Verizon Throttles Data To "Provide Incentive To Limit Usage"

An anonymous reader writes About a week ago, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) asked for Verizon's justification on its policy of throttling users who pay for unlimited data usage. "I know of no past Commission statement that would treat 'as reasonable network management' a decision to slow traffic to a user who has paid, after all, for 'unlimited' service," the FCC wrote. In its response, Verizon has indicated that its throttling policy is meant to provide users with an incentive to limit their data usage. The company explained that "a small percentage of the customers on these [unlimited] plans use disproportionately large amounts of data, and, unlike subscribers on usage-based plans, they have no incentive not to do so during times of unusually high demand....our practice is a measured and fair step to ensure that this small group of customers do not disadvantage all others."

Comments

There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[TheRealQuestor]

We kick you in the head because we care!

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

We give you tiny plate at all-you-can-eat buffet because we care.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[erroneus]

I was thinking the same thing about restaurants with "all you can eat" deals. :) Mostly because I'm hungry and haven't eaten since lunch time. :)

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[mikeiver1]

I have a Verizon account with 2 cells and one data card on the unlimited plan. I pay $216 a month for the whole thing. In the past they were to only internet I could get in the third world city of Santa Ana, CA that we lived in. We used to stream netflix and game on the connection, sometimes running well into the high teens of GB. I did get a notice from them to the effect that they were going to cap or throttle me should this continue. I responded that a lawsuit for breach of contract sounded fun and that I would be happy to take them there after contacting the press. I informed them that I had logs from my DEDICATED firewall showing the average transfer rates and volumes etc over past months and I would be happy to see them in court in front of a jury of "my" peers. It was not to long after that that the tower that they leased was dropped and the signal went to crap in our area. So fuck them I says, I built a very high gain Yagi/Uda and put it on the roof facing the tower that I now had to hit. I went from -103dBm to -52dBm and got the bit rate back up. I then started downloading ISOs for fun and pulled down near 23GB that month. All the while logging. They then called me again and I promptly told them that unlimited was what I signed on for and I was paying for. I was using 3G and they had 4G rolled in the area. I suggested that they move me to the 4g or stop calling and wasting both our time. They chose option 2. The phone, electric, banks, and gas companies are out of control but they pay big sums to the assholes on the hill so they can be. The load is transferred to the assholes of the middle class. Half the time I feel like I am going to burp up corporate cum from getting fucked so hard from so many different companies and the governments.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[davester666]

and when we are especially busy with people who order a la carte, we get the waiters to trip you on your way to the buffet...

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've hit 1tb in my monthly usage and they've never contacted me. They must have itnout for you.

Yes I know I'm abusing my plan. If it was a reasonable company I'd limit it. But the verizon, comcasts, and atts do everything they can to fuck over the consumer for more profit. So fuck em.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

23gb? for a whole month i average at about 300gb..

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

We give you tiny plate at all-you-can-eat buffet because we care.

and this is why we understand the angle of repose... AKA sausage link Jenga...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_repose

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't call that abuse, it's what you PAID for. If these swindling thieves at Verizon cannot provide 100% capacity to 100% of their customers at all times, then they are overselling their service and pocketing the money instead of using that money to build out their infrastructure. They are committing fraud.

I'm glad my ISP doesn't do any of this shit and I can use my full capacity 24/7.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

What, on mobile internet??

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems very clear. If Verizon thinks it's okay to throttle bandwidth to "provide incentive to limit usage", then when it comes time to pay the bill, pay only 70-80% to "provide incentive to lower your monthly bill".

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Sqr(twg)]

It seems to me that Verison's problem is on the marketing side. Their technical implementation is correct.

This is basic QoS. For a simplified example, let's assume there are only two users (but the network is still congested). One is trying to download a fix amount of data, i.e. watch a certain number of YouTube videos. Let's call her the "limited" user. The other is trying to download as many linux-distribution isos as she possibly can. Let's call her the "unlimited" user. (We assume that the carrier can guess which user is which, based in historical bandwidth use.)

If the carrier throttles both users equally - what some would consider the "fair" solution - then the limited user will have to wait while her videos buffer (but we will assume that she still watches the number of videos that she had decided on). The amount of data that the unlimited user can download equals total network capacity minus the size of the YouTube videos.

If the carrier only throttles the unlimited user, then the limited user gets a better experience, but still watches the same number of videos, i.e. downloads the same amount of data during the period of the congestion. The amount of data that the unlimited user can download still equals total network capacity minus the size of the videos, so she doesn't actually get any negative effect from the "unfair" throttling.

(The above reasoning holds even if the unlimited user is also watching video, if we assume that she has a large enough buffer. But if both users are doing video conferencing, then it would be better to throttle both equally.)

Of course, the best solution would be to upgrade the network to 4G, and this is what the FCC should force the providers to do.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

You little shill, it's not his fault Verizon oversold, if they're offering unlimited, they need to be able to provide it.. you should be angry with the multi billion company that can't deliver what it promises.

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[TheRaven64]

I'm glad my ISP doesn't do any of this shit and I can use my full capacity 24/7.

Unless you're paying an insane amount or have a very slow connection, the odds are that you can only do this because a lot of users near you don't. ISPs don't have the off-network capacity for everyone to saturate their connections all of the time and they provide a service that's a lot cheaper than a dedicated leased line on the assumption that most won't. This assumption is usually fine, because most of their customers don't come close to it. The 32TB/month that you'd consume if you saturated a 100Mb/s link all of the time is a couple of orders of magnitude more than most users will need, even if they're streaming a couple of hours of video each evening.

The problem is advertising it as unlimited. Most users would be fine with a few hundred GBs a month at full speed and then throttling. My ISP has bumped the speed of my connection twice since in the last few years so that now the throttled speed is about the same as the unthrottled speed used to be, so I can still watch 720p streams even if I am throttled (they've also bumped up the allowances, so I think I've only hit them once in the last year).

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[N1AK]

It seems to me that Verison's problem is on the marketing side. Their technical implementation is correct.

Pretty much, although it is a little more than 'marketting' when a company sells you 'unlimited internet' but doesn't provide that. The issue pretty much boils down to the fact that for 99%+ of users 100GB a month would be plenty, but those users want the security of knowing that their policy is 'unlimited' so they won't a surprise charge if they use more than normal. 'Unllimited' is the wrong word to use for a clearly limited service even if for most users it's the same as unlimited, but the problem is that there's no clearly understood term for 'effectively unlimited for the vast majority of customers'.

Personally, I think the best option would be to accept that the word unlimited is misused, and create a level of service that is required to be allowed to call it 'unlimited'. That limit could be, for example, 10x the average usage calculated each year based on the previous year, with the consequence for breaching the limit being restricted to removing service to people who repeatedly exceed it. That way when the vast majority of users buy an 'unlimited' package they are getting what they want and expect (all they need with no risk of fines) and the very small group of high bandwidth users can pay for a premium package.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[flyneye]

Verizon Throttles Data To "Provide Incentive To Limit Customers"

            Verizon has indicated that its throttling policy is meant to drive away users with an incentive to limit their data usage. The company explained that "a small percentage of the customers on these [unlimited] plans are really all our limited network can handle, and, unlike providers on usage-based plans, we have no incentive to oversubscribe during times of unusually high demand....our practice is a measured and fair step to ensure that this small group of customers actually get what they pay for. " We really are just a bunch of Carnies pumping you up with promises that we cannot possibly deliver, but now we will only cater to an elite few and raise prices accordingly.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it defined what "Unlimited" actually means in the contract. Usually the BS is that "Unlimited" means whatever they want it to mean, in some cases the companies define it to mean "You can use it in an Unlimited way so long as it does not violate the terms of the contract" which translates into "you can do it any way you want as long as it's the way I say".

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

>ISPs don't have the off-network capacity for everyone to saturate their connections all of the time...

Most of that "off network" capacity isn't needed if you place in-network CDN which those ISPs are trying to kill with fire because then they can't double dip on charging netflix and the likes IN ADDITION to what YOU pay them.

There isn't a lot of high-bandwidth content out there the average joe uses except for streaming and windows updates.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I did get a notice from them to the effect that they were going to cap or throttle me should this continue.

I was grandfathered in under the unlimited plan from Alltel, and they NEVER called / harassed me for using ~30GB/month. They did silently throttle, however. Take a smartphone and turn it into a hotspot, run a speed test, observe results. Take the USB modem, run a speed test, observe results. Noticeable difference. The throttling wasn't just speeds, oh no, I dropped from 3G to 2G on the aircard frequently and it wasn't the damn tower. I got sick of seeing 16KB/s 1500ms pings so I finally voted with my wallet and ditched the aircard. Much happier with satellite now using ~50GB a month with several scheduled downloads during their "unlimited time".

Now, in fairness to Verizon, this only started happening in 2011 when the iPhones hit their networks. Prior to that everything was great. Verizon did not properly prepare their 3G networks for the onslaught of iPhones. From Verizon's business perspective, they had no interest in supported unlimited users on 3G, their focus was 4G and gouging users there. Not a surprise, they recently announced they are cutting off the few unlimited 4G plans that exist out there.

Fuck them. Fix your damn networks, make your customers happier, and stop kissing ass to your your greedy shareholders.

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can understand the want of a speed limit. I know TWC has a limited plan where you get a discount from your bill. I think its $7-8 off if you have a 5GB cap or $3 if you have a 30 GB cap. I know I use anywhere from 50 GB to 100 GB most months so its worthless to me. I would be fine with getting throttled at some higher level say 100GB or higher but if it happened at 50GB I would probably just drop hsd.

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[sillybilly]

I buy unlimited, and I've hit many tens of GB downloading entire ftp sites of old software for win95 and such, like ftp.sac.sk. However I don't know what the actual limits are, or what they feel they should be. If they gave me a quota of 10GB/mo or 100GB/mo or 1000GB/mo, I'd pretty much hit that quota every month. Say I have 4 days left, my quota is 100GB/mo, and my total usage is 55GB so far, I'd pretty much download all kinds of ISO files for the remaining 45 GB nonstop, just because that's the quota. So this kind of behavior is what they are trying to avoid, by not giving a quota, and instead let users use what they need. There might be some doctor watching x-ray videos of patients at really high resolutions at home and making diagnoses in he evening before he goes to sleep, postpones some and makes the diagnoses when he wakes up, after sleeping over them, at say 5 TB /mo, coming from the nearby hospital through the same isp service, say Time Warner Cable, without tracerouting through other corporations networks in other cities, such as AT&T. Since it's a doctor helping the local community, and he does need that kind of bandwidth, the cable company would probably more than be happy to provide this service to him even for free, and throttle everyone else so he can get his job done. Unlike somebody who's pulling 100GB of free porn down each month, or warez-like things, he might get a notice, but somebody watching regular netflix movies at 200GB might be left alone, under the same conditions. Ideally ISP's would be agnostic about the kinds of content their users consume, as they are technically supposed to be, but in the real world, when counting beans, and optimizing a limited resource, such things as judging the type of content consumed do come into play, without explicitly stating this, or without it standing up in court.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say it is more similar to the kitchen sending out trays of food slower, similar to those with the sushi/sashimi department with a controlled release, either by adding only a few slices on the serving plate at a time or a dedicated waiter/waitress serving the food.

Or, even more apt analogy is the AYCE Japanese restaurants that has an algorithm that ties how much you eat/order with how easy your next order is "forgotten."

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[mrchaotica]

Unless you're paying an insane amount or have a very slow connection, the odds are that you can only do this because a lot of users near you don't. ISPs don't have the off-network capacity for everyone to saturate their connections all of the time and they provide a service that's a lot cheaper than a dedicated leased line on the assumption that most won't. This assumption is usually fine, because most of their customers don't come close to it. The 32TB/month that you'd consume if you saturated a 100Mb/s link all of the time is a couple of orders of magnitude more than most users will need, even if they're streaming a couple of hours of video each evening.

Indeed, it's fine... until the average customer starts using more capacity than Verizon can provide on average.

At that point, however, it does NOT mean that Verizon is somehow justified in throttling their "unlimited" connections, it means they are obligated to either increase the capacity of the network or stop advertising their service as unlimited.

Given that they've accumulated billions of dollars of public subsidies over the years (for the purpose of improving the network), I think it's reasonable for them to improve the network!

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cant they just do a "Rogers Cable" and redefine Unlimited to mean time instead of Data?

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless there is an service level agreement (SLA) with regards to speed on those connections, then Verizon is still delivering unlimited data to those customers. The delivery is simply slower.

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

ISPs don't have the off-network capacity for everyone to saturate their connections all of the time and they provide a service that's a lot cheaper than a dedicated leased line on the assumption that most won't.

That explanation is getting very old and very tired, and really doesn't hold water. If the total amount of traffic is larger than the network can handle during peak hours, then the network is too small or the traffic is too big -- neither of which is your problem as a customer. Your ISP could have not offered unlimited plans, but they didn't. Instead they sold plans not only offering unlimited internet, but at a specific speed. This kind of bait-and-switch thankfully doesn't fly in many other countries including where I'm at with a truly symmetric 100Mb/s link averaging 2+TB of monthly traffic... Isn't it time the US stepped into the world of civilized internet speeds?

