Disqus
As operators around the world look to curb people’s data usage by rolling out confusing pricing plans or just simply raising their rates, things are going a little bit differently in Russia. MegaFon, the third largest operator in the country, recently held a contest whereby the person who could use the most amount of data would be awarded with a 150,000 ruble ($5,000) vacation overseas. With the way temperatures have plummeted across all of Europe, Thailand looks like the place to be right now. Anyway, the winner was someone who managed to pull 419 GB in the span of a single week. Doing some back of the envelope calculations, that’s a constant download rate of 5.7 megabits per second. Not bad for a network that uses 21 Mbps HSPA+ technology, which is arguably inferior to anything offered in America, but on par with what’s available in most of Europe. Some countries have 42 Mbps HSPA+ networks, but that technology isn’t as widely deployed yet.
The bigger story here is that MegaFon has managed to not only stick to their guns when they say they have “unlimited data”, but they also demonstrated that they have a network capable of handling a tremendous amount of load. Why can’t other operators be like this? Imagine if someone in Verizon’s or AT&T’s marketing department suggested running a competition to see who could use up the most amount of data, that person would get fired so fast that their head would explode.
We’re curious, how fairly does your operator treat you? This writer once lived in a temporary apartment for about a month and managed to consume over 300 GB of data using a prepaid SIM card. No one complained, no one sent an angry text message with a warning, absolutely nothing happened. That’s Elisa Finland for you.
[Via: The Next Web]
About The Author
Stefan Constantinescu
Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.
