Opinion: The rise of data-heavy apps vs. low data caps

[Anonymous]

A couple of days ago Google launched its Music service in the UK, and it's absolutely fantastic. The service acts as a cloud for your music collection, allowing you to access your music from any web browser as well as giving you access directly from Android's built-in music player. Having tried this service for the past few days, I'm completely in love with it. What I'm not in love with is the amount of data it uses. Over the past 2 days of commuting 45 minutes each away, I've burnt through nearly 350MB. While music is cached after the first time of playing, rediscovering my music collection has come at the cost of using nearly all my data allowance in just 2 days.

Having looked at the O2 website, the largest bolt-on I can find for data is just 1GB, or about a week and a half of commuting. While I can appreciate that many users loading such a large amount of data can cause strain on the network, such caps will become increasingly restrictive on phone usage as more and more data-intensive apps become availabe - a criticism also levied against EE for their low data caps. This is seriously making me consider carefully whether it's worth abandoning O2 in favour of Three's all-you-can-eat data tarriff when my contract comes up for renewal next year, especially if 1GB is the upper limit on O2.

Which raises the question - would people be willing to put up with slower data speeds and more congestion if it meant that data limits were higher, possibly leaning towards an all-you-can-eat package? And would the rise of more data-intensive apps like Google Music cause more people to lean towards the higher data caps over higher speed?

[perksie]

This is going to be the problem if we all start using cloud storage, gobbling data, I feel O2 and others will have to relax and increase the data limits before very long.

[MI5]

I agree but without the infrastructure to support it the download speeds will be so slow that it would become unusable. With Wifi available in so many places these days you have to consider which suits you best.

[sheepdog]

Don't expect any increase in data allowances till this 4G auction is sorted. Then its another 3 years before the majority of the country get 4G so in my cynical mood, those first adopters are going to be using it heavily so by the time I get it limits will be placed!

On a postive note, I'm surprised more companies aren't doing the server compression that RIM does as that would help a great deal.

Problem with wifi is that either you offer it for free and recoup your costs elsewhere or you lock it down and get people to pay (hotels are pretty bad at this). The latter I won't so will rely on the network. 

[perksie]

I've had a few tries with hotel wi-fi but only in one out of three did it work properly, in the others it was patchy coverage or very slow.

[Anonymous]

"Steps need to be taken now to head off a looming "capacity crunch" on the UK's mobile networks, says regulator Ofcom."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20356760

[perksie]

Like they couldn't see that coming?

[Toby]

Interesting discussion here guys. I'd go for slower data personally,

Welcome Doddy

[jonsie]

I have found most hotel wifi is adequate but normally very slow so really browsing and email is about the best you expect. I think that it's inevitable that higher data caps will have to be introduced but I'm sure these will come at a premium.

[Toby]

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@jonsie wrote:

I have found most hotel wifi is adequate but normally very slow so really browsing and email is about the best you expect. I think that it's inevitable that higher data caps will have to be introduced but I'm sure these will come at a premium.

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There also seems to be a huge disparity if Wi-fi prices depending on the hotel which I was surprised about.