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AT&T capped data speeds

R

reemas

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 6, 2004
79
32
I was getting around 2-5 Mbps but now that I hit the 3GB mark I'm getting about .1-.25 Mbps. Is this how severely they cap the data?

Just wondering what some of your experiences have been.
 
Yes. That is what happens to those with unlimited data rather 3GB. Funny thing is I still manage to pull down 6 more gigabytes by the end of my billing cycle.
 
Wow I'm not sure how you get an additional 3GB at those speeds. Impressive.
 
I get an additional 6GB at those speeds for an average monthly big of 9GB. It isn't too hard. Just do lots of overnight downloading and lots of everything when the speeds are not capped. They usually get capped about a week into my billing period.
 
Intell said:
Just do lots of overnight downloading and lots of everything when the speeds are not capped.
Click to expand...

Are you tethering on the unlimited plan? Just curious, because I know a while back they were sending warnings for people tethering on the unlimited plan. That is part of the reason I have a second line with a capped plan, so that I can tether.
Just curious if they have changed that since implementing the throttling. The threads about it really seemed to die down.
 
Intell said:
No tethering at all. Lots of streaming media and downloading of large files.
Click to expand...

I was throttled last month and only managed to use another 300MB on top of the 3GB until the end of my billing cycle. It was too painful to stream anything. This month my cellular usage is only about 700MB in total because I didn't want to get throttled again. :eek:
 
Updates, iOS firmwares, Xcode, things from my remote server, disk images, and other misc stuff.
 
intell, what exactly are your capped speeds on avg? mine are close to .1 Mbps down and at that speed it seems everything is unusable.
 
About 220 kilobits per second. Slightly faster then EDGE with a ping time of about 89ms.
 
I have yet to reach the 3GB limit. I think most I ever got was 1.5GB-2GB. With an average of 1.2GB a month.

I'm starting to wonder if it's worth having an unlimited plan if they are gonna throttle your speeds to an unusable amount passed 3GB and just settle on the tiered plan and swallow the additional $10 per GB passed the 3GB plan in order to have the same speed.

I'll kep my unlimited plan for now since I haven't come close to 3GB. I'd have to see how much slower the speeds are passed 3GB. I'm sure if and when I do, it'll only be for a few days at the end of the billing cycle where I'm throttled and I guess I could swallow the slow speeds rather then being charged an additional $10 for a few days of non-throttled speeds.
 
AT&T is horrible with this. When I hit the 3GB cap I couldn't even open new safari pages so my dad called and yelled and they said I had a bad sim and that the don't actually cap/throttle speeds and that they only say this to scare people away from going over 3GB. Like they throttled my speeds so much that even though it said I had 5 bars of "4G" every time I try to load a page safari said it was unable to connect to internet.
 
The throttling would make much more sense if the unlimited plan was discontinued last year and was around 10GB. But what's most baffling is that they discontinued it over 2 years ago. Would those few still left with an unlimited plan still impact the network? I don't think so.
 
I usually get between 3-4 Mbps. When throttling went active it dropped me to .05 Mbps...unusable speed. I couldn't even open a text based email in under a minute.

I was using 7-9 GB a month before on unlimited. I commute 2 hours a day and stream music.

I relented and switched to the 5GB w/tethering plan. ne bonus is through my job I was able to get a FAN discount on the Data Pro plan that unlimited didn't qualify for, so its only costing me about $15 more per month and now I have usable speed all the time. No overages yet, but I guess we'll see come the fall when I'm streaming more video
 
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