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Virgin Mobile To Start Throttling Broadband2Go
Daevad writes "Virgin Mobile sent an e-mail today informing me of their plans to start throttling the Broadband2Go Plan. The web site doesn't seem to reflect the change yet, but here is the message they sent to me:
'Here at Virgin Mobile, our mission is to deliver an outstanding customer experience. Sometimes that means making difficult choices in order to provide the best possible service to the greatest number of customers.
To make sure we can keep offering our $40 Unlimited Broadband2Go Plan at such a great price, we're putting a speed limit in place for anyone on that plan who uses over 5GB in a month.
How will it work?
Starting February 15, 2011, if you go over 5GB in a month on the $40 Unlimited Plan:
Your data speeds will be limited for the remainder of the monthly plan cycle. During this time, you may experience slower page loads and file downloads and lags in streaming media.
Your data speeds will return to normal as soon as you buy a new Broadband2Go Plan.
This change will only affect plans bought on or after 2/15/2011.
How will it affect me?
Keep in mind, 5GB is A LOT of data. To give you an idea, it's about 250 hours of web browsing or over 500,000(!) emails. So this change shouldn't affect you unless you're a heavy downloader/streamer/etc.'" Just when I was getting comfortable recommending it to people, too. I do prefer a slowdown to an absolute cap, but this sours me a bit on the (locked-to-Sprint) MiFi I bought to use the Virgin service.
Yup, classic bait and switch.
Palm trees and 8
Now how the hell am I supposed to get a full VR Metaverse pipe when I'm shreddin' the Santa Monica on my Smartwheels(tm) if I can't get any kind of pipe up to the Street? Totally lame.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
NOTICE: Broadband2Go Terms of Service have changed which potentially impact download and upload throughput speeds on the $40 Broadband2Go Plan when monthly data usage exceeds 5GB. The new terms and conditions will apply to new and existing customers purchasing Broadband2Go Plans on or after 2/15/11. Read More: http://www.virginmobileusa.com/legal/terms-of-service-virgin-mobile#bb2g
"To make sure we can keep offering our $40 Unlimited Broadband2Go Plan at such a great price, we're putting a speed limit in place for anyone on that plan who uses over 5GB in a month."
I downloaded 100 GB last month (movies, tv shows, music videos) on my DSL. 5 GB is not much data at all.
ALSO: Since VirginMobile US is subcontracting from another company (Sprint?), it's likely the limits are being imposed by them. (shrug). I still like the company. They give me my cellphone at $0.00 per month, and I only pay for my minutes used. It's nice and cheap.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Or, printing (!) 1,789,569,706 times!
Virgin mobile is a no-contract company. If they locked you into a contract and THEN started to throttle, that would be a bait and switch. But with no contract, you can decide to stop buying more airtime if you don't like the new terms.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I briefly had a Broadband 2Go plan and it was painfully slow at the best of times and cut out completely during the travel home time of 5-6 PM. I too it back to Best Buy after it died two weeks in. Turns out a lot of the early units were defective. The ONLY thing it had going for it was being unlimited. Don't waste your money and just get the Verizon. Oh by the way it isn't as hard as they make out to go over 5 gig. I have that cap now and I have to limit my videos to a couple of short ones during the day to stay within my cap. If you do normal surfing and try to watch a couple of movies a month you will go over the limit.
"Sometimes that means making difficult choices..."
Virgin likes money. Customers are on plans. It's about as difficult as deciding not to slam one's genitals in a door.
So this change shouldn't affect you unless you're a heavy downloader/streamer/etc.
The Windows SDK alone is a gigabyte and a half, and a six-month upgrade to a popular GNU/Linux distribution is nearly a gigabyte.
I bought one of their Broadband2Go MiFi devices and I have to say that the performance is already pathetic. I can't imagine them throttling it back! How can you throttle back 30kbps downloads?!?!
What would you have Virgin Mobile do instead? So far, this is among the most reasonable takes on the problem I've seen to date. Let's lay down some assumptions:
1) The cost-per-user for the service has turned out to be too high at the current pricing.
