macnn/electronista
04/09/2008, 1:45pm, EDT
Wednesday, April 9thO2 limiting most 3G users to 128Kbps
The British division of O2 is deliberately limiting the speeds its 3G customers can operate at, representatives have admitted. Most customers, it says, are being artificially restricted to 128Kbps, equivalent to an ISDN landline connection. By default only customers paying £35 or more per month are being given access to O2's top speeds, rated at 384Kbps; business customers are also being upgraded automatically, as deemed necessary.
The average O2 customer can, though, obtain 384Kbps at any time, by contacting the carrier directly and requesting the speed upgrade. The issue may nevertheless have a significant impact on British iPhone customers, who have been anticipating the 3G iPhone as a panacea to the slow speeds of O2's EDGE network. Initially, some owners may find that 3G is no faster than their current 2.5G technology.
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If people didn't want the content, they wouldn't be using their connection to get it. If the current network was too slow for their taste, they can go to a faster one. If there isn't one, then it should be seen as an opportunity to create a higher speed with increased pricing packages. What should have been viewed as an opportyunity to improve a company and increase business was couched as the ISP bitching at the content providers for being too successful and making them have to work harder.
Sorry, idiocy annoys me, especially when it's held up as newsworthy. Of course, the people writing the article were serving themselves when bringing such to the public's atention:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7336940.stm
I don't agree with what O2 is doing, but your reasoning is seriously flawed. If you think that your phone company has enough circuits for everyone that they service to make a call at the same time, then you're sadly mistaken. If they did, or if internet providers had to maintain a connection sufficient to service the maximum speed of every user simultaneously, service would be so expensive that no one would ever use it. If you don't believe me, maybe you should check out the price difference between ADSL and SDSL. In most cases, or at least in my area, SDSL will cost you 2-3 times as much as ADSL for maybe a quarter of the speed because the ISP will only offer a QOS guarantee on the SDSL line. Not to mention that this doesn't even begin to touch on the numerous other businesses that base their business model on some sort of predicted or average use of their services...