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[thebjorn]

"Unlimited" is a very easy word to understand, and I'm sure it has a definition in Webster etc. If they don't mean unlimited, then they should call it something else. If they call it unlimited, then you should be allowed to trust your understanding of the English language to know what you're buying. If you're planning on using 500GB/month and you only get 30GB/month, then the service they're delivering is clearly not what you bought. I don't understand why this is so difficult to understand.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[mrchaotica]

First of all, you don't understand what "basic QoS" is. Second, you're conflating the amount of data usage with the type of data usage. Let's try switching the types of data for the two users, and then see if your example is still reasonable:

This is basic QoS. For a simplified example, let's assume there are only two users (but the network is still congested). One is trying to download a fix amount of data, i.e. [download a certain number of linux-distribution isos] . Let's call her the "limited" user. The other is trying to watch as many YouTube videos as she possibly can. Let's call her the "unlimited" user. (We assume that the carrier can guess which user is which, based in historical bandwidth use.)

If the carrier throttles both users equally - what some would consider the "fair" solution - then the limited user will have to wait [a little longer for her ISOs] (but we will assume that she still [downloads the number of ISOs] that she had decided on). The... unlimited user [will have to wait while her videos buffer (which will cause her to watch fewer Youtube videos in total)].

If the carrier only throttles the unlimited user, then the limited user gets [the same] experience, [and] still [downloads the same number of ISOs], i.e. downloads the same amount of data during the period of the congestion [even though she didn't necessarily care that much when she got the data]. The [number of videos] that the unlimited user can [watch is reduced (along with their quality, due to buffering)], so she [suffers] from the "unfair" throttling.

"Basic QoS" means throttling the ISO download because it's not time-sensitive while not throttling the Youtube stream because it is time-sensitive. The aggregate data usage of the parties in question is completely irrelevant!

Oh, and by the way: QoS happens only when there's congestion, which is different from what Verizon wants to do, which is to punitively throttle customers after they hit their "cap" even if the network has excess unused capacity at the time the throttling occurs!

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please share your antenna design.
That sounds awesome.

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[captaintightpants]

I never tried quantifying it before, but I pay for 50 Mb/s and as such with my 300GB data cap I can only use .6% of my potential maximum that I pay for, assuming I download 50 Mb/s for an entire month. That's some fraudulent BS if you ask me.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[bmo]

YOU BE HERE FOUR HOUR!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

--
BMO

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

If they're slowing the rate in response to bandwidth usage, then it's not unlimited. People grouse about the fact that there are technical limits in that you can't download more than the maximum possible all month, but when it's a limit that's implemented by Verizon to discourage use, that's definitely false advertising. Unlimited is unlimited, as in they don't place any limits on how much of the bandwidth you get to use.

I'd love to see some enterprising attorney sue the crap out of them for false advertising.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to say it, but this time they do have a point. Cellular networks are quite a bit different than wired networks, and can easily become very congested. While to a certain extent they probably could ease it a bit by adding additional towers there is still limited spectrum and capacity. i.e. it's not like wire networks where you can just drop another connect, and other additional equipment.

OTOH specifically throttling? The very scarcity of the resource would eventually throttle everyone.

Tmo: my "unlimited" plan, AFAIK they just dump us to 3G/Edge @ somewhere around 5.5GB... however IIRC it's documented on their site somewhere, but I've never hit the cap just congested towers, and near my home their coverage has gone from pretty good to almost crappy, but still better than sprint, which just plain sucked.

AT&T drops calls in my area -> probably congestion problems as well, and Verizon as usual has AWESOME coverage unfortunately their rate plan pricing sucks large hairy donkey balls. And well that's it... (VZ you know when I had verizon I can't recall ever going anywhere where I did not have at least voice coverage(west bumfuck, population ~5 if you include timber wolves, black bears, chipmunks, deer, rabbits, and squirrels etc. then maybe 100ish), which is the problem with Tmo their limited coverage no matter what their maps show...)

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter what the contract says it means. They market it as unlimited knowing that people will have made their decision before they even see the contract. That's why the FTC needs to step in and sue their asses for false advertising. Unlimited has the clear meaning of having no limits imposed by the ISP. Anything else is a limited connection and shouldn't be marketed as such.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[CauseBy]

I agree with everything you said. Fuck those douchebags. One point of pedantry: I would be happy to see them in court in front of a jury of "my" peers. The "jury of your peers" thing is not part of American jurisprudence. If you are American, you can demand an impartial jury, but not a jury of your peers. America doesn't even have a legal "peerage" system so the concept doesn't translate into our laws.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[CauseBy]

I agree. The problem is that they are lying fucksticks, not that their network is faulty.

"Unlimited" would mean infinite, which is nonsense because we live in a finite universe. You can't possibly provide "unlimited" service. They can offer "service not artificially limited", where the limits are natural side effects of the network -- and I think that would be a mostly fair interpretation of the word "unlimited".

But these asshat motherfuckers aren't even doing that, they are selling as "unlimited" service which is in fact "limited". Fuck those liars.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[CauseBy]

Why not just stop selling service that way? Just meter the service by the unit, like all utilities do. Have a base cost plus a usage cost. Done, problem solved. While you are at it, make sure that the marginal cost shrinks as the usage increases -- like all bulk sales do. Also make sure that people are able to cap out of usage, so if they hit the max they want to pay for, you just turn off the service instead of hitting them with huge bills.

All other service plans are dishonest, which means all service plans are dishonest.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[LifesABeach]

Didn't we see this in the last act of the Wizard of Oz?

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Lord Lemur]

They are already paying for the premium package.

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad my ISP doesn't do any of this shit and I can use my full capacity 24/7.

Unless you're using DSL you probably can't. This is the reason for "no servers" policies. The wireline caps are so much higher than the wireless ones that people rarely run into them, but if you, for example, host an ftp mirror of open source software, you could actually keep a cable connection busy 24/7, and you'd hit the 250GByte cap in a couple of days. That's much longer than the 9 minutes it takes to use up your monthly cap on 4G. 3Mbit/s DSL is >1TByte/mo.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[EvilJoker]

It's more of a historical note than anything. Britain had classes, such as royalty and commoners.

In the US, we are all considered equal under the law.
More info here.

Fortunately for the GP, the odds are pretty high that any jury would have a few people burned by the telecoms industry.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what all the fuss is about.. around here, being throttled to 3g speeds would be an improvement.

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Too fucking bad. If you advertise a service, list a price and then don't provide that service that is fraud. It is a business and marketing ploy and has NOTHING to do with the technology. They should be advertising less bandwidth and raise the prices if they want to be honest.

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ADSL2+ and my ISP allows me to run servers or do anything I want with the connection with no limits, caps or throttling. They are a true ISP.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[Reziac]

Where I used to live I had a choice of one, fixed wireless from a one-man band. And he liked to talk about his work. One thing he told me was that due to peering agreements, downloads cost nothing, and uploads are 5 cents per GB. (This was 7-8 years ago. Probably hasn't changed too much.) He came right off the AT&T backbone.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[volmtech]

I recently had a meal at a popular buffet in Orland. I did notice the plates were much smaller than in years past. That didn't stop to couple at the table next to me from making a third trip and then leavening their plates full of food when they left. People who have multi terabyte drives full of downloaded movies they never watch are the same way.

Re:There is no incentive because they PAY for it!

[mikeiver1]

Well considering that the connection was capable of supporting around 1Mbps and gaming used around 1/10th of that I see little to no issue, that and we gamed from around 9PM to midnight. Also considering that in the prime times of the evening the connection would show signs of throttling due to usage I had no worries about your issue. As mentioned, they had 4G in the area so there was overlap and plenty of bandwidth available for dickheads like you to show your shaved balls pictures to your mom and sister. Assholes like you are the reason that there is such an implied shortage of bandwidth, you and your fucking facebook bullshit and all the petty BS pictures and spam. You should format your drive and put a bullet in your head if you are on a jury and checking your FB account. Have a shit day moron.

"....they have no incentive not to do so...."

[Anonymous Coward]

...Which is exactly why they paid for or kept themselves locked into THEIR contract.

Is this really the biggest problem?

[timrod]

I've seen much bigger problems with cell phone internet than this. For instance, there's the tactic of selling "4G" service with the caveat that you get 4G speeds on "preferred websites" for the first 200MB, and then get throttled down. Give us net neutrality on phones first, then start working on regulating how they can sell it.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[gl4ss]

200mb is a joke at 20mbit/s.

anyways, the problem with penalizing the top 10% is that next month top 10% will have smaller use and the next month 10% is smaller and the next 10% is smaller... ending up with 100mbytes getting you into the top 10% users before long. what kind of "unlimited" is that?

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[flargleblarg]

200mb is a joke at 20mbit/s.

The GP said 200MB, not 200mb.

That said, yeah, even 200MB is a joke at 20mbit/s.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[viperidaenz]

If you're going to be pedantic, what's a millibit (lower case m is milli, not mega)?

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[beelsebob]

a militia doesn't exist - but a milibit per second does. It's 1 bit transferred every 1000 seconds.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[beelsebob]

milibit... damn you autocorrect.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

What browser has an autocorrect feature?
And why did you turn it on?

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[meerling]

Any measurement abbreviation where they expect it to be identified between two different measurements of the same type of subject (in this case data) by capitalization of the letters is a complete F-N fail of the first order.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[gl4ss]

200xz is a joke at 20xz/s

in a post written all undercase.. you think i can afford a shift button???

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no need to add in time to have Millibits. One thousand of a bit is a millibit - if it's practical or not is something else. If you have 1000 switches that needs turned on for your "system" to see it as a bit, then each switch represents a millibit.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[mrvan]

I'm not sure you understand what 'digital' means...

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

millibit. Use preview next time.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Of course not - that takes extra bits!

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you can't take the square root of -1 either, but that doesn't stop it from being a useful concept sometimes.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[N1AK]

anyways, the problem with penalizing the top 10% is that next month top 10% will have smaller use and the next month 10% is smaller and the next 10% is smaller... ending up with 100mbytes getting you into the top 10% users before long. what kind of "unlimited" is that?

I agree. Better to have the cut off as a certain multiple (say 10x) average use. That way the limit would increase naturally with average use, and only those way out of line with the average would be capped.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[fnj]

Well ... actually ... the prefix for 1/1000 is milli, not mili. At least in English speaking countries.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[fnj]

I happen to agree it is a damn poor design, but it is the standard. Just like case-sensitive pathnames in Posix. Actually, truth be known, I kind of dig that it makes an automatic laughingstock out of lazy sons of bitches who can't be bothered to use the fucking shift key.

Which, full circle, is not to say that all of these are not poor designs. I'll give you another one. C forcing you to interrupt the flow of typing by reaching for the shift key on identifiers, whether you use camel case or underscores. Although I still remember the magnificent ADM-3A, where underscore was a gorgeous UNSHIFTED keystroke.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe it means any system where values are broken up into a finite number of discrete samples. So a bit broken up into 1000 parts is still digital as the parts are discrete and finite. Did you know that when you're talking wireless that on the actual air interface you don't talk about bit rate, but chip rate. And the chips per bit indicate how much error correction you're using. So having a 1024 chips per bit encoding isn't actually particularly uncommon. Granted that would be a pretty craptacular rate, so you'd assume that's for a very noisy signal. I think more typical chip rates are like 32 chips per bit.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[rossdee]

"a militia doesn't exis"

It does if it is 'well regulated' according to the 2nd amendment.

Anyway I think you need to type the data rate as milli (bit per second)

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he was referring to his brain's autocorrect feature.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[mrchaotica]

C forcing you to interrupt the flow of typing by reaching for the shift key on identifiers, whether you use camel case or underscores. Although I still remember the magnificent ADM-3A, where underscore was a gorgeous UNSHIFTED keystroke.

That's your keyboard's fault, not C's.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you can't take the square root of -1 either

wouldn't that be i^2

if i recall the square root of -1 is required in order to prove the fundamental theorem of algebra

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing about "binary digit" that says it's digital. And wikipedia gives the entroypy of some passwords with millibit precision http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_strength#Random_passwords

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[chihowa]

That's a decent technical solution, but it would require transparent accounting and trusting the phone company. Unless there was some public listing of the average use, it also doesn't allow planning on the users' part. Glass caps are a pretty shitty implementation overall.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never heard of nits? Non-integer numbers of digital things have their uses.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you can't take the square root of -1 either

wouldn't that be i^2

No, that would be i... or maybe j depending on who you ask.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[flargleblarg]

C forcing you to interrupt the flow of typing by reaching for the shift key on identifiers, whether you use camel case or underscores. Although I still remember the magnificent ADM-3A, where underscore was a gorgeous UNSHIFTED keystroke.

That's your keyboard's fault, not C's.

And just one's own laziness. I mean, if someone has a disability that makes using the shift key difficult (for example, you only have one good hand, or you are looking at pr0n while writing code), then I sympathize. But if they have no such disability, then they're just lazy. It's not that difficult to type an underscore character.

Re:Is this really the biggest problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

regulation is EVIL its hand of big government!!!! we need the magic hand of the free market to self regulate militia's!!

Kinda like -

[RichMan]

Kinda like, getting into the car in the morning to go to work and being limited to 20mph as the roads are busy now.

Hmm, I guess that is how it works.

Except,,,

[mark-t]

If they don't actually have the resources to offer plans to subscribers without the disincentive of additional fees, then they shouldn't be offering such plans to customers in the first place.

Of course, both fees and throttling can equally be considered as disincentives, and the entire notion behind "unlimited" plans is that you wouldn't have to deal with any unexpected disincentives to continue use.

Re:Except,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare these people pay for unlimited data service and then use it.

God damn fucking assholes don't they know Verizon is cash strapped when it comes to building out infrastructure?!

Re:Except,,,

[Darinbob]

Verizon is still providing unlimited data, as much as the user can download. It is only the speed of the download that is changing. Did the original service agreement provide for maximum available bandwidth, or a guaranteed minimum bandwidth? If not then the problem is only with the perception of the user.