2) Analysis shows that a small percentage of users are super-heavy traffic users gobbling up many, many GB per month.
Virgin Mobile could then:
1) Up the plan pricing for everyone to accommodate the upper-end of the bell curve's massive usage. This will penalize the overwhelming majority of users for a few users' overuse. (Isn't that just the same crap that everyone complains about with stupid no-differentiation rulemaking in schools? "It has to be the same for everyone.")
2) Keep the same pricing, but impose a throttle that imposes a penalty only on those users who are breaking the pricing model. They still get service, but at a degraded level.
3) .... ??? (Your Answer Here.)
Its only *mostly* unlimited.
Fair is foul and foul is fair... and some are fairly foul.
Seriously, this is important to me. I have my MC760 hooked up to Windows 7 (don't ask) running virtual-AP software (buggy as hell). I was considering going for a mifi but this story puts the kabosh on that idea. No more downloading 'criminal minds' episodes. More importantly, no more attending class online. Which means, for me, that virgin mobile has lost its value proposition. Oh well, I spend $50 on the device...good bye Virgin Mobile, it's back to Starbucks & McDonald's for me.
Honestly, I agree with people that are saying that 5 GB is very little for a normal Internet connection. But who the hell uses mobile broadband for their primary internet connection. I've been thinking about getting VM's broadband to go to occasionally use when I can't get wifi since its so cheap. But I can't imagine using any kind of mobile broadband (regardless of carrier) as my primary Internet connection that I would use to download ISO's / movies / etc. For me, mobile broadband / tethering is something to use when I'm away from my house, and can't use wifi for some reason. Maybe this will change with Wimax, but we don't have that yet here...
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
So, you're using your smartphone to download the Windows SDK?
Should someone outside the reach of cable and DSL be using satellite instead?
T Mobile does the same with their mobile wifi. I pay to tether my phone, and full speed caps at 5 gig, and slows after that. I'm quite happy with it. Now if they'd offer a plan to restore speed after 5 gigs for a price, I might even do that.
I shopped around for a new cell phone plan for several weeks before finally deciding to go with Virgin Mobile, and it's thanks to the fact that I am travelling for my job, because they don't even have stores where I come from so I picked up a prepaid at a Sprint store close to where I am now. They have very sensible plans, and in fact seem to be the only ones who understand that it makes much more sense to limit voice than texts. (All their plans have unlimited text and data; you just get more or fewer minutes depending on how much you pay.)
I'm disappointed that they would throttle back your broadband, but I like it much better than being cut off or charged extra. I just hope they're open about this "reasonable use" change and don't keep advertising it as completely unlimited. They could do better at mentioning the tax on their plans, too. I thought they were like MetroPCS, which includes taxes in its plans. To be fair, Virgin charges far less tax than other carriers, but it was still an unpleasant surprise. And I can't believe that a mobile company doesn't have a mobile version of its own website.
Liking them so far. Let's see how the coverage fares when I go back home this weekend.
Hey, everybody! Don't worry about this. The free market will take care of it. The companies that shaft their customers will lose business. No need to worry.
...Right?
Right?
Great Intellect...
5 GB is the soft cap just about every American Provider uses for "unlimited" service. Sprint has had the "throttle anyone who goes above 5 gb" policy in place for a while -- they're just finally closing this last "hole" in it (since they own the Virgin Mobile brand). Of course AT&T no longer offers "unlimited" data, but for those who still have it, it remains at a 5 gb soft cap. Rather than throttle you, they simply threaten to cut you off if you repeatedly exceed it.
We have 4 wireless carriers in most areas but they all move in such coordinated lockstep you'd think we only had one. Customer service and prices are terrible no matter which you choose because they all act as if they were monopolies and all are making far too much money to challenge that status quo by offering consumers something better . . .
Are you retarded? The 'How will it affect me?' is clearly part of the message sent by Virgin, not Daevad's question. It's inside the quotes.
Dilbert RSS feed
If you don't already have the $40 'Unlimited' level on automatic update/renewal, you won't be able to buy it in the future.
