Top 5% being throttled starting 6/1

[jamesinclair]

This is a genius move by Sprint. Utter brilliance. Think about it this way...

 

It does not affect 95% of their customers. So 19 out of every 20 customers will see no difference. None.

 

 

As I mentioned earlier, it does though. It affects everyones peace of mind. Even if you only use 1GB a month, you might have chosen Sprint because you COULD use more. You were paying for that safety buffer - and now it's gone. We all know of people who are completely bound to the idea of unlimited simply because of the possibility that they MIGHT one month use a billion gigs.

 

Theres people with 4 year old phones on Verizon who use 500mb a month but dont want to give up their unlimited just in case they ever need it.

 

It affects the reputation of the company. No longer is Sprint "truely unlimited". And I personally think thats a huge loss.

 

I fully expect Tmobile to roll out ads capitalizing on that,

 

Im not a shareholder, but if I were, id be nervous. I think this is going to put a serious strain on attracting new customers and holding onto existing ones.

 

Without "true unlimited" and without significantly different pricing, what competetive advantage does Sprint have overall?

 

If the REAL data hogs were an issue, than Sprint could have done something like set a 25GB limit. 5GB hits just a little bit too close to home, especially with AT&T and Verizon flooding the airwaves with ads that mention 10GB. Its apples to pineapples, but people see 10GB in one ad, they see 5GB in the AP headline....and they do the math. 10 > 5. Verizon > Sprint. For some (many) people, its that simple.

 

(And again, this is coming from someone who has never gone over 2.5GB)

[tampaflusa]

With more data intensive apps and normal web use 5 gig will be the norm soon imo. Like I said earlier just 5 or 6 hours on Google Music I used .92 gigs. I have wifi at home but don't at work, don't tether or hot spot I usually end up between 4-6 gigs a month.

 

Sent from my SPH-L720T using Tapatalk

[glenavo34]

http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/05/08/sprint-will-begin-throttling-the-top-5-of-data-users-in-congested-markets/

 

 

[kojitsari]

What kind of campus has Sprint DAS but not Wi-Fi? That sounds like a bad IT department.

 

AJ

They have WiFi, just not in this cave. It so happens to be where all classes pertaining to my major are. Everything is hardwired down there. I'm not complaining because literally no other carrier has service in there, everyone is jealous of my sprint service at school lol.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[cavendano]

As I mentioned earlier, it does though. It affects everyones peace of mind. Even if you only use 1GB a month, you might have chosen Sprint because you COULD use more. You were paying for that safety buffer - and now it's gone. We all know of people who are completely bound to the idea of unlimited simply because of the possibility that they MIGHT one month use a billion gigs.

 

Theres people with 4 year old phones on Verizon who use 500mb a month but dont want to give up their unlimited just in case they ever need it.

 

It affects the reputation of the company. No longer is Sprint "truely unlimited". And I personally think thats a huge loss.

 

I fully expect Tmobile to roll out ads capitalizing on that,

 

Im not a shareholder, but if I were, id be nervous. I think this is going to put a serious strain on attracting new customers and holding onto existing ones.

 

Without "true unlimited" and without significantly different pricing, what competetive advantage does Sprint have overall?

 

If the REAL data hogs were an issue, than Sprint could have done something like set a 25GB limit. 5GB hits just a little bit too close to home, especially with AT&T and Verizon flooding the airwaves with ads that mention 10GB. Its apples to pineapples, but people see 10GB in one ad, they see 5GB in the AP headline....and they do the math. 10 > 5. Verizon > Sprint. For some (many) people, its that simple.

 

(And again, this is coming from someone who has never gone over 2.5GB)

 

As a shareholder and as a customer I applaud this move.

For the last few years some sites have been over loaded that any attempt to even load the google home page would fail.

Now data works and people are afraid of a little throttling?

[Conan Kudo]

I was thinking thus was the case, but I wasn't sure enough of myself to post it. Thanks.

