There have been many disputes about the online disk speed limit. The excessive download speed limit or the erratic download speed not only make people look upset, but also for users who need to download important files temporarily, they don't have so much time to wait and can only choose to open a paying member. Recently, the Ministry of industry and information technology issued the notice on carrying out the action to improve the perception of information and communication services, focusing on the information and communication service links affecting users' perception. There are five specific optimization measures, including optimizing the display mode of tariff package setting, double Gigabit service publicity mode, privacy policy and permission call display mode The display method of APP pop-up information and the provision method of network disk service. For network disk services, the Ministry of industry and information technology requires enterprises to optimize the service tariff introduction, clearly indicate the storage space, transmission rate, functional rights and tariff level, and emphasize that under the same network conditions, the minimum upload and download rates provided by enterprises to free users should ensure that they meet the basic download needs. This is intended to ensure the user's basic use experience and avoid too "outrageous" download speed when downloading files. However, while praising the new measures of the Ministry of industry and information technology, there are still some questions worth thinking about. Why is the online disk speed limited? Sometimes so hard? Free price In the era of PC Internet, the network disk has begun to rise. One of the big differences between the network disk at that time and the current network disk is the free capacity. When used for free, the capacity is mostly between a few GB and dozens of GB. Later, with more and more players in the market, online disk manufacturers began to use the "profit sharing strategy" to attract new users and scramble to expand the free online disk storage space. In 2013, Jinshan express disk under Jinshan cloud took the lead in launching the "100g free space" plan, and all new and old users can enjoy the rights and interests of the new plan. Since then, the domestic online disk market has gradually entered the "100g era", and the online disk war has been officially opened. It took less than a year for the online disk free space from 100GB to 10TB. In order to keep up with the pace of Jinshan, other network disk manufacturers have to launch similar free schemes. 360 cloud disk launched 360gb free space scheme. Baidu, another network disk manufacturer, is not willing to lag behind and provides more 1024gb free space. Tencent micro cloud is more direct and announced that it will give 10TB free network disk space. This scene is the same as the community group purchase war we are familiar with before. We rely on ultra-low prices to attract new users to register. As long as the market share grows fast enough and survives the bad competition, all the unsustainable players will naturally leave the market, and then formulate other profit plans. According to the report of AI media consulting, from the distribution of monthly active users of China's cloud disk storage in July 2020, Baidu, Weiyun and 115 online disks ranked among the top three. Most of the products that can be listed now have large factory backgrounds, such as Baidu, Tencent, China Telecom and China Mobile. On the other hand, some downloaders with certain storage functions also began to withdraw from the historical stage and were replaced by high-capacity online disk, software store and browser direct download. For example, QQ whirlwind officially stopped operation on September 6, 2017, which may have something to do with the online disk war. But free has a price. There have always been different views on the speed limit of free online disk. Some advocate no speed limit, and some can understand the charging strategy of manufacturers. After all, enterprises do online disk services not for charity. However, when doing differentiated services, enterprises need to consider the basic use experience of ordinary users. The reasonable speed limit for online disk download is understandable, but sometimes the download speed of more than 100 kb is too slow, which is far lower than the actual network speed. In recent years, with the improvement of broadband network speed, "speed up and fee reduction" strategy enables users to enjoy faster network speed at lower cost. According to the data of Speedtest, the average download rate of broadband in China in October 2021 was 151.32mbps, much faster than 43.23mbps of 4G. After 151.32mbps/s conversion, the download speed is 18.8mb per second (8mbps = 1MB / s). Considering the operation and maintenance cost of the enterprise to the network disk, calculated at this download speed, it is not required to be full speed but sufficient without opening members. The download speed of 500kb or 1MB per second seems to be more reasonable. After so many years of development, the market share of domestic online disk market tends to be stable, and there are fewer existing players and new players, which makes the online disk market more and more lack of freshness, and the market needs to usher in an innovation. The move of the Ministry of industry and information technology is also to remind network disk