They're not going to offer it at all. Just the lower level, much more limited data (and those ARE a hard limit.)
http://www.virginmobileusa.com/legal/terms-of-service-virgin-mobile#bb2g_plans_expiring
And they may cancel it completely in the future.
This assumes your smart phone is not randomly sending data on its own at a couple of MBs a day.
Translation: To make sure we can keep offering our $40 "Unlimited" Broadband2Go Plan at such a great price, we're putting limitations on it, but still calling it unlimited. Simple, really.
Manager: I'm sorry, sir. You have to leave the buffet now.
Customer: But it says "All you can eat for $10".
Manager: That is correct. That is all you can eat for $10.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
"Unlimited"... its false advertising... they could be taken to court and fined heavily. (at least in Europe, now I dont know what half-arsed laws you yanks have...)
Unlimited means UNLIMITED . period . ISPs and Mobile providers should open a dictionary once in a while, wouldn't hurt.
5Gigs = 250Gigs yeah maybe in 1998... Nowadays with Flash spamming adverts and all that useless shit, client-side scriptings, cross-linking bullshit to social sites, more like 1 hour ?
--
www.twilightcampaign.net
If the device gives you enough control, then tethering restrictions dont matter.
How could TMobile detect tethering if the device makes it look like a seamless, untethered connection?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Sure, if the customers don't idiotically support the companies they loathe. But keep sending them money each month for their crappy service and what do you expect?
5 GB is a lot of data? 5 GB happens to be:
1. About one hour of Netflix streaming, every day for a week.
2. One fully-featured Linux install, with the bells and whistles.
3. A Steam purchase of BioShock 2.
4. About 20 minutes of uncompressed video from a decent camera.
5. About 1% of a full system backup.
The ______ Agenda
Keep in mind, 5GB is A LOT of data. To give you an idea, it's about 250 hours of web browsing or over 500,000(!) emails. So this change shouldn't affect you unless you're a heavy downloader/streamer/etc.
So, if you use more than email you are a heavy user? If that's all people used the web for, I doubt it would even exist anymore.
Oh stop your sniveling. I'm in Canada, and I have no problem figuring out what they're talking about. If it were about a nation other than the US, it would say so in the summary. If it doesn't say, then they're talking about the US. It's not rocket science.
I'm sure that you already understand this as well as I do - you've just got some kind of persecution complex which demands that everyone acknowledge your particular corner of the world. Well too bad. Do something notable, and maybe /. will have a story about you. "Dickwad in Greater Southeastern Bostwanistan consumes 5 keyboards rectally". Then you can feel all warm and fuzzy because your exploits got your country mentioned on Slashdot. Until then, chill the fuck out.
Uhhh you DO know that /. is an American site yes? it even says so in their TOS! So basically what you do doing is no different than me going to a Japanese site and saying "Speak fucking English!"
As for TFA, who in their right mind hasn't figured every single thing an ISP says should be replaced by little word balloons that say "Bullshit" "lie" and "OMFG you actually BELIEVED that? LOL!". Hell their TOS might as well say "We'll do what we like, sell your data to anybody who'll give us a buck, fuck you every single way in every position we can think of, and if you don't like it please feel free to write us a nasty note and then burn it because we don't read those things anyway. Oh and we made deals with the other ISPs so you're fucked either way. Have a nice day!"
You know, I thought politicians were bad, but ISPs have made bullshit and lies into an artform. Hell they would take the gold if BS ever becomes an Olympic sport. For those that bought those Mifi routers maybe you can find a sucker on eBay. But anybody who didn't know ISPs were kings of lie haven't seen any of the recent Hughes sat Internet commercials. Man those guys lie like champs!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Sometimes you don't have a lot of choice.
Crappy service is better than NO service, and sometimes there isn't a non-crappy alternative.
Do something notable, and maybe /. will have a story about you. "Dickwad in Greater Southeastern Bostwanistan consumes 5 keyboards rectally". Then you can feel all warm and fuzzy because your exploits got your country mentioned on Slashdot. Until then, chill the fuck out.
Huh? Where did you get that from? You just sound like a jerk.
Somehow you have interpreted my post to be "Oh I want this to be about me" - when it was "Oh I wish they'd make it clear what the hell they're talking about" - you seem to have comprehension issues - or was that just some other assumption you made...
