Re: throttling, just got off the phone with Stewart Lyons

**howard** · 01-10-2012, 03:52 PM

I just got off the phone with Mobilicity's CEO Stewart Lyons. Among other things we chatted about throttling. He basically had 2 things to say about it. If you use more than 100MB/15 mins your account will be slowed down (he didn't say by how much). So, if you use on average more than 111 kb/s or 0.888megabits/s in a 15 mins period. Please note that these numbers are not set in stone and that they changed twice already.

The purpose of this is to stop people from using Netflix. They don't want you using Netflix on Mobilicity.

They also have a deep packet inspection box to stop people from using BitTorrent. Since there are many ways to mask your BitTorrent traffic the DPI box sometimes mistakes legit traffic for BT. The example he gave me was Blackberry Maps.

He also mentioned that the network is capped at 2 megabits/s. If you run a speed test won't get usually get speeds of much more then that.

Right now I'm testing this out. I'm streaming video from an IP camera at around 50kb/s. I'm also monitoring the bandwidth usage. I'll leave it running for a few hours to see how it runs. Then I'll in case the bitrate to something higher than 111kb/s and see what happens.

What do you think?

**UssjTrunks** · 01-10-2012, 03:58 PM

Do you know if Tune-In or other internet radio uses 100 mb/15?

**Mr Mystery** · 01-10-2012, 03:59 PM

Well thanks for the report Howard first off, secondly I find it interesting the change from Dave's HoFo meetup where he himself mentioned specifically using the connection for Netflix, but then again he is gone and things have changed. I think there are better ways to control usage though. Example being Wind/T-Mobiles method. As long as they can get things tuned properly as they have mentioned in the Mobi Ops thread it should suffice though. They have obviously reached a point where they know what kind of users/usage they want on the network and all else can well...

**howard** · 01-10-2012, 04:02 PM

Just tried it. Listened to the Fan 590 for a minute or two and it appears to use around 5 kilobits/s.

**cricketfan** · 01-10-2012, 04:06 PM

Sigh. Atleast increase the 2Mbps to 3.6 Mbps which was what it was when they started. Then if they get 100Mb per 15 mins, they can throttle the user. But cmon, why are they capping the speed so low for everyone.

P.S: I still think best and simplest option is to give max network speed till 5GB or something like that, then 256kbps till the end of their billing cycle.

**howard** · 01-10-2012, 04:08 PM

Okay, it's been around 15mins. I have the IP camera open in one window and 680 news in another (so I'm streaming 2 things at once). So far I've downloaded approx 50MB. So far so good. Later I'll try downloading more than 100MB/15 mins to see what happens.

**UssjTrunks** · 01-10-2012, 04:12 PM

Originally Posted by howard

Just tried it. Listened to the Fan 590 for a minute or two and it appears to use around 5 kilobits/s.

Perfect. That shouldn't be a problem then. Thanks for running the test.

**howard** · 01-10-2012, 04:34 PM

Okay, I'm firing up another stream - 2 IP camera streams and 680 news. Now I'm averaging around 93kb/s. I maybe leave this running over night to see how reliable the streaming is.

**nfq** · 01-10-2012, 04:44 PM

Originally Posted by UssjTrunks

Do you know if Tune-In or other internet radio uses 100 mb/15?

Internet radio shouldn't be affected by this. With Tunein on a BB: 128kbps stream is about 60ish MB/hr

As for this being a Data connection, it seems to me this is more a browsing connection than a true data connection as initially advertised.

Mr. Mystery nailed it when he said "They have obviously reached a point where they know what kind of users/usage they want on the network and all else can well... "

**HC - NO "i"** · 01-10-2012, 04:50 PM

Fellow HC,

Last week, when I tweeted back and forth with Stewart Lyons, he has never made the previous, more aggressive threshold clear. My guess was somewhere between 50 and 100MB per hour... then they have promised to fine tune the threshold. Are you tethering or everything on device?

Watch a few YouTube HQ videos or news from various mobile apps / sources e.g. France24 or DW-TV via SPB TV (about 350kbps) in the tow.

**Karala** · 01-10-2012, 04:55 PM

Thanks for the information. This doesn't sound very good. Not only a cap on speed but a slowdown after 100 mbs?! I guess this explains why I can't even download additional content for my purchased apps. If it's 600+ MB and the average speed is really slow to start with then I can't finish the download, it cuts off at around 150 Mbs. This isn't very reasonable at all. In other words, if you want to do anything beside watch a couple minutes of a video on Youtube you're outta luck. Guess this is their "within reason" on "unlimited".

Sent from my LG-P999 using HowardForums

**howard** · 01-10-2012, 05:06 PM

I'm tethering - my Galaxy Nexus is on my window and I'm using a laptop with the same bandwidth monitoring software I showed you when we ran our LTE test.

Originally Posted by HC - NO "i"

Fellow HC,

Last week, when I tweeted back and forth with Stewart Lyons, he has never made the previous, more aggressive threshold clear. My guess was somewhere between 50 and 100MB per hour... then they have promised to fine tune the threshold. Are you tethering or everything on device?

Watch a few YouTube HQ videos or news from various mobile apps / sources e.g. France24 or DW-TV via SPB TV (about 350kbps) in the tow.

**HC - NO "i"** · 01-10-2012, 05:11 PM

Fellow HC,

Good. When you are done with this set, try something on-device only.

**howard** · 01-10-2012, 05:14 PM

I forgot to mention that I'm running this test outside of Mobilicity's official coverage area. I have native Mobilