I don't think the problem is that niche though. Even outside of accessibility concerns, there are plenty of times I've tried to use websites on smartphones within intermittent internet access — e.g. on the London underground checking in to a flight on the way to the airport or ordering a pizza when coming home late from work.
In both scenarios, I'm trying to complete my task as quickly as possible while I still have a good connection. A simple HTML page (with JS layered on top for fancier stuff) would be plenty to get the job done. Instead you get hindered by sites that aren't optimised in any way for slow devices or slow internet.
Heard that Facebook before had "2G Tuesdays" where the product teams throttled their internal net speeds to 2G while browsing the site to see what it was like — that should be the standard for dev teams. The trouble is so many things are designed and tested by people on T1 broadband in a downtown office, but that's not the set-up of a majority of their users.
I can't remember exactly how much it was, but within the last year, I ran out of cellular data and my "unlimited" plan dropped back to a lesser amount of bandwidth, but still what used to be broadband. However, I literally could not load any website I tried. However much it was, it was way more than dialup. It seemed to me like there was no point in a soft cap, if one can't even load the website to change plans.
I would hazard a guess that it was 2G. And yes, it's absolutely infuriating that so many basic services (which used to be implemented just fine on 2G speeds (or less!)) no longer remotely function without LTE.
In both scenarios, I'm trying to complete my task as quickly as possible while I still have a good connection. A simple HTML page (with JS layered on top for fancier stuff) would be plenty to get the job done. Instead you get hindered by sites that aren't optimised in any way for slow devices or slow internet.
Heard that Facebook before had "2G Tuesdays" where the product teams throttled their internal net speeds to 2G while browsing the site to see what it was like — that should be the standard for dev teams. The trouble is so many things are designed and tested by people on T1 broadband in a downtown office, but that's not the set-up of a majority of their users.