FCC Questions Verizon Plan to Throttle Some Unlimited Data Customers

[GoCubsGo]

One day in the not to distant future, we will all be using 100's of GB of data a month and no one will think twice about it. It's inevitable. Data caps are the dinosaurs of the tech world. How can we progress if we purposely limit the very technology that we are producing? Anyone remeber a time when we didn't have unlimited texting for instance? It's just a matter of time.

Today should be that day. Data usage is cheap and they know it. All of us are bent over backwards without so much as a hair pull and a smile. It's ludicrous. I do like what T-mobile is doing though with their streaming music being free. I don't know what the conditions are, but their advertisements state that they will not count streaming music against your data. They do offer unlimited data so there's a bit of a conflict there in my mind, but that's another story.


As for VZW, it would be unreasonable to expect that a corporation is going to actually allow unlimited data users to use their data with ease. They should not give two ***** about it, but they're constantly looking for ways to strengthen their bottom line. They do not care about customers, not at all. This goes for AT&T as well. They're not in the business to care though.

 

[C DM]

Today should be that day. Data usage is cheap and they know it. All of us are bent over backwards without so much as a hair pull and a smile. It's ludicrous. I do like what T-mobile is doing though with their streaming music being free. I don't know what the conditions are, but their advertisements state that they will not count streaming music against your data. They do offer unlimited data so there's a bit of a conflict there in my mind, but that's another story.


As for VZW, it would be unreasonable to expect that a corporation is going to actually allow unlimited data users to use their data with ease. They should not give two ***** about it, but they're constantly looking for ways to strengthen their bottom line. They do not care about customers, not at all. This goes for AT&T as well. They're not in the business to care though.

For those who are in densely populated areas and might often be on cells where there is peak usage it should be just fine for them to keep on experiencing slow speeds at various times because some unlimited users on those cells might be streaming their Netflix or torrenting some movies. Clearly Verizon should care more about the tiny number of those users rather than the vast majority that can sometimes be negatively affected by the data use of some in that small group.

 

[EvilQueen]

All a good reason to go SIM-free, and go with T-Mobile.

Unfortunately t-mobile isn't everywhere.

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For those who are in densely populated areas and might often be on cells where there is peak usage it should be just fine for them to keep on experiencing slow speeds at various times because some unlimited users on those cells might be streaming their Netflix or torrenting some movies. Clearly Verizon should care more about the tiny number of those users rather than the vast majority that can sometimes be negatively affected by the data use of some in that small group.

Do you really think that that tiny number of users is what is slowing the speeds?

 

[stickyd8]

AT&T Throttling

Aren't at least some of the other carriers already doing something similar on at least some of the (older/unlimited) plans they have?

I don't know how these companies say 5Gb is top 5% of usage! I don't stream any movies, TV, or radio throughout a normal month, yet I'm consistently over 5Gb and throttled by AT&T. Not to mention, I'm on WIFI most afternoon and evenings. It's hard for me to believe, I'm considered a bandwidth hog. I'm paying $120+ a month so I should be able to use more than 5Gb of data. With Time Warner, I have 50Mbs WIFI and constantly stream movies and media at home, yet I only pay $60/month. You can't tell me bumping up the the cap to 10Gb would cripple these cell phone companies. That's why we pay the exuberant amounts in monthly service charges. Even more importantly, when AT&T throttles me, it's not as if they just slow my data-heavy apps/sites, they cripple my entire iPhone to speeds that are slower than 3G. Why not lower the speeds to 3G or target specific websites and apps like YouTube, NetFlix, Hulu, etc...Maybe 7 years ago 5Gb of data was the top 5G of all data users, but I'm not buying it today! Bunch of crooks!

 

[EvilQueen]

I love how Verizon claim their problem is with "high data users in cell cities experiencing high demand".

Yet if you're in one such city, and suppose you're very rich, on a normal 5 GB plan and use 500 GB a month and pay whatever the extra 495 GB cost, they're fine with it and won't throttle you.

