Jump to content

Top 5% being throttled starting 6/1


Recommended Posts

I'm a truck driver. LTE is my main source of Internet. Downloading purchased movies/shows, Spotify, tune in, nbc live extra, netflix, YouTube, plus browsing, email, and social media can really add up. I run a few speedtests per day, usually when my connection goes wonky just to verify a site isn't broken, and it's in fact the connection. Also, I never have, nor will I ever tether illegally. Everything is through my phone. I'm just using my phone for what it is, and what it is meant for. Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of an office wifi connection for 8-10 hours a day.

You do all that while driving a truck? Impressive.

 

Try using your radio or satellite radio. Spotify/Pandora plays the same songs they do. Just a heads up.

 

I am on my phone all day, I stream music, watch a few netflix a month, do email and all the works. I am told I am glued to my phone.

 

I have never cracked 5 gigs.

 

Sent from my HTC M8

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In 4 days I used .92 gigs with Google play music streaming alone. Combined with the free Spotify promotion that Sprint is advertising my monthly usage will creep up to 6 gigs or so. It's very easy to get above 5 gigs if you have a long commute daily and use the above mentioned services with regular email and web browsing. Throttling would effect the very promotion Sprint is advertising with Spotify.

 

Sent from my SPH-L720T using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually, I think we are very sensitive to Sprint bashing. I think an equal amount of people hate on Verizon, AT&T and T-mobile. The entire industry has a bad reputation. Let the haters hate. Web blogs/sites are not representative of the average user.

I wasn't referring to people on this site. Just things I have seen and heard from the general public. Friends, family, other websites don't like Sprint. It doesn't bother me. That is their own opinion. But I do agree the industry has a bad reputation, we just don't know any better. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry, but being a truck driver without "the luxury of an office" does not entitle you to special wireless data privileges. You will not get much sympathy for that here. Millions of truck drivers before you survived on AM/FM and CB radio. So, with the new throttling policy, you may have to curtail your usage or have it curtailed for you. Those are the breaks. And if significant data access is that important to you, you may need to reconsider your chosen profession. People do that every day.

 

AJ

I never expected a harsh rebuttal from you, AJ. Unfortunately, data usage isn't one-size-fits-all, and I really don't care what presser tells me that "97% of Americans use less than 2gb, so you should, too!" Those "millions of drivers before me" didn't have the available technology at their disposal like I do in 2014. I guess I should switch jobs, or just sit in my truck miserable, and find a nice AM broadcast of a church sermon to "offload the network." I understand your concern, and firm stance on "data pigs," but please, take into consideration that not everyone is alike in their usage.

  • Like 13
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You do all that while driving a truck? Impressive.

 

Try using your radio or satellite radio. Spotify/Pandora plays the same songs they do. Just a heads up.

 

I am on my phone all day, I stream music, watch a few netflix a month, do email and all the works. I am told I am glued to my phone.

 

I have never cracked 5 gigs.

 

Sent from my HTC M8

Drivers have to go off-duty in their truck for 10 hours, by law. It's either that, or stare out the window.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmm but they pledge unlimited data and I thought the clearwire spectrum was to aid them to keep offering unlimited data.... Guess not

 

From what I'm reading...There are THREE versions of throttling...

 

Depending on if you are .... 1) A Top 5% user....2) A PRE-PAID ( Boost/ Virgin ) user .... 3) A NON-Top 5% user ( Contract or FRAMILY ) the throttling will mean something completely different to you.

 

My understanding is Sprint will temporarily throttle ( contract and framily ) users hooked to an overburdened site ( until it's not overburdened ) .. and even switching to another tower would return you to normal speeds.. 

 

In essences this makes sense.. If 4 guys are watching netflix on one tower and I can't even bring up Google on my web browser then this isn't fair to everyone else who just needs useable data..

 

For Sprint Pre-paid users service ( who have had throttling since 2012 ) .. that after using so much data ( 2.5 Gb) ...  now  these users the throttle will be put on more so then before.....and  Sprint prepaid users will have data throttled no matter what once they hit those limits....

 

Top 5%... Whats that mean ?  Are the top 5% using 20 GB a month or more?

It would have to be A LOT !!

 

I used a 3 or more Gigs last month.. and thats pretty low for LTE.. most of us just won't be in the top 5%..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry, but being a truck driver without "the luxury of an office" does not entitle you to special wireless data privileges.  You will not get much sympathy for that here.  Millions of truck drivers before you survived on AM/FM and CB radio.  So, with the new throttling policy, you may have to curtail your usage or have it curtailed for you.  Those are the breaks.  And if significant data access is that important to you, you may need to reconsider your chosen profession.  People do that every day.

