Will Google Save Us From Strict Data Plans?

The tale of two mobile carriers could be at an end. For years Verizon and AT&T have flip-flopped between the being the largest domestic carrier, though not for lack of competition. Soon, perhaps today, Google will announce they’re joining the ranks, but it seems they will be partnered with existing carriers T-Mobile and Sprint. For now it seems as though the Google service will have data priced based on pure usage rather than paying for a set data plan. Still just a rumor at this point and limited to the Nexus 6 phone on T-Mobile and Sprint, Google appears set to dip their toes in the wireless provider market.

For example, the alleged data plan would not require agreeing to anything resembling current 3GB data plans where if you were to go over said agreed data plan, you’d be hit with overages. Both AT&T and Verizon offer data calculators, however  watching five hours of video (maybe two baseball games) with no emails, tweets etc. account for almost 2 GB. Verizon is partnered with NFL Mobile, but on their calculator the same 300 minutes of streaming the NFL Mobile is counted at 625 MB, barely one third the data usage of the 1750 MB 300 minutes of 4G usage tallies.

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In select AT&T and Verizon plans a $15 overage for as little as 250 MB can be applied to your monthly bill. If price is a concern in for your next phone, and it is for just about everyone these days, you may want to avoid Verizon as they don’t even want your business. According to Bloomberg and chief financial officer Francis Shammo, Verizon lost about 138,000 postpaid accounts — a standard account and not prepaid — over the past three months, but Shammo didn’t pull any punches on his thoughts during the quarterly earnings call:

“If the customer who is just price-sensitive and does not care about the quality of the network—or is sufficient with just paying a lower price—that’s probably the customer we’re not going to be able to keep.”

Give how well poorly Verizon’s attempt at a tech blog went, the big red telcom could be out of touch with much of its user base. Perhaps if robots were penning the stories, something Verizon apparently wanted due to strict limitations of news coverage, the site would still be up. Whether they’re alienating their consumers or not, as recently as Q4 2013 Verizon was the biggest carrier in the US, though the latest numbers have them tied with AT&T at 34% of the market each. The table below, powered by Statista, displays carrier market share as far back as the first quarter of 2011.

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Google is pushing, or more accurately in some cases dragging, the web as their extensions will soon no longer be compatible with older website designs and now YouTube apps are no longer compatible with many older devices. The advances Google is bounding forward on in web development will hopefully be mirrored on the wireless phone service side of things.





You can catch David spouting off about baseball, soccer, esports and other things by following him on twitter, @davidwiers.

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Eric F
8 years ago

This is pretty exciting, and being that I have a Nexus 6 on Sprint, hopefully I’ll be able to be one of the first to try it out! Basically, at this point, Google’s taking over the electronic world, and I’m going to be along for the ride.

Eric F
8 years ago
Reply to  David Wiers

Yeah the Nexus 6 is an absolute beast of a phone. I have no complaints about it, especially not for how cheap I was able to get it.

Bill
8 years ago

I agree that it isn’t possible to stream games with a data cap. It would be great if MLB would reach agreements with the ISPs such that they pay the ISP to keep streamed MLB games from counting against user’s data caps. I think RDIO reached an agreement like this with T-mobile a while back. The ISP then uses this money to improve their network to offset the increased use. I win, the ISP wins, and MLB wins.

Even without an agreement like this, Google, as one of the biggest drivers of internet traffic, can essentially do the same thing. If they know how much cheaper data rates lead to greater internet use and they know the percentage of internet traffic they provide, they can reasonably forecast the amount of money they will make by decreasing data rates. They can use some of this profit to offset the difference between what it costs them to provide data and what they charge for data. This gives them a distinct advantage over other wireless carriers. So, Google offers lower data rates to drive YouTube traffic and this will make it cheaper to stream MLB games. So, I win and Google wins.

I like the former scenario better as MLB could pay any carrier to do this so competition would keep the price in line.

Eric F
8 years ago
Reply to  Bill

This is one of the many reasons why I’m so glad to have been grandfathered-in with an unlimited data plan with Sprint.

John Thacker
8 years ago
Reply to  David Wiers

“I absolutely do not want any form of preferred, premium or fast lane internet, at home or even via cellular data.”

