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Verizon Now Throttling Top 'Unlimited' Subscribers On 4G LTE
PC Magazine (along with Forbes, Reuters, and others) reports that those on the rightmost edge of the graph for Verizon's "unlimited" 4G LTE service are about to hit a limit: [T]hose in the top five percent of Verizon's unlimited data users (which requires one to pull down an average of just around 4.7 gigabytes of monthly data or so) who are enrolled on an unlimited data plan and have fulfilled their minimum contract terms (are now on a month-to-month plan) will be subject to network throttling if they're trying to connect up to a cellular tower that's experiencing high demand." As the article goes on to point out, though,
[A] user would have to hit all of these criteria in order to have his or her connection slowed down. There are a lot of hoops to jump through, giving even more weight to the fact that Verizon's throttling — while annoying on paper — won't affect a considerable majority of those still holding on to their unlimited data plans.
It doesn't matter. If customers are paying for it, throttling them should be seen as illegal. I've been a Verizon Wireless customer for over a decade and these recent decisions to screw their own customers have led me to the decision I don't want Verizon anything. Not their phones, Internet, anything. Switching to T-Mobil this week.
I was sent a warning message about this, I'm still grandfathered in on the unlimited plan. I looked at my usage and over 4G of traffic was from facebook... apparently because I was auto-playing videos. Turning this off on an iphone requires you to go to the settings menu on the phone (not, confusingly, the settings menu in the facebook app, but the facebook app settings in the phone settings menu). You can set it to auto-play only on wifi or never.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
This has nothing to do with their network infrastructure, and everything to do with the fact that they would like you to pay out of pocket to stream media on their network. With a 10gb monthly limit on my 4 user plan, if I go away on a trip and watch 3-4 netflix movies in HD, I've used up my entire monthly allowance, and then streaming becomes pay-per-view at $10+ per movie.
They are annoyed that they have customers who still have an "unlimited" plan, and they are effectively converting those users to having a usable 5gb plan.
that takes 5 GB per month?
do you HAVE to stream entire movies and music to it?
why not copy stuff to its storage and maybe save some wireless bandwidth?
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
Which is, of course, what "unlimited" means. So in reality, the term is quite accurate. The fact that a person can't physically download an infinite amount of content in a finite period because network speeds are finite is entirely irrelevant.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This is just until the news cycle finds its next shinny bloodbath and moves on. Once that happens, then Verizon will slap the bandwidth cap on all the time in every place. They're just trying to find a way to annoy these people into changing plans or switching to another provider without it making front page news.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Who is Verizon not fucking over? I'm not even their customer and I feel like I need some lube, just from hearing about these things. I would never, ever buy any service from Verizon. Every business they're in, they seem to take pleasure in punishing their customers just for using what they tried to purchase.
It's bad enough dealing with Comcast, but thankfully I don't rely on them for all of my services (despite their best efforts) and Sprint treats me pretty well for cell service.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
I'm definitely meeting all the conditions required to be throttled. I'm going to wait until October to see what the impact is for me. Whether or not I stay with Verizon will depend on the severity of the throttling, and how frequently the tower where I live suffers from saturation.
As long as I get at least EvDO speeds (over LTE, for the lower ping and IPv6), I'll probably stay with Verizon and continue my existing usage pattern. I use about 70 to 150 GB per month. I tether with the (legitimate) mobile hotspot feature, enabled by paying an extra $30/mo. I don't have a wireline Internet connection because Comcast is unreliable and doesn't care to fix it, and Verizon, despite telling me in 2007 that we could get FiOS in a matter of weeks, is still only offering us 7 Mbps ADSL.
I usually do most of my downloading/uploading at off-peak hours, anyway. I'm fine with firing off a 25 GB download on Steam at 11 PM and letting it run through the night. It's unlikely to be throttled at that time, because the tower won't be saturated. The population density where I live is strictly suburban (full-size houses, not town homes), so I don't think it'll be saturated very often.
