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This is so dumb!!!! :mad: How much do these stupid carriers pay per GB anyways? 2-3 cents? And then they go and charge us how such for the service? We should be able to download as much as we pay in... I cant see any throttling being necessary until a user goes through several TB's a month.
 
My girlfriend uses sprint... she can't even get speeds fast enough to really make use of the data package. Her average is 300-500k. Piss poor compared to the 2,500 - 4,000+k I get on my grandfathered $7/mo T-Mobile T-Zones plan.

The thing about these services and technologies is that they are very much still in their infancy. It will be a while before the market settles in to common practices.
 
If you stream video content then even a 30 minute show could use 600MB+..

Is that really an appropriate use of radio spectrum?

I certainly can see how somebody might occasionally want to watch the odd episode of Two and a Half Men on their iPhone. But why not wait to do that when you have wifi access? Or download an episode from the iTunes store.

Its not like Sprint is saying you can never stream video over their 3G network. Its just they are saying that, if you do it all the time, they'll start throttling. And I don't think that is unreasonable.

The fact of the matter is that radio spectrum is limited by the fundamental laws of physics. It can never be increased, no matter how many cellphone towers Sprint or ATT or whoever puts up. And if a relative handful of people are walking around streaming bandwidth hogging entertainment to their phones, it will mean that other people wishing to use those same (public) airways for the kind of data transmission for which the smartphone was created, simply won't have access.
 
Nothing wrong with throttling the top 1% users. It's still "unlimited" at throttled speed. ;)
 
Is that really an appropriate use of radio spectrum?

I don't see why not. Apple could go some way to alleviate these issues by putting FM or Digital Radio support in the iPhone - even if people stopped streaming audio over cellular networks that would be something.

My carrier offers unlimited data and encourages video streaming.

They do throttle, but only when a specific site is actually congested - and that's for everyone using it.

Its not like Sprint is saying you can never stream video over their 3G network. Its just they are saying that, if you do it all the time, they'll start throttling. And I don't think that is unreasonable.

I didn't say anything to the contrary. I think throttling is appropriate in some situations.
 
You know how much data that would need to be? People who stream music while commuting and at work only use about 8-10 GBs/month and that's not even in the 1%. You'd have to leave your phone on streaming music 24/7...
 
You know how much data that would need to be? People who stream music while commuting and at work only use about 8-10 GBs/month and that's not even in the 1%. You'd have to leave your phone on streaming music 24/7...

Of course, but if everyone stopped doing it it would help in some situations.

If you're getting 1mbps down from a particular site and someone's streaming 128kbps audio from it then that would be 10% of the capacity of that site.
 
Wait wait wait, hold up.

If they allow you to use as much data as you want a month regardless if its throttled or not, its still technically unlimited right?

Should read there is no truly Un-throttled data plans for iPhone users in the U.S.

While technically unlimited, if you watch their ads, they claim that they do not slow down your speed and that it is truly unlimited, comparing directly to T-Mo, which is unlimited but throttles.
 
The people they throttle are those who are using 4G as their only source of internet and running bit torrent and all sorts of stuff off of it. You could stream all day, every day, and you wouldn't be in the top 1% that they are throttling.
 
The 1% isn't a science its just a PR number. They are saying 1% because it sounds better than 5% or anything higher.

Truth is we don't know exactly what point carriers start throttling a user.

I think carriers need to make it clear at what point your service will be or could be throttled (such as over 20GB a month) or some hard figure instead of this "oh we throttle the top 1%", great that tells consumers a lot.
 
Wait wait wait, hold up.

If they allow you to use as much data as you want a month regardless if its throttled or not, its still technically unlimited right?

Should read there is no truly Un-throttled data plans for iPhone users in the U.S.
Yes, *BUT* in the commercial (watch it) Sprint specifically calls out how some carriers "say they're unlimited, but slow you down" and then goes on to say Sprint is the only "truly unlimited" plan. This comment represents an about face from that advertisement.

*HOWEVER*, it seems important to note that Dan merely said they *could* knock them off - not that they've started doing it. If they have, then I could see it being a problem.
 
Wait wait wait, hold up.

If they allow you to use as much data as you want a month regardless if its throttled or not, its still technically unlimited right?

Should read there is no truly Un-throttled data plans for iPhone users in the U.S.

Look at the byline. ;)
 
Guys, what are you doing on your phones that needs this much data? I run my phone on Wi-fi only. I will admit I am an excessively frugal person but I talk to friends on some of those crazy +$100 plans with everything just to figure out how they can justify THAT much data usage. I have not gotten an answer yet...