I'm not a customer and not a heavy user so I don't know what the level of "throttling" really is and if the throttled rate is still useful. Say I got 50Mbps and it was throttled to 25Mbps, but still unlimited, I'd say that was good service. However if it was 50Mbps and dropped to 50kbps then I'd say it sucked.

But for PR reasons I'd rather let the current service agreement run out and then implement throttling when the sign up for a new service agreement (unless Verizon was so stupid as to provide a lifetime contract).

Re:Except,,,

[jeIIomizer]

Verizon is still providing unlimited data, as much as the user can download.

What a bunch of bullshit. When you think of "unlimited," you don't think that they'll throttle you so hard your connection is useless anyway. This is just corporate lying.

Re: Except,,,

[s4m7]

Well the contracts remain month to month after their term, unless you upgrade your phone or change your plan in some way. Those of us who are fighting to keep the unlimited plan have to buy retail price phones to upgrade.

So short answer, yes, they kinda were that stupid.

Re:Except,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon is still providing unlimited data, as much as the user can download.

What a bunch of bullshit. When you think of "unlimited," you don't think that they'll throttle you so hard your connection is useless anyway. This is just corporate lying.

I read my eulas... somewhat. And the only mention of this is that you're not guaranteed to receive the speeds they offer.
How they can legally go from that to "fairness" and "disincentives" like
1) it's a kids game that should even require words to explain for the whaaaambulance
2) like UN-LIMITED is a relative term in some way.

The game in the EULA is "we can't give you Infinity because physically it's humanly impossible to reach 100% efficiency on anything"
the actual result is "Going to youtube? kick him! down to the x Percent bucket. Why try to even give you near 90%? you can't prove we did it ... if you can, well, there's no real internet police! We have other content to serve someone in business class tier who also paid for 100%, but we'll never admit to HIM we oversold capacity... he paid n times more for the useless, lying SLAs"

Re:Except,,,

[mark-t]

Obviously "unlimited" is limited to whatever capacity their network can stand, but this is *deliberate* throttling... and is functionally no different from charging limited data plan subscribers extra fees for going over their allocated limits.

Re:Except,,,

[mark-t]

"Unlimited" should mean limited only by whatever capacity the infrastructure and technology of the time can support... there should be no restrictions enforced on the use of the service. If the hardware can physically provide a level of service, then that level of service should be available. If Verizon were, in fact, throttling everybody so that their networks could actually handle the communication load, that would be one thing, and for unlimited plan users, it could still satisfy a reasonable definition of unlimited, but Verizon is only targeting the subscribers who download the greatest amount of content among their unlimited customers, creating a disincentive for them to continue to use the service that is functionally no different than charging extra fees to limited plan subscribers when they exceed their quota.

Re:Except,,,

[Bryan Ischo]

Too true. And when I go to an all-you-can-eat restaurant, I expect to be able to take the entirety of all of the food in the buffet, throw it in garbage bags, and carry them to my table, denying everyone else in the restaurant anything to eat.

Yeah, that works.

You know what really works? People using common sense and realizing that there is no such thing as "unlimited" bandwidth, food, or anything else. When such services are advertised I think we all realize, or at least the reasonable among us realize, that "unlimted" means "much more than the average consumer would utilize, and thus from the perspective of the average consumer, unlimited", not "as much as you can possibly use".

Who doesn't realize that limiting the highest users is sometimes necessary to ensure quality of service for everyone? Hey I paid my Verizon bill too, how come my service is slower because some dork has to torrent down 100 movies per month to add to his never-watched "collection"? Shouldn't I be complaining also about not getting the quality of service *I* paid for?

Re:Except,,,

[jeIIomizer]

You know what really works? People using common sense and realizing that there is no such thing as "unlimited" bandwidth, food, or anything else.

Then stop advertising it as such. "common sense" is nonsense, and I'm tired of people using a phrase that could literally mean anything. Popularity is irrelevant, and since what is believed to be "common sense" is often nonsensical, it's just not a very good term.

Re:Except,,,

[drinkypoo]

Too true. And when I go to an all-you-can-eat restaurant, I expect to be able to take the entirety of all of the food in the buffet, throw it in garbage bags, and carry them to my table, denying everyone else in the restaurant anything to eat.

That's a dumb metaphor, because the customers are using provided plates. It's like they're providing you a plate the size of your table, then insisting you put no more than one cup of food on it at a time.

Re:Except,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlimited data comes from a time when nobody used cellular data because data on flip phones is damn near unusable and smartphones were clunky and expensive (think pre-iPhone) - think of it like unlimited minutes or texts in today's world where nobody uses their smartphones for calling and all texts get routed through iMessage or Hangouts anyway. It's a 1%-of-the-time service they give you 'unlimited' for so they can justify adding an extra $20 or so to your bill.

When people started actually using the data they realigned their business model to stop selling minutes and texts, and start selling megabytes, so they could still charge you more for using your smartphone more. The people in question that Verizon are throttling are people who have very old service contracts from the minutes-and-texts era, a segment you would expect to be both fiercely loyal (they don't buy phones on contract to avoid losing unlimited data) and vanishingly small (you can't get unlimited anymore, so switching providers, changing plans, or even missing a bill payment by a day kicks you out of this category). It makes little sense to focus on kicking these users off the network by providing them with horribly slow service as they are very likely to churn out of spite of you do so. But then again, I'm only thinking from the narrow perspective of network management - I'm sure the suits are bothered by having any customers whose bills don't grow according to usage and probably view them as unprofitable and thus undesirable.

As for me, I wouldn't have a problem with metered data if the caps weren't so insanely low. Wireless networks are only getting faster, so the actual amount of time you can use your smartphone decreases every time they upgrade the network so that streaming apps burst through your limit faster.

Re:Except,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a difference between "you are not guaranteed these speeds because other people are using the network" and "you are not guaranteed these speeds because we are deliberately crippling your connection".

Re:Except,,,

[Kielistic]

It's "all you can eat" not "all you can waste". If you could actually eat all of those garbage bins they wouldn't stop you. Most buffets try to keep supply slightly below or slightly above demand. They don't take away your plate and make you use napkins if you eat too fast. If they find they can't actually offer an all you can eat model they stop advertising and selling it.

Re:Except,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

People pay serious money for connections with speed service level agreements (SLA) and you thought Verizon was just going to give one to every customer. Keep dreaming. At no point was a speed ever guaranteed by Verizon.

Re:Except,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what really works? People using common sense and realizing that there is no such thing as "unlimited" bandwidth, food, or anything else.

You know, words have meanings. "Unlimited" means exactly that, not limited. Its COMMON FUCKING SENSE.

Re:Except,,,

[mark-t]

Verizon is still providing unlimited data, as much as the user can download. It is only the speed of the download that is changing.

You could argue that they provide unlimited data to everyone by that that reasoning.... it's only that if you have a "limited" plan and go over your limit, you will pay more for it.

They are, in effect, doing the same thing here... if you use too much data, they will impose a penalty upon you. The fact that the penalty in this case is not strictly monetary does not mean that it is not a disincentive against continuing excessive amounts of use, and thus, not technically any more of an unlimited plan than their expressly limited plans which charge you more when you go over the quota.

Re:Except,,,

[Richy_T]

Plus it's all you can eat which means you're supposed to y'know, eat it.

Re:Except,,,

[mrchaotica]

Congratulations, that's the least-bad analogy I've read in this thread so far.

Re:Except,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't the carriers use "common sense" and not advertise a product that they can barely offer?!
They are the ones setting expectations with words/terms like unlimited, blazing fast, stream in HD, etc. in their advertising.

Re:Except,,,

[Jahoda]

unlimited [uhn-lim-i-tid]
adjective
1. not limited; unrestricted; unconfined: unlimited trade.
2. boundless; infinite; vast: the unlimited skies.
3. without any qualification or exception; unconditional.

But I appreciate you coming in here and defending poor verizon from those insensitive jerks who paid for something "unlimited" and who are responsible for your slow service, rather than because verizon sold bandwidth and capacity that they don't have.

Re:Except,,,

[shadowrat]

You know what really works? People using common sense and realizing that there is no such thing as "unlimited" bandwidth, food, or anything else.

Then stop advertising it as such. "common sense" is nonsense, and I'm tired of people using a phrase that could literally mean anything. Popularity is irrelevant, and since what is believed to be "common sense" is often nonsensical, it's just not a very good term.

Do you feel as strongly about places that advertise having the world's best car, hamburger, cup of coffee, etc?

Re:Except,,,

[jeIIomizer]

"Best" is subjective; this is just outright lying.

Re:Except,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the original service agreement provide for maximum available bandwidth, or a guaranteed minimum bandwidth? If not then the problem is only with the perception of the user.

I just checked my service agreement, and it doesn't say anywhere that they can't just redirect all my traffic to goatse.

Re:Except,,,

[Bryan Ischo]

I disagree. They are the same thing. A certain amount of hyperbole is allowed, even expected, in advertising.

People who are using so much bandwidth that they are subject to throttling are almost certainly the *most* savvy, *most* knowledgeable users. There is no way that they don't know what bandwidth is, how networking works, and there really is no such thing as an "unlimited data cap", so pretending like they don't is really just disingenuous.

Re:Except,,,

[Bryan Ischo]

Nope, COMMON FUCKING SENSE is realizing that words are not always used literally and should not be expected to mean such. It's realizing that when an advertisement for Tylenol says that it cures headaches, that doesn't mean you can sue the manufacturer if your headache doesn't go away. It means understanding the context of meanings reflected in how the world actually works instead of pedantically insisting on meanings that clearly are impossible.

That, my friend, is COMMON FUCKING SENSE. It's the skill that we all have to understand WHAT IS MEANT, even when it is not exactly the same as WHAT WAS SAID.

In this context, anyone who believes that you really can take as much as you want of something that has been advertised as "unlimited" is not using common sense. You're saying that if I use so much bandwidth that it drives the company out of business, I should expect them to allow me to do it? If I use so much bandwidth that the company providing the service has to take out loans to support the infrastructure to provide my service, go broke, and starve to death, I should exect them to do that? COMMON FUCKING SENSE, man. There is no such thing as unlimited.

Re:Except,,,

[Bryan Ischo]

Why in their right mind would believe that they will be delivered "boundless; infinite" bandwidth just because they signed up for a plan that called itself "unlimited"? I absolutely agree that the companies should not be using the term "unlimited" in their advertising, but can't we all recognize that this is a term now deeply embedded in the nomenclature of internet service that has a clear definition in that context (that should be especially clear to the highest bandwidth users, who certainly must be seasoned users), that doesn't actually mean "truly infinite" as you would suggest we should expect it to mean?

Re:Except,,,

[Darinbob]

Well, I had not realized this was about phones and was thinking about internet services where they advertise "up to 12Mbps" or things like that, rather than guaranteeing a minimum bandwidth (do phones do that, I don't know, I don't have a data plan).

Re:Except,,,

[jeIIomizer]

I disagree. They are the same thing.

"Best" is subjective. "Unlimited" is not.

There is no way that they don't know what bandwidth is, how networking works, and there really is no such thing as an "unlimited data cap", so pretending like they don't is really just disingenuous.

Then don't sell plans claiming they're unlimited. It's really easy, is it not? This is *deliberate* throttling; no one could expect them to defy the laws of physics, but that's not the issue here.

I seriously don't know why people step up to defend this corporate lying.

Re:Except,,,

[mark-t]

The issue isn't about guaranteeing any particular speed, the issue is that the company is actively pushing a disincentive on high volume users so that they do not consume as much bandwidth, which is functionally no different from charging them more money.

Even "limited" plans have unlmited data too... since the user will just have to pay more money as they go over their quote. But with so-called "unlimited" plans, the user evidently must pay by having their connection throttled. Either way, it's a disincentive to avoid using too much data, and either way it's not unlimited.

Re:Except,,,

[mark-t]

This isn't about network speed at all... if Verizon really only want to offer a certain speed to "unlimited" subscribers, they certainly are free to do so. The problem is that the company actively imposes the disincentive of throttling only the very high data volume users, which is not conceptually any different from charging the "limited" plans more money whenever *they* go over their limit. It's worse in some ways because at least with limited plans, you know exactly how much you are allowed before you pay a penalty, but with these so-called unlimited plans, the decision to throttle can be wholly arbitrary, as long as the company feels that you are using too much. Regardless,whether the company is charging limited plans for exceeding their quota, or throttlling the connections of high volume "unlimited" plabs, the company is imposing a penalty on the user based on the volume of data that the user actually consumes, which is the very antithesis of what an unlimited plan should actually entail.

Re:Except,,,

[mark-t]

If they find they can't actually offer an all you can eat model they stop advertising and selling it.

Indeed... honestly, I'm not sure why Verizon wants to continue to pretend to offer an "unlimited" plan if they can't implement it without explicitly throttling the highest volume users of that plan (in fact, if they simply throttled all users of the "unlimited" plan, regardless of how much data that user had actually consumed, even that would meet a fairer definition of "unlimited" than what Verzon is currently doing).

Re:Except,,,

[drinkypoo]

Congratulations, that's the least-bad analogy I've read in this thread so far.

This being Slashdot, that is the highest praise that I can expect. I am appreciably appreciable.

Re:Except,,,

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

I used to do this to particular bars I didn't like when they had a "free beer refills"; after a couple of pitchers we'de just pour it down the drain if it got too warm and get more...it's was "unlimited" and I was a bit intoxicated so it was humorous. It all ended up down the drain anyway eventually...but if it was too warm then it would just "skip" the human part.

