[OT] Effect of UTF-8 on 2G connections

[Marco Leise via Digitalmars-d]

Am Wed, 01 Jun 2016 13:57:27 +0000
schrieb Joakim <dlang at joakim.fea.st>:

> No, I explicitly said not the web in a subsequent post.  The 
> ignorance here of what 2G speeds are like is mind-boggling.

I've used 56k and had a phone conversation with my sister
while she was downloading a 800 MiB file over 2G. You just
learn to be patient (or you already are when the next major
city is hundreds of kilometers away) and load only what you
need. Your point about the costs convinced me more.

Here is one article spiced up with numbers and figures:
http://www.thequint.com/technology/2016/05/30/almost-every-indian-may-be-online-if-data-cost-cut-to-one-third

But even if you could prove with a study that UTF-8 caused a
notable bandwith cost in real life, it would - I think - be a
matter of regional ISPs to provide special servers and apps
that reduce data volume. There is also the overhead of
key exchange when establishing a secure connection:
http://stackoverflow.com/a/20306907/4038614
Something every app should do, but will increase bandwidth use.
Then there is the overhead of using XML in applications
like WhatsApp, which I presume is quite popular around the
world. I'm just trying to broaden the view a bit here.
This note from the XMPP that WhatsApp and Jabber use will make
you cringe: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6120#section-11.6

-- 
Marco