Sprint Set To Throttle Unlimited Data Hogs

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I'm still trying to figure out who uses this much data on their phone? On average, how much do you guys use on your phone?

Starting Friday, the nation's fourth-largest wireless operator will begin "throttling," or slowing down, the connection speed for its heaviest unlimited-data customers, the company said. You really need to work to get in Sprint's sights, though. Customers won't see a slowdown until they hit 23 gigabytes in a month, or enough data to stream all five seasons of the HBO series "Game of Thrones." The average user consumes about 3GB of data per month.
 
I wonder what parts of the country Sprint has fast speeds?
In Hampton Roads, the speeds are really slow compared to the other carriers.
I'll sometimes use a friends phone to search for something since Sprint is pretty slow with their LTE here.
 
So in other words, Sprint users won't be able to discern a difference. :p
 
23 gigabytes enough to stream all 5 season of Game of Thrones?

I would consider 700 megabytes / episode poor quality, which would add up to roughly 35 gigabytes, if each season has 10 episodes... I guess it all depends what res, quality, codec, etc.
 
These are people who use their cell phone as their main source for internet.

I did it for a while with ATT when they had their unlimited medianet subscription (never got more than 3g) as the only connection I had was a shitty 15mbps line that really only maxed out at 5...
 
I know a guy who streams twitch all day long at work. He said over a period of about 40 hours a week, he hits around 18-20gb/mo.
 
I'm still trying to figure out who uses this much data on their phone? On average, how much do you guys use on your phone?

Starting Friday, the nation's fourth-largest wireless operator will begin "throttling," or slowing down, the connection speed for its heaviest unlimited-data customers, the company said. You really need to work to get in Sprint's sights, though. Customers won't see a slowdown until they hit 23 gigabytes in a month, or enough data to stream all five seasons of the HBO series "Game of Thrones." The average user consumes about 3GB of data per month.

Teenagers, especially ones that are tech-stupid?

Example. My nieces. There house has about a million connected devices. The girls will blow through seasons of whatever with hbo go or streaming on demand, or borrowed netflix accounts or whatever.

Despite me setting up their wi-fi repeatedly with all the pertinent details sharpied on their damn router. Their internet constantly "goes out". Their fix for this is to use the neighbors wifi... except when the device has a wireless data plan, that just slams into their data caps. If their LTE coverage were good enough, and they had tablets with LTE, they'd owe a couple million dollars in overage fees. Their mother has popcorned herself into deep shit a couple of times.

NOTE: their internet has never failed to work for me once set up. I have yet to determine what psychotic stupidity the whole household gets up to.
 
I normally use 4-6GBs/month. But a few times a year I have to travel for work or take the family on trips and ramp up to 20-30GBs using my hotspot for my laptop and the kids tabs. I'm on Verizon's unlimited data still and have never been throttled.
 
1.5 gigs a month, but I pay attention enough to only watch videos on WIFI.
 
The good ole "data hog" myth.

Sigh, it's like they think people are stupid enough to believe that.

Internet don't work that way.

Slow downs happen when they oversell their network and don't have the means to support all the people that sell it to, it doesn't matter "how much" people download but the fact that the network is congested.

Think of it like a roadway, now picture the fact that each lane can only hav ea maximum of one car per lane. You can sell it to two people and REGARDLESS of how much they "travel" on this road it will always be unclogged because you can support both people.

Now you sell it to a third person and when all 3 are on it the roadway becomes clogged, not because someone is traveling too much but because you no longer have enough lanes to support it.
 
My wife and I share a data plan and we've never broken 4GB combined in a month. I don't see how you can use that much data unless you're trying to run a business off your phone also.
 
How does anyone even use that much data in a month on sprint? No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't even break 5 gigs, their 56k speeds were terrible! LTE my ass.
 
I have T-mobile and was going to switch my wife and myself to 10GB a month each because it was cheaper than what we pay for unlimited. After looking at my wife's usage for the month I decided I better not. She used up over 16GB for the month. I am not even sure the month was over yet either.
 
P.S. She doesn't even use it for a mobile hot spot or anything. She watches a lot of shows on her phone though.
 
I rarely even come close to the 1gig a month I have from T-Mobile. The couple times I exceeded it toward the end of the month, they just throttle my connection for a couple days.
I'm on WiFi at work and at home, and really don't have the need to use the internet much when I'm elsewhere.
 
Most months I hit AT LEAST 100GB, along with another 80-100GB on my iPad.

bIYsFgh.jpg
 
Between Sept25 and now, I've used about 14.75GB of data.
Aug25 to Sept24: 19.45GB
July25 to Aug24: 16.41GB
June25 to Jul24: 23.2GB
 
I wonder what parts of the country Sprint has fast speeds?

25Mbps often here in Chicago. And I'm using Boost, which is undoubtedly capped compared to contract Sprint customers.
 
4pm. Right in the middle of the congestion period.

Still got 21Mbps with no bars.

Can we quit with the hyperbolic and ignorant remarks? Just because your connection sucks doesn't mean everyone else's should, too.