Re:Except,,,

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

There is no room for "common sense" when it comes to corporate rules and their ability to profit. Corporations are just like human sociopaths, their "common sense" equals as little service as possible for the most money. Anything else is a failure of fiduciary responsibilities, and results in problems like this. If there is any clause in the 1000 page ToS that can somehow make them more profit they WILL do it, no matter how mad people "might" get. Corps don't care about us at all until the "annoying anti-consumers" start causing PR problems as everything else is just the "cost of doing business".

Verizon has no proof whatsoever that anyone has been impacting their network by fully utilizing their unlimited bandwidth. It's always a case of "it could happen", "what if", or such. I have yet to see them show any charts, graphs, logs, etc to actually show "this is where the high utilization is impacting other user users at this time"' all Verizon does is slap a throttle whenever they feel like it...they don't even say what the criteria is for throttling in numerical terms. If they said "we only throttle when there is an 80% network utilization on specific towers and only while the utilization is over 80%" then that might be OK. Right now it's "hyey, your using to much and now THROTTLE for the rest of your billing cycle".

Re:Except,,,

[Jahoda]

I understand the points that you are making, but none of this changes the fact that Verizon sold customers "unlimited" internet, and indeed, had the customer broken their side of the contract, they would be on-the-hook to verizon for a substantial sum of money, followed by an adventure with collections.

Verizon either needs to clearly and openly define terms, or stop overselling their network. Conducting an honest business is not rocket science.

Re:Except,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but when I go to Denny's for their advertised "All you can eat Pancakes," I don't expect that to be N = 2 + h/2 where N is pancakes and h is hours I sit there with an empty plate. It turns out I'm wrong about Denny's and Verizon.

Re:Except,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

And when I go to an all-you-can-eat restaurant, I expect to be able to take the entirety of all of the food in the buffet, throw it in garbage bags, and carry them to my table, denying everyone else in the restaurant anything to eat.

Incredibly poor analogy. You should know better.

There are a few valid points in the rest of your points, but they drown under the weight of your poor start.

Re:Kinda like -

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it would be like buying a bus pass but then being told you're using it too much so they won't let you on the bus as an "incentive" to ride less.

This would all be resolved...

[Anonymous Coward]

...if the government would just cut the crap, close the loophole, and apply the common carrier designation to these greedy service providers.

Unfortunately, America is the greatest country in the world that money can buy.

Re:This would all be resolved...

[RivenAleem]

Yeah, I keep saying this too. For comparison: http://imgur.com/g0eYPCc this is my allowance for my mobile with Three (a mobile provider in Ireland). It's called unlimited (but I guess they put in a figure of 2 TB in the field just to put in something. I regularly pass the 50GB mark and never heard a complaint from them.

I can't say for certain it influenced people, but I'm happy to and regularly do recommend my provider to people looking for a good provider. It might be intentional that Three never bother me, because as one of their customers who uses a disproportional amount of data, I act as an ambassador for them. Very recently, during the Steam summer sale, I almost hit 100GB in a month downloading newly bought games. Not a peep out of Three.

More Like --

[dcollins]

Getting in the car and finding that Chris Christie shut down most of the lanes to gain political leverage.

Re:More Like --

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting in the car and finding that Chris Christie shut down most of the lanes to gain political leverage.

It is more like getting in the car, and being killed by an axe murderer hiding in the backseat.

Re:More Like --

[Anonymous Coward]

Jokes on you. My car is a deathtrap. I installed side-door gasoline tanks.

Just can the customers.

[dubiousx99]

If they aren't good for your business, just cancel their contracts.

Re:Just can the customers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, this would be the most honest thing to do. That being said can you imagine the uproar?

Re:Just can the customers.

[Darinbob]

Don't cancel them completely, just cancel the current contract and replace them the lower tier contract (call it "unlimited data limit over limited bandwidth").

Re: Just can the customers.

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't sign customers up for a different contract without their permission. Thats probably the only reason they keep unlimited around.

Re:Just can the customers.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good idea. But I have a better one. They should also share a blacklist with the other carriers of all the customers who dare to use their unlimited plans so that they never get a contract again, ever ! Ah business will be good in the free market of carriers.

Re:Just can the customers.

[CauseBy]

"Yep, this would be the most honest thing to do."

Ding ding! We have a winner -- now we know why that will never happen!

Re:Just can the customers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Free market? Laughable. A free market wouldn't have government involved in slicing up the frequency spectrum, or disallowing construction of new towers.

cretinous because

[Anonymous Coward]

All they need to do is state a limit (200G 500G, 2T?, ...) at which throttling will kick in, and stop lying about 'unlimited'. American corporations are so addicted to getting away with telling lies that they don't seem to even know when they're doingit.

Re:cretinous because

[CrazyDuke]

It's more likely the meglomanical "because I said so" attitude, which can vary from ye'ol emperor with is invisible clothes to the tried and true "Shut up or else."

Re:cretinous because

[s4m7]

Well, that's exactly what they're doing. The problem is they're doing it to those of us users who already have unlimited plans which they don't sell anymore, but are paying month to month and buying phones elsewhere to keep our contracts from being re-written. They won't be throttling the new "unlimited" customers because there aren't any.

Re:cretinous because

[Damarkus13]

The thing is, you're on a month to month contract. The honest thing for Verizon to do is simply cancel those contracts, admit that they are not willing to invest enough in infrastructure to accommodate unlimited plans, and take the temporary PR hit.

Instead they have chosen the path of a thousand papercuts. Every so often them try to screw those still on unlimited plans, and every time it causes some sort of PR headache.

Re:cretinous because

[Darinbob]

What user honestly thought that "unlimited" meant "unlimited bandwidth"? I remember some of these people whining when their fast internet got slow merely because their neighbors started using the shared cables. What was unlimited was the cap on how much data could be downloaded per month, not a cap on the actual speed.

Re:cretinous because

[Darinbob]

I think they can handle "unlimited" plans, the problem is with users who think unlimited means maximum bandwidth and no limits on how much data is downloaded a month, whereas the ISPs really intended for unlimited to mean how much data can be downloaded a month. Even a dialup plan can be unlimited. Everyone I *hope* understood that "unlimited" did not mean "infinite" no matter what metric they thought it applied to.

Re: cretinous because

[tysonedwards]

"I have altered the deal. Pray that I do not alter it further."

Re:cretinous because

[Nemyst]

"Unlimited" means "limited by the physical nature of the connection", in essence. We all agree that you can't break the laws of physics and get more data per month than your connection can handle. Therefore, if my connection is 20Mbps down, I should be able to take 20Mbps down 24/7 for the whole month. THAT is unlimited.

If Verizon can't handle that, they should put a cap on it and be honest that it's not an unlimited plan. You can't have it both ways.

Re:cretinous because

[AcidPenguin9873]

Three things:

1. These unlimited contracts came into being at a time when 3G radios had just come out, so the amount of traffic any one device could produce on their network was an order of magnitude less than what they can today with LTE. It would be reasonable for Verizon to say that the plan is unlimited at 2008 bandwidths.
2. I don't recall these unlimited plans as even having a bandwidth number attached to them. Do you?
3. Speaking strictly about wireline ISPs, no wireline ISP sells a consumer grade plan as 20Mbps for 24/7 usage. They sell it as 20Mbps peak bandwidth, with "peak" being purposefully vaguely defined. Besides this artificial throttling, there really are network congestion issues that come into play on consumer links at peak hours. They will sell you a business grade plan where it's guaranteed bandwidth for 24/7 usage, for about double the price of the consumer grade plan. Yet most people haven't opted for that type of a plan.

Re:cretinous because

[TyFoN]

Wire-line ISP, you mean the ones connecting fiber and copper?
If so, my provider sells me 100/100 mbit 24/7 unlimited that I pay about $80/month for.
My record is 15 TB data transfer in one month, which according to the logs averaged out at about 50/50 for the whole month.

I have never heard them talk about caps or limits when I am on the phone with them. I even called them to cancel their TV service since I am only streaming and downloading. They said nothing but cancelled the TV.

My $30/month mobile plan only allows for 5 gb before throttling the speed. But that is in the contract and I have agreed to it. I never agreed to unlimited. If I had and they throttled me, I'd be pretty POd too.

Re: cretinous because

[Stolpskott]

I cannot decide on the best response to that:

"You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”

“Who’s the more foolish; the fool, or the fool who follows him?”

or maybe...

"If they follow standard Imperial procedure, they’ll dump their garbage before they go to light-speed. Then we just float away.” “With the rest of the garbage.”

However, whatever the response is, Verizon will come back with one of these:

“So what I told you was true from a certain point of view.”
“Only at the end do you realize the power of the Dark Side.”

Re:cretinous because

[dkf]

Speaking strictly about wireline ISPs, no wireline ISP sells a consumer grade plan as 20Mbps for 24/7 usage.

Mine did, but doesn't now: their lowest grade plan is now faster than that. The upper tiers might have throttling, but I don't thing the base grade tier can hit the level at which they care.

But then I'm not in the US. We have real competition between communications providers.

Re:cretinous because

[Anonymous Coward]

These unlimited contracts came into being at a time when 3G radios had just come out, so the amount of traffic any one device could produce on their network was an order of magnitude less than what they can today with LTE. It would be reasonable for Verizon to say that the plan is unlimited at 2008 bandwidths.

You would assume though that they had upgraded their backbone bandwidth at the same rate during those 6 years. If the 2008 3G-backbone ratio was the same as the 2014 4G-backbone ratio then they'd have no trouble serving the same duration at maximum bandwidth.

What's really changed is with the explosion of the smartphone market everyone's using the bandwidth more now, whereas previously most people who had the plans didn't have anything to use it with/for enough to be an issue.

Re:cretinous because

[Ash-Fox]

What user honestly thought that "unlimited" meant "unlimited bandwidth"?

If you say you have an unlimited 4g connection, you would expect to have no bandwidth caps/throttling on your 4g connection I would think.

Re:cretinous because

[Ash-Fox]

The only thing dkf and I have to worry about is scummy advertising now.

Re:cretinous because

[Bryan Ischo]

The problem is, no one wants to be first, because the first one to change their advertising will put themselves at a competitive disadvantage against those who continue to bogusly advertise unlimited internet.

So I guess this is where government regulation is supposed to kick in and force all such businesses onto a level, more honest playing field?

Re: cretinous because

[jamiesan]

or maybe "I've got a bad feeling about this."

or "What a wonderful smell you've discovered"

Re:cretinous because

[Kielistic]

A user that purchases a connection advertised as a certain bandwidth with no cap would be pretty justified to honestly believe that's what they will/are entitled to get.

Re:cretinous because

[mrchaotica]

You would assume though that they had upgraded their backbone bandwidth at the same rate during those 6 years. If the 2008 3G-backbone ratio was the same as the 2014 4G-backbone ratio then they'd have no trouble serving the same duration at maximum bandwidth.

What's really changed...

LOL! What's really [not] changed is that they simply pocketed the money as profit instead of upgrading their backbone bandwidth.

Re:cretinous because

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, my "unlimited" contract was renewed with an LTE phone. I upgraded & renewed with a Galaxy S3 (LTE device) a day before the deadline. So saying that it should be "3G" speeds is incorrect. They allowed & encouraged me to upgrade before their deadline. I did.

Re: cretinous because

[IwantToKeepAnon]

Repeat after me: This deal is very fair and I'm happy to be a part of it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re: cretinous because

[cyberchondriac]

And of course, "tweee boop leetleleetle bzzzzthtppthtppth " .. that pretty much sums it up with a raspberry.

Re: cretinous because

[cyberchondriac]

That's definitely the downside of supply and demand, when demand exceeds supply; or, collusion amongst the powers that be, in the face of the Sherman Antitrust act. Or both.

Re:cretinous because

[Rich0]

These unlimited contracts came into being at a time when 3G radios had just come out, so the amount of traffic any one device could produce on their network was an order of magnitude less than what they can today with LTE.

Sure, but a 3G radio running at maximum speed utilizes a large portion of the total capacity of a 3G tower, just as an LTE radio running at maximum speed utilizes a large portion of the total capacity of an LTE tower.

Modern phones can send far more data, but the towers also have the capacity to handle far more data.

The tower should be the rate-limiting part of the operation. The infrastructure from there to the net should be able to handle a saturated tower. Landlines can handle far more bandwidth than radio.

Re:cretinous because

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

In the US here, the max speeds I can buy is 24Mbps, this is with an $85/month business-class connection. But my apartment complex enforces their illegal exclusivity contract with AT&T via not having the authority to allow other ISP's in per corporate policy coupled with the corporate office being completely unreachable by anyone except the front office. So far I've gotten four different phone numbers which no one at their "corporate office" answers, and all emails to them just bounce.

Funny

[TheDarkMaster]

So... In short, the company wants me to pay full price for the service and expect me to not use it? I pay for a car, but I can not use it? Ok, I give up trying to understand the humans...

Re:Funny

[Nyder]

So... In short, the company wants me to pay full price for the service and expect me to not use it? I pay for a car, but I can not use it? Ok, I give up trying to understand the humans...

Corporations are not humans. And while I know you are trying to be funny, it's not a funny matter, it's serious. The Corporate Greed Culture has gone overboard, and this is a prime example of it.

Re:Funny

[mark_reh]

bbbbbbbbut corporations ARE people. The supreme court said so. That's why its legal to buy elections.

Re:Funny

[fnj]

Reality check. There are no elections being sold. There is only advertising/PR being sold on behalf of candidates. If the voting public is so goddam fucking stupid as to be swayed like sheep by political advertisements, they are getting PRECISELY the government they deserve. As a block, not as individuals, unfortunately. The voters who have functioning intellect are being sold down the river by the voters who are ignorant, stupid, and selfish bastards. Just assign the blame where it belongs.

