG add on but I do hope Three keep this for the £15 add-on.

It is the only thing keeping me with Three as, like everyone knows, EE are very capable and well ahead in terms of spectrum, coverage, speed and roll out plans- just not cheap!

On 3's website they listed loads of places to have 4G for the end of '14 but I know lots of them are not covered.

As 3 and EE have this MNBL agreement, once EE sites was upgraded to 4G would this not benefit Three and let them do the same? Or do they just share the base station buidling/upgrading costs and then they 'tack' on their 4g when they have the budget to do so.

[Jack_Wilson2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hmeister

So has the All You Can Eat Data been pulled or hasn't it?

No and according to the Three UK Social Media Team AYCE is here to stay. *They may change the tariffs but Three will continue to offer AYCE as it's a major selling point for Three UK.

[moox]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jack_Wilson2

No and according to the Three UK Social Media Team AYCE is here to stay. *They may change the tariffs but Three will continue to offer AYCE as it's a major selling point for Three UK.

We already know that 3's customer services seem to know nothing about anything - they're probably still claiming that the 4G rollout is on track and that unlimited tethering is not going away