So I had this thought the other day while talking to a friend that works at an electrical utility, the thought is naive so I'd love to hear some thoughts from people in the ISP game.
My friend and I calculated that it takes about $1 worth of electricity per year to keep your smartphone charged, we have cheap power so let's say $1-3, but even on a very cheap MVNO it costs at least $360 per year to provide cell service to that same phone.
There are a lot of assumptions here, I pay ~$30/month for 12GB of data, for a lot of people that's too little, for some more than enough, but its the orders of magnitude that are important, is it just the case that providing cell service is 100x to 300x harder than providing electricity? I'm curious to hear the answer from people in the field, because for my friend who works in power generation, electricity generation doesn't seem 100x easier than providing data service, no coal had to be mined or water reservoirs had to be created in order to send cat videos, his words lol.
My friend and I calculated that it takes about $1 worth of electricity per year to keep your smartphone charged, we have cheap power so let's say $1-3, but even on a very cheap MVNO it costs at least $360 per year to provide cell service to that same phone.
There are a lot of assumptions here, I pay ~$30/month for 12GB of data, for a lot of people that's too little, for some more than enough, but its the orders of magnitude that are important, is it just the case that providing cell service is 100x to 300x harder than providing electricity? I'm curious to hear the answer from people in the field, because for my friend who works in power generation, electricity generation doesn't seem 100x easier than providing data service, no coal had to be mined or water reservoirs had to be created in order to send cat videos, his words lol.