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Anyone on ATT Unlimited...

T

titans1127

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 10, 2009
1,179
414
And get unthrotted before your billing cycle was up? I get throttled most months towards the last 2-3 days of the cycle normally. This cycle was at the beginning of my new job and with training and traveling on the train I blew through 5 gigs within the first week. It's been pretty brutal the last 2 weeks with the throttled speeds to the point where the phone feels unusable. One minute YouTube videos buffer like crazy.

Long story short. I picked up a Moto X Monday and used that Monday night into Tuesday night before putting my SIM back into my 6 Plus. I did 1 speed test with the Moto X on Monday and the speeds were still throttled. Today I'm at work and while I'm browsing the web and Facebook everything seems snappier than its been. I run a speed test and bam, 7 Megs up and down. Never expected this since there's still 8 days left in my billing cycle and I've used almost 6.5 gigs. Definitely not complaining but confused on how the throttle got lifted. Was it changing phones? Or maybe something else?

Would like to hear from anyone else that has come across this or knows what's going on.
 
as far as i know it gets trottled once you reached 5gb. maybe because you're almost at the end of the month.
 
Yeah but 8 days early seems odd especially since they had me throttled for over 2 weeks. Who knows. Maybe they're starting to scale back the throttling now.
 
You get throttled once you hit 5GB it could be the first day of your cycle doesn't matter. Never known them to lift it though, or at least with me.
 
titans1127 said:
Yeah but 8 days early seems odd especially since they had me throttled for over 2 weeks. Who knows. Maybe they're starting to scale back the throttling now.
Click to expand...

AT&T claims that they are implementing system improvements that will let them scale back throttling of LTE accounts. For non-LTE accounts, they only throttle if there is network congestion. For LTE accounts, they currently throttle after you hit 5GB regardless of whether there is network congestion. AT&T says that by the end of the year LTE accounts will only be throttled if there is network congestion. Perhaps they are rolling it out in your area.
 
Anyone on ATT Unlimited...

KPOM said:
AT&T claims that they are implementing system improvements that will let them scale back throttling of LTE accounts. For non-LTE accounts, they only throttle if there is network congestion. For LTE accounts, they currently throttle after you hit 5GB regardless of whether there is network congestion. AT&T says that by the end of the year LTE accounts will only be throttled if there is network congestion. Perhaps they are rolling it out in your area.
Click to expand...
if that's the case(haven't read into it lately) then that's very good to hear. I guess we won't know for sure until next month. I have no problem being throttled due to congestion because that's temporary, maybe a day or so and then speeds go back to normal. Not like how it is up until now.

Mobile hotspot is the only useful thing I'd be gaining by leaving unlimited and that's something I may only need once a month anyway so I hope ATT gets more lenient on throttling
 
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Came home from work tonight and I'm back to being throttled. So i'll have to check back tomorrow at work and see how it is. AT&T Tech Support live chat wasn't helpful at all to see whats going on other than try to convince me to switch to Mobile Share. Which if they would offer 15 gigs for the price of 10 again long with the rollover, I would actually make a strong consideration to switch.
 
titans1127 said:
Came home from work tonight and I'm back to being throttled. So i'll have to check back tomorrow at work and see how it is. AT&T Tech Support live chat wasn't helpful at all to see whats going on other than try to convince me to switch to Mobile Share. Which if they would offer 15 gigs for the price of 10 again long with the rollover, I would actually make a strong consideration to switch.
Click to expand...

They were offering rollover?

EDIT: Wow... some searching shows they offer it (seems to everyone on mobile share automatically). Only for one billing period, but still rather awesome.Good to know!
 
lordofthereef said:
So, this doesn;t require any user input, does it? This will just "happen"?
Click to expand...

As long as you're on a mobile share plan, then yes it will just happen.

Edit: OP, I am still throttled as soon as I hit 5GB, right around my 3rd week of the billing cycle, it sucks. As soon as tmo improves their coverage, I'm switching.
 