 

Robert via Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

The only beef I have with Sprint's new policy is that it skips connection redistribution and goes straight to throttling. It may be necessary, I don't know, but I would have appreciated the company at least making the effort to try to rebalance the load before going the throttling route. Especially when something like statistical analysis is used to trigger it (which means there's no fixed throttle point).

[jamisonshaw125]

As I mentioned earlier, it does though. It affects everyones peace of mind. Even if you only use 1GB a month, you might have chosen Sprint because you COULD use more. You were paying for that safety buffer - and now it's gone. We all know of people who are completely bound to the idea of unlimited simply because of the possibility that they MIGHT one month use a billion gigs.

 

Theres people with 4 year old phones on Verizon who use 500mb a month but dont want to give up their unlimited just in case they ever need it.

 

It affects the reputation of the company. No longer is Sprint "truely unlimited". And I personally think thats a huge loss.

 

I fully expect Tmobile to roll out ads capitalizing on that,

 

Im not a shareholder, but if I were, id be nervous. I think this is going to put a serious strain on attracting new customers and holding onto existing ones.

 

Without "true unlimited" and without significantly different pricing, what competetive advantage does Sprint have overall?

 

If the REAL data hogs were an issue, than Sprint could have done something like set a 25GB limit. 5GB hits just a little bit too close to home, especially with AT&T and Verizon flooding the airwaves with ads that mention 10GB. Its apples to pineapples, but people see 10GB in one ad, they see 5GB in the AP headline....and they do the math. 10 > 5. Verizon > Sprint. For some (many) people, its that simple.

 

(And again, this is coming from someone who has never gone over 2.5GB)

It doesn't effect my peace of mind. In fact, for most people who will not even notice it at all, it won't effect them either. It's the 1 person, out of 20 that will notice. The one person who uses excessive data. And lets reiterate this for the 100th time. This is only during peak congestion hours, when the network needs it most and when the excessive data user probably isn't getting much better speeds anyhow. I don't want to give up my unlimited data because I don't want to worry about having a damn data cap. Eventually I might have too, and I accept that. 

 

Sprint is unlimited, and like conan said, I am surprised they did not do this sooner. It's not a huge loss. It's 5%. 95% of people will not be effected by this at all. And if T-Mobile decides to rollout advertisements on that and spend more money that they don't have, then so be it. The data abusers (and you know who you are, so don't assume I mean everyone who has higher than usual data usage) will head on over to T-Mobile, free up some stress on our network and T-Mobile will start feeling the weight.

 

Sprint is doing everything in its power to manage its ever growing network. Throttling is an excellent way to manage congestion issues in areas that do not have b41 and b26 in place. And it's an excellent way to benefit the remaining large percentage of single band phones out there with people who don't want to upgrade to a triband device, or can not afford to yet. This is a solution. It's an actual solution that could and probably will benefit everyone, and everyone seems to be focusing on the select few that might be effected. Lastly, this is ALOT better than having data caps and ACTUAL throttling. I'll take this over that anyway.

[milan03]

It doesn't effect my peace of mind. In fact, for most people who will not even notice it at all, it won't effect them either. It's the 1 person, out of 20 that will notice. The one person who uses excessive data. And lets reiterate this for the 100th time. This is only during peak congestion hours, when the network needs it most and when the excessive data user probably isn't getting much better speeds anyhow. I don't want to give up my unlimited data because I don't want to worry about having a damn data cap. Eventually I might have too, and I accept that. 

 

Sprint is unlimited, and like conan said, I am surprised they did not do this sooner. It's not a huge loss. It's 5%. 95% of people will not be effected by this at all. And if T-Mobile decides to rollout advertisements on that and spend more money that they don't have, then so be it. The data abusers (and you know who you are, so don't assume I mean everyone who has higher than usual data usage) will head on over to T-Mobile, free up some stress on our network and T-Mobile will start feeling the weight.

