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TMCNet: A Ballooning Megabyte Budget [Virginian - Pilot]

[April 15, 2012]

A Ballooning Megabyte Budget [Virginian - Pilot]

(Virginian - Pilot Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) By Brian X. Chen The New York Times Everyone knows how long a minute is. And your cellphone carrier keeps close tabs on how many you have used this month. Now, in the smartphone era, more people are being forced to think about how many megabytes of data they are using.

But what, exactly, is a megabyte? If a sampling of pedestrians on the streets of New York is any guide, most people have only a vague idea. One said a megabyte was "the amount of something we have to use the Internet," adding, "We should have three or four." Miranda Popkey, 24, was closer: "It's a measure of how much information you store. If there are too many of them, I can't send my email attachment." A megabyte is, in this context, 1,000 kilobytes - or about the size of a photo taken with a decent digital camera, or roughly one minute of a song, or a decent stack of email.

Therein lies the problem: Counting things like minutes and text messages is fairly easy, but there is no intuitive or natural way to gauge data use.

The carriers say they are doing their best to help customers keep tabs on their data diet. But the potential for confusion - and unexpected charges - is growing as people upgrade to faster devices running on faster networks.

Even the most sophisticated of mobile customers can be tripped up - people like Paul DeBeasi, a research vice president at Gartner specializing in wireless technology. He said that he once streamed a Netflix movie to his iPad and was charged extra for exceeding his data plan limit.

DeBeasi did the math and found that watching two hours of a standard-definition Netflix video consumes 2 gigabytes - or 2,000 megabytes - of data.

"Even if you're just watching a standard-definition movie and you're only watching five movies in a month, it's costing you $100 just to watch those five movies," he said. DeBeasi suggested using Wi-Fi networks whenever possible, as this does not run up your carrier's data meter.

A vast majority of smartphone owners do not come near their data limits, many studies say. But data use is predicted to climb considerably over the next few years. Cisco, the networking company, recently published a study showing that mobile data more than doubled in 2011, and it predicts that by 2016 it will have grown by a factor of 18.

Faster fourth-generation or 4G networks are driving that increase. The faster speeds encourage customers to use more data- intensive applications like video, so a smartphone on a 4G network is likely to generate 50 percent more traffic than it would on a slower one, Cisco says. The 4G-ready model of the latest iPad is potentially a data hog, given that its big, extra-high-resolution screen makes high-definition video streams especially tempting.

And soon your personal data plan may not be the only one you will have to worry about. Verizon and AT&T have said they are working on data plans that can be shared among multiple devices, similar to family plans for cellphones. That means parents will not only have to keep an eye on the number of text messages and phone calls their children are burning through, but also the amount of video, music and games they are streaming over the cellular network.

Michael Weinberg, senior staff lawyer of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit group that advocates more transparency in the billing from telecommunications companies, goes as far as to question why smartphone customers even have to pay more to use more data. He said the carriers have not provided evidence that limiting the amount of data a person uses reduces congestion. He added that there was a disconnect between what the carriers' advertisements say and what customers can really do with their data allowances.

"There's a problem with understanding exactly what the data means in the real world, and also matching up some of the advertising that networks do with the actual reality," Weinberg said. "You have these ads with people doing things like Facebook and watching videos, and you realize how quickly you can burn through it." Schwark Satyavolu, chief executive of Truaxis, a company that offers tools for consumers to manage their utility bills, said it was in the best interest of carriers like AT&T and Verizon to keep consumers in the dark.

"They make more money if they don't inform you of anything," Satyavolu said. "Their interest is in not informing you and having you go over." AT&T and Verizon dispute that, saying they offer several ways for customers to monitor their data. For example, each has a website with a data calculator so people can see how much data a specific activity uses. Verizon customers can register with a service called My Verizon to get alerts when they have reached a certain percentage of their monthly data allowance.

"We do our best to provide the tools customers need to manage their wireless services," Brenda Raney, a Verizon spokeswoman, said by email. "There is no sustainable business model based on customer confusion." " (c) 2012 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved.

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