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Verizon Reserving Right to Throttle Data Speeds for Top 5% of Users

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

This just in ...

In an effort to preserve their vehicles, Avis will now remotely limit their vehicles rented with unlimited mileage to 25 mph for the customers with the top 5% in mileage. The limit will apply to the current and their next rental.
 
NoExpectations said:
Great.....but your average smartphone user will not understand what you are talking about and how to get around this throttling of an already slow network.
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It's shouldn't be up to the smartphone users themselves to do that.

For web services, it's up to the website maintainers to make their HTTP portals automatically redirect to HTTPS. (Facebook finally allows that, but you have to change a privacy setting first. Next step: turn it on by default.)

For apps, it's up to the App Store developers to incorporate basic privacy and data security features into the products they're offering the public.
 
Fly Rodder said:
A) I don't trust any company where their priority number 1 is their profits. They don't give a ***** about me as long as I keep paying my monthly bill.
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so what you're saying you don't trust any company, because that is the number 1 priority of every company whether they say it to your face or not, they aren't in business to give you money or make things easier for you, they are in it for the money. just some choose to be up front about their intentions and others are shady and try to hide their intentions. personally i'd put more trust in the guy who is upfront about it, at least he hasn't lied to you yet
 
NoExpectations said:
Great.....but your average smartphone user will not understand what you are talking about and how to get around this throttling of an already slow network.
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And this is 2011, not 2005. The average smart phone user is simply the average user now, and is unlikely to notice there is an extra layer of compression going on.
 
I'm sorry but legally Verizon is in the WRONG here. If your going to provide unlimited data you can't discriminate by throttling the users who use to much data vs. other users who don't. If they can't properly manage unlimited use equally to all customers, they need to do a limited based plan then.

I myself am with ATT and use only 200ishMB a month but I think VW is definitely wrong on this.

Instead of ATT and Verizon finding ways to screw customers on data, why not they upgrade their data networks similar to who wired-telcos did in the early 2000s. They need to shut up and spend money on the networks to meet industry demand! Wireless data isn't decreasing anytime soon.
 
Last edited:
bmoorhouse said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

This just in ...

In an effort to preserve their vehicles, Avis will now remotely limit their vehicles rented with unlimited mileage to 25 mph for the customers with the top 5% in mileage. The limit will apply to the current and their next rental.
Click to expand...

Best quote today. Let me add, "Avis will also replace (compress) all full size car rentals to sub-compact cars in order to preserve customer satisfaction".
 
Not that I am on the big V network with my iPhone, and don't plan on it (love my voice and data simultaneously). that said, if they do throttle, does that in turn mean cheaper monthly rate for that customer?! They can kill the data on my Corp Blackberry if it will help out a fellow iPhone user (don't really care who you pay your bill to).
 
In regards to compressing images and video, does ATT do that? I've always noticed sending a picture text between two iPhones always result in a great looking image, but when someone with an Evo (with a supposed 5 megapixel camera) send an image to an iPhone, the image is down to VGA resolution.

Just how much is too much compression?
 
mm1250 said:
I'm sorry but legally Verizon is in the WRONG here. If your going to provide unlimited data you can't discriminate by throttling the users who use to much data vs. other users who don't. If they can't properly manage unlimited use equally to all customers, they need to do a limited based plan then.

I myself am with ATT and use only 200ishMB a month but I think VW is definitely wrong on this.
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and is that your opinion or do you have some case law to back up this statement?

verizon is selling you unlimited use of their data network, they aren't selling you data speed and they sure as hell don't guarantee any data rates, so they can throttle the thing back to 56k modem speed if they wanted to. as long as they are allowing to consume as much as you can in that billing cycle ,which they are doing
 
I guess the question is how many users will this affect (effect?). Also throttle it down to what? And I would definitely say throttling for 2 months is a little too punitive. Especially for a bandwidth issue that really shouldn't last very long. This still seems like a very bad idea since heavy users are heavy users for a reason and that could potentially be business.
 
this is actually pretty smart and ATT should use this as well. Data bandwidth is considered "unlimited" but doesn't matter if you are pay the same as I am....you're spoiling the dip by double dipping.
 
tritonj said:
and is that your opinion or do you have some case law to back up this statement?

verizon is selling you unlimited use of their data network, they aren't selling you data speed and they sure as hell don't guarantee any data rates, so they can throttle the thing back to 56k modem speed if they wanted to. as long as they are allowing to consume as much as you can in that billing cycle ,which they are doing
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I don't agree. Users who pay the same monthly fee are being treated differently by Verizon. I call this discrimination.

Verizon is taking a page out of the book "Animal Farm". "All users are equal, but some users are more equal than others."
 
