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AT&T Turbo Indicator Showing Up in iPhone Status Bar for Subscribers

I’ve always felt that having the carrier name there at all was dumb. Probably a concession from ca. 2006 to get Cingular on board as a launch partner.

The status bar doesn’t show your energy utility name when charging. It doesn’t show your WiFi network name either. Why should it constantly show your cellular carrier?

How far away are we from, when you open the faucet, a jingle “da-ding! Your H2O is brought to you in part by Thames Water. Thames Water! When it’s the 80s and you really need to ruin a country’s resources.”

MacRumors said:
The Turbo feature provides enhanced network performance through prioritized data access, offering improved speeds and lower latency for activities like gaming and video streaming.
Click to expand...

What does this even mean? It’s either a concealed price hike, i.e. “we’ll artificially throttle your data unless you pay $7 more”, or it’s a net neutrality violation, in which case… how? Does it look at the host name you’re connecting to and, for those who don’t pay the $7, throttle Epic Games and Steam?
 
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MacRumors said:


AT&T has begun displaying "Turbo" in the iPhone carrier label for customers subscribed to its premium network prioritization service, according to reports on Reddit. The new indicator seems to have started appearing after users updated to iOS 18.1.1, but that could be just coincidence.

at-t-turbo-indicator-iphone-16-pro-max-v0-8hrh7w5f3w1e1.jpg.jpeg

Image credit: Reddit user No_Highlight7476​

The Turbo feature provides enhanced network performance through prioritized data access, offering improved speeds and lower latency for activities like gaming and video streaming. Previously, customers had limited ways to confirm the service was enabled beyond checking technical network settings. With the new label, Turbo subscribers can easily verify when the $7 monthly add-on is active on their line.

Some users have said they aren't too happy about the longer carrier text in their iPhone's status bar, but others don't mind it since it gives them a clear visual indicator of their premium network status. AT&T says that the icon can appear sometimes when Turbo is inactive, such as when connected to Wi-Fi or when a customer's hotspot allotment is exceeded.

Article Link: AT&T Turbo Indicator Showing Up in iPhone Status Bar for Subscribers
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LOL what a joke. "TURBO" but still only has one bar LOL
 
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chucker23n1 said:
I’ve always felt that having the carrier name there at all was dumb. Probably a concession from ca. 2006 to get Cingular on board as a launch partner.

The status bar doesn’t show your energy utility name when charging. It doesn’t show your WiFi network name either. Why should it constantly show your cellular carrier?

How far away are we from, when you open the faucet, a jingle “da-ding! Your H2O is brought to you in part by Thames Water. Thames Water! When it’s the 80s and you really need to ruin a country’s resources.”




What does this even mean? It’s either a concealed price hike, i.e. “we’ll artificially throttle your data unless you pay $7 more”, or it’s a net neutrality violation, in which case… how? Does it look at the host name you’re connecting to and, for those who don’t pay the $7, throttle Epic Games and Steam?
Click to expand...
I have the option to remove the carrier name from my home screen on my Honor Magic V3 Global, which I have toggled to remove the "AT&T" text. Is there not an option for this on iPhone?
 
Spock said:
And they actually slowed the computer down..
Click to expand...

Not sure if sorta trolling, or not old enough to know.

One of the reasons computers had "turbo" buttons back in the day was because certain programs didn't run right at the faster clock speed. Particularly games. If you ran a game on a PC that expected a 5 MHZ clock speed and the PC was running at 7 MHZ, the game would be almost unplayable.

However, if you were calculating a spreadsheet or running some other processing "intensive" task, you would want it to run at the fastest speed possible.

My IIGS (hence the user name) even had a control panel setting to change the clock speed of the processor.

Running the IIe Version of "Castle Wolfenstein" at GS speeds was an interesting experience.
 
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My guess is that people are whining about how their speeds still suck and are making excessive support calls. So it makes sense to go out of your way and slap that bad boy on to let users know that AT&T sucks.
 
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contacos said:
The EU doesn't allow it. Telekom in Germany used to have a free add on that allowed certain apps not to be counted towards your monthly data allowance but they had to stop offering it because it is against EU law to prioritize services over others.

ALSO they ask the customer to pay more, just because their network is apparently not good enough to handle it? What the heck. Now that is a spin
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Same in Spain. Vodafone would let you get WhatsApp, Spotify or social networks addons and didn’t last that much
 
There really needs to be a "truth in advertising" regulation that prohibits putting a "turbo" label on anything that doesn't have a turbine in it.

(Looking at YOU, Porsche.)
 
N0ughtsAndCr0sses said:
It is called Tiering


All the companies are doing it

Amazon: pay £2.99 extra for no ads when watching a film despite the fact that you pay for prime

Netflix with their tiers


ETC
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Welcome to McDonalds, oh you want special sauce on that Big Mac? That’ll be an additional .99¢. 😄
 
chucker23n1 said:
I’ve always felt that having the carrier name there at all was dumb. Probably a concession from ca. 2006 to get Cingular on board as a launch partner.

The status bar doesn’t show your energy utility name when charging. It doesn’t show your WiFi network name either. Why should it constantly show your cellular carrier?

How far away are we from, when you open the faucet, a jingle “da-ding! Your H2O is brought to you in part by Thames Water. Thames Water! When it’s the 80s and you really need to ruin a country’s resources.”




What does this even mean? It’s either a concealed price hike, i.e. “we’ll artificially throttle your data unless you pay $7 more”, or it’s a net neutrality violation, in which case… how? Does it look at the host name you’re connecting to and, for those who don’t pay the $7, throttle Epic Games and Steam?
Click to expand...

Yeah, that carrier name is completely useless. I know who I'm paying, I don't need it on the phone screen all the time, especially when that space could be used for something more useful like Bluetooth status.

And from what it looks like it's a net neutrality violation.
 
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