So really their problem isn't that you're a "high data user in cell cities experiencing high demand". It's that they regret entering into a contract with you where you didn't have to pay extra for that and now they're trying to unilaterally change the terms of the contract to make more money.

Yep. I went over my data limit while on vacation last month and never notied a slowdown. They will happily take my money for my overage.

 

[C DM]

I don't know how these companies say 5Gb is top 5% of usage! I don't stream any movies, TV, or radio throughout a normal month, yet I'm consistently over 5Gb and throttled by AT&T. Not to mention, I'm on WIFI most afternoon and evenings. It's hard for me to believe, I'm considered a bandwidth hog. I'm paying $120+ a month so I should be able to use more than 5Gb of data. With Time Warner, I have 50Mbs WIFI and constantly stream movies and media at home, yet I only pay $60/month. You can't tell me bumping up the the cap to 10Gb would cripple these cell phone companies. That's why we pay the exuberant amounts in monthly service charges. Even more importantly, when AT&T throttles me, it's not as if they just slow my data-heavy apps/sites, they cripple my entire iPhone to speeds that are slower than 3G. Why not lower the speeds to 3G or target specific websites and apps like YouTube, NetFlix, Hulu, etc...Maybe 7 years ago 5Gb of data was the top 5G of all data users, but I'm not buying it today! Bunch of crooks!

Seems like I have fairly similar usage along with my wife and we both together rarely go over 4 GB on any given month (for years now). Not sure what to say, but at the very least it's certainly far from being something that most users get to from typical usage.

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Yep. I went over my data limit while on vacation last month and never notied a slowdown. They will happily take my money for my overage.

But you do your best not to go over the limit in most cases and this your data usage is less impactful because of that, compared to someone who doesn't have to care about their data usage and can use up whatever they feel like. There is a difference between the two and it's not just Verizon making more money.

 

[truettray]

Makes me wonder if Tom Wheeler has a grandfathered Unlimited plan with Verizon?..

 

[stickyd8]

I still have my UNLIMITED data on verizon.
I was month to month.
I upgraded AND kept my unlimited data until 10-2015.
I use it for spotify, iTunes match, FB, IG,EVERYTHING requires data.
Most wifi hot spots slow to a crawl because EVERYONE is on wi-fi.
Verizon LTE is faster.
They're telling me they won't throttle me in 9-2015 even if i reach 100GB
because I'm in contract but will on 10-2015 out of contract? makes no sense.
Until then, i will use as much as I can. I paid for UNLIMITED, period.
Makes me an a---hole? so be it. You guys were so quick to drop unlimited to get a phone at $200 never imagining paying MORE for data instead of the phone.

I didn't want to change from my "grandfathered" AT&T unlimited data plan, but they pretty much forced me to. They started throttling my unlimited plan once I crossed over 5Gb of data used. They decided to start doing this without warning customers. I was on vacation and needed my phone for work, so when they throttled my phone, they basically made it useless. I couldn't even open up email attachments in a timely fashion. They told me the only way they would unthrottle my phone was if I upgraded to a plan where I get 5Gb of data a month and pay for $10 for every extra 1Gb I use.........I had no choice and had to make the switch. They are all a bunch of crooks. Given the current amount of media that is streamed, I would say 10GB to 15Gb a month would be somewhat exuberant, but in no way is 5Gb a lot of data.

 

[C DM]

Unfortunately t-mobile isn't everywhere.

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Do you really think that that tiny number of users is what is slowing the speeds?

On a congested cell when it is under a good amount of load, which is what this is all about, throttling the bandwidth of at least some users will ease the congestion at least to some degree at that time. Fairly basic principles at play here.

 

[zaphon]

And then you see how crappy their coverage is and you go right back to Verizon. At least... that's what I did today.

