Question related to Cellular Data and restrictions..

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

All,

I realize this is not exactly relevant to the usual topics on NANOG, but I thought this list was a decent place to ask a question related to cellular data usage limits.

Have any of you experienced or been subjected to a "domestic data roaming policy"? I am a customer of a carrier who advertises "Unlimited Nationwide 4G data", but limits their customers to 50MB per month while traveling in an area they do not have coverage (Alaska, for example). I've never heard of such a policy in regards to a "Nationwide" plan.. I thought the entire idea of saying nationwide was to represent you were covering the ENTIRE NATION.

Happy to receive replies on or off-list.

Thanks!
//warren

2

TL;DR: peering is not free in wireless.

Hi,

So as you may or may not be aware, most operators do not, in fact have nationwide networks, just as you, as I assume you're an operator, do not run last mile connectivity to all your customers (or every intervening interconnect for that matter). The same is true in wireless.

Sprint (arbitrary example) has coverage in most of the top 100 metros but supplements this coverage with domestic roaming agreements (usually with Verizon or a group of independent tower aggregators). Sprint pays Verizon for the traffic they send to their network.

The pricing you receive as a consumer is based upon the majority of your traffic hitting sprints towers (and not being ferried over a more expensive channel, like a roaming agreement). When you send your data over a partners network it raises your wireless company's cost of delivering service, in some cases so much so that you become unprofitable. Sprint isn't a charity and therefore cuts you loose.

Cheers,
Joshua

3

Have any of you experienced or been subjected to a "domestic data
roaming policy"? I am a customer of a carrier who advertises
"Unlimited Nationwide 4G data", but limits their customers to 50MB per
month while traveling in an area they do not have coverage (Alaska,
for example). I've never heard of such a policy in regards to a
"Nationwide" plan.. I thought the entire idea of saying nationwide was
to represent you were covering the ENTIRE NATION.

I believe you will find that any carrier says "Nationwide means where we
have coverage, and unlimited means 'if you're on our towers'."

Cheers,
-- jra

4

In my experience, nationwide, typically just means the continental 48 states, for the most part.

5

Since we're on the subject of T-Mobile USA, who was kind enough to send me a notification via SMS that my 10 megabytes of roaming data allotment was all used up yesterday while driving a long stretch of I-77 between somewhere in mid-Ohio all the way to somewhere about Wytheville, VA, I'm pretty sure the fine print says the unlimited data is only useful while on their network which we all know to be anything but nationwide.

Heck, right now I'd just be happy to get some sort of data at all riding the rural stretches of major highways.

The upside is my bill dropped considerably by switching from AT&T so it goes both ways.

Ryan

6

Traveling, I usually see better data performance natively on a network vs roaming.

In "outlying" areas, such as Maine, Alaska, Hawaii, you're better off using a local telco. More likely to have better coverage.

- Jared

7

Some folks over at Ting(.com) suggest that the cost for data roaming is as
high as ten times that for voice/SMS roaming, which is why they don't charge
extra for the latter, and do not at all provide the former.

8

Ting is an MVNO (just like my company 2600hz) and while it would violate the terms of my NDA to confirm the 10x number I can say that we found it to be prohibitively expensive.

One should be aware that, just like in the IP transit world, the small players have different rules than the big kids. It might be prohibitively expensive for us, but it's a different order of magnitude for a carrier like Sprint proper.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Joshua

P.S. shameless plug: we provide white-label cellular service to operators including full provisioning and call control plus it can be tied back into corporate phone systems (and it's open source!!).

9

For example, the regional wireless carrier my $DAYJOB has partnered with has
rate-limiting in place with its two major roaming partners, to help control
roaming costs. And when it uses the word "unlimited" in its marketing
materials it means you can access data anywhere where there is access, not
"unlimited quantity" or "unlimited speed".

Frank

10

Blanket reply.. :slight_smile:

So at what point does unlimited mean unlimited? Roaming agreements have always been two sided. In my case.. I roam on to AT&T's network, the same as AT&T folk roam into tmo when they do not have coverage. At the end of the month the two are reconciled and someone gets paid. If you are selling a service that is making generalized assurances in connectivity (nationwide 4g let netwokr) , you should make a best effort to honor that. It wasn't even a fair amount of bandwidth.. I could deal with a 2gb a month cap or something.. But I am now able to use my unlimited data in 100 countries without incurring additional charges.. Are we going to start saying that international roaming costs are lower than domestic on a regularly used network?