manufacturers not to forget their original intention and insist on bringing better product experience to users. Old net track As mentioned above, the active network disk products either have a large factory background or have certain characteristics, and have accumulated a number of loyal old users. Many online disks are adjusting their product strategies. Limiting download speed is just a routine operation. Some reduce free storage space to reduce costs and improve revenue. Even the rich Google adjusted the Google photos service (compressing high-quality photos) which originally focused on unlimited storage space to 15GB free space, which needs to be charged after exceeding the capacity. The two key factors affecting users' use of network disk are nothing more than download speed and storage space, which determines to a certain extent that third-party network disk manufacturers can use less product strategies, and improper adjustment is easy to cause users' disgust. At this time, the network disk services provided by mobile phone manufacturers have sprung up, relying on the differentiated use experience built by the combination of software and hardware. It should be noted that there are some differences between the mobile cloud service and the network disk in the call of stored files. It is more convenient to view old photos and videos on the mobile phone, and the call frequency of cold data is higher. In order to ensure the user experience, the server needs faster read-write performance. The data on the third-party network disk is opened less frequently. The network disk has the characteristics of 1 to N. when storing files shared by others, the same files stored by multiple users only occupy a small space on the server, which has a certain advantage in unit storage cost. The free space of network disk provided by mobile phone manufacturers is generally only 5GB, which is only enough to store some photos and videos. If the cost per GB after charging is calculated, the third-party network disk is more valuable. Taking apple icloud charging scheme as an example, the charging space is available in three grades, 50GB / 6 yuan per month, 200GB / 21 yuan per month, 2TB / 68 yuan per month, and 5TB / 30 yuan per month for Baidu online disk super members. It can be said that the mobile phone's own online disk sells a comprehensive experience to seize the market of third-party online disk. After opening the mobile payment cloud service, some users' willingness to open third-party online disk members decreases. In 2014, it was reported that icloud was expected to contribute $1 billion to Apple's revenue every quarter. Third party network disk manufacturers are also very helpless, so we will see that the free storage space provided by third-party network disk is much lower than that of mobile network disk. Last year, Alibaba cloud disk caused quite a stir when it was launched. In addition to the highlights of no speed limit and large space, another reason is that users finally see new players entering the market. The long silent domestic online disk market needs some freshness. This also confirms the "big factory background" of the network disk manufacturers mentioned above. The network disk we see is a virtual product of network storage, and the manufacturers see various costs such as servers. If the network disk track can not develop a new profit model, the final players will only be fewer and fewer, and the share is mainly concentrated in several manufacturers. How to break the game? Combined with the views of some online disk users, online disk manufacturers should really clarify the download speed of the free version and improve it to a more available level, rather than lower the lower limit to stimulate users to open members. Advertising is a major source of revenue for online disk. Only by ensuring enough registered users and monthly activity data can we have a more full voice in advertising negotiations. In the use scenario, the third-party network disk can cooperate with mobile phone manufacturers and app manufacturers to launch customized network disk products, reduce the cost of self operated network disk of partners, expand products to more fields, and develop the enterprise market. In terms of playing methods, you can use incentive mechanisms. For example, if users of the free version want faster download speed or greater storage space, they can exchange a certain amount of money by inviting friends, or even fight a lot of "chop" strategies. Foreign online disk Dropbox has a similar practice. Secondly, there is a monthly quota strategy, which gives users a certain amount of unlimited downloads every month to encourage users to open the app and receive it. The innovation of business model needs different new links. On the individual client side, the third-party network disk needs enough upgrade points to compete with mobile phone manufacturers for users. The enterprise side is another direction of network disk development. Combined with other tob products, it takes the road of enterprise payment. In any case, online disk products cannot survive without charging, but only when the free version experience is guaranteed can these users be transformed into paying users. If users have to temporarily open members after facing a bad use experience, it will only bring more "one-time paying" users and can not really improve the scale of the whole paying users. (Xinhua News Agency)