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Rayfire said:
As long as you're on a mobile share plan, then yes it will just happen.
Click to expand...

I don't strictly mind that, however this gives ATT a much easier opportunity to just pull the program alltogether since its not promised.

Oh well. It's newly implemented. I guess that probably won't happen too soon.
 
Rayfire said:
As long as you're on a mobile share plan, then yes it will just happen.

Edit: OP, I am still throttled as soon as I hit 5GB, right around my 3rd week of the billing cycle, it sucks. As soon as tmo improves their coverage, I'm switching.
Click to expand...
I hear ya man. T-Mobile coverage is just as good as AT&T out here in the spots I travel to. The only thing that's stopping me from switching is where I go on vacation in upstate NY there is zero coverage, not even EDGE. So sadly thats enough for me to hold back even if its just a minor inconvenience one week out of the year.

Just sucks that its a matter of waiting for AT&T to do something thats good enough for me to drop unlimited. Wouldn't be much either but if they wanna stop throttling unlimited users or at least raise the cap, I'd be happy with that as well ;)
 
The 5GB cap is ridiculously low. It was fine a few years ago when they didn't have all these data tiers and only had like 2 or 3 that you could choose from.
 
chrfr said:
What could roll over if the data is unlimited?
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I can see both schools of thought.

Unlimited is currently a 5GB throttle. I think what the above poster may have been implying is if you use 3GB on "unlimited" one month, you won't then have 7GB of unlimited unthrottled data the next month.
 
Sadly I'm back to being throttled. The other day must have been a weird fluke. I was dabbling at the idea of dropping Unlimited and going with either the 10 or 30 gig MSV. But no matter how many times I crunched the numbers both plans are going to cost us more money each month than we are paying now. So at least for now I am just going to deal with it and see whats in store for the future of ATT's throttling policies.
 
titans1127 said:
Sadly I'm back to being throttled. The other day must have been a weird fluke. I was dabbling at the idea of dropping Unlimited and going with either the 10 or 30 gig MSV. But no matter how many times I crunched the numbers both plans are going to cost us more money each month than we are paying now. So at least for now I am just going to deal with it and see whats in store for the future of ATT's throttling policies.
Click to expand...

I'm anxious to see what happens with that FTC lawsuit they have on ATT.
 
Applejuiced said:
Me too.
And it is taking forever.
Not sure what is the holdup to get some answers from AT&T or some changes to their throttling practices.
Click to expand...
It definitely shouldn't take this long to at least inform us whats the status of everything.

I'd be cool if they limit throttling only those affected by legit network congestion or if they raised the cap to 10 or 15 gigs before throttling to a speed of 1meg up and down. At least at that speed the phone won't feel crippled like it does now.
 
I think that a change may be coming

My billing cycle starts on the 17th and I usually hit 5GB in 2 weeks. So today I did my usual speed test using the FCC app and I hit 40 Mbps down! I've used over 9GB this month so I should be throttled down to 0.5 Mbps.

It's definitely strange that I have my fastest speed test while I'm supposed to be throttled. I'll keep testing everyday to see if the throttling comes back.
 

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rgarjr said:
The 5GB cap is ridiculously low. It was fine a few years ago when they didn't have all these data tiers and only had like 2 or 3 that you could choose from.
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5GB is overkill for the vast majority of iPhone users. Most of us do not live on our phones and we actually have and use WiFi when there are big downloads to be had. :rolleyes:
 
TypeMRT said:
My billing cycle starts on the 17th and I usually hit 5GB in 2 weeks. So today I did my usual speed test using the FCC app and I hit 40 Mbps down! I've used over 9GB this month so I should be throttled down to 0.5 Mbps.

It's definitely strange that I have my fastest speed test while I'm supposed to be throttled. I'll keep testing everyday to see if the throttling comes back.
Click to expand...

I sure hope so, I'm not sure if it's market to market basis only since you're screenshot suggests you come from LA. Last billing cycle, I got throttled; good thing my billing cycle started last 10th so I'm fine (for now before getting throttled again) :rolleyes:
 
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