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Networking United Kingdom The Internet

British Operator EE Offers £8 Million Petabyte 4G Data Bundle 53

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the just-in-case dept.
judgecorp writes "British mobile operator EE is offering a massive 1 Petabyte data bundle to businesses spread across multiple phones,.It's more than a gimmick to promote the 4G data service — it's aimed at heavy data users such as media companies who use data networks to upload content. This deal charges £8 per gigabyte, which is less than half the cost of the satellite uplinks they currently use. So the £8 million cost of this package might even result in savings for some organizations."
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British Operator EE Offers £8 Million Petabyte 4G Data Bundle More

British Operator EE Offers £8 Million Petabyte 4G Data Bundle

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  • ... thats 8M euros for the petabyte...

    • Re:expensive (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rosyna ( 80334 ) on Sunday November 10, 2013 @12:31AM (#45381219) Homepage

      It's expensive for even the most evil carrier in the world, AT&T, which only charges $10/gb. And that's without any kind of bulk data rate discount.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gl4ss ( 559668 )

        ...but in euro generally you can get ten bucks a month plans for all you can use dataplans( I used to torrent on a _prepaid_ for a while... I think the speed was capped to 3mbit/s though, but I did transfer tens of gigs per month).

        8 million is a pretty expensive proposition in that regard, especially since they would still need to have the satellite links as backup(I'd reckon they would wish to cover overcrowded areas).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rosyna ( 80334 )

          ...but in euro generally you can get ten bucks a month plans for all you can use data plans I think the speed was capped to 3mbit/s though

          I'm sorry but a 3Mbit/s capped connection is a not something I'd consider "all I can use".

        • Re:expensive (Score:4, Interesting)

          by FlyHelicopters ( 1540845 ) on Sunday November 10, 2013 @01:05AM (#45381391)
          While that is probably true, that 10 EUR a month is probably licensed for consumer use, not business use. It probably also comes with no SLA (service level agreements). It is quite possible that for this money, they will provide unlimited bandwidth (no data rate caps) and perhaps preferred transmission during heavy use times (if that is legal there, I'm in the USA).

          For a business, part of what you get for the money is service and the ability to hold the company's feet to the fire. For 10 EUR a month, you more or less have no power, for 8 Million EUR, you would have some sway.

          Keep in mind that if media companies could really use those 10 EUR plans, they would, they pay for the sat uplinks for a reason.

          • Also keep in mind it's one thing to have a customer use 10GB. It's quite another to use petabytes of data. There aren't necessarily economies of scale if you have to support an intensive user like that. I know we hammer our ISP at work way harder than most users since we're a media company. We don't pay more, but we would have to if we needed more than our ISP provides and I wouldn't be surprised to be charged a premium for a niche usage metric.

      • At $10 a gb, that would still cost $10 million for a petabyte.

        I don't think people quite understand how much data a petabyte is. I see some 4TB drives on Amazon running around $300 each (consumer grade drives - go with me on this). How long does it take the average user to fill up 4TB with stuff they are pulling over the internet? Many ISPs cap you at 200 gig of data a month, some are lower, so 20 months if you were capping out your bandwidth cap every month to fill one of these drives. A Petabyte is 250 of

        • Um, I worked for a Fortune 200 (telecommunications industry) and my team alone would generate over 5 petabytes of data every month and a half, give or take a few weeks. Mind you, my 'team' consisted of several hundred people, but we were a huge organization with over 40,000 direct workers and 39,000 contract workers. This type of organization is what this plan is aimed for....
    • Actually, it's 8M Pounds for the Petabyte...

      ~~

    • Note that this is primarily targeting companies needing UPLOAD capacity. Where normal consumers use download mostly.

      I wonder what the transfer rates are in this bundle.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by mr.gson ( 458099 )
      Here's a rough comparison of the price to a variety of other offerings: http://www.araneus.fi/bwcost/?highlight=71 [araneus.fi]

  • Better summery: (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "EE is offering bundles of 50TB, 100TB, 200TB, 500TB and 1PB, with each gigabyte costing £8 per GB." && "The operator is targeting data intensive industries such as broadcasting, which traditionally rely on satellite uplinks" && "According to EE, satellite uplinks cost £20 per gigabyte and must be booked in advance"

  • Another antiquated space-based (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    technology rendered obsolete by advances in technology. The space-based future envisioned in the '60s sure looks more and more quaint every day.

    • It was a good troll, but have you ever actually tried to use a mobile 'phone for anything mission critical? And "4G" is mostly marketing hype, providing significant speed improvements only if no more than about three people in the area are saturating their connections at once, and a horrible recipe for RFI.

      Give me satellite any day. If my dish can see it, I can transmit to it. And if I can transmit to it, I get the capacity I am expecting.

      Also my 4G plan, for business and home use, costs £8 for 5GB. Y

  • Do The Right Thing (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Charge exactly as much as competitors (or even your corporation), charges for the cheapest plan.

    If they do this, and spread the word well, they will see profit.

    Regardless, today, this is a service that should be provided for free. We, at least in the USA, still charge for phone usage, ignoring the fact that phone accessibility is a literal necessity of modern life.

    Please let this capitalization of necessary resources cease.

  • on most systems it's like $10-15 for going over your plan base pack and I think if your buying a big corporate plan the rate is a lot lower then that.

  • So, that's about $13 / GB. AT&T (ie. the global rip off artist of the century) basically charges $10 / GB to inividuals. So, EE can't do any better than a 30% premium over that for a $13M contract!? How is this in any way interesting?

    • So, that's about $13 / GB. AT&T (ie. the global rip off artist of the century) basically charges $10 / GB to inividuals.

      Cheap by Australian standards. Telstra charge [telstra.com.au] $25 for 1GB, with excess data at 10c/MB or $40 with no excess data charges. You can pay $95 for 15GB with same excess data 10c/MB excess data charge. The prepaid option is even worse $20 for 250MB up to $180 for 12GB.

      amaysim's [amaysim.com.au] $9.90 for 1GB or $29.90 for 4GB is about as cheap as it gets in Australia.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fisted ( 2295862 )
        horricheap?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dahamma ( 304068 )

        Yeah, but Australia is notorious for *horrible* Internet prices.

        And even you are saying 15GB is $95, which is just over $6 / GB. *That* is the sort of volume discount I'm talking about. So you'd think buying 1 PB of data would give an even *better* one. Since it clearly didn't, this article is fairly pointless...

  • Lacklustre service (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    EE [wikipedia.org] and their subsidiaries are the most complained about telecommunications company in the United Kingdom, according to the regulator Ofcom. They may want to rethink their target market for this service too [bbc.co.uk].

  • As if anyone can get 4G coverage long enough to actually put data over it at any interesting rates. You'd have to search for a location where your signal is strong enough so much, that you could just as well be looking for a wifi uplink that will cost nothing more than a cup of coffee at a starbucks or equivalent.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      Most public wifi is hanging off the end of a DSL line and has really poor upstream, you wouldn't want to be using that to upload large files.

  • Sign me up! (Score:3)

    by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 ) on Sunday November 10, 2013 @10:31AM (#45383863) Homepage

    British Operator EE Offers £8 Million Petabyte 4G Data Bundle

    £8 for a million petabytes? I'll take two.

  • Since the merger of Orange and T-Mobile, EE have been cost cutting by shutting down cell towers with overlaps. This sounds reasonable, but it's having a huge effect on signal strength and quality. Initially they denied there was a problem, now they can't hide the fact the service is suffering. So if you're a business with £8 million in your pocket, make sure you do your due diligence and check coverage in your area! Remember what you check now might not be there when you want to use it, as EE are st

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