Carriers Sending Mixed Signals On Mobile Bandwidth

Then there is the question of how bandwidth is going to be used. If I am paying for bandwidth by the byte, I want to have a lot of say over what is using those precious and expensive bytes. Take advertising for example. When browsing a typical Web page that has huge banner ads or Flash, I want those ads to be blocked so they aren't downloaded at all. Why should I download those ads? Often they are several times larger than the content I actually want on the web page, which is simple text. If the mobile carrier is going to put me on the meter for those bytes, I have no reason to download them.

Mobile phones currently don't provide much control or visibility on what is using up the mobile data. An incredible example just played out in Windows Phone 7, showing that users are often helpless to gauge or control bandwidth usage. Last November, some users of Microsoft's newly released phone noticed that they were using huge amounts of data, but they couldn't easily tell why. In late December -- a month later -- Microsoft said they thought they had identified the culprit but didn't provide any more information. Another month goes by and an independent investigator does network traces to confirm that Yahoo Mail was the problem, using about 25 times the data that it should. It wasn't until last week that Yahoo and Microsoft issued a workaround (not a complete fix, mind you) to reduce the amount of data being sent. Yes, that is two months for a workaround, while users pay for the bandwidth.

I want phones or tablets to tell me how much bandwidth each app is using, and for apps to give me more control over when and how they use bandwidth. And of course, when they use bandwidth at all it should be for MY benefit, not to deliver unwanted content or report back information that doesn't help me. It's not enough to just know that I have used 36% of my monthly bandwidth allocation even though it's just the fourth day of the billing cycle. I need to know what is using all the bandwidth.

I haven't found an iPhone app that can do more than just monitor the overall bandwidth on the system -- do you know of any? For the Nexus One, I've found a free app in the Android Market that is great for tracking bandwidth usage. It's called Network Usage by yhlee, and should work with any Android phone. The display shows a complete list of applications and the amount of data they've used, broken down by send and receive bandwidth. Already it's opened my eyes to a couple of problems. For example, it's easy to accidentally configure both the email app and the Gmail app to monitor mail, and when you do that you're downloading all messages twice. By removing Gmail I saved quite a bit of bandwidth.

Ultimately, if carriers are going to nickel and dime us for bandwidth, then apps need to get much smarter about how they use bandwidth. I would like apps to be able to switch their behavior based on whether they're on Wi-Fi or mobile data. When I'm in range of a registered Wi-Fi network such as at home, I want Google Voice to automatically switch to using Wi-Fi for making and receiving calls. I want email to check every 10 minutes when I'm on Wi-Fi, but only every hour otherwise. Right now apps don't do this, and as a result we're all using a lot more of that precious and expensive bandwidth.

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