That is very subjective, as where I live I get 50-60Mbit down / 20-30Mbit up on T-Mobile and love it. I have 4 phones with unlimited 4G, and they all run north of 20GB of usage a month (as I don't even bother switching to WiFi anymore, it's faster to stay on LTE). I shudder to think what that would cost me on Verizon.

 

[zorinlynx]

Cellular providers are being disingenuous when they calculate "average usage". The problem is that the "average usage" is brought way down by non-techie people who have smart phones yet only talk and text, and maybe read E-mail and use a little Facebook.

These people might use at most 100MB a month, but you can't really count them in "average usage" calculations because they're not using smartphones to the fullest. It's wrong to penalize those who use smartphones to the fullest, just because there happen to be a lot of other users out there who buy a smartphone to replace their flip phone and never use any of its features.

 

[Agent OrangeZ]

That is very subjective, as where I live I get 50-60Mbit down / 20-30Mbit up on T-Mobile and love it. I have 4 phones with unlimited 4G, and they all run north of 20GB of usage a month (as I don't even bother switching to WiFi anymore, it's faster to stay on LTE). I shudder to think what that would cost me on Verizon.

Well... each situation is different. I live in Phoenix. For the most part, T-Mobile does have good speed. 20Mb on average... but it sucks that a LOT of time, as soon as I head indoors... my LTE switches to HSPA+... and in some placed... like at my job... I get EDGE indoors. I work right smack in the middle of Phoenix. (The job site is LITERALLY next to Sky Harbor Airport's runway.) And last weekend... when I went to Northern AZ to go camping, I had edge the entire trip up the highway, and fluctuating edge/HSPA+ at the place I camped. Meanwhile, all of the Verizon phones in our camp had LTE... in the WOODS!

Verizon's acquisition of Alltel a few years ago has really paid off. They are the only carrier with native coverage that pretty much blankets the state of Arizona.

 

[donnaw]

There are two use cases where people use more data that's not abuse IMHO.

1. You use this for work. Somoe people need to tether laptops and they can churn some data just doing email attachments.
2. Many rural customers may not have other options and this is the only Internet they can get. Mobile carriers were tapped to help provide this service and LTE was supposed for be the answer. For 10 years that was me until recently I was able to get a point to point connection via radio to a tower with a small ISP.

These people have no choice because people like Verizon insist they want to serve them this way, instead of offering wired service. They shouldn't be further pushed into the digital divide because of caps imposed by carriers because they refuse to offer other options.

Your second item reminds me of the time when railroads were being built. There was no ROI (return on investment) for them to service small towns. Same with his service. The government stepped in and said that if you(the rails) want eminent domain to lay your tracks you must also lay tracks and service these rural areas. Hence we have railroad tracks to just about every small town in the nation. (This was before the highway system). When building the highway system the government followed the same philosophy. You can have a vibrant economy when much of the population is not included.

With electricity, it was up to rural electric coops to get the lines laid. But these were sometimes subsidized by government grants. I'm old enough to remember both. I remember being excited when my grandparents finally got electricity. I grew up with no phone service until I was a teenager and then we had party lines. And I'm only 63.

Unfortunately these days people seem to think this is 'big government' so no regulations have been put in to require intranet companies to service these rural areas. We are 'letting the market' take care of it and it's not going too well. Cell service is not a viable option for high speed Internet on a daily basis. The spectrum is just not there. It takes physical lines to really provide speeds and bandwidth to meet today's needs. Plus the cell companies don't put in a lot of towers to service these areas either because, again, the ROI isn't there.

Until we have lines laid pretty much everywhere (which will happen eventually) those folks living in the more rural areas will be pretty much left out of the digital age.

 

[C DM]

Cellular providers are being disingenuous when they calculate "average usage". The problem is that the "average usage" is brought way down by non-techie people who have smart phones yet only talk and text, and maybe read E-mail and use a little Facebook.