There isn't a case law that I know of, however, if someone is providing unlimited data to 2 users, and intentionally throttles 1 user's access speeds, this is considered discriminating against that 1 user. There are many case laws that you can find against that. I'd have to check more on the ISP side to see any cases of unlimited data service being intentionally throttled.


tritonj said:
and is that your opinion or do you have some case law to back up this statement?

verizon is selling you unlimited use of their data network, they aren't selling you data speed and they sure as hell don't guarantee any data rates, so they can throttle the thing back to 56k modem speed if they wanted to. as long as they are allowing to consume as much as you can in that billing cycle ,which they are doing
Click to expand...
 
mm1250 said:
I'm sorry but legally Verizon is in the WRONG here. .
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I'm no lawyer and reading your post, it sounds like you're not as well. Given those two facts don't you think VZW made sure their lawyers looked over the policy change to ensure that they'd not be sued.

They're providing unlimited data, they said nothing about guaranteeing any sort of speed of that unlimited data.
 
NoExpectations said:
I don't agree. Users who pay the same monthly fee are being treated differently by Verizon. I call this discrimination.

Verizon is taking a page out of the book "Animal Farm". "All users are equal, but some users are more equal than others."
Click to expand...

don't go jumping the shark and bring in discrimination that is a bit sensationalizing it.

you don't like have to like what they are doing and let your money do the talking for you, don't be their customer. i don't like it either, but they are well within their right to do it and for anyone to say it is "illegal" is just silly
 
NoExpectations said:
I don't agree. Users who pay the same monthly fee are being treated differently by Verizon. I call this discrimination.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't call discrimination, as you're still able to access the same service. Verizon is not denying you anything. They're slowing down the bandwidth of the people who hog it the most. That is trying to make it acceptable for most of us.
 
tritonj said:
don't go jumping the shark and bring in discrimination that is a bit sensationalizing it.

you don't like have to like what they are doing and let your money do the talking for you, don't be their customer. i don't like it either, but they are well within their right to do it and for anyone to say it is "illegal" is just silly
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I guess that first, inevitable, class-action lawsuit will settle this.
 
You know what's funny here? Verizon's 3G is already slow as mud, no faster than AT&T's Edge and they're going to throttle it and make it slower? Now that's funny!
 
tritonj said:
don't go jumping the shark and bring in discrimination that is a bit sensationalizing it.

you don't like have to like what they are doing and let your money do the talking for you, don't be their customer. i don't like it either, but they are well within their right to do it and for anyone to say it is "illegal" is just silly
Click to expand...

The truth is they are discriminating against users. What if a user signs a 2year deal, only to find out 2-3months in his data throttling get's to a point where the service is unusable. He has incurred lost of the phone and service termination fees.

I read a previous post that stated very well a comparison. See example below:

A person rent's a car with unlimited mileage. He plans to go out of state with it, so the rental company maxes the speed to 25miles per hour while other renters who drive locally can drive as fast as the car will go. Does this sound ethical or legal?
 
Meandmunch said:
The beginning of the end.

If you contract for unlimited data and at a certain speed thresholds (I suppose within reason) thats what you should get. I am sure they have very good lawyers working on very deceptive and clever verbiage on there newest contracts to deal with this.

So iPhone users get hit the first and the hardest.
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I made a similar point in a differnet thread. It's always the iPhone that gets picked on. We never hear about other phones.
 
tritonj said:
and is that your opinion or do you have some case law to back up this statement?

verizon is selling you unlimited use of their data network, they aren't selling you data speed and they sure as hell don't guarantee any data rates, so they can throttle the thing back to 56k modem speed if they wanted to. as long as they are allowing to consume as much as you can in that billing cycle ,which they are doing
Click to expand...

I don't think Verizon can get away with that. It can be legally argued that by consciously reducing the speed they are indirectly reducing your usage. Given that there are only a fixed number of hours/minutes/seconds in a month, Verizon can exactly tell how much data you can use in that period of time if you were continuously using data at a speed determined by them. Unlimited is unlimited period. You get to use as much bandwidth as the network allows at any point in time. It is like the rental car company saying unlimited mileage and fixing your rental car to run at a max speed of 25 Mph. Would that be acceptable? How much mileage can you put on the car in a day at 25mph max speed? If that is not acceptable then why is this Verizon stand any different?
 
mm1250 said:
The truth is they are discriminating against users. What if a user signs a 2year deal, only to find out 2-3months in his data throttling get's to a point where the service is unusable. He has incurred lost of the phone and service termination fees.

I read a previous post that stated very well a comparison. See example below:

A person rent's a car with unlimited mileage. He plans to go out of state with it, so the rental company maxes the speed to 25miles per hour while other renters who drive locally can drive as fast as the car will go. Does this sound ethical or legal?
Click to expand...

your analogy only works if the rental company is paying for the gas too. You can drive as many miles as you want. You just can't waste gas. They just don't want you lead footing at every stop light and doing 90 down the freeway.

That's why the carpool lane was invented. To show appreciation for those who are gas conservative. Is the goverment discriminating too?
 
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