I literally feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. Tmo and Att are far from small fish.. And a 50mb per month cap is absolute bullshit. Figure it into your business line.. Or do the honest thing and don't offer the service. How you guys are justifying this is BEYOND me. You can buy a ds1 for several hundred dollars per month.. And unlimited customers get 50 megs a month for data.. You can't even check email over the month on that. I'm not an abusive user.. I don't download or use my cellular data connection for hacked hotspot use.. Not to mention the hotspot I do have with them has 10gb a month nationwide.. So I can use my puck for 10gb..but my phone (on the SAME TOWER) is different?

That is like saying sms costs network providers money.. (don't bring up ran gear or smsc costs.. It's not related)

11

Tier 1 ISPs engage in settlement-free peering. Everyone else pays for transit.

I had a giant reply about politics but figured I'd save everyone the reading time.

Suffice it to say, the regulatory environment in Wireless is different. It costs more money than their model allows for you to use their service. They are not making the profits they need to and cut the service, it's that simple. Roaming costs money, you're not crazy, this is 2013.

A DS1 and a cellular link are completely different.

Cheers,
Joshua

P.S. A puck with 10GB is a ton of data; I'd also wager you couldn't use the full 10GB on a roaming tower without a warning, but I could be wrong.

Blanket reply.. :slight_smile:

So at what point does unlimited mean unlimited? Roaming agreements have always been two sided. In my case.. I roam on to AT&T's network, the same as AT&T folk roam into tmo when they do not have coverage. At the end of the month the two are reconciled and someone gets paid. If you are selling a service that is making generalized assurances in connectivity (nationwide 4g let netwokr) , you should make a best effort to honor that. It wasn't even a fair amount of bandwidth.. I could deal with a 2gb a month cap or something.. But I am now able to use my unlimited data in 100 countries without incurring additional charges.. Are we going to start saying that international roaming costs are lower than domestic on a regularly used network?

I literally feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. Tmo and Att are far from small fish.. And a 50mb per month cap is absolute bullshit. Figure it into your business line.. Or do the honest thing and don't offer the service. How you guys are justifying this is BEYOND me. You can buy a ds1 for several hundred dollars per month.. And unlimited customers get 50 megs a month for data.. You can't even check email over the month on that. I'm not an abusive user.. I don't download or use my cellular data connection for hacked hotspot use.. Not to mention the hotspot I do have with them has 10gb a month nationwide.. So I can use my puck for 10gb..but my phone (on the SAME TOWER) is different?

That is like saying sms costs network providers money.. (don't bring up ran gear or smsc costs.. It's not related)

12

Blanket reply.. :slight_smile:

So at what point does unlimited mean unlimited? Roaming agreements have

always been two sided. In my case.. I roam on to AT&T's network, the same
as AT&T folk roam into tmo when they do not have coverage. At the end of
the month the two are reconciled and someone gets paid. If you are selling
a service that is making generalized assurances in connectivity (nationwide
4g let netwokr) , you should make a best effort to honor that. It wasn't
even a fair amount of bandwidth.. I could deal with a 2gb a month cap or
something.. But I am now able to use my unlimited data in 100 countries
without incurring additional charges.. Are we going to start saying that
international roaming costs are lower than domestic on a regularly used
network?

I literally feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. Tmo and Att are far

from small fish.. And a 50mb per month cap is absolute bullshit. Figure it
into your business line.. Or do the honest thing and don't offer the
service. How you guys are justifying this is BEYOND me. You can buy a ds1
for several hundred dollars per month.. And unlimited customers get 50 megs
a month for data.. You can't even check email over the month on that. I'm
not an abusive user.. I don't download or use my cellular data connection
for hacked hotspot use.. Not to mention the hotspot I do have with them has
10gb a month nationwide.. So I can use my puck for 10gb..but my phone (on
the SAME TOWER) is different?

That is like saying sms costs network providers money.. (don't bring up

ran gear or smsc costs.. It's not related)

If you have a beef with tmo, here is the complaint department
https://mobile.twitter.com/JohnLegere or you can email him at
john.legere@t-mobile.com

You can probably just forward this thread

Given that tmo now has free (rate limited) intl data roaming, it is a
bummer to see domestic roaming is now less well served. I think in belt
tightening years limiting domestic roaming saved substantial cost ... since
it can be expensive having some users living on roamed networks

CB

Sent from my Mobile Device.

