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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.
You even have a month to buy in to the old plan if you so desire, which I find surprising.
From the summary: "This change will only affect plans bought on or after 2/15/2011."
You even have a month to buy in to the old plan if you so desire, which I find surprising.
Even so, it would only be good for 1 month.... You can't prepay multiple months like you used to be able to with AT&T prepaid data.
Or, printing (!) 1,789,569,706 times!
You still get unlimited data, it just comes slower after a certain point. Sounds reasonable to me, compared to some other plans.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
VM doesn't sub contract from sprint anymore. VM is now owned by sprint 100%. It has been a sprint brand for atleast a year I believe.
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.
Just reply to the email with the, "You keep using that word, but I don't think you know what it means" line.
Far better than the AT&T bait and switch with iPad plans... remember that? Changed before the device was even available for a full month. Still, this is the fairest cap I've seen a wireless provider implement so far. Throttling users at their limit actually makes much more sense than cutting them off cold. Unless you are one of the people who thought cellular service would be able to truly replace landline service, (having no concept of the very finite bandwidth available via RF) 5GB is a lot of data. ...and if you run into it by accident, you can still use your service for less bandwidth-intensive things like email, light web access, or reloading your Virgin Mobile account.
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.)
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!
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...
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.
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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.
Uh, the whole point of the Broadband2Go plan is to use it by devices other than smartphones. That's why its website has a MiFi router in the front page.
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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 $10.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
yes but those thing your use your pc or a wifi hotspot for. they probably throttle you down to edge speeds, still useful for browsing but forget netflicks etc. i assume this is going to apply to there 25$ unimited data phone plans to. 5gb still could play wow all month long mmos use very little data unless theirs a update. we did wow for one month purely on 3g and used 250mb data. i still prefer that from being cutoff or being charged by the mb when i whent over if i ever did.
I believe most people want to use the service for "spurts" of downloading when they are away from their primary internet connection. I don't think the general case is for people to remain connected 24 hrs/day for 2 weeks straight.
Far better than the AT&T bait and switch with iPad plans... remember that? Changed before the device was even available for a full month.
I don't know about you but I got grandfathered on my plan. I still get unlimited data from AT&T for the same price as before. There was no bait-and-switch involved. If you got the plan before the change then you can have unlimited data for $30/month, if you got the plan after the change then you can get 2GB for $25/month and each additional 2GB is $25.
Sapere aude!
You even have a month to buy in to the old plan if you so desire, which I find surprising.
Not quite. Virgin's Broadband2Go is month to month, there is no contract. So if you pay for B2G service on 14 February you will not be throttled throughout the rest of February but after 14 March you will be throttled if you go over 5GB.
I fully support this. Normal users won't use that much, however for businesses and such that need more bandwidth Virgin should offer higher priced plans with more bandwidth.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
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.
Far better than the AT&T bait and switch with iPad plans... remember that? Changed before the device was even available for a full month. Still, this is the fairest cap I've seen a wireless provider implement so far. Throttling users at their limit actually makes much more sense than cutting them off cold. Unless you are one of the people who thought cellular service would be able to truly replace landline service, (having no concept of the very finite bandwidth available via RF) 5GB is a lot of data. ...and if you run into it by accident, you can still use your service for less bandwidth-intensive things like email, light web access, or reloading your Virgin Mobile account.
I dunno, I've still got my AT&T 29.99$/month unlimited data. I occasionally horse around and blow way past 5GB/month just to feel I'm getting my money's worth, too. It would be bait and switch if they pulled it from me, not just because they're no longer offering it to you.
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
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.
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