 

AJ

 

 

Actually, it does entitle him.  It's somewhat profound you feel otherwise.  He is entitled to exactly what he signed up for - regardless of your moral issues surrounding unlimited data.

 

I think what he was outlining why unlimited data, a service that was offered to him by sprint, was important to him as a Sprint customer and why he was a Sprint customer.

 

Perhaps his point was - under the new data throttle policy (TBD on how it will exactly work) he will no longer be a Sprint customer and perhaps choose another wireless carrier that fits his needs.

 

What's interesting is that you constantly police S4GRU users into how they should use their unlimited plans (I am baffled that you would suggest he make a career change to access the internet).   If Vince was illegally tethering, I could see your point - he would be using the service in a way that Sprint did not intend and cannot support. 

 

If you feel Sprint shouldn't offer unlimited, perhaps you yourself should switch carriers.  Verizon does a good job of supporting the number of subscribers they have with enough capacity and data buckets to provide fairly reliable speeds.  Your carrier selection would more accurately reflect the way you feel the wireless industry should allocate capacity.

 

AJ - Sprint set a policy/plan to attract subs.  Now they are probably figuring out that the small portion of subscribers are causing extreme network degradation and that data usage trends are growing faster than the network can support.

 

I think the real issue is what what Sprint will do to manage the network over the coming years.  Will it always be 5%?  Will it morph into an actual GB limit similar to how AT&T killed unlimited (3GB then you are throttled)?  I think these are the questions we should be asking/discussing.

 

Normally, I wouldn't be this direct but I have a family member who is a truck driver.  It is an extremely tough job but some people really enjoy it.  I take great offence that you would actually suggest he find another job or use AM radio for entertainment when he has downtime.  He is doing absolutely nothing wrong yet you blast him on how he uses his sprint plan.

  • Like 17
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Drivers have to go off-duty in their truck for 10 hours, by law. It's either that, or stare out the window.

So when do you sleep? You stream while you sleep?

 

Sent from my HTC M8

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You do all that while driving a truck? Impressive.

 

Try using your radio or satellite radio. Spotify/Pandora plays the same songs they do. Just a heads up.

 

I am on my phone all day, I stream music, watch a few netflix a month, do email and all the works. I am told I am glued to my phone.

 

I have never cracked 5 gigs.

 

Sent from my HTC M8

Satellite and traditional radio stations play whatever they want, it may not be what you want to listen to. There's also areas where you cannot get an ok station (traditional), and in the case of satellite radio it requires special equipment and a paid subscription. Some members like myself are college students without a real yearly salary paying job. Personally if I shelled out to get satellite radio I'd either have to take cash that I'm using to pay off debt or try to work 40 hours a week while taking 20 credit hours of school. Also last month I used 6.48 gigs of data, the lowest I've used since I switched to Sprint in January. I don't tether my phone, I don't torrent. I stream Pandora 4-6 hours a day. I occasionally catch up on a TV if I had to miss it for whatever reason(no cable or satellite where I'm at), and I use my phone to read articles, check emails, general stuff. It's easy to get up around 8-12 gigs a month and I'd say 60-80% of my usage is on sub par 3g at home.

I get the whole offload the network frame of mind(and I do where I can), but there's times I can't and I'm not going to not use my phone because of that.. We pay Sprint for unlimited internet for usage on our phones, if throttling people like me down occasionally helps others have a better experience for a bit that's fine by me. Unless this turns into what AT&T did to their unlimited and they cut us to mediocre 3g speeds after hitting the "average users data cap." Then and only then will I be upset, if it's a more fair limit around say 12-15 I can understand that happening when Sprint becomes the colossal power house it will be and there are millions of more Sprint customers needing the bandwidth.

 

Thanks for reading my thoughts on this, I understand its a mini novel lol.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Satellite and traditional radio stations play whatever they want, it may not be what you want to listen to. There's also areas where you cannot get an ok station (traditional), and in the case of satellite radio it requires special equipment and a paid subscription. Some members like myself are college students without a real yearly salary paying job. Personally if I shelled out to get satellite radio I'd either have to take cash that I'm using to pay off debt or try to work 40 hours a week while taking 20 credit hours of school. Also last month I used 6.48 gigs of data, the lowest I've used since I switched to Sprint in January. I don't tether my phone, I don't torrent. I stream Pandora 4-6 hours a day. I occasionally catch up on a TV if I had to miss it for whatever reason(no cable or satellite where I'm at), and I use my phone to read articles, check emails, general stuff. It's easy to get up around 8-12 gigs a month and I'd say 60-80% of my usage is on sub par 3g at home.

