Carriers are warning of a time when unlimited data plans will be curtailed — or at the very least the terms of service which prohibit certain activities (such as streaming from a Slingbox) will be enforced, rather than ignored as they apparently are now. There’s a tip for everybody…go wild, they won’t care. For a while, anyway. The issue is that the carriers desperately want people on their 3G network and are offering very attractive packages, which won’t withstand the load if everyone signs up and uses excessive data.
“A 3G crunch could be caused not just by too many users reaching the service on a single base station, but by overloading of the wired “backhaul” that connects the wireless cells to the Internet, said IDC analyst Godfrey Chua…”We don’t really know what the condition of the transmission network is right now,” Chua said.”
This will in general be bad for content providers, especially if a per-kilobyte rate is introduced. It’s possible some will benefit, though. If Slingbox users are actively banned it may see a rise in the use of mobile video services … or some form of hack.
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