These people might use at most 100MB a month, but you can't really count them in "average usage" calculations because they're not using smartphones to the fullest. It's wrong to penalize those who use smartphones to the fullest, just because there happen to be a lot of other users out there who buy a smartphone to replace their flip phone and never use any of its features.

If there is network congestion on a cell site to relieve its impact during that time bandwidth needs to be freed up, who would it make sense to throttle then, those who use a bit of data for those things you mention or those who are using a lot at that time? Clearly doing one makes sense and would make a difference and affect less people, while doing another won't make as much of a difference and would affect way more people. Seems like thinking about it more leads to a more rational answer.

 

[zaphon]

Well... each situation is different. I live in Phoenix. For the most part, T-Mobile does have good speed. 20Mb on average... but it sucks that a LOT of time, as soon as I head indoors... my LTE switches to HSPA+... and in some placed... like at my job... I get EDGE indoors. I work right smack in the middle of Phoenix. (The job site is LITERALLY next to Sky Harbor Airport's runway.) And last weekend... when I went to Northern AZ to go camping, I had edge the entire trip up the highway, and fluctuating edge/HSPA+ at the place I camped. Meanwhile, all of the Verizon phones in our camp had LTE... in the WOODS!

Verizon's acquisition of Alltel a few years ago has really paid off. They are the only carrier with native coverage that pretty much blankets the state of Arizona.

Well I live in Los Angeles, and short of buried way deep inside a large warehouse (Wal-Mart for example), I stay on LTE 99% of the time. I know T-Mobiles coverage outside cities lacks, but it's not something that will ever affect me, so I didn't worry about it when switching from Sprint (after being on AT&T for years (Cellular One originally), Verizon for a few months, and Sprint for 2 years). The big seller for me was unlimited data, as I have 2 teenagers who I have seen use > 50GB in a month (with no tethering, thanks YouTube), and over a year in, T-Mobile continues to deliver without ever seeing a slow down. Obviously every location is different (I switched from Sprint to T-Mobile after a move because I went from a location where I had 30Mbit+ LTE with Sprint to 0.03Mbit on Sprint and I couldn't even make a phone call at my new home), so YMMV.

 

[krravi]

They don't sign you up, you sign up with them. You agree to the terms, right?

Of course. So you are telling me there is no difference between me signing up for say Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity and Verizon Wireless?

 

[ChrisNH]

ISPs and Providers: IDIOTS

This comes on the heels of ISPs holding Netflix hostage. The bandwidth of our infrastructure is PLENTY robust enough to handle whatever Netflix throws at it, and whatever Verizon's users do, too. Listening to ISPs and Verizon moan and groan about their 'stretched-to-the-limits' infrastructure would have all of us believe that everything is still going through stranded copper wire.

Dumb Clucks.

 

[Nabooly]

I'm still on Unlimited with VZW, but the speeds these days aren't even worth the $30/month anymore. A year ago I was averaging ~7mbps now its between 1-2.

 

[alent1234]

Cellular providers are being disingenuous when they calculate "average usage". The problem is that the "average usage" is brought way down by non-techie people who have smart phones yet only talk and text, and maybe read E-mail and use a little Facebook.

These people might use at most 100MB a month, but you can't really count them in "average usage" calculations because they're not using smartphones to the fullest. It's wrong to penalize those who use smartphones to the fullest, just because there happen to be a lot of other users out there who buy a smartphone to replace their flip phone and never use any of its features.

watching netflix/youtube or streaming music all day does not make you a techie or some genius and does not use a smartphone to it's fullest

 

[C DM]

Of course. So you are telling me there is no difference between me signing up for say Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity and Verizon Wireless?

What?

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This comes on the heels of ISPs holding Netflix hostage. The bandwidth of our infrastructure is PLENTY robust enough to handle whatever Netflix throws at it, and whatever Verizon's users do, too. Listening to ISPs and Verizon moan and groan about their 'stretched-to-the-limits' infrastructure would have all of us believe that everything is still going through stranded copper wire.