How hard is it to specify the location to which something applies? It is information that is useful to the reader.
Hell why state any specifics at all, let's just leave everything to assumption.
If it were about a nation other than the US, it would say so in the summary
Why is this? I've already suggested as to why this is...
Never happened. True story.
Uhhh you DO know that /. is an American site yes? it even says so in their TOS! So basically what you do doing is no different than me going to a Japanese site and saying "Speak fucking English!"
Look, there is a story about a specific GLOBAL company that is being read by a GLOBAL audience yet the editor think that being specific about what who it apples to doesn't matter because the site is American?
Your analogy is garbage - I referring to the content, not the language used. - I'm saying, provide the context that is required to make the story useful to those who may not be American.. I know, bizarre concept.....
Never happened. True story.
I Love how it says: "To give you an idea, it's about 250 hours of web browsing or over 500,000(!) emails."
And that's exactly the example they use on their website to distinguish the $10 100MB "limited" plan from the UNLIMITED:
100mb = 5 hrs web browsing, 10,000 emails without attachments
UNLIMITED = UNLIMITED
are they going to change UNLIMITED to being 250 hours of web browsing and 500,000 emails?
My real problem is these devices are designed for PCs, not cellphones, and how incredibly easy is it to zoom past 5 gigabytes on a PC over broadband? With game downloads and updates measuring in the gigabytes now and the popularity of streaming HD video most users would probably exceed 5GB within their first day and not even notice it.
I understand what they're trying to do but it's not right. They're trying to eliminate the top 10% of customers that actually bought this service for what it's suppose to be, unlimited wireless broadband, and keep the other 90% that never or rarely use 3G data. This is like offering $10 satellite TV and then limiting you to one channel if you watch TV more than an hour a day.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Q: When were the first US telco plans sold?
A: When God put Broadband2Go in front of Adam and said "Choose yourself a plan"
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The market can only "punish" the extremes of shafting the customer. With the DOJ and FTC asleep at the switch, we are racing to the bottom on many fronts, so shafted tends to be a constant. Only the degree of shafting varies.
Keep in mind, 5GB is A LOT of data. To give you an idea, it's about 250 hours of web browsing or over 500,000(!) emails. So this change shouldn't affect you unless you're a heavy downloader/streamer/etc.
An honest rendering of this would be, "We really only intended for you to do unlimited emailing and web browsing (defined as reading through html pages very slowly, mind you; certainly not as enjoying the kind of content that we all take for granted these days). This won't affect you unless you are a moderately heavy downloader of documents, or you try to watch videos. To give you an idea, you could burn through 5GB by watching just four two-hour movies."
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Trying to have any kind of long term relationship with an outfit called Virgin is bound to end in disappointment, one way or another.
Except for three things:
1. Most carriers have multiple billing cycles. I've got two separate T-Mobile accounts (3 devices on one and 2 in another area code on another) and they cycle on different weeks.They have had the 5GB and then throttle till next month "unlimited" concept on data cards for quite some time, BTW. I've seen the same thing when I was on AT&T with more than one account. So the un-throttling will happen spread across the month, at least in smaller cluster.
2. Most users are not going anywhere near to 5GB of usage. /. users are totally atypical.
3. It's not a cure to network congestion/oversell. It's a deterrent to keep the tiny proportion of potential customers who will go over 5GB from becoming customers, or for existing customers who regularly do so from remaining to be customers. It sometimes makes sense to "fire your customer" if said customer doesn't match your product offering and capabilities. If you regularly go over 5GB/month data, you are NOT the customer they want.
And it probably isn't the product you want either, given that EV-DO Rev.A isn't all that fast. T-Mo "4G" HSPA+ or for that matter their 3G is faster than Sprint's EV-DO Rev.A (Virigin's network) - I've had both in multiple locations. Sprint's "4G" (actually Clear's WiMax network) is very fast and is unlimited with no throttling. Sprint sells it as 5GB 3G with unlimited 4G, and I think Clear does too, while also selling an unlimited 4G-only plan cheaper. If you're in a Clear WiMax area you're better of with this, and WiMax was actually designed as fixed-broadband replacement.