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Then again, your connection might suck because there's people using Sprint as tethered internet instead of switching to Wifi at home.
 
I was in a position where I had to use my service with sprint as my internet connection... Man that evo hated me, 54GB was the lowest I had in a month and that was limited by speed. My home connection I maintain 350-400gb a month pretty easy. There is a whole bunch of interwebs out there I must find!!!
 
23gb hah. Average 10 times that on vzw. No throttling.

Other choice for Internet is dial up or satellite, 10gb for $80. No thanks.

Moving next week where I can get 6mbps dsl for like $50/mo. Or just use my phone with a speed test of over 90mbps from the living room. What to choose???
 
I don't think I've ever used more than 2GB in a month.

Most months I hover at about 1GB.

I feel like I use my phone a lot, but I guess I'm either at home (on Wifi) or at work (on Wifi) when I do.
 
What hell does your friend do to "work"??

Customer care. He watches it while the customer complains about their bill or service or both. He doesn't pay attention to it all day, but it streams all day.
 
For those who this is the only internet they have and can get, I can see this as a problem. I'm sure this is what brought them to the unlimited plan to begin with.

This crap seems to go in phases.

Lets see if T-Mobile follows suit.
 
I'm still trying to figure out who uses this much data on their phone? On average, how much do you guys use on your phone?

Verizon in my town sucks so bad, I use it as little as possible. According to their maps I'm in the middle of a big 4G LTE area, but I spend 90% of the day on 1 bar of 3G signal. If I can't find a hot-spot I don't even bother trying to use the internet on my phone.
 
23 gigabytes enough to stream all 5 season of Game of Thrones?

I would consider 700 megabytes / episode poor quality, which would add up to roughly 35 gigabytes, if each season has 10 episodes... I guess it all depends what res, quality, codec, etc.

I kinda think you can tolerate a lot more compression on a 5" screen than on your computer or TV.
 
This is what I'm getting via tether on Sprint from work.

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The FCC speedtest on my phone reports MUCH lower.

Though that could just be shitty coverage at home.
 
I'm just wondering what part of unlimited data handset plan Sprint doesn't understand.
 
I really wish carriers would just drop the "unlimited (but throttled)", tethering addons and data caps bullshit.

Sell us speed tiers. Allow us to use it continuously. Price it by how fast it goes. And fuck off.
 
I really wish carriers would just drop the "unlimited (but throttled)", tethering addons and data caps bullshit.

Sell us speed tiers. Allow us to use it continuously. Price it by how fast it goes. And fuck off.

That sounds good on paper, but unlike stable wired connections, the uneven signal coverage and signal strengths of both towers and the receiving handsets would make it practically impossible to guarantee speed tiers. Top that off with having to integrate with 3rd party towers = difficult and costly to upgrade to. If they had some sort of real-time tracking of your data stream throughput, possibly they could charge based on your fluxating speed, i.e. you pay less when you get less speed because of congestion or weak signal.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but all the carriers will want to stretch out the life of their existing infrastructure as long as possible to make the most profit before having to upgrade.
 
That sounds good on paper, but unlike stable wired connections, the uneven signal coverage and signal strengths of both towers and the receiving handsets would make it practically impossible to guarantee speed tiers. Top that off with having to integrate with 3rd party towers = difficult and costly to upgrade to. If they had some sort of real-time tracking of your data stream throughput, possibly they could charge based on your fluxating speed, i.e. you pay less when you get less speed because of congestion or weak signal.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but all the carriers will want to stretch out the life of their existing infrastructure as long as possible to make the most profit before having to upgrade.

It might easy enough to do if Carriers weren't greedy douchebags.

Sell 1Mbps max download, provision for 3Mbps.

Sell 5Mbps max download, provision for 10Mbps. etc...

But they'd rather sell 5Mbps max and provision for 4.97Mbps max.
 
From internal Sprint information today, technically it isn't a hard throttle. It's like a QoS policy that turns on after 23GB of used data that reduces the priority assigned to you by the cell tower you are connected to. As long as you aren't on a congested tower, you won't even see any difference in max bandwidth. However during peak usage times on a congested tower, these users will not be given the same priority as other customers.

The lowest speeds I see on my device through the speedtest.net app on my device in metro areas is 12Mb/s. The highest I've seen was at just over 60Mb/s. I'd say I average around 20Mb/s. This is on a newer handset that supports LTE Carrier Aggregation though.
 
4pm. Right in the middle of the congestion period.

Still got 21Mbps with no bars.

Can we quit with the hyperbolic and ignorant remarks? Just because your connection sucks doesn't mean everyone else's should, too.

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Then again, your connection might suck because there's people using Sprint as tethered internet instead of switching to Wifi at home.

Lol, I had Sprint in California, it is the absolute worst carrier in California, Nevada and Arizona. Had it since WiMax and their so-called 4G LTE, and before you say "oh you were just in a spotty area", bullshit. I travel alot in SoCal and when I went to Nevada/Arizona, SPRINT SUCKS. That is all.
 
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