I should ask again.

Because they can. I personally know someone who streams video almost 24/7. A work colleague has Pandora streaming music the entire day while walking around with his iPhone and ear buds. Then there are the jailbreaker/tetherers who use their iPhone as a hot spot for everyone around them. They think it's cool. AT&T recently imposed data caps on their home DSL service of 150GB/month. People howled with rage in the forums. I have been keeping an eye on my usage for a while and rarely exceed 15GB/month or 1/10 of the cap. I consider myself a higher than average data consumer. Some people must saturate their connections 24/7/365. That's what "unlimited" means to some people. But just like the all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants like Bonanza or Golden Corral things should even out. Apparently the carriers don't think so.
 
Unlimited My A$$

Yup, I still have it from the iPhone 3GS days by way of the grandfather law. My plan never changed and no throttling as occured. Unlimited and fast as can be.

I've been a iPhone user since 1G. My data plan has been grandfathered as well through my 3GS. However with the 4S, I've gotten warnings via SMS for the past couple of months stating the following:
"ATT Free Msg: Your data usage is among the top 5% of users. Data speeds for this bill cycle may be reduced. Visit www.att.com/dataplans or call 8663447584."

Mind you, my daily usage habits haven't really changed from phone to phone. Between daily work emails, personal emails, surfing the web, social networking, games, maps, iMessage, etc., it seems that the iPhone has outmatched the data providers.
 
This is so dumb!!!! :mad: How much do these stupid carriers pay per GB anyways? 2-3 cents? And then they go and charge us how such for the service? We should be able to download as much as we pay in... I cant see any throttling being necessary until a user goes through several TB's a month.

Another example of the entitled, whiny, clueless people I mentioned. Several TBs a month? On ****ing mobile Data? I'm pretty sure my home internet provider has bandwidth limitations in the 200-400GB range, nowhere even near 1 TB/mo, yet you want and expect mobile data to allow for several?

Are you part of this potential 1% Are you being affected or victimized? Who exactly is really suffering from this policy? What you deem to be necessary is irrelevant, because you have no clue of what you're talking about, and you're up in arms about something that likely if affect noone in an meaningful way.

Maybe it's because I get along fine on a 500MB/mo plan while constantly using 3G, so I have trouble feeling any sympathy towards potential throttling of those who use many, many, many times that.
 
Its one thing to say you don't throttle when you do, but its another to completely make it the foundation of your entire 'Come to Sprint' iPhone campaign...

What a joke...false advertising.

It's not false advertising. It's still unlimited... just throttled.

I have no problem with the idea in concept either. Bandwidth abuse will affect everybody else's speeds. However, I don't like them using "top 1%" as the target because it's a moving target. 1% could mean 2GB one month or 1GB the next... and nobody would really know.
 
All carriers, everywhere in the world, do this. It is called the 'Fair usage' policy, where a carrier justifies a throttle / ban based on the arguement that a single user's excessive usage could severely compromise other users usage.
Not all carriers. Virgin Mobile USA still has truly unlimited data, which is ironically served from sprints towers.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

It was just a matter of time...
 
Reminds me of those network commercials where the data ticker reaches terabytes by mid day. Heavy users indeed :p
 
Truly unlimited

Someone needs to teach them the definitions of "truly" and "unlimited".

I was contemplating switching over, but not any more.

Unlimited refers to an amount

You still get as many bits as you want per month... it's still unlimited.

The complete opposite would be a data cap... where they cut you off when you reach a certain amount. That's not what is happening here.

Throttling refers to a rate of speed... that's a different thing altogether. :)
 
Because they can. I personally know someone who streams video almost 24/7. A work colleague has Pandora streaming music the entire day while walking around with his iPhone and ear buds. Then there are the jailbreaker/tetherers who use their iPhone as a hot spot for everyone around them.

All these people you mentioned DESERVE to be throttled. I mean.. come on. Maybe it will make them realize there's more to life than streaming **** from your phone, everywhere, all the time, 24/7.
 
It's not false advertising. It's still unlimited... just throttled.

I have no problem with the idea in concept either. Bandwidth abuse will affect everybody else's speeds. However, I don't like the idea of top 1%... it's a moving target. 1% could mean 2GB one month or 1GB the next... and nobody would really know.

Throttling IS limiting data. That's the entire point of artificially throttling someone's speeds: to limit how much data they use. That's why they're doing it!

... even if you downloaded at the maximum rate possible 24/7 for the entire month there's still going to be a limit.

But not an artificial limit applied to specific people. That's the difference.
 
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