I get the whole offload the network frame of mind(and I do where I can), but there's times I can't and I'm not going to not use my phone because of that.. We pay Sprint for unlimited internet for usage on our phones, if throttling people like me down occasionally helps others have a better experience for a bit that's fine by me. Unless this turns into what AT&T did to their unlimited and they cut us to mediocre 3g speeds after hitting the "average users data cap." Then and only then will I be upset, if it's a more fair limit around say 12-15 I can understand that happening when Sprint becomes the colossal power house it will be and there are millions of more Sprint customers needing the bandwidth.

 

Thanks for reading my thoughts on this, I understand its a mini novel lol.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

As a student, where are you 4-6 hours per day that you cant stream pandora on wifi?

 

People throw out these fantastic numbers of use per day, but there are only 24 hours in a day.  You cant dodge that fact.  Pandora uses around 30mb an hour based on everything I see online.  If you did 6 hours, thats 180 megs per day.  30 days of 6 hour use will get you to about 5.4 gigs, give or take.  

 

Thats assuming none is on wifi.  You also arent streaming movies or videos while streaming pandora.  At least one would assume.

 

People are acting like 5 gigs is a small amount of data.  For one person, not abusing the network through some less than ethical ways, it is a lot of data.  If a user abuses the network and their terms of service, 5 gb is nothing, as the will probably do 50+.  My point is, that for a legit user, 5gb is a lot of data to use.  You have to really try to hit that number.  The only way to really push that is if you tether legally off your phone, and all the data shows up in one pool of total monthly use.  

 

One thing most people could do, but dont, is set applications to only update over wifi.  That eats a lot of data per month for people.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No one is being capped at 5gb. All Sprint is doing is saying that if you happen to be in an overloaded site, your connetion may slow down a little. People are freaking out at this but normal network bandwith management requires setting priorities to work properly for everyone.

 

Currently overloaded sites suck for most users and are fine for a few users. They are trying to change the priorities so that the overloaded sites will suck less for most of their customers.

 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 using Tapatalk

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Since Sprint just granted every user 6 months of free premium access, I urge all of you who are beholden to pandora or even casually using Spotify to do Sprint and yourself a favor and USE the premium features.  

#1: Let the app cache data and

#2 create playlists and when on wifi or a good connection, DOWNLOAD THOSE PLAYLISTS. Not only saves network resources, but you get what you want without waiting. 

 

 Spotify's download feature uses improved compression, occupying less space than raw music storage. Even when casually streaming, I observe spotify to use significantly less data than pandora or other internet radio stations.  I've been a premium user for about two years and adore it. 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, as long as they don't throttle our slow a** 3G speeds in Cincinnati, I'm ok with it. Lol

But I agree with a few of the comments I've read, they haven't even finished the NV deployment and they are already talking about throttling speeds??? They are parting the Red Sea, yet again...

 

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess in the end, it all comes down to what sprint is going to consider an overcrowded site. And if they will raise the "power" usage of 5gb or more to 10gb or more. Some people are right, they are definitely saying that we should use our LTE because we pay for it, but then kinda saying we don't want you to use it.

 

But again, I stand by what I said earlier. This is not going to be 100% of the time. It is only during peak hours, on peak congestion sites. It is not going to be everywhere, and will change as soon as congestion dissipates, and/or you switch to a more suitable band. If this is necessary to maintain a usable service for everyone on the site, then I am all for it. Every provider will/does probably have this issue already, including the all might magenta god. There is only so much a network can handle before it starts crumbling. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry, but being a truck driver without "the luxury of an office" does not entitle you to special wireless data privileges. You will not get much sympathy for that here. Millions of truck drivers before you survived on AM/FM and CB radio. So, with the new throttling policy, you may have to curtail your usage or have it curtailed for you. Those are the breaks. And if significant data access is that important to you, you may need to reconsider your chosen profession. People do that every day.