 

Sprint is doing everything in its power to manage its ever growing network. Throttling is an excellent way to manage congestion issues in areas that do not have b41 and b26 in place. And it's an excellent way to benefit the remaining large percentage of single band phones out there with people who don't want to upgrade to a triband device, or can not afford to yet. This is a solution. It's an actual solution that could and probably will benefit everyone, and everyone seems to be focusing on the select few that might be effected. Lastly, this is ALOT better than having data caps and ACTUAL throttling. I'll take this over that anyway.

 

I'm not buying a theory that "data abusers" will go to T-Mobile and all of a sudden make Sprint's network perform like a champ. Doesn't work that way. T-Mobile has been gaining millions of subs over the past year, has almost the same amount of subs as Sprint, unlimited data, and consistently the fastest LTE network in the nation. It's actually getting faster as they're widening LTE channels according to netindex.com .

 

On the other hand Sprint's subs base isn't growing, Sprint's been bleeding millions of subs over the past year, and the network is consistently the slowest, with highest latency. So that theory doesn't really fly anymore.

 

Nothing will make Sprint's LTE super fast until they actually upgrade that backhaul, add B41 to capacity strained sites, and densify the LTE grid. That needs to happen ASAP.

I wouldn't worry too much about throttling already strained network. That isn't a solution to this problem. 

[lordsutch]

The only beef I have with Sprint's new policy is that it skips connection redistribution and goes straight to throttling. It may be necessary, I don't know, but I would have appreciated the company at least making the effort to try to rebalance the load before going the throttling route. Especially when something like statistical analysis is used to trigger it (which means there's no fixed throttle point).

It's entirely possible Sprint is doing connection redistribution behind the scenes, but not sending out press releases to that effect.

[COZisBack]

I said it once and I'll say it again.... Where else are you going to go? It's still the best situation. Since this statement will once again be ignored, let me figure out a completely random example that will make no sense.... Alright let's go.

 

So it's like your 16 years old. Your parents told you that you could hang out all night as long as you don't get in trouble. Well guess what, you started hanging out with that one girl. Now you're doing all type of things, (you know what you did), now it's time for your parents to pull back on the reigns.

• If your parents are AT&T and VZW, you must be in the house AND in the bed by 9PM every night.
• If your parents are Sprint, you must be in the house by 9PM BUT you're allowed to stay up and watch TV until Colbert goes off.
• If your parents are T-Mobile, they're meth smoking hippies, that go to every backyard punk rock concert where everyone is slamming 8-balls of meth and streaking through the streets. You can decide to stay out all hours of the night, but you run the chance of running into your parents at 3AM as they're tripping ballz down 11th street.

I don't know about y'all, but I'll stick with my Colbert.

[COZisBack]

It's entirely possible Sprint is doing connection redistribution behind the scenes, but not sending out press releases to that effect.

 

Agreed.

[Destroyallcubes]

I said it once and I'll say it again.... Where else are you going to go? It's still the best situation. Since this statement will once again be ignored, let me figure out a completely random example that will make no sense.... Alright let's go.

So it's like your 16 years old. Your parents told you that you could hang out all night as long as you don't get in trouble. Well guess what, you started hanging out with that one girl. Now you're doing all type of things, (you know what you did), now it's time for your parents to pull back on the reigns.

• If your parents are AT&T and VZW, you must be in the house AND in the bed by 9PM every night.
• If your parents are Sprint, you must be in the house by 9PM BUT you're allowed to stay up and watch TV until Colbert goes off.
• If your parents are T-Mobile, they're meth smoking hippies, that go to every backyard punk rock concert where everyone is slamming 8-balls of meth and streaking through the streets. You can decide to stay out all hours of the night, but you run the chance of running into your parents at 3AM as they're tripping ballz down 11th street.

I don't know about y'all, but I'll stick with my Colbert.

Colbert did a semi funny part on T-Mobile lol.

[utiz4321]

If you are talking LTE, those sites were already nearing capacity. There you go. This throttling policy may help to "fix" that. Sprint cannot just wave a magic wand and say, "Abracadabra, let there be faster data for everyone all the time!"

