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Does the USA have any open market cellular options that are legitimate pay-as-you-go and only for what you use options like Europe yet? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 5 months ago by j4k3 to c/asklemmy

38 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've lived under a rock for 10 years. I did Metro ages ago while most were still on contracts. Surely we've reached true capitalist open market freedom by now. Is it still total closed market, noncompetitive, privateering corruption?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The unlimited data plan offers 35GB at full 4G LTE/5G speed with 5GB of hotspot included. Data speed is reduced after 35GB.

Wow. Truly unlimited. And how much does it get reduced?

Let's check ToS.

Your data speed will be reduced to lower speeds once you have used 35 GB of data in a billing period.

Uh, huh. Very precise information.
Also...

New and existing customers on qualifying plans including data have streaming video optimization technology automatically applied to our plans, and video is delivered at a lower resolution (typically 480p) rather than at a higher resolution which is better suited for larger screens. This helps customers stretch their Data Plans by reducing the amount of high-speed data consumed for streaming video.

What, how? How does that work?

Anyway, I am probably spoiled by Swan (4ka) in Slovakia.
It is the 4th carrier, weakening oligopoly of T-Mobile, O2 and Orange since 2015.
I have their unlimited data plan, which is 300GB, not 35GB, nor 5GB on hotspot. Of that I used 220GB so far in this month (usually I do around 100GB though). €13/month for me, €15 for new customers.
I am not even sure if limiting hotspot usage could be a thing in Europe. It sounds stupid enough.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Limited hotspot usage was definitely a thing in Europe

Twenty years ago 😂

[–] j4k3 4 points 5 months ago

I have a limited understanding of how the video thing works. I think there is a black box installed locally at most ISP connection points. These are from the major streaming services like Google/YouTube and they sit inline with all if the traffic I/O. From what I recall seeing on reddit (not a primary citation worthy memory or source), people that worked on said ISP infrastructure had no idea what the black boxes actually do in full scope, but empirically, they cache the most active streaming content locally.

Speculatively, this was one of the big reasons YT changed so much in 2017 where they started focusing on promoting fewer prominent creators over an egalitarian community. They needed to promote a narrower scope that could be effectively cached. You can usually see this behavior by watching old and obscure content. It takes longer to load, change resolutions, etc., whereas on newer stuff that is popular, the content is nearly instantaneous.