Out of curiosity, do all broadband suppliers have different contracts or is there a standard in what you buy vs. what you end up getting after a few months?
For example, if I get an "unlimited" (that word can't go without inverted commas when related to broadband) package, but end up a few months later with a revised cap, can I cancel the contract or am I still bound by a "we can change this at any time" clause?
I am sorry Mr. Amish sir but Its a nice try and all. I understand that the computer has to stay in the field house but really in the 21st century there are no actual farmers any more. There's you folks and the Mennonites and the big corporate farms. Anyone else has to make hard choices, and that's what a sacrifice is. You choose to leave in a rural area without basic services. (basic to us, electricity, TV and Phone) Well thankjs anyway.
> $40 Unlimited Broadband2Go Plan at such a great price, we're putting a speed limit
It would behoove us to pay attention to words. Words matter. These plans are really _unmetered_ plans. Why not unlimited?
Well, the number of hours in a day is a limit. The number of days in a week is a limit. The number of weeks in a month is a limit.
Scilicet, if you decided to download the Internet you would not be on the meter, but you would be on a clock limit. That is before they start parsing the word "unlimited."
Remember, a "speed limit" is a limit, and a limit is not without limits. Stop being fooled, or better yet coopted.
I use my Sprint MIFI with Millenicom on their unlimited BYOD, and the offer TRUE unlimited service - I routinely burn through 12-15GB/month. I have no association with them, other than being a very satisfied customer.
In Australia we would call that a 5GB plan. Doesnt happen so much on mobile data but on ADSL its very common that once the 'data limit' has been reached you will get throttled to 72k. Looks like Virgin is applying a similar principle to mobile data.
This sig has been distributed under the Creative Commons license.
Hell yes! If you let the government interfere when companies lie and cheat then you'll be on the slippery slope to communism before you can say "socialized healthcare".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The network you get is still unlimited. It's not like you could actually use an infinite amount of bandwidth before - unlimited simply means you can keep using the internet as much as you like. That remains true after you pass the (very reasonable) 5GB cap, it's just that it gets a bit slower at the end. I think they have hit upon the nicest possible way to offer "unlimited" internet with reasonable real-life restrictions to keep bandwidth hogs from chewing up way more bandwidth than they are paying for.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You realise that bandwidth isn't actually cheap, no? Actually, it's really expensive - if you buy it on a 1:1 contention ratio. The reason your ISP is able to sell it to you so cheap is that they actually buy it on a 1:45 or more contention ratio.
You want unlimited bandwidth (and do note that bandwidth is charged on a commit throughput basis, not data quantity basis) you better to be prepared to pay many thousands of dollars more than you currently do - just call up Level3 or Equinix and ask them how much it'll cost to run an 8Mb/s committed fibre line to your house. Then you can go lease some spectrum, and build GSM/3G/LTE towers all across the country and run fibre backhaul to your house so that you can use that pipe anywhere with a cellphone.
A few billion dollars should do it.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
If the baby bells that took hundreds of billions from the government and never delivered, then rolled out cell service, decide to hand that money back, it may entice a free market competitor. But you know that's never going to happen.
"2. Most users are not going anywhere near to 5GB of usage. /. users are totally atypical."
WTF? It's ridiculously easy to blow this cap, for example by watching YouTube videos.
Only carrier with their own towers and data infrastructure, which they are still investing heavily in.
my plan is sold as;
2,000 free minutes per month
5,000 free texts per month
"all you can eat" data per month (their quotes)
For 30 quid a month, around 45/50 bucks, Samsung Galaxy S on android 2.2 included.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
5 gigi-bytes or 5 gigi-BITS per month?