Dumb Clucks.

Yeah bandwidth is a magical unlimited resource out of thin air and it's not like the providers invested tons of money in creating and upgrading and maintaining the infrastructure that Netflix can just come in and disproportionately use and benefit for free and even make money on, right? Just something to chew on.

 

[iF34R]

What?

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Yeah bandwidth is a magical unlimited resource out of thin air and it's not like the providers invested tons of money in creating and upgrading and maintaining the infrastructure that Netflix can just come in and disproportionately use and benefit for free and even make money on, right? Just something to chew on.

Netflix doesn't use the bandwidth. smh

USERS, ahem, use the bandwidth. Do you work for Verizon or something?

 

[zaphon]

Yeah bandwidth is a magical unlimited resource out of thin air and it's not like the providers invested tons of money in creating and upgrading and maintaining the infrastructure that Netflix can just come in and disproportionately use and benefit for free and even make money on, right? Just something to chew on.

NetFlix pays their carrier for bandwidth to push the content.

The EndUser pays their ISP for bandwidth to stream content.

How does the ISP get to charge NetFlix a second time to allow the data in? As an EndUser of an ISP paying for Bandwidth, it shouldn't matter who it's coming from. But without net-neutrality, it does somehow. I know this is a gross over-simplification of the entire picture, but it hits the main points at a high level. Both parties are already paying, and Verizon is standing in the middle going we want to be paid to carry your special traffic, because we CAN!

 

[EvilQueen]

On a congested cell when it is under a good amount of load, which is what this is all about, throttling the bandwidth of at least some users will ease the congestion at least to some degree at that time. Fairly basic principles at play here.

If everything else is equal, however it is not. They aren't talking about throttleing everyone at peak times. They are throttling unlimited users when they get to a certain level of total use. They are not throttleing based on a type of use at a certain time of the day. Is one person streaming netflix a problem but 30 on youtube is not? The number of unlimited plans out there is a very small and the argument still remains that if I am on a 5 gig plan and use that all up and then use 10 more gigs, I will not be throttled, no matter what city I am in or what time of day it is. I just will pay the overage.

 

[C DM]

If everything else is equal, however it is not. They aren't talking about throttleing everyone at peak times. They are throttling unlimited users when they get to a certain level of total use. They are not throttleing based on a type of use at a certain time of the day. Is one person streaming netflix a problem but 30 on youtube is not? The number of unlimited plans out there is a very small and the argument still remains that if I am on a 5 gig plan and use that all up and then use 10 more gigs, I will not be throttled, no matter what city I am in or what time of day it is. I just will pay the overage.

But they are talking doing this only on congested cells and only at a time when they are congested. The people who would be affected would be those you described but not just unilaterally when they use more than some amount of data and that's it, only at times of congestion and only on those particular congested cells when they are experiencing that congestion.

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Netflix doesn't use the bandwidth. smh

USERS, ahem, use the bandwidth. Do you work for Verizon or something?

Netflix benefits from the users using more of the heavy data they provide. Let's not split hairs here and only look at one part of that split hair.

 

[kdarling]

I'm still on Unlimited with VZW, but the speeds these days aren't even worth the $30/month anymore. A year ago I was averaging ~7mbps now its between 1-2.

Similar for me out here in the woods. Used to be one of the few with an LTE smartphone & tablets, and they were super fast. Now not so much during the weekends when all the teens are streaming videos at the lake.

Of course, the same thing happened with my home cable connection. It was incredibly fast at first, too, before everyone and their brother bought a Roku or Apple TV or whatever and started streaming movies.

If there is network congestion on a cell site to relieve its impact during that time bandwidth needs to be freed up, who would it make sense to throttle then, those who use a bit of data for those things you mention or those who are using a lot at that time? Clearly doing one makes sense and would make a difference and affect less people, while doing another won't make as much of a difference and would affect way more people. Seems like thinking about it more leads to a more rational answer.

This.