Re:Funny

[Kielistic]

Corporations are persons. The constantly repeated statement that "corporations are people" is purposefully ambiguous. You think it means "a corporation is a person"- it does not. A corporation is a group of persons. This statement should be self-evident and with that it should also be self-evident that they are provided the same protections as other groups of persons.

Re:Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations don't make laws and decisions. Humans do.

Re:Funny

[mark_reh]

A person is a person. A corporation is a legal construct designed to shield the persons who start the corporation from legal responsibility for their corporate actions, deserving of no special protections. This relief of personal liability/responsibility leads to all sorts of abuses, therefore, persons need protection from corporations similar to the way persons need protection from criminal gangs.

Re:Funny

[Kielistic]

If you really that opposed to this legal concept the least you could do is read up on what "corporate personhood" means. For one, corporate personhood is the reason you can sue a corporation. You seem unable to grasp the fact that a corporation is made up of a group of persons. Other associations of individuals maintained certain protections under the Constitution. Way back in the day it was decided that since corporations are also associations of individuals the same rules should apply. Are you saying that because a group of persons incorporates they should lose their Constitutional protections? That sounds a little fascist to me.

If it is legal for a person to 'buy' an election then what difference does it make if a corporation does it instead?

Equal Share of Bandwidth

[bondsbw]

Do the top users somehow get 100 Mbps during a time when I can only get 2 Mbps? If so, why is this allowed? If not, why is it a problem?

I don't recall any wireless service claiming that unlimited data would guarantee unlimited bandwidth (which is physically impossible). They usually use terms like "up to X Mbps", based on various factors such as signal strength and usage... so during peak times, everyone's bandwidth goes down equally.

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[dunkindave]

Except what Verizon is doing is throttling only people with "unlimited" plans during peak times. People on paid usage plans are not subject to the same throttling. This isn't apparent throttling because of congestion, this is Verizon actively saying that because you have an unlimited plan, they will not allow you to use the available bandwidth, while if you drop the unlimited plan and subscribe to a metered plan then you CAN use the available bandwidth. Unfortunately the quote by the Commissioner is being dropped in these later articles where he said that he can see no legitimate claim for reasonable network management to be based on which plan a user subscribes to.

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[Austerity Empowers]

The bottom line is that without upgrading their networks, they can't provide the promised service to 100% of their customers. Divide and conquer. Cut off a small fraction of people they feel they can label as "greedy", and hurt them most, rather than admit they're in default on their contract obligations and upgrade their network. /. can kick and scream all they want, but idiots in Congress will happily buy it all up and ignore dissent like they do every time.

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the most important part of "Without upgrading their networks":
They like the subsidized incentives, but not so much the "using them to upgrade their networks" part of not-pocketing-it.

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

The bottom line is that without upgrading their networks

Sure they can! All they have to do is claim that they are a utility and request 2 billion dollars in government funds to lay new lines in New York city, then a year later turn around and claim they are *not* a utility so they are not bound to the rules of being one! It's a fool-proof plan. I mean, it worked for Verizon, didn't it?

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

The bottom line is that without upgrading their networks, they can't provide the promised service to 100% of their customers.

So in other words, they're selling something they can't provide. Isn't that illegal? At the very least, its false advertisement or bait-and-switch.

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the top users somehow get 100 Mbps during a time when I can only get 2 Mbps?

No, it's the other way around. When you're getting 10 Mbps, the unlimited users are only getting 1 Mbps. They throttle the top unlimited users more than they throttle other users.

Verizon's reasoning is that the unlimited users aren't paying per MB, so they have no reason not to use the service during peak times. Thus, Verizon throttles those top unlimited users during peak times. This leaves more bandwidth for other users.

I believe the criteria are something like

1. Must be a peak time when there are more requests for bandwidth than they can handle.
2. Must be an unlimited subscriber.
3. Must be one of the top bandwidth users.

So if they don't have to throttle anyone, they don't throttle the unlimited users. If it's not an unlimited plan, they don't do the extra throttling. If it's a peak time and an unlimited user, they still don't throttle extra if this isn't one of the top users. As best I can see, they have a bunch of users who use the unlimited plans all day. They throttle those users extra during peak times.

And in terms of promising what they can't provide, they no longer offer unlimited plans. You can only get an unlimited plan by having had one before they stopped selling them. If you don't like the unlimited service, I'm sure they'd be happy to switch you into another plan without unlimited usage.

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[Darinbob]

I would be in favor of throttling them after they exceed a certain download amount. Ie, first they have to prove that they're a heavy user.

Ie, they get exactly the same service as most normal non-entitled humans until they reach the normal human data cap. Once they hit that then their service is throttled, and the good thing is that they're still more special than normal humans like you or me in that they continue getting huge amounts of data without paying metered penalty rates only it comes slower (still fast enough to stream HD all day long).

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[Darinbob]

Why do they have to upgrade? It is not necessarily their responsibility. The cables were good enough back when the customers signed up for the service. The only reason they're not good enough now is that the customer's usage has gone up (more movies to watch). What next, cable TV now has the responsibility to upgrade the quality of their television shows? If you don't like the provider then drop the service.

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[unrtst]

The bottom line is that without upgrading their networks, they can't provide the promised service to 100% of their customers.

Wrong (AFAICT).

They are actively throttling users. That is not the same as their network being unable to handle it, or for congestion to affect many users.

The users with metered plans are not being throttled. They may be using even more. Everyone could do that, and they would not throttle the metered users because they want that additional money. The unlimitted users are getting throttled when they hit some cap of MB/month. That's not unlimitted. Unlimitted would mean they should behave just like the metered plans, but they'd pay a flat fee.

As others have said, they should just terminate all of these contracts and offer those users something else. They are all on month to month. There's just an awful lot of them that ARE still profitable, and they're scared to lose that... so either it's worth it to keep them all or not, but they shouldn't be throttled like that (as much as I hate the idea of some very small percentage of folks ruining my day to day experience).

Personally, I'd like a more customizable rate... something like the way fractional T1's used to work (dedicated 256k up/down, and burstable to 1.5mbit if it's available... but some different rates in those places, especially on the high end). I'd be willing to wager this is quite possible (for 3g/4g/lte as well as cable/dsl/etc), but is just "too complicated" to market to people (quantity, 2gb/month, is easier to grasp than throughput, 256kbps; and they are very very different forms of measurement, with the former barely meaning anything - if you do all your downloads at 3am, you'll still hit your cap even though there was loads of extra bandwidth).

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you're in favour of false advertising so long as you stand to benefit from it?

It's rare to find such an upstanding citizen!

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[aevan]

So you're claiming they haven't gained more customers, and so the congestion is entirely the amount downloaded, and not that downloading increased, coupled with there now being many more users fighting for that same finite bandwidth?

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's the other way around. When you're getting 10 Mbps, the unlimited users are only getting 1 Mbps. They throttle the top unlimited users more than they throttle other users.

When Verizon is throttling, yes. But I believe OP's point was that, absent all throttling, everyone should be getting the same speed.

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[Kielistic]

Apparently they were not "good enough" when the customers signed up. They cannot offer the advertised service. If cable TV quality degraded as you watched it more and it was advertised as a certain quality of course they have the responsibility to upgrade. An HD TV signal doesn't drop to SD because you watched too many movies.

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you enjoy paying for things you do not use, does not mean that everyone should have to.

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[mrchaotica]

How is it the so-called "heavy users'" fault that the "light users" aren't using their fair share? The only difference is that "heavy users" are taking full advantage of our incredible technology and "light users" aren't.

In terms of policy and providing the maximum benefit to society, we should be encouraging what you call "heavy" usage to be "normal!"

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

Except what Verizon is doing is throttling only people with "unlimited" plans during peak times.

I think you misunderstand OP. What they are saying is that, if I am on an unlimited plan, and you are not, and we are both on the same tower sharing the same bandwidth, does the tower allocate 90% of the available bandwidth to me? If it does, then why? But, if it does not, and instead during times of non-throttling, we would each have 50% of the available bandwidth, then there should be no need to throttle.

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[Darinbob]

Internet service only downgraded over time (I thought verizon was internet provider not phone stuff, so I made a mistake there). Early broadband adopters with cable modems got huge bandwidth, more than they could use. However overtime it degraded as more and more customers started using the shared lines because it was broadcast and not point-to-point links, and those early customers indeed started complaining.

My HD signal does drop in quality when the network is congested.

Now I do think the ISPs *should* upgrade their networks. However they don't have the legal requirement to do so, or the responsibility. If they want to be a substandard hated company then that is their right. And customers can decicde to change services. If they hate Verizon then they should drop Verizon.

Re:Equal Share of Bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

correct. It would be an easy distinction for the FCC to make: demand that the throttling algorithm be "fair", and include "stateless" in the definition of fair. They certainly give the impression that they don't think about these things as hard as the average slashdot commenter.

Re: Equal Share of Bandwidth

[bondsbw]

Correct, thank you.

And the FCC will do...

[Anonymous Coward]

probably nothing.

They were castrated during the Bush era and Obama has done nothing but continue down the same line.

Re:And the FCC will do...

[tarball]

So no comments?

This is a bipartisan problem. Both sides are lobbied.

tarball

Re:And the FCC will do...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's your own fault for voting for Bushbama.

Re:And the FCC will do...

[amiga3D]

It's congress that's the problem, not so much the executive branch in this case. Congress needs to gut these bastards but then they'd lose all the free trips and whores they've been provided.

Re:And the FCC will do...

[diamondmagic]

Um, remember the Broadcast Flag? The FCC claiming “ancillary” authority under the 1996 Tellecommunications Act to Regulate the Internet?

The FCC only exists to allocate RF spectrum and limit interference in it -- THE FCC IS NOT YOUR FRIEND (nor do you want them to be). They do not exist to make Internet providers do your bidding - if they're violating a contract (i.e. "unlimited" Internet), that's the proper role of the courts to enforce.

Re:And the FCC will do...

[tarball]

The FCC is not controlled by Congress. And the _engineers_ in charge of the commission were replaced by _appointees_ during the Bush administration.

Obama has done nothing to fix this problem. I won't comment on the motives of either president.

tarball

Re:And the FCC will do...

[tarball]

I responded in the wrong place before, the following should have been here..

----

The FCC is not controlled by Congress. And the _engineers_ in charge of the commission were replaced by _appointees_ during the Bush administration.

Obama has done nothing to fix this problem. I won't comment on the motives of either president.

tarball

Fucking with you because we can

[gelfling]

Now fuck off, little people and pay your bills.

Smithers, release the hounds.

I don't buy it

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember they're the ones that lied about Netflix data throttling then after they we're called out they tried to lie more.

Re:I don't buy it

[Austerity Empowers]

If you lie about lying that's like telling the truth.

sounds more like

[ihtoit]

1. incentive for customers to sue for breach of contract
2. incentive for customers to take their business elsewhere.

I have no sympathy for Verizon.

Re:sounds more like

[mysidia]

1. incentive for customers to sue for breach of contract

It's not breach of contract, because the contract and terms of use says they can do (basically) whatever they like in terms of throttling.

It is deceptive advertising, because they are selling it as an Unlimited service. The FTC should be on their ass for telling bold faced lies in the way they describe their service marketingwise and in the ad material.

Re:sounds more like

[ihtoit]

It becomes a contract when the offer is accepted. The offer is accepted on the understanding that the buyer is paying for something advertised which he thinks he's going to get, ie unlimited internet. Yes, it's deceptive if it then says in the terms of use that their definition of unlimited isn't the same as the dictionary's, but that should be made clear in the advertisement.
If I pay for unlimited and I don't get what I paid for - UNLIMITED - through the demonstrable fault of the provider, then that's a breach of contract.

Hutchison 3G say "Unlimited", and I have it in writing that when Three customers pay on contract or prepay for an unlimited internet package, that is what they get: no throttling or capping, PERIOD. That's after I told the CSM that I was pulling down over 20GB a *day*. That's TWICE THE *MONTHLY* CAP OF BT.

Re:sounds more like

[mysidia]

It becomes a contract when the offer is accepted. The offer is accepted on the understanding that the buyer is paying for something advertised which he thinks he's going to get, ie unlimited internet.

That would work, except the service is not governed by the buyer's informal understanding, since their signup for the service is commemorated by a formal written legal agreement, which takes precedence over other things the buyer might believe, unless the formal written document commemorating the agreement contains ambiguity in the formal terms of the form of contract which can be interpreted in the buyer's favor.

Re:Kinda like -

[ihtoit]

no this is winding your governor down the more you drive, so if you drive 1 mile to work the governor is wide open and you can drive as fast as you like, but if you drive more than 20 miles the governor is wound to half so you're stuck at 40mph, if you somehow manage to drive more than 100 miles after that the governor is set to 90% which means you're stuck at 5mph for the rest of the day. Good luck getting home before tomorrow.

ummm no...

[Anonymous Coward]

ummmmm.... did you happen to forget the part where they are paying for it??? You don't get to discourage anyone of anything they are paying for... plain and simple.

Re:Kinda like -

[mysidia]

Kinda like, getting into the car in the morning to go to work and being limited to 20mph as the roads are busy now.

No... it's like... the road sensor has detected that your vehicle has driven more miles in the past 30 days than 98% of the other vehicles on this particular road, therefore, whenever you happen to be on a side road at a junction, you will be given an automatic red light for an adjusted (increased) period of time in order to incentivize you driving fewer miles during rush hour.

anonymous coward? ignorant or complacent slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... switched networks don't work the way verizon just explained. Verizon is lying and apparently the FCC is to dumb to be able to fact check that with 10 minutes and google.

Re:Kinda like -

[mysidia]

so they won't let you on the bus as an "incentive" to ride less.

They'll let you on the bus. But they will always force you to get off at the next stop and drive away, so you have to wait for the next bus, in order to get to your destination.

No, you can't.

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon is trying to apply the FCC's cable modem rules...

"For example, if cable modem subscribers in a particular neighborhood are experiencing congestion, it may be reasonable for a broadband provider to temporarily limit the bandwidth available to individual end users in that neighborhood who are using a substantially disproportionate amount of bandwidth."

Except that they are explicitly forbidden from doing that on the 700MHz band:

... with its continuing obligation under the 700 MHz C Block open platform rules, [under which] Verizon Wireless may not deny, limit, or restrict the ability of end users to download and utilize applications of their choosing.

Verizon

[Narcocide]

Redefining "unlimited" to mean whatever the fuck we want it to mean. You think you're mad now, but wait until next month when we redefine "free."

Re:Verizon

[ledow]

Sorry, but do you live in the real world?

I've seen any number of products use the word "free" when they quite clearly aren't. Free* (Postage & Packing not included). Free to play. Buy one, get one free* (cheapest one only, some products not eligible, etc.). Free phone on our monthly contract.

The problem is not using the word "unlimited" or "free". It's not clarifying what you mean. Technically, an "unlimited" connection would have no upper speed limit either (that's a limit, isn't it?). One person could buy an "unlimited" account and supply the entire world.

It's deceptive business practice to use Unlimited or Free without clarifying what's unlimited or free. And there are advertising laws that say exactly how that has to be done. As a rule, any text larger than 12pt is probably not the complete truth, and anything less than 12pt will explain why.

Sure, it sucks, but "free" was already destroyed many decades ago. Unlimited is just the new free.

Such weasels ...

[gstoddart]

Verizon has indicated that its throttling policy is meant to provide users with an incentive to limit their data usage

This is mostly about the fact that their business model is based on over-subscription, and they make their money by lying about what they're really selling you.

A user who has paid for unlimited bandwidth doesn't want or need an incentive to use less bandwidth -- this is just weaseling out of the contract by making sure you can't actually get that unlimited data.

They feed us horseshit while smiling at us, and somehow they expect us to not notice.

Essentially Verizon are lying assholes who are trying to not actually give unlimited bandwidth, and they're trying to make it sound like it is for the customer's own good.

I hope the FCC sees this for what it is and smacks them down.

Of course, that would assume the FCC hasn't been taken over a by a former Cable and Wireless lobbyist who will support the corporations in anything they want.

The cable companies are lying assholes, but they don't need to worry about it, because the head of the FCC is on the payroll -- or at least needs to keep his options open for after he's done as much damage as his term at the FCC allows.

Verizon can cancel out of contract unlimited data

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume they dont because they would have to cancel them all, and they are making a net profit. Too many customers would probably turn over and it would be a net loss.

So they clearly just want to increase profits. But I don't think they can justified discriminating based on plan, especially with the restrictions on the 700mhz spectrum they purchased.

just call it what it is

[silfen]

Stop offering "unlimited" plans and start calling it the "2G" or the "5G" or the "500M" plan and everybody will be OK with it.

Re:just call it what it is

[Damarkus13]

They haven't offered unlimited plans for years now. This is about customers who are still on unlimited plans and haven't yet "upgraded" to a paid usage plan. These people are not in any sort of long term contract. Verizon could simply tell them, "Your unlimited plan is gone, pick a currently offered plan," but they don't want to deal with the PR nightmare that would spawn.

Re:just call it what it is

[Opportunist]

Odd, this is less of a PR nightmare?

It's really more acceptable for us to be browbeat into leaving our home than to be evicted?

Re:just call it what it is

[Damarkus13]

Long-term? I don't think so. But, no one really likes Verizon anyhow and they are currently dealing with a competitor who is aggressively trying to poach their customers. Add to that their claim that 20% of their customers are still on unlimited plans and it does become understandable why they might opt for the path their taking.

I don't think it mean what you think it means.

[freeze128]

http://www.merriam-webster.com...

Re:I don't think it mean what you think it means.

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Unlimited is not un-limit-ed? Inconceivable!

I would rather pay for a set bandwidth cap

[mrflash818]

I would rather pay for a set bandwidth, unlimited usage at that bandwidth level, than "faster, but you get charged penalties for exceeding your monthly cap."

My DSL used to be unlimited, _real_ unlimited, and I miss that type of service/honesty/product.

Flipside...

[Anonymous Coward]

Customer lowers payment to provide incentive to not be douchebags.

How is this different?

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon has for the most part ignored the FCC requirements for the 4G spectrum they bought. You can't connect compatible devices to the the Verizon network until they approve of the device. There are already additional restriction on the unlimited users of 4G against tethering.
And while the well "we/you need to not be their customers" sentiment is great, for many of the users they are the only reliable network available in their area.

Re:How is this different?

[Opportunist]

Ìf it was at least reliable... but for some they're the ONLY fucking network available.

The cynic in me would say "hence they can even drop the reliable part"...

Re:Kinda like -

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda like, getting into the car in the morning to go to work and being limited to 20mph as the roads are busy now.

Hmm, I guess that is how it works.

That is exactly how it works, haven't you ever driven in rush hour traffic? Some days I'm lucky to hit 20mph.

Loony as a tune

[jtownatpunk.net]

Verizon is just plain psychotic. When they were advertising the upcoming 4G LTE service years ago, their advertising copy said users would be able to stream video and download HD movies. All kinds of wonderful things that weren't possible with the new caps they'd put on 3G. Then they rolled out LTE with the same caps as 3G. So, sure you could download Air Bud in HD but that'd be your data for the month.

Now they're all excited about XLTE doubling (or more) the speed available thru Verizon's network. I've seen those speeds and they're amazing. Absolutely freaking amazing. And totally useless to anyone without an unlimited account. WTF is a new customer supposed to do with 80 Mb/s down and 40 Mb/s up? That's the kind of speed I saw near Atlanta. Holy Hell, that's fast. Faster than any wired service I've had. And totally useless if you can only move 2 gigs a month. Why are they spending all this money speeding up their network when it's wasted on their customers. It's crazy.

And the numbers Verizon is throwing around don't make a lick of sense. (Of course, I can't find the exact numbers now so I'll guestimate.) They say around 20% of their customer base still has unlimited data. They say 95% of those people use less than 5 gigs of data per billing cycle. If those two statements are true, why is Verizon upset? They should be ecstatic. They cut off unlimited data in 2010 so they're claiming an amazing retention rate. And the vast, vast, vast majority of those people are overpaying for what they use. And they're paying full MSRP for unsubsidized equipment. Why on earth would Verizon want to rock that boat?

Re:Loony as a tune

[Narcocide]

Why on earth would Verizon want to rock that boat?

For the LOLs?

Re:Loony as a tune

[Opportunist]

Just to force a car analogy, what good is a Ferrari if all you get is a gallon of gas?

Re:Loony as a tune

[evilviper]

Why are they spending all this money speeding up their network when it's wasted on their customers. It's crazy.

If customers are stupid enough to pay more money for the faster speeds that they aren't allowed to use, then Verizon would be stupid not to take their money...

Re:Loony as a tune

[Andrio]

I would say that they build speed for two reasons.

One is marketing. It looks better in marketing to advertise SPEED in big letters, and use words like FASTEST and MOST POWERFUL.

The other is overages. If they give you tons of speed but a tiny limit, you run over your amount fast, then they get co charge you 10 dollars per GB.

Re:Loony as a tune

[Anonymous Coward]

Why on earth would Verizon want to rock that boat?

They're only rocking the boat if the FCC actually does something.

Given the FCC's gloating after their tiny impotent wrist-flick when they tried to hold vzw to their 700MHz obligations over tethering apps and failed, vzw is probably playing this right. Sorry your regulator sucks so much. Move to Europe.

Well there is an issue with cellphones

[Sycraft-fu]

You may remember the Shannonâ"Hartley theorem from engineering class as it relates to the bandwidth of a given channel. Well with radio transmission, this becomes something you really have to think about. SNR is set by environmental noise and FCC transmission limits. Spectrum is something you only have a license to a small amount of. As such, the total bandwidth you can put out has a hard limit on it. Everyone on a tower shares that bandwidth and there's just nothing you can do to increase it. You can't "lay more fiber" or "use another laser" or anything like that which you can do on wired connections. On a given segment, there is just only so much bandwidth nature and regulations will let you have.

So the more grabby people get with that bandwidth, the less there is to go around. If someone is using as much as they can because they have their phone hooked to their computer doing torrents, that slows everyone else down, even if you are are just using it in small spurts to check your e-mail.

That's the thing with RF communications. There is only so much spectrum that is useful (different frequencies have different transmission characteristics), everyone wants a piece, so there is only so much you can get, and everyone on a given system shares the same stuff. You have to share and play nice, you can't just build out more capacity to easily solve the problem.

It is realistic to tell a cable company with an overloaded segment "just allocate more channels to DOCSIS" because they can do that. They have the bandwidth on the wire. You can't tell the phone company "just use more spectrum" because they only have so much they are licensed to use.

Re:Well there is an issue with cellphones

[whoever57]

Sharing the finite bandwidth amongst customers is fine. Giving a lower share because that customer is on an unlimited contract is where the problem lies.

Re:Well there is an issue with cellphones

[ortholattice]

Spectrum is something you only have a license to a small amount of. As such, the total bandwidth you can put out has a hard limit on it. Everyone on a tower shares that bandwidth and there's just nothing you can do to increase it. You can't "lay more fiber" or "use another laser" or anything like that which you can do on wired connections. On a given segment, there is just only so much bandwidth nature and regulations will let you have.

The solution is to add more cells (towers). That's the whole idea behind cell phones. How do you think the humongous bandwidth used by say downtown Manhattan cell phones is achieved?

Re:Well there is an issue with cellphones

[currently_awake]

Available user bandwidth = total tower bandwidth / number of users. Given that total tower bandwidth is limited by spectrum allocation the easiest way to increase user bandwidth is to reduce the service radius of the towers (by having more towers, each cell smaller) so that the number of users per tower is smaller. The cheapest way is to throttle users. If the cell companies don't feel like spending to upgrade their network to be sufficient to handle what they are selling then they should find a way to get rid of those pesky unlimited contracts and meter everyone.

Re:Well there is an issue with cellphones

[stephanruby]

Well with radio transmission, this becomes something you really have to think about.

[...]

So the more grabby people get with that bandwidth, the less there is to go around. If someone is using as much as they can because they have their phone hooked to their computer doing torrents, that slows everyone else down, even if you are are just using it in small spurts to check your e-mail.

Unfortunately, that's not how this works in real life.

My so-called 4G "unlimited" plan from T-Mobile gives me 2.5 gigs per month of data (initially it was a 5 gigs cap), and then after that, it's supposed to give me 3G speed. But it doesn't, after my initial "unlimited" cap is reached, only Facebook works anymore, my email doesn't, google maps doesn't, and my web browser doesn't. And the 3G speed it gives Facebook is actually pretty good, it's good enough to download and upload many pictures, but that 3G speed actually works for nothing else.

Just take a look at this article which is not really very clear, I'll grant you that, but this will have to do because I couldn't find another corroborating source no matter how much I googled for it.

Facebook [...] is placing its own servers inside points of presence owned by ISPs to speed to delivery of its content to users in places around the world.

Unfortunately, the Facebook executive doesn't come right out and say it, because otherwise he would have said that Facebook is placing its own servers inside points of presence owned by ISPs, including the premises of cell phone network providers (those last words are my words, not his).

And of course, placing servers inside points of presence owned by cell phone networks should have very little to do with radio bandwidth. At best, it should only improve the latency and the speed a little. So I would argue that it's the money given to the cell phone networks that encourages the cell phone networks to assign higher priority to Facebook traffic after that initial cap is reached, and to slow down traffic to a standstill for any other kind of traffic at the same time that same cap is reached (despite what T-Mobile is claiming in its advertisements and in its plans).

Re:Well there is an issue with cellphones

[stephanruby]

Available user bandwidth = total tower bandwidth / number of users. Given that total tower bandwidth is limited by spectrum allocation the easiest way to increase user bandwidth is to reduce the service radius of the towers (by having more towers, each cell smaller) so that the number of users per tower is smaller. The cheapest way is to throttle users.

Along the same lines, when a cell phone network knows a tower is at full capacity, it should reject new customers that reside or work near such a tower.

Re:Well there is an issue with cellphones

[drinkypoo]

Along the same lines, when a cell phone network knows a tower is at full capacity, it should reject new customers that reside or work near such a tower.

Or instead of paying out massive executive bonuses while charging people for services they aren't providing, they could build up capacity, and never have a tower at full capacity.

Re:Well there is an issue with cellphones

[Anonymous Coward]

How much do you think a new tower costs? (not trying to be snarky, I know the answer but it would be interesting to know what you (or others) think it costs)

Re: Well there is an issue with cellphones

[bondsbw]

So the more grabby people get with that bandwidth, the less there is to go around. If someone is using as much as they can because they have their phone hooked to their computer doing torrents, that slows everyone else down, even if you are are just using it in small spurts to check your e-mail.

True, but that top 5% torrent user would not have any more of a detrimental effect than the guy who rarely gets online but happens to fire up youtube at that moment.

The bandwidth per user at any given moment is (total bandwidth / # users). It doesn't matter whether all those users download very little or very much during the entire month... bandwidth per user at any given moment would be the same.

So, why is there a need to throttle?

Re:Kinda like -

[currently_awake]

No, it's like the speed limit for sports cars is 20, everyone else can drive at 50. But only to ease congestion.