From: Joshua Goldbard <j@2600hz.com>
Date: 12/04/2013 4:10 PM (GMT-09:00)
To: Henry Yen <henry@AegisInfoSys.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: Question related to Cellular Data and restrictions..

Ting is an MVNO (just like my company 2600hz) and while it would violate

the terms of my NDA to confirm the 10x number I can say that we found it to
be prohibitively expensive.

One should be aware that, just like in the IP transit world, the small

players have different rules than the big kids. It might be prohibitively
expensive for us, but it's a different order of magnitude for a carrier
like Sprint proper.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Joshua

P.S. shameless plug: we provide white-label cellular service to operators

including full provisioning and call control plus it can be tied back into
corporate phone systems (and it's open source!!).

Sent from my iPhone

>> ... When you send your data
>> over a partners network it raises your wireless company's cost of
>> delivering service, in some cases so much so that you become
>> unprofitable.
>
> Some folks over at Ting(.com) suggest that the cost for data roaming is

as

> high as ten times that for voice/SMS roaming, which is why they don't

charge

> extra for the latter, and do not at all provide the former.
>
> --
> Henry Yen <Henry.Yen@Aegis00.com> Aegis Information

Systems, Inc.

> Senior Systems Programmer Hicksville, New York
> (800) AEGIS-00 x949 1-800-AEGIS-00

(800-234-4700)

13

I've been talking to their executive officer after doing that exact thing. 15 years ago roaming was very expensive.. But when you are selling something using terminology like "free" or "unlimited", I believe you should be extremely careful. I don't know how or who implemented this policy.. But they have been claiming to rock AT&T with this "actual nationwide" and this "uncarrier" talk. If you claim to be unlike your competitors.. At least make an attempt to be.. NOT like your competition. I was floored seeing the Nanog tribe reply with "it was a business decision over cost".. It's 2013 and nearly 14...get your lives together. Make these people who give you a paycheck accountable.

14

You are misunderstanding the political reality and are instead making impermissible technical inferences.

Is moving bits between networks hard or expensive? No.

Is moving bits between asymmetric power relationships trivial? No.

When you think about how much roaming costs, you're thinking of the settlement free model which is not how cellular roaming works. Cellular roaming is a fiefdom. There is no common carriage. No one is obligated to carry anyone else's traffic.

Therefore roaming is artificially more expensive. It is political not technical.

Bear in mind, you are preaching to the converted. You don't get much more hippie-status in the telecom world than writing open-source infrastructure (which is what my company does). I know where you're coming from and I'm trying to explain why the networks are not behaving in an optimally efficient manner: because it isn't profitable.

We can sit here and rail about how bad TMobile is on a mailing list but the behavior they are displaying is entirely rational given the rules of the game.

You asked how someone could claim nationwide network without owning all of the assets, I answered you and you don't like the answer. Sorry.

If you don't like it, write Tom Wheeler or put in a false advertising claim, but you should understand that TMobile's behavior is politically rational.

Cheers,
Joshua

I've been talking to their executive officer after doing that exact thing. 15 years ago roaming was very expensive.. But when you are selling something using terminology like "free" or "unlimited", I believe you should be extremely careful. I don't know how or who implemented this policy.. But they have been claiming to rock AT&T with this "actual nationwide" and this "uncarrier" talk. If you claim to be unlike your competitors.. At least make an attempt to be.. NOT like your competition. I was floored seeing the Nanog tribe reply with "it was a business decision over cost".. It's 2013 and nearly 14...get your lives together. Make these people who give you a paycheck accountable.

15

TSRH.

When I was at Alltel we discovered one client that was using his 3g card on a
roaming partners network 24/7. As we could not bill based on this we only
discovered it via a roaming settlement audit. I think at the time we were
paying .35 cents per kb or something like that (might have been MOU based).
Basically this customer was costing us $10-$20k per month and we had no way to
track it back to them.

I believe they fired the customers using the clause that nationwide is
included, but you your home majority use location must be on our network. the
lawyers had nicer way of saying it :slight_smile:

Wireless data interconnect (GRX/CRX) is like the most arcane and backwards
peering there is. every single bit of use must be tracked and metered back to
the user, and it makes the whole thing more expensive than it needs to be.
It's like going to your users and demanding different payments based on the
amount of data they receive from different ASN's.