If the throttling gives me so little bandwidth that I can't even stream 720p H264, I'm outta there. Might have to move to an area that has decent wireline service. But I can tell you for certain that it won't be Verizon or any company related to it in any way. Once I decide that Verizon has put the last straw on me, I am not going to spend another penny on that company for the rest of my life, and will go out of my way to ensure that nobody I know spends a penny on them, or at least make them seriously reevaluate their choice of service provider, for both cellular and wireline service.
Verizon's taking a real risk with this. If the throttling is only 50-60% of the normal speed, I probably won't even notice, since my bandwidth needs during prime time are usually modest (720p streaming video might be the MOST I ask for, and in many cases I'll just be surfing the web or coding). If the throttling is 90-95% of the potential throughput, they will convert a long-time advocate (since the Windows Mobile early EvDO days) into a bitter enemy, spewing vitriol and anti-Verizon word of mouth everywhere I go for the rest of my life. Are they prepared to live with that consequence?
Oh, and they'll lose my $700 cash infusion that I supply them approximately yearly when I pay full retail to upgrade my phone. Hope they can live without that, too.
Oh, and my $200/month (family-wide) cellular bill.
Oh, plus the fact that I've successfully convinced tens of people in the past, who already have a suitable wireline connection at home, to subscribe to Verizon limited data plans because they actually do offer more data for less money than their competitors, and the service reliability and availability is second to none.
Dear Verizon: if you're reading this, you better go easy on the throttling. If you don't, look to lose about $10,000 per month in revenue by the time I get done canceling my service and talking to my connections about Verizon and they start pulling the plug. I'm a very convincing and influential person. People follow my lead, especially when it comes to technology. I wonder how many other people like me out there are souring to your business by your anti-consumer practices. Are you really OK with staring into the abyss? Is it really your goal to force people who've loved your company for over a decade to do an about-face and tear you down?
All because you couldn't deploy a few more towers, because cost cutting and the bottom line. That type of reasoning is a plague that needs to be rooted out and eradicated, starting with deporting the MBAs who come up with this shit.
I believe throttling is an appropriate response to this situation, so if you see any Verizon corporate officers, please let me know.
You are welcome on my lawn.
When this question was put to Lowell C. McAdam, CEO of Verizon, his response was, "Because fuck you, that's why. And by the way, sign this new user agreement where you give away any rights to sue Verizon for anything ever for the rest of your life and agree to instead face arbitration by that group of Verizon lawyers, sitting right over there with the "Fuck You, That's Why" t-shirts".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Verizon market-tested the new corporate slogan of "Fuck You, That's Why". It tested very badly, but they decided to go ahead and use it because, you guessed it, "Fuck You, That's Why".
You are welcome on my lawn.
You know, people used to see that as an excuse to upgrade their network capacity religiously. 10Mbit not fast enough? Let's go buy some 100Mbit equipment. 100Mbit equipment not fast enough? Let's go buy some 1000Mbit stuff. People would invest time and money getting to that next tier, because they wanted to make sure they never hit 75% network utilization as a religion. And that passion, that fire is gone today. Instead we have fat network execs who are bleeding people dry while complaining that it costs too much to upgrade to the next tier, or even throw on a few more ports of the current stuff. People who think that we need fast lanes and slow lanes...I tell you, if you need to switch on QoS on your network, the pipe is already too small. The only QoS you need for a network is a little counter for dropped packets, which should be studied by seeding something on bit torrent and trying to Skype to somewhere in Asia...if you've done it right, you won't notice any degradation. Net Neutrality? Fairness? I believe in the inherent fairness that comes with TCP / IP. Fight for your right to transmit and receive...all network devices are equal in the eyes of the firewall.
Here's what you're missing. The article is about what happens when a tower hits maximum capacity for a moment.
Suppose the hardware on the tower is capable of serving 1,000 people per second*. There are 1,050 people who want to download this second. Sorry, 50 people are going to have to wait one second. The tower can only handle 1,000. That's just a fact. They aren't "messing with" anything, that's just what the hardware is capable of.
What Verizon has decided is that when there is an overload and somebody will have to wait a second, it'll be the heaviest users who have to wait. After all, they've already used "more than their fair share".
* it's actually how many packets and bytes the tower can serve per second / millisecond, not customer count. The person who uses a lot will wait milliseconds.