Well there is an issue with cellphones

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the fault of the end-user... That's their fault for selling it that way. Buy more spectrum. Do what you say you're going to do.

class action?

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems ripe for a class action suit. It kinda sucks that lawyers generally get disproportionate funds from a class action, but it can really make a poorly behaving company take notice. So, Verizon obviously misrepresented their level of service calling it "unlimited" -- if it was unlimited or even minimally limited it would at worst be subject to throttling necessary to keep the minimal subscriber at their bandwidth and at best subject to throttling only after "limited" tiers are throttled first. What about damages? Can we identify how much they were throttled? If not, I would say any time this throttling was in place they should only pay as much as the next non-unlimited level down the hierarchy. The difference should be the damages. I expect the differences would be a huge chunk of change for Verizon.

Keep voting, sheep

[ourlovecanlastforeve]

What I don't understand is how we're still allowing carriers to call their service "unlimited."

When I pay my water bill and I am told I get unlimited water, I don't expect the water company to decrease the flow of water to a trickle if I take too many showers.

If they did that, there would be an uprising.

When I pay the electric company for electricity I don't expect them to decrease the voltage on my line if I leave the TV on while I'm sleeping.

So... how is it that Verizon gets to tell me I am paying for unlimited data, but not provide unlimited data?

Where is the uprising for this lie?

Re:Keep voting, sheep

[Anonymous Coward]

When I pay my water bill and I am told I get unlimited water, I don't expect the water company to decrease the flow of water to a trickle if I take too many showers.

When I pay the electric company for electricity I don't expect them to decrease the voltage on my line if I leave the TV on while I'm sleeping.

That's the problem.
You don't pay a flat rate for your water or power supplies. If that were possible, some people would similarly abuse it by building fresh water cascades outside and leaving the air con on full blast with their windows open.

But ISPs got into this arms race which somehow led to all of them claiming unlimited internet.
Well, turns out a percentage of your users will push those claims to the limit, so if you promise you better be ready to back it up.

In Europe where advertising standards are more strict, nobody advertises "unlimited internet" anymore.
Mobile operators normally specify directly how much you're able to use before your service is cut off or throttled, and normal DSL calls it an "always-on" connection, and put a little star next to the advertised speed.
The little star then leads you to the small print which states that they'll throttle you if you exceed X amount of GB per month. Typically this is large enough that at least I've always found it to be pretty reasonable, i.e. nothing I've ever come close to even with regular torrenting.

Re:Keep voting, sheep

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet should be treated like electricity because the internet IS electricity.

Re:Keep voting, sheep

[CauseBy]

Yes. People who use disproportionate data thus clogging networks are assholes -- assholes who paid for the right to clog the network. It is absolutely impossible to blame the assholes for doing something they paid to do and were promised they would be allowed to do.

The problem is the stupid promise of "unlimited" bandwidth. That is both impossible and bad policy. If you want to use a gazillion gigabytes per minute, then the providers should meter out the bandwidth and charge your accordingly. They should stop using the "unlimited" lie and should begin having some tiny modicum of honesty.

When people have to pay for what they use, the natural cost-benefit analysis will mitigate over-use. When people are willing to pay for high usage, then providers will use the money to build more bandwidth. The only problem is the dishonest marketing which causes this whole mess.

Re:Keep voting, sheep

[Anonymous Coward]

capped unlimited data plans: either "unlimited" is a great marketinga term or they bought a paradox engine.

Re:Keep voting, sheep

[Anonymous Coward]

Presumably, your water and electricity consumption are metered, and somebody somewhere pays for what's clocked on the meter.

Internet consumption, on the other hand, works differently. For some reason that frankly escapes me, we've always vilified people who tried to charge for usage, which is how we ended up with "usage caps" instead. And the natural corrollary, "uncapped" plans - which have never once, not for one minute, stopped being an inherently and irredeemably stupid idea.

Re:Keep voting, sheep

[Rich0]

So what happens when everyone uses too much electricity? You get brown outs because too many people are taxing the system.

When was the last time you experienced a brownout in the US? It almost never happens. And yet, people complain about slow data service on their cell phones all the time.

The difference is that you pay for usage when consuming electricity. The only way you end up with a brownout is when everybody in a region has an unusually high demand for electricity, especially an unpredictable one. That almost never happens, because in the aggregate usage tends to be very predictable and the service providers budget to meet it. A brownout means lost revenue for the provider - they had an opportunity to sell electricity but were unable to do so.

With cell phones people sell way more service than they have the means to deliver, and then basically punish people for actually trying to use the service. Dropped voice calls were fairly rare even back in the old days of cell phone coverage when towers couldn't handle nearly as much traffic, because voice calls were billed by the minute.

The solution is simple - just charge for usage and get rid of flat-rate plans. Oh, and charge something reasonable - not measured in cents per kilobyte or some such nonsense. There are so few competitors that rates really should be regulated as they are with any other utility.

Verizon Math

[Anonymous Coward]

>a small percentage of the customers on these [unlimited] plans use disproportionately large amounts of data

There's always going to be a 1% that use more data than the other 99%. It's called "Math". I know Verizon finds that awfully difficult, but I would have thought they'd have upped their hiring requirements to include at least a minimum of a GED.

Give him the stick

[aoism]

DON'T GIVE HIM THE STICK https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Because we care

[pitchpipe]

"...our practice is a measured and fair step to ensure that this small group of customers do not disadvantage all others."

Because if anyone is going to be putting someone at a disadvantage, that's going to be us.

Sincerely,

Verizon

P.S. Fuck You

Sarbanes-Oxley?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the CEO and CFO have certified the financials (including all revenue sources), and then the company admits it hasn't built enough capacity for the plans that it's selling?

throttling thoughput

[Anonymous Coward]

We employ a choke hold to encourage our victims to use less oxygen.

Lawsuit waiting to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Wondering how long until someone sues them for breach of contract, because they are paying for unlimited access and receiving only limited one...

Actually, that's an incentive to use MORE

[Opportunist]

Because now people would have to download everything, e.g. while sleeping, so they can check whether they need it when they are actually at the machine. What I predict is people downloading everything that looks remotely like they might want to see it automated, e.g. while at work or sleeping, then checking it when they get to their machine, most likely throwing out 99%.

Well, at least that's what I would do.

If you dont want to offer flatrates.

[drolli]

Then dont offer flatrates. I am perfectly fine with paying per GB. But i am not fine with paying for a flatrate, and when i hit an (conditions undisclosed or changing) limit, the providers decides (based on his calculation what a GB *should* cost) to do weird shit with my packets.

That being said, I believe everybody would be better off without flatrates. The people who need much less transfer than the provider includes in the flatrate calculation, and the providers, since the people would really have incentives to reduce data (and peak) usage.

I would also appeciate a "slow flatrate" + "high speed metered" model where the *user* can select which protocols he wants to slow down and which are important. (O, i understand. That woudl get in the way of asking for the fees for quicker transport from the provider).

if i have this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

What they're saying is, it's unlimited, meaning no limit, but they want you to self-limit, and if you don't, they'll limit you, to incentivize you to self-limit your plan that has no limit, because it's unlimited.

I have an unlimited data plan...

[PhantomHarlock]

...but I actually don't use more than about 600MB per month on average. I could have a newer plan and it wouldn't matter, but they charge exactly the same for their lowest current data tier ($30/mo) as I am paying for unlimited. I'm keeping it on principle.

flawed measure

[SkunkPussy]

No matter how little bandwidth customers use, some of them will always be in the top 5%!

Re:flawed measure

[Anonymous Coward]

Even easier if you include all the dead, closed or inactive accounts!

Re: Kinda like -

[Anonymous Coward]

More accurately, you buy an unlimited metro pass, but they only let you ride the slow train instead of the crosstown as an incentive to ride less.

somebody sue them already

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way Verizon's going to stop throttling unlimited data users is if the unlimited users sued them for breach of contract. I wish to god someone would do that. Somebody please just sue them. Get representation from the ACLU or the EFF and sue them.

Kill auto-play videos

[Mr Z]

I'm not on Verizon, nor am I on an unlimited plan. Still, I seem to hit my bandwidth cap more regularly these days. What seems to kill my utilization these days are websites with auto-play videos that I can't kill simply by blocking Flash.

What's really annoying is that the videos load in the background, and on a few occasions, have started playing after I've already locked the display and set my phone down. I only notice them because my phone starts making noise (when I don't have it set to 'silent'). It kills my battery and eats the bits I paid for on the assumption I'd be using them for things I actually wanted.

I honestly don't have a problem with throttling actual abusers. But, modern website design seems to make "abusers" out of more of us than there otherwise would be.

For the unlimited crowd, perhaps there should be tiers there, also. How about two levels? The lower tier would be "no overage fees" unlimited, meaning you don't get random dings for going over arbitrary caps, but you might get throttled occasionally. Rather than a hard cap, there's a soft limit. The upper tier would be "no limits, no throttling," meaning you could stream all the video and download all the torrents you want, but you pay a significantly higher fee for it. I'd happily sign up for the former service just to avoid the fees associated with the occasional data-heavy month. Folks who want to treat their phone as a cable-less cable modem can pay a few bucks more to avoid the throttle.

I think the problem currently is that 95%+ fall into the first group, and the remaining 5% or fewer really need a different class of service. The current "unlimited" label doesn't really make a sufficient distinction between the two.

Of course, the cynical would point out that such a tiering system would open itself to a whole new brand of marketing abuse...

Re:Kill auto-play videos

[Mr Z]

Oh, and give me a way to say "Never play a video under any circumstances, unless I explicitly say 'play this video.'" KTHXBYE.

Re:Kill auto-play videos

[ruir]

I dont have the problem of the bandwidth per se, however I already too noticed there are a new class of "videos" that are specifically setup in web sites to evade your flash filters. In one particular case of a popular news site, I managed to track down the URL where they came from, and blocked it. On the mobile side, fortunately my phone does not support flash, and I dont want it to. Has anyone any hint how to block effectively those videos, stopping short of blocking javascript?

Re:Kill auto-play videos

[ruir]

What I do with sleazy sites, is just that I close them and do not come back.

Re:Kill auto-play videos

[Teun]

I see you need APK's hosts file :)

Re:Kill auto-play videos

[Mr Z]

Unfortunately, there isn't a way to determine a site is sleazy prior to clicking on a link.

Re:Kill auto-play videos

[Mr Z]

There are a couple popular news sites that seem to have moved to HTML 5 videos that don't need a flash plugin. I don't know how to block their videos on my phone. Turning off flash doesn't help, since it isn't involved.

The browser does have a switch between 'mobile' mode, which gives me a turn-of-the-century web browsing experience (not what I want), and 'desktop' mode, which usually (but not always) much better.

Re:Kill auto-play videos

[ruir]

I was forgetting the HTML 5 part...you maybe onto something. Dummy me have not remembered it sooner. Probably it is enough to block the video tag...

Re:Kill auto-play videos

[ruir]

Yes, but I close them in seconds. That ones that auto-play videos, and the ones that require me to like them in facebook to see some retarded joke. And weather.com I block everything except the weather, that site seems to have gotten out of idiocracy.

Re:Kill auto-play videos

[Mr Z]

Maybe it's AT&T's network, or maybe my phone (BB10), but the videos often don't load quickly enough for me to notice them until it's too late. My only hint is that the browser gets strangely unresponsive, and then 5 seconds later it pops over to full screen nonsense.

I've been known to just kill the browser app outright when that happens, as it's quicker than trying to get the video player to quit.

I freely admit that some of the trouble may be phone specific. Still, auto-play videos suck.

Re:Kill auto-play videos

[ruir]

often some shady pages leave behind some timer to open publicity. Not usual, but I have seen it happen.

Re:Kill auto-play videos

[Mr Z]

Could be. Most of the links I run into trouble with are from generic news aggregators. It isn't like I'm surfing the underworld or anything. I guess everybody's out for a buck these days, though.

Sell BandWIDTH not data

[sirlark]

What I don't understand is why they don't just make everyone's life easier and sell the unlimited plans by bandwidth, not 'data limit', i.e. unlimited 1Gb/s costs X, unlimited 2Gb/s costs more etc. Pay for your speed, and never sell more than some fraction of a towers total bandwidth, so that two or three big down loaders at once don't clobber everyone else.

Re:Sell BandWIDTH not data

[F.Ultra]

Because they want to fool you into thinking that you have bought an unlimited 100Gbps, just as long as you don't plan to actually use it.

Re:Sell BandWIDTH not data

[TheRaven64]

Because guaranteed bandwidth is expensive. Let's say you have a 1GB/s pipe from an exchange. That exchange services 100 users. You can offer them each 10Mb/s connections that you can guarantee that they'll be able to saturate. Most of the users won't be using it all of the time though, so you could offer them 20Mb/s and still be pretty confident that they'd all be able to saturate it when they wanted to. Even at 50Mb/s you'd probably be able to, but now there's the potential for 20 of the 100 users to consume all of the bandwidth, so you're a bit closer to a sensible limit.

Now, the sensible thing to do would be advertise two speeds, the guaranteed speed and the maximum speed. Unfortunately, this is really easy to game. An ISP would say 'well, we have a 1GB/s link, so we'll guarantee 10Mb/s and set the maximum to 1GB/s'. Then, however, no one would ever see the maximum. ISPs used to advertise contention ratios on ADSL, but they stopped for this reason: your 1:50 contention ratio looks really bad next to your competitor's 1:10 contention ratio, but they don't advertise that the contended link for them is a tenth the speed of yours.