 

AJ

On the other hand, he's not using the 20gb all on the same site or sector, so he's not over-burdening a sector for everyone around. Most of his usage is probably on highway towers, and the other users are switching sites so often that even if he was using all the available bandwidth on a site (he isn't) that they would be on a new site before they knew they were being affected

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On the other hand, he's not using the 20gb all on the same site or sector, so he's not over-burdening a sector for everyone around. Most of his usage is probably on highway towers, and the other users are switching sites so often that even if he was using all the available bandwidth on a site (he isn't) that they would be on a new site before they knew they were being affected

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Honestly, in his case I don't think he will experience any throttling. This is only if he comes across a burdened site. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just had my sister in law added when we switched to Framily two months ago. She is not technical automatically connects to wifi at home but is waiting usually about two hours a day for rides and uses data heavy then. She has been over 7gb the first two months on. I have had months well over that myself but now I work in my home office so I have wifi 90% of the time and still use 3-4gb.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On the other hand, he's not using the 20gb all on the same site or sector, so he's not over-burdening a sector for everyone around. Most of his usage is probably on highway towers, and the other users are switching sites so often that even if he was using all the available bandwidth on a site (he isn't) that they would be on a new site before they knew they were being affected

 

That seems statistically sound, but it is not.  Now, it would be relevant if there were only one heavy data user constantly moving in and out of various sectors.  That would geographically spread out the load, lessening the impact on other users.  But there is not just one heavy data user -- there are many.  And the odds are just as good that as one heavy data user exits a sector, another one enters that sector around the same time.  Basically, it is the law of large numbers.

 

Plus, I get the impression that Vince is consuming much of his data during mandated downtime.  So, he is likely parked within one sector for hours on end.

 

AJ

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On the other hand, 5 GB is pretty low...

 

Apparently, it is not "pretty low."  Rather, it is a telling statistic, if true, meaning that 95 percent of users consume less than 5 GB of macro network data per month.  It would be interesting to see the actual distribution curve.  My guess is that most of the top 5 percent is not just barely breaking the 5 GB barrier but instead pushing the standard deviations way out there past 25 GB.  

 

AJ

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Apparently, it is not "pretty low."  Rather, it is a telling statistic, if true, meaning that 95 percent of users consume less than 5 GB of macro network data per month.  It would be interesting to see the actual distribution curve.  My guess is that most of the top 5 percent is not just barely breaking the 5 GB barrier but instead pushing the standard deviations way out there past 25 GB.  

 

AJ

This is several years old (2011) mobile data consumption has skyrocketed since then. It also is an aggregation of all carriers by Nielsen. Sprint with the unlimited data could skew even higher, but at least it gives us some idea of what a distribution pattern may look like.

mobile-mb-usage-percentile.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a student, where are you 4-6 hours per day that you cant stream pandora on wifi?

 

People throw out these fantastic numbers of use per day, but there are only 24 hours in a day. You cant dodge that fact. Pandora uses around 30mb an hour based on everything I see online. If you did 6 hours, thats 180 megs per day. 30 days of 6 hour use will get you to about 5.4 gigs, give or take.

 

Thats assuming none is on wifi. You also arent streaming movies or videos while streaming pandora. At least one would assume.

 

People are acting like 5 gigs is a small amount of data. For one person, not abusing the network through some less than ethical ways, it is a lot of data. If a user abuses the network and their terms of service, 5 gb is nothing, as the will probably do 50+. My point is, that for a legit user, 5gb is a lot of data to use. You have to really try to hit that number. The only way to really push that is if you tether legally off your phone, and all the data shows up in one pool of total monthly use.

 

One thing most people could do, but dont, is set applications to only update over wifi. That eats a lot of data per month for people.

In a cave on campus(where all my classes are) that doesn't have WiFi but does have a sprint DAS since they sponsor our campus.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Apparently, it is not "pretty low."  Rather, it is a telling statistic, if true, meaning that 95 percent of users consume less than 5 GB of macro network data per month.  It would be interesting to see the actual distribution curve.  My guess is that most of the top 5 percent is not just barely breaking the 5 GB barrier but instead pushing the standard deviations way out there past 25 GB.  

 

AJ

I would whole-heartedly agree with this.  There are a lot of people that do stream Netflix at work (don't ask me how they have the time), but those users will easily bring the usage way up.  But I think there are A LOT of people that bring the average way down.  My mother in-law refused to upgrade her Verizon iPhone because she did not want to lose unlimited.  When I checked her usage, she was average 120MB a month.  I said there is no reason not to upgrade.  Likewise, my parents on Sprint do not want to give up unlimited data, yet only use 75-500MB a month.  So, while the average for data consumption might be 2.5GB, I think the median usage is probably below that ~1-1.5GB.  The average is probably being brought up by the extreme cases. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, I'm glad for "unlimited" data, but I never go over 2GB a month.  So I have no problem with something that's been in their terms of service for a while.  :-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In a cave on campus(where all my classes are) that doesn't have WiFi but does have a sprint DAS since they sponsor our campus.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

And in that respect, you are most likely not on an over burdened sector.  Being in the cave, on a DAS.  So you wouldnt get throttled anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...