I wouldn't put it past them!
the number of dipshits that try to attach an entire drive to an email because they don't know how the file system works has grown exponentially. the only emails small enough to divide into to 500K are spam. messages that small are always text now days.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
i got a trial version from a reseller of those overdrive hotspots because he wanted to see if i could set up a bridge for his lan. i set up a windows machine just in case i would need ie to connect to the management page (which is annoyingly common). as soon as everything was up that machine started doing updates. needless to say, there wasn't anything left afterwards. it worked; but, assuming he is a good netitizen, 50% of his bandwidth will be lost first tuesday of every month. :(
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
good i hope ...see, thats not unlimited. that plan has what we call in the field...a "limit"
Much better than Clear Wimax. They throttle everyone all the time because they were never prepaired to handle even the smallest of loads. I have complained to the BBB about them because they have called me an excessive user when I watch 1 Netflix movie while my son plays on the XBox with XBox Live in the same evening. They advertised 6Mb/s download speeds and I am fortunate to get 1.5Mb/s down most of the time. Other than the first week of use, I rarely ever see 6Mb/s downloads, and I am only a mile or so from the nearest tower.
Joshua 24:15
I guess the word "unlimited" has a different meaning inside Virgin.
I wonder how long it will be before we see a class-action suit for false advertising?
... I can't really argue about this too much, but still - "Unlimited" Broadband2Go. For certain smaller values of "unlimited".
Trouble is, there are huge sections of the country that are not served by any form of broadband other than 3G. I understand that Virgin probably had to do something, but why can't they just offer a higher tier of service (at an additional cost)?
2. Most users are not going anywhere near to 5GB of usage. /. users are totally atypical.
Are you thinking of phone users? People using hotspots are probably hitting 5GB pretty regularly. Aircard users have historically struggled with 5GB limits, so I don't see why hotspot users wouldn't also have this issue.
I have been using broadband to go for quite a little while now, and even scripted up a way to use it in linux in python/pygtk (http://code.google.com/p/vmdialer) and this has been a rollercoaster with them as they keep changing their plans around. First they had an assortment of plans, the 10 dollar plan for when you just need it on a weekend trip, the 20 dollar for 250 megs (the one I used for just sitting in irc at work), the 40 dollar for 1 gig, and the 60 for "unlimited" 5gb. Then they changed it, and it was better for me, where the 20 dollar plan gave you 300 megs. All the plans received slightly raised caps. Then they took away my 20 dollar plan, and made it 40 for "real" unlimited and it was finally a deal really. But since they capped it back down, and I would want to switch back to my 20 dollar plan, it's now gone. I don't think it would be so bad, but they have had so many plan changes recently, and the last plan was actually what one would call a deal, it's upsetting. It kind of feels like when you were a kid, and some person would give you a gift, then take it back saying, "Nevermind, I can't afford to give this to you".
There are still unlimited options with Sprint. http://www.millenicom.com/ resells Sprint 3G for $70/month (plus $165 startup costs), so the same tower you used with VM will be the one you get with Millenicom. No caps, no contract, month to month, could change at any moment, yada^3.
They also offer a 20GB package from Verizon for $60 (same $165 setup), as a January promotion.
Note they don't tell you who the upstream provider is unless you ask. You can read real user comments about them at http://www.dslreports.com/forum/cover,3165
I was a happy customer until my speed with the sprint service suddenly dropped to almost nothing, and no one could figure out why. After much gnashing of teeth and HW Upgrade$, I gave up and called Comcast to see if there was anything they could do. (They had quoted me $2000 to get on line a few years ago.) They hooked me up to the nearest neighbor's drop for nothing and now I am wired.
Even if Virgin doesn't allow people to bring their own device (BYOD?) it isn't the only service provider that supports mifi 2200s. That eBay link I already provided listed them from Verizon and Sprint as well. The Wireless MiFi -A Product Review lists others such as ATT, T-Mobile, and Orange.
However you bring up a valid point, locked hardware. These should not exist, buyers should be able to use whatever service provider they want when they buy a device. That is unless there was a contract such as providers offering free or reduced prices if the buyer signs up for 2 year service plans. Even then though after those 2 years the owner should still be able to use another service provider should they so choose.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
That's the problem, "Unlimited"! Such ads should either be banned or the services should really be unlimited. As I see it it's false advertizing, so users should be able to sue. Of course corporations sometimes think of these things so they include clauses in contracts that allows them to unilaterally change service plans.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?