Re:Sell BandWIDTH not data

[Imrik]

How do you know which tower a cell user is going to be using their data from? Keep in mind that people will tend to use more data when they aren't at home since they can't use their wi-fi.

Re:Sell BandWIDTH not data

[mrchaotica]

Maybe they should be forced to advertize link speed * contention ratio (i.e., only the "guaranteed speed") and anything you get above and beyond that is gravy.

Re:Sell BandWIDTH not data

[droptone]

ISPs used to advertise contention ratios on ADSL, but they stopped for this reason: your 1:50 contention ratio looks really bad next to your competitor's 1:10 contention ratio, but they don't advertise that the contended link for them is a tenth the speed of yours.

This only matters when there's competition tho...

Re:Sell BandWIDTH not data

[gstoddart]

What I don't understand is why they don't just make everyone's life easier and sell the unlimited plans by bandwidth, not 'data limit'

Because, selling more than what you have is profitable, and selling what you have is less so, and requires honesty in advertising.

What they're saying is that "unlimited" is a marketing term which really means "a bunch, but probably not as much as you think it means, and definitely not actually unlimited".

This is giving shittier service and claiming it's for your own good.

Re:Sell BandWIDTH not data

[Anonymous Coward]

Because guaranteed bandwidth eats into borderline criminal record corporate profits

Fixed that for you.

Build the infrastructure or die in your fabled 'free market' capitalism when competitors blow you out of the water.

Re:Sell BandWIDTH not data

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anybody ever heard of fair queueing?

Just don't cap anything and let it do its shit.

Re:Kinda like -

[TheRaven64]

Since we're in bad analogies, how about buying a bus pass and then having to wait for the next bus because the first one is full.

Disgusting

[goarilla]

They milk their data-usage plan subscribers as much as they can even going so far as reducing the bandwith of their premium paid-up front users.
And then they try to convince everybody it's for guaranting that everyone has (some) connectivity.
Douchebags ! Verizon customers vote with your money !

Re:Kinda like -

[N1AK]

A little pointless pedantry don't you think? If a bus company sold unlimited passes and did what you described they'd still be facing a class action lawsuit in short order.

Re:Kinda like -

[N1AK]

Since we're in bad analogies, how about buying a bus pass and then having to wait for the next bus because the first one is full.

I know you said bad analogies, but there's bad and false. In this case the bus isn't 'full' they're stopping you getting on the bus, which has spaces, so that they can ensure there is space for other bus pass holders that have used their pass less in the last few days.

More towers is not easy

[Sycraft-fu]

Not only is the cost non-trivial but there is the issue of where do they go? People don't like cell towers. They whine that they are ugly, they NIMBY about them. Now all in all it isn't a huge problem, you can find enough commercial properties that are happy to lease you space on their building. However if you want to build out past a certain point, you run out of good spots. It becomes harder, or impossible, to find more and more expensive to do so.

There's also the issue of interference and overlap, as well as cell hopping. There are practical limits to how small you can make a segment. You try and stick a ton of really tiny low power ones around and they'll start stepping on each other and phones may have fits as they hop all the time.

The real answer is what we have already: Short range wireless, aka WiFi, for higher bandwidth transfers in selected locations and longer range wireless for general coverage. I don't find my data cap of 1GB on Tmobile to be problematic because I use WiFi at home and at work. When there's an area I know I'll be in a lot, setting up WiFi is cheap and easy, not to mention faster.

The easiest way really is for people to just play nice, however some folks have a problem doing that. They get an entitled attitude and decide to use whatever they can (as you can see from other posts in this topic). That creates a problem.

Re:More towers is not easy

[jsepeta]

not me. put one on every block for all i care

Re:More towers is not easy

[mrchaotica]

Not only is the cost non-trivial but there is the issue of where do they go? People don't like cell towers. They whine that they are ugly, they NIMBY about them. Now all in all it isn't a huge problem, you can find enough commercial properties that are happy to lease you space on their building. However if you want to build out past a certain point, you run out of good spots. It becomes harder, or impossible, to find more and more expensive to do so.

You list a bunch of technical or economic concerns, none of which are even slightly relevant to the issue. The issue is that Verizon is acting UNETHICALLY, which should not be tolerated under any circumstances. The technical and economic concerns you mention are Verizon's problem, not its customers'.

Solution

[StripedCow]

The solution is of course to go back to the straightforward pricing model of paying per byte used.
That way, the provider has an incentive to make the communications as fast as possible (more bytes per second = more money per second)
And also, the market becomes transparent (consumers can easily compare between different offers from different providers, without complicated pricing schemes), and thus improving competition.

Verizon throttles Netflix too

[Gothmolly]

I have to use a VPN in order to get reasonable Netflix performance on my DSL line. WTF Verizon?

That is not why they throttle

[Grand Facade]

They throttle to get users to buy a new phone and re-up their contract!

incentive for corporate greed

[Anonymous Coward]

And the incentive of having to purchase our devices at full price or risk losing our "unlimited" data plan has nothing to do with profit either. ..

Bandwidth Costs the Providers Almost Nothing!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have worked for the largest ISP in the US in an engineering capacity and I can tell you that bandwidth is dirt cheap. Once the infrastructure is in place and peering agreements are made, it costs the ISPs next to nothing to operate. Don't let them fool you with marketing hype. The infrastructure exists in much of urban America already to give everyone 100mbit down and 5mbit up with no loss of infrastructural integrity. They won't because they are greedy capitalist thugs who want to please their equally greedy capitalist shareholders. I left this company because I thought they were largely immoral. Great engineering experience, but they were thugs nonetheless. I've since had my tastes soured and now pursue work with non-profits, where I have more latitude to work on things I enjoy and I make a difference.

Keep voting, sheep

[Anonymous Coward]

Because towers have limited bandwidth, and when you have several people taking full advantage of all of the available bandwidth everyone else starts to slow down. I worked for a company that overloaded their cell towers. People everywhere complained because there was never enough speed and sometimes things were worse than dial up. Turns out, things were especially bad when folks were using torrents or other high bandwidth options during peak times.

That's ok I get it, it's not about everyone else, it's only about you. F everyone, I want "my" data, and everyone else can fend for themselves.

Your analogy is a crappy one. So what happens when everyone uses too much electricity? You get brown outs because too many people are taxing the system.

You and several others are like a kid with an unlimited pass to ride on a 1 man roller coaster. F the rest of the folks, I'm going to ride this thing for 5 hours straight, because I can.

Look, I'm not saying that Verizon is in the right here with how they're doing things, but sometimes there are other sides that people seem to overlook when the perceived impact is "damaging" to their precious sense of self worth.

Unlimited data != unlimited bandwidth

[sureshot007]

Why is it that people think they deserve both unlimited data AND unlimited bandwidth? If you want to gripe that "I PAY FOR IT!", fine, here is your unlimited data. Just don't expect to be able to use all of the bandwidth while you are at it.

Offer to pay the bill with unlimited money

[stiggle]

but limit them to less than $10 a day.

Bullshit

[allo]

Think of all the wasted data, greenpeace will hate you!

Seriously. If its such a small percentage, which needs huge amount of data, they can provide it to them. There are a lot of people with unlimited data, who check their mail once a day. So the money is okay on average. Thats the whole idea of flatrates.

that word...

[kick6]

I do not think it means what you think it means. Throttling is a DISincentive to continue to use. Offering a discount for moderate consumption is an incentive.

the incentive is to leave Verizon

[jsepeta]

because Verizon sucks. as does AT&T, Comcast, and all the big ISP/cellular carriers.

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

We oversold our bandwidth so we've decided to maximize profits by ass-fucking-without-lube our customers who outsmarted us by taking us up on our offer for "Unlimited" data plans that didn't have our ass-terisks (yes, intentionally mis-spelled for the spelling nazis) next to them to redefine unlimited as limited.

False Logic

[NoseBag]

Yeah - they throttle back the well-behaved in order to "not disadvantage them".

D'uh?

Throttling users it the least of all evils

[scamper_22]

Network management is a real thing. Like any network (internet, roads, trains...) you need to manage it for load/safety...

Unlimited usage simply means that you can use it as much as you want.

I can use the public roads as much as I want. It doesn't mean there are no traffic lights, accidents, speed limits, speed bumps...

Throttling is going to happen. The only thing that matters is what kind.

Throttling specific content is probably bad policy as you can run into anti-competitive practice. Things like throttling netflix traffic as a cable company.

Throttling heavy users as network capacity becomes an issue (maybe > 70%) is probably quite sane.

This allows a simple billing policy as well. You don't need to worry about overage charges or anything like that.

Re:Throttling users it the least of all evils

[CauseBy]

No, metering usage is the least of all evils, because it's not evil at all. Sell bandwidth like everything else in the world -- the more you use, the more you pay.

Re:Throttling users it the least of all evils

[scamper_22]

why? In networked systems, there is no direct correlation between how much you use it and the cost of it once the network is built.

Re:Throttling users it the least of all evils

[CauseBy]

I don't even necessarily agree that there is no correlation between use and cost after the network is built, but even if I did that still leaves out the cost of building the network. If most users can fit comfortably in the existing bandwidth, but a few users are causing congestion requiring a network upgrade, then the cost of that upgrade is due to the use by those people. Hence, usage is costly. More to the point, metering is more straightforward and fair than throttling.

Re:Throttling users it the least of all evils

[Anonymous Coward]

Throttling heavy users as network capacity becomes an issue (maybe > 70%) is probably quite sane.

That could be sane, as long as it applies to all heavy users, not just those on an unlimited plan. If the same usage pattern on a metered plan doesn't get you throttled, the whole thing is just plain unreasonable.

Re:Throttling users it the least of all evils

[Anonymous Coward]

"I can use the public roads as much as I want."

Odd. My contract with federal, state, and local government doesn't include any wording that could cause me to think that, even in the large print. But my Verizon contract does. However, as others have pointed out, the error is mine, because I'm unfamiliar with what the meaning of "unlimited" means, as the meaning of that word is understood by Verizon.

Clearly, it doesn't mean, "having no limit, without limitation."

Re:Kinda like -

[CauseBy]

No. It would be like getting on the road, having it be 3/4 empty, but being forced to slow down because yesterday you drove a lot of miles.

And that wouldn't make any sense. All reasonable people see why that is stupid.

If the network is congested, fine,service will slow down naturally. That means there is no need whatsoever to limit bandwidth artificially.

The true solution is to sell the service honestly, which means metering it and never using the word "unlimited". Nothing in the universe is unlimited.

Fair enough

[FatAlb3rt]

Then provide an incentive for your low-usage users to stay that way. Maybe a bill credit.

[record scratch - room is dead silent]

What?

Re:Kinda like -

[Anonymous Coward]

These limits are only being applied to some customers, not everyone equally.

Wow...

[RobertM1968]

It's like they didn't even try to come up with a defensible or plausible reason. Reminds me of the old TV commercial parody with Lily Tomlin in it "We're the phone company..."

We're the phone company, and we don't care...

Fuck FCC

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck the FCC. I have a lot more trust in these companies than I do a government agency. That said, the courts better get these ISPs under control and fast. They are selling a fraud, and if you or I did that, we would end up in jail.

I would not be surprised to see people getting violent on the officers and bord members of these ISPs that do this, and frankly, they did it to themselves.

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Cox in northwest arkansas area just doubled my speed for free because I got a docsis 3.0 modem to replace my 2.0 modem. Funny thing is, the new modem was used and the precious account owner rented it and was not paid up (my wife's, we separated for a year so we could fuck new people. Wound up back together lol). They tried to block me activating it online but when I called them they didn't say a word and registered it to my account and took my speed from 30 Mbps to 60 Mbps. And when "super boost" kicks in I sometimes get 70 Mbps. Super boost is where they increase your bandwidth during periods of low use.

Guess it just depends on if you're lucky enough to have a major ISP that gets it servicing your area.

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be a regionally thing. All these big telecomm companies are managed in regions, states, and localities, so some areas may be better than others.

Interesting logic on their part

[Anonymous Coward]

The company explained that "a small percentage of the customers on these [unlimited] plans use disproportionately large amounts of data, and, unlike subscribers on usage-based plans, they have no incentive not to do so during times of unusually high demand....our practice is a measured and fair step to ensure that this small group of customers do not disadvantage all others."

So what would happen if most of the unlimited customers tried to use large amounts of data.
It would no longer be 'disproportionate' but rather the norm.

Would VZ have to make it work?

If they would, then what is wrong with a few folks using that B/W now?

If they would not, then what does unlimited service mean?
Maybe that you have the unlimited ability to try to use the service.
Except that that is what they are preventing these few from doing.

A fair definition of unlimited might be 'you can use all the bandwidth you can get, but if too many folks are try to use b/w at the same time we'll have to make you share fairly at that instant'. Hopefully, VZ can argue that this is essentially what this new policy does?

It's interesting to note that in the 90's the telco's faced a similar problem with POTS not being able to support dialup Internet service.
The POTS service was sold as unlimited and they had to make it work.
POTS service, wireless, and the Internet are in this boat because they use statistical multiplexing.
Making it work for POTS meant installing more equipment to improve the odds.
For wireless, that may be much harder?

Re: There is no incentive because they PAY for it

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, 50M/Second continuously would be approximately 3Gig/hour

Re:Kinda like -

[mysidia]

The large ISPs make you agree at signup to contractual language before you start. There is a requirement that you settle disputes using binding arbitration. There is language effectively prohibiting plaintiffs from joining together in a class action, which the courts have upheld as disallowing any class action lawsuits on the matter.

Also, the fine print within the contractual agreement reserves rights to throttle and manage traffic, so apparently breach of contract isn't something you can sue the provider for.

It does help reduce bandwidth use... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

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