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Sprint Throttles Top 1% of Data Users, No "Truly Unlimited" Data For US iPhone Users [Updated x2]
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Unlimited internet does not exist anywhere. Even if you have a direct fiber connection to your office, your months worth of data will be limited to the max rate you can get thru the slowest or most congested link or router in between you and your network data sources. Which is far from infinite. Even with fiber-to-the-home. There's always some bottleneck.
Sprint does not limit the amount of data you can get through the slowest network link. They just become the slowest link.
So it's still as unlimited as any other internet connection. Just not fast.
So you can't sue Sprint unless you can also sue every network provider on the planet. Not.
Well, since they mention others throttling and them not in their ad it looks like it is time to file an FTC complaint for false advertising. Force them to spend some money or to have their ads pulled and hurt their bottom line and they may change their tune.
How much do you guys think pretty heavy web and facebook usage would use? I don't stream anything, no youtube none of that but I use facebook adn safari like a feen.
The whole point of their now BS ads was that they don't throttle users at all and you're entitled to absolutely unlimited data. Now they've all but gone against this claim, all the while calling out other carriers because they do the same. It was their only selling point for the iPhone over the much larger and broad AT&T and Verizon and now they've forked themselves. I had Sprint and I liked them an all, but I can't stand up for them on this one. They've bold-faced lied to everyone who went to them for these very reasons, and now they'll probably see a noticeable increase in contract terminations and they've opened themselves up for some serious business with the FCC.
I was ready to ditch AT&T for Sprint when iPhone "5" comes out but now I'll have to think twice about it...
I'd give this thread a read before you make a decision:
http://community.sprint.com/baw/thread/78766?tstart=0
Actually for a 30 minute tv show it would be about 55mb's. A movie at about 90 minutes would be about 225mb's. It's about 2.5mb's per minute from Netflix.
It's a lot less on a smartphone than people realize.
lol they talking about knocking people off. **** they need to be happy the customers are staying.
Vodafone and the other big players in the UK are just as expensive as Sprint and AT&T, in my experience.
We have MetroPCS here in the US, which offers unlimited talk, text, and web plans for about $40/month, though the phones are unsubsidized.
Speed of a slug through a pinhole
Perhaps we should better define what 'abuse' means.
Someone using a lot of their supposedly 'truly unlimited' data plan? Probably not, unless Sprint wants to get honest and spell out what they mean by that.
A better definition of 'abuse' might be of a customer sold the promise of all the wonderful things their smart phone might do -- if only enough data throughput to actually do it, and of course denied this by the powers that be. Meaning apparently all service providers and their corporate-owned government lackeys, more interested in short-term profits than providing truly viable broadband for the 21st century. Something not only fast, but a whole lot closer as well to 'truly unlimited.'
Why not just get a dial-up phone, that is about the speed you'll be operating at anyway?
Perhaps we should better define what 'abuse' means.Someone using a lot of their supposedly 'truly unlimited' data plan? Probably not, unless Sprint wants to get honest and spell out what they mean by that.
A better definition of 'abuse' might be of a customer sold the promise of all the wonderful things their smart phone might do -- if only enough data throughput to actually do it, and of course denied this by the powers that be. Meaning apparently all service providers and their corporate-owned government lackeys, more interested in short-term profits than providing truly viable broadband for the 21st century. Something not only fast, but a whole lot closer as well to 'truly unlimited.'
Why not just get a dial-up phone, that is about the speed you'll be operating at anyway?
He was misquoted apparently:
Update: TechCrunch says that Hesse was misquoted, and that the quips only apply to people "while roaming." That'd sure make a lot more sense, but don't go overboard just to find out, okay?
/b
Update: TechCrunch says that Hesse was misquoted, and that the quips only apply to people "while roaming." That'd sure make a lot more sense, but don't go overboard just to find out, okay?
/b
Using google maps a lot is what eats up most of my data. It's very easy to hit 154mb.
The iPhone contracts in the UK are about the same as the US, but if you have an unlocked smartphone (which unlike the US, you can get at the end of your contract) you can get a sim-only deal for all the voice, texts and data you need for about £10-15 ($15-$22) a month. Such deals are unheard of in the US.
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)
Sprint's network sucks too much for this to even affect me. I can't even use their network for anything except for light browsing, it' so ridiculously slow here in Orange County. I went from using 4gb+ a month on AT&T to like 800mb on Sprint.
Sprint's network sucks too much for this to even affect me. I can't even use their network for anything except for light browsing, it' so ridiculously slow here in Orange County. I went from using 4gb+ a month on AT&T to like 800mb on Sprint.
Unlimited
I'm on the three network on my iPhone 4S in the UK and find USA plans so expensive.
I pay about $50 a month for the three unlimited plan. I get 2000 any network minutes, 5000 three to three minutes and 5000 texts per month plus unlimited data on their 'all you can eat' plan.
Three in the UK have said that 97% of their network traffic is data and last month I experienced my home broadband being down due to a telco cabling issue.
I tethered my iMac to my iPhone and continued for almost a week. In that time i downloaded / used 105GB of data without a problem.
I occasionally tether to my iPhone as i get 8mb download speeds on that, where as in my rural area i only get 2mb on my home broadband.
I think the term 'unlimited' is banded about a lot but few networks actually honour it, although so far it does appear three's advertisement as the 'only unlimited 3G network in the UK' is actually for real.
I tend to stream more media now direct on my iPhone and typically will use 5GB-10GB a week on data.
Blitz
I'm on the three network on my iPhone 4S in the UK and find USA plans so expensive.
I pay about $50 a month for the three unlimited plan. I get 2000 any network minutes, 5000 three to three minutes and 5000 texts per month plus unlimited data on their 'all you can eat' plan.
Three in the UK have said that 97% of their network traffic is data and last month I experienced my home broadband being down due to a telco cabling issue.
I tethered my iMac to my iPhone and continued for almost a week. In that time i downloaded / used 105GB of data without a problem.
I occasionally tether to my iPhone as i get 8mb download speeds on that, where as in my rural area i only get 2mb on my home broadband.
I think the term 'unlimited' is banded about a lot but few networks actually honour it, although so far it does appear three's advertisement as the 'only unlimited 3G network in the UK' is actually for real.
I tend to stream more media now direct on my iPhone and typically will use 5GB-10GB a week on data.
Blitz
Then you probably aren't really using excessive data the way the carriers define it.
and it should be pointed out that Sprint said 'unlimited' which these folks are getting. They can have a TB if they want. No where were they promised that the later 990GB would come to them as fast as the first 10 did.
It is skeevy that they implied in the ad that they don't throttle and for that they deserve a take a hit.
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In the US, we can get our smartphones unlocked (at least on T-Mobile and AT&T). The big exception is the iPhone for reasons known only to AT&T.
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OK, we can back off Sprint a bit. Throttling applies only to people who use too much data while roaming. That's OK with me, since Sprint needs to pay their roaming partners, and it's also easy to know when you are roaming on data. Most of us in big cities wouldn't be affected by this policy.
I can't speak for an iPhone (because i have to wait a month to get mine) but on my droid I was up in the mountains over christmas, and since theres no wi-fi up there, i used the cell connection for everything. I watched 7 episode of family guy on Netflix. I was shocked when i check my data and found i had only used 1gb since the beginning of my billing period. I figure its because the video stream is significantly lower quality than usual when on 3g. And id also like to point out a 30 minute SD show on iTunes only takes up about 200 mb of space not 500+.
Will Brits stop complaining because you pay $0.20 more per song on iTunes than we do here?