Unfortunately Google was forced to offer fast lane service for video with Google Fiber because people demanded it in order to subscribe. They didn’t want to offer traditional broadcast cable TV but they had to compete with bundles. They had to offer it themselves because an ISP can have a fast lane for video walled off as an MVPD, but outsourcing it (and even outsourcing it to a choice of many different providers) is a fast lane apparently prohibited now. (Even though it goes over the same fiber for quite some distance until it reaches the ISP/MVPD central office.)

I suppose if it were possible I’d prefer video fast lanes over many competing video content owners over the Internet to the status quo of a single Cable provider controlled fast lane for their own content, and people that they sign deals with. I’m too much at the mercy of the cable provider’s decision as how to value the content per subscriber.

I wonder if Google’s network will open up to more than the Nexus 6? If not, sure comes close to violating Title II and the Carterphone decision.

John Thacker
8 years ago
Reply to  John Thacker

They are providing a traditional Multichannel Video Programming Distribution service, like other cable TV operators. That is a fast lane. They use QOS options in routers to reserve a certain amount of bandwidth for their video broadcast distribution, in order to prevent signals from being dropped for a low latency application. The same “fast lane” technology is used both for video and for plain old telephone service these days by many providers, because both of those are wrapped in pseudowire and things like MPLS-TP are used.

Google didn’t want to provide cable TV in KC but they have to because of customer demand.

It’s pretty obvious that if cable TV broadcasting didn’t exist but was being announced as a new product, it would be banned as an obvious fast lane. However, it’s a legacy product and so it’s allowed, and Google was allowed to provide it in order to compete with legacy carriers.

Voice calls on cellular as well as texts are a fast lane built directly into the air interface. In LTE, rather than data and IP being a specific application built on top, Voice over LTE is a fast lane, a pseudowire, on top of an IP network. Again it wouldn’t be allowed if proposed as a new application under these rules, but it’s allowed as an obvious upgrade path to the older legacy application. However, it’s illegal for someone like Vonage to negotiate the same sort of preferential treatment as the carriers give to their own voice service.

John Thacker
8 years ago
Reply to  John Thacker

AT&T UVerse for example is definitely an IPTV service and delivered as a fast lane over the same Internet access. I don’t mean just video on demand but all their video . Centurylink is similar. Verizon uses IPTV for some things but not yet most video distribution.

John Thacker
8 years ago
Reply to  John Thacker

Google Fiber’s cable TV like service is definitely IPTV delivered over a fast lane. It looks like a walled garden to subscribers once it comes out the set top box, but it’s certainly a fast lane over the Internet service from the network perspective.

I suppose we could argue that fast lanes are OK if they involve special hardware, ports, software, or set top boxes.

Unthought_Known
8 years ago

Although I have unlimited data on Verizon, I don’t really take advantage of it. Most of my usage is over wi-fi, and I average less than a gig per month. Based on the pricing I saw for google, I doubt it would lead me to use much data anyway. It appears to be $10/gig. Based on this article, a full game on mlb.tv is about a gig. Unless it was a crucial game, I doubt I’d pay an extra $10 in data fees to watch any single game.

If I was starting from scratch, it might be an enticing option because I could pay $30/month for unlimited tax and 1 gig of data. But it’s not a good enough deal to make me switch. The article seems to criticize Verizon for their attitude, but I thought that sentiment has been the case for years (i.e. Verizon is a little more expensive than the rest, but they have by far the best network). Unless they revamped their network and became more competitive, I don’t see myself switching to any system that uses the T-Mobile/Sprint network.

Kris Gardham
8 years ago

I think I might actually like this whole techgraphs thing. I’m digging the comments. And the article, of course.

Jorge Fabregas
8 years ago

The graph appears to depict the handset market and not the carrier market, fwiw. If the plan is for $10/GB as has been reported, then I don’t think that heavy data users would have a significant savings.

Jorge Fabregas
8 years ago
Reply to  Jorge Fabregas

I should mention that the $10/GB price point was probably reported after this piece was posted. So the answer to the headline seems to be no.

Hank G.
8 years ago

I don’t see why Verizon’s position is outrageous or wrong. Different tiers of service or products are common in a free market. Do you criticize Lexus or Cadillac for providing a higher quality product at a higher price? They also can not keep customers customers who are price-sensitive or don’t care about quality. They don’t say it, because everyone already understands it.