 

AJ

That is true, but they are sitting on a ton of unused or underused spectrum and NV is taking far long than it was billed by sprint, so let's not let them off the hook so easily. That said this change seems like a reasonable network management tool, but for me if the number of over burdened sites I run into degrades my service to the point it isn't working for as a consumer I have choices.

[S4GRU]

As I mentioned earlier, it does though. It affects everyones peace of mind. Even if you only use 1GB a month, you might have chosen Sprint because you COULD use more. You were paying for that safety buffer - and now it's gone. We all know of people who are completely bound to the idea of unlimited simply because of the possibility that they MIGHT one month use a billion gigs.

 

Theres people with 4 year old phones on Verizon who use 500mb a month but dont want to give up their unlimited just in case they ever need it.

 

It affects the reputation of the company. No longer is Sprint "truely unlimited". And I personally think thats a huge loss.

 

I fully expect Tmobile to roll out ads capitalizing on that,

 

Im not a shareholder, but if I were, id be nervous. I think this is going to put a serious strain on attracting new customers and holding onto existing ones.

 

Without "true unlimited" and without significantly different pricing, what competetive advantage does Sprint have overall?

 

If the REAL data hogs were an issue, than Sprint could have done something like set a 25GB limit. 5GB hits just a little bit too close to home, especially with AT&T and Verizon flooding the airwaves with ads that mention 10GB. Its apples to pineapples, but people see 10GB in one ad, they see 5GB in the AP headline....and they do the math. 10 > 5. Verizon > Sprint. For some (many) people, its that simple.

 

(And again, this is coming from someone who has never gone over 2.5GB)

 

If you need peace of mind, then churn.  And see what the other carriers do to your Peace of Mind.  Even Tmo does the same thing according to Conan Kudo above.  He is the closest equivalent to S4GRU over at Tmo.

 

Robert

[S4GRU]

That is true, but they are sitting on a ton of unused or underused spectrum and NV is taking far long than it was billed by sprint, so let's not let them off the hook so easily. That said this change seems like a reasonable network management tool, but for me if the number of over burdened sites I run into degrades my service to the point it isn't working for as a consumer I have choices.

 

They are rolling out all that spectrum.  But they need relief now while they are rolling it out.  They can't roll it all out next month.  It will take years.  And it will also take years for people all to buy Triband devices.  But 3G and Band 25 LTE are jammed up now.  

 

And it only effects the 1 in 20.  If you are the 19 in 20, don't need to worry.  If you are the 1 in 20, and you can't live with the throttling when you are on an overburdened site, Sprint actually wants you to churn.  And we all want you to also if you are the 1 in 20.

 

Robert

[WiWavelength]

If you need peace of mind, then churn.  And see what the other carriers do to your Peace of Mind.  Even Tmo does the same thing according to Conan Kudo above.  He is the closest equivalent to S4GRU over at Tmo.

 

I do not get the impression that jamesinclair is concerned about peace of mind for himself.  Rather, he thinks that Sprint should be concerned about the peace of mind of many current and potential subs.  I agree with him to an extent.  This will affect some perception of Sprint -- even among the 95 percent who will be unaffected.  But network congestion also affects the perception of Sprint, and it affects the perception of Sprint among basically everyone.  So, Sprint needed to do something.  Taking action is better than doing nothing.

 

AJ

[utiz4321]

They are rolling out all that spectrum. But they need relief now while they are rolling it out. They can't roll it all out next month. It will take years. And it will also take years for people all to buy Triband devices. But 3G and Band 25 LTE are jammed up now.

 

And it only effects the 1 in 20. If you are the 19 in 20, don't need to worry. If you are the 1 in 20, and you can't live with the throttling when you are on an overburdened site, Sprint actually wants you to churn. And we all want you to also if you are the 1 in 20.

 

Robert

I don't think sprint wants me to churn, they have made a calculation based on a cost benefit analysis and they believe the gain is greater than the loss. I am well aware sprint is deploying on all frequencies but I am also aware that sprint has not been deploying at the pace they had hoped.

 

High usage unlimited customers are not as negative for sprint as you might at first think. They are far less likely to churn and less sensitive to price increases. For sprint to lose this segment of the customer base because the pace of their deployment is not something they are happy about, but something they believe they have to do based on how fast they can meet data demand.

 

All things being equal they would rather keep high usage customers and have all their spectrum deployed then drive them away, hurt their reputation and struggle to finish NV late.

 

As far as what the other 95% customers, they want a good end user experience, if sprint delivers it through throttling or deploying their spectrum they don't care.

[S4GRU]

I think all of you who are in the 5% who don't like the new terms should churn. That will show Sprint.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

[Ascertion]

I am a somewhat heavy user but I only see good out of this. I've been out and about and sitting right next to a site with a -78dBm threshold pulling less than 1mbps on LTE at around 9PM so peak hours are over. The only logical excuse is someone is torrenting/netflixing all day and night on the dang thing. If it means I'll get even a steady 1mbps, I'm fine. I use most of my data loading pictures over anything else. I typically use on avg now about 2-3 GBs per month. Mostly on WiFi. I dislike those that cancel home internet because they have LTE at home. It just ruins everyone else's experience on Sprint in that area.

 

Sent from my LG-LS980

[utiz4321]

I think all of you who are in the 5% who don't like the new terms should churn. That will show Sprint.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

So I am confused about what your position is on unlimited data. Should people who are with sprint for the purpose of having unlimited data from a smartphone should not be able to use there device as they need it?

[S4GRU]

So I am confused about what your position is on unlimited data. Should people who are with sprint for the purpose of having unlimited data from a smartphone should not be able to use there device as they need it?

Unlimited is still in force. Even for the 5%. 95% are completely unaffected. But the 5% of highest users will still have unlimited data consumption that will only be slowed down when they are using an overburdened site. It's fair, reasonable and even Tmo is already doing it. And the ones who can't deal with it should go to another provider and experience the same thing or worse.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

[milan03]

Unlimited is still in force. Even for the 5%. 95% are completely unaffected. But the 5% of highest users will still have unlimited data consumption that will only be slowed down when they are using an overburdened site. It's fair, reasonable and even Tmo is already doing it. And the ones who can't deal with it should go to another provider and experience the same thing or worse.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

T-Mobile isn't throttling their $80 Unlimited Plans, but I see your point.

 

Throttling Unlimited data plans did help AT&T, to a certain extent.

[jamisonshaw125]

T-Mobile isn't throttling their $80 Unlimited Plans, but I see your point.

 

Throttling Unlimited data plans did help AT&T, to a certain extent.

According to Conan Kudo they do the same thing that sprint is going to put into place. They just didn't single out the top 5% of users.

[lilotimz]

T-Mobile isn't throttling their $80 Unlimited Plans, but I see your point.

 

Throttling Unlimited data plans did help AT&T, to a certain extent.

 

Weren't they traffic shaping a few months back and got caught by users?

[utiz4321]

Unlimited is still in force. Even for the 5%. 95% are completely unaffected. But the 5% of highest users will still have unlimited data consumption that will only be slowed down when they are using an overburdened site. It's fair, reasonable and even Tmo is already doing it. And the ones who can't deal with it should go to another provider and experience the same thing or worse.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

I agree with what you are saying, but the tone of your commits feel hostile to heavy data users. Sprint has already indicated that they plan to raise the price of unlimited data in the future, who do you think will be willing to pay those premiums but heavy data users? Traffic shaping should be apart of sprint plan to maintain network quality, but I am sympathetic to people who are worried in areas where the network seems to alway be over burned seeing there network experience degrade even further because they rely on mobile data more.

 

Especially when you consider that there would be far fewer over burned sites if not next to none if sprint had all the spectrum they plan to put in use in use. I get that Isn't possible and I am not saying sprint should already have everything deployed today. What I am saying is that if this negatively effects heavy users to the point that they have a bad network experience that is not ideal for sprint either. It is certainly better than everyone have a bad network experience but it is still not ideal.

 

The ideal solution is to turn Sprint's pile of spectrum into a network as soon as possible.