Great show chaps, but sorry I could not disagree more about your comments on unlimited data plans, and Steve's minor rant disappoints me on how easily he's been taken in by the phone networks pathetic excuses.
The issue is not the numbers of users all using the bandwidth at the same time, although obviously that's the cause of the congestion at the moment, but the real issue that the networks don't speak about is the fact that it's their badly set up network of cell towers i.e. there aren't enough of them and they are not willing to spend the money to add the number needed to keep up with demand. It's not like they don't have the money, look how much they're making on SMS messages each month!
I can even give you a real world example of how it should be done. I live in Luxembourg and in the months following the launch of the iPhone 3G, I began to get complaints from our staff that their Blackberry handsets were not receiving emails very quickly or at all at times and that they were taking ages to send emails. Internally we could find no faults and from RIM's perspective nothing was wrong there. So I spoke to our mobile provider, and here I'll paraphrase as I can't recall the exact words we exchanged:
[INDENT]Me: "Do you have any idea why we're having so many issues with out BBs? Seems to have coincided with your iPhone release"
Provider: "Yes, since the iPhone was released and many people taking the highest data tariff our network speed has begun to suffer."
Me: "Are you doing anything about it?"
Provider: "We already are. We've begun to install new towers which will help with the data but also provide wider coverage, plus we are also upgrading all the older towers for more bandwidth."
Me: "And when can we expect things back to normal?"
Provider: "In about two to three months."[/INDENT]
Then true to their word, things did get better and have been fine ever since, of course apart from the normal outages any provider would experience. Not one word about removing their unlimited data plans to fix the problem - BECAUSE IT ISN'T THE CURE!
Now, Luxembourg isn't a huge market I'll grant you, but it's bigger than most "sample areas" various statistical reports could come out with. It just shows that it's not the customers to blame, but the networks being lazy and not doing their job i.e. "profit profit profit" at the expense of customer service.
I certainly don't agree it's all about trying to download all you can when you have unlimited, not that that doesn't happen. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that I subscribe to unlimited so I know how much I spend each month and don't have to worry that I will go over some limit and have an unwelcome surprise in the post when the bill comes. I don't stream video myself, but I do subscribe to numerous podcasts including yours and Steve's PSC, constantly connect to two email accounts, always connected via Skype and surf the net on my almost desktop quality web browser, so the data downloaded isn't insignificant and does mount up.
In my opinion the future is most certainly "unlimited" both on fixed and wireless connections, as we as consumers start to demand more and more services to be online - look at the online movie services, a 10GB cap for example on my home broadband isn't going to let me watch too many HD movies is it? What's the point of all these always-on connected smartphones if you're going to strangle their connectivity? Limiting the amount you can download only serves to delay the inevitable as it will just get worse again as more subscribers come on-line - you don't think networks are just going to turn away new accounts do you?
I can only hope the networks that aren't currently doing this will look at it as an opportunity to tempt more subscribers to their networks to show the likes of AT&T that they need to get their own house in order first.