Hello Everyone!
Today I’d like to talk about Bandwidth throttling. I figured with the way companies like
AT&T and Verizon wireless keep trying to charge more for less and the way our
smartphones require more and more data each day, some of you out there may become
victims of Bandwidth Throttling. But
even if you don’t become a victim, it’s still good to know what it is and how
it could happen.
First we need to go back and understand something. A couple of years ago pretty much all of these
companies offered Unlimited Data. But
even then it was never really “UNLIMITED”.
If they felt you were using up too much data they would Throttle your
connection, this means that they would slow down your connection like crazy making
it almost useless. It was ok because
they were technically still providing data, so you couldn’t say that they were
not giving you unlimited. With Android
phones and iPhones becoming so popular, their networks started to suffer
more. So now they had to throttle even
more than before. In order to get rid of
the confusion they decided to get rid of the UNLIMITED plans and give you
actual limits. So instead of paying $30
a month for UNLIMITED you were probably now paying $30 for 3GB of data. If you used more than 3GB they would charge
you something like $10 to give you another 1GB and so on. However, those of us who were customers before
the change had the option of keeping our Unlimited plans until we decide to
make a change on our plan, then we can only chose from the new plans.
The problem now is how some companies have decided to deal
with the UNLIMITED customers that have been there longer.
AT&T in my opinion is by far the worse. If you live in a city where traffic is pretty
heavy (internet traffic) then they’ve been known to throttle people on Unlimited
plans as early as 2 Gigs of Usage. So
you could be paying $30 a month for unlimited and your friend could be paying
$30 a month for 3GB and your friend can enjoy his 3GB but you are throttled after
2. This to me seems EXTREMEY unfair. Once you are throttled it stays like that
until the next billing cycle.
Verizon is also doing it but they are being somewhat nicer
about it. Normally they wait till way
past 5GB of usage (normally being key word here) before throttling and even
then they only throttle if the network in your area has very heavy
traffic. The good thing here is that as
soon as the traffic in your area dies down, you get back to your faster speeds.
T-Mobile also does throttling but they at least have the
decency of making it clear when it’s going to happen. Their limit is 5GB, once you pass that you
will get throttled.
Sprint is currently the only one that does not Throttle
you. Their Unlimited means unlimited . .
. . so far.
So do be careful when watching youtube videos on your device
or streaming music over Pandora and stuff like that. Remember that if there is a Wi-Fi hotspot in
the area you should always try and connect to that before doing anything that
consumes a lot of data.
Hope this has been of some
use for ya!
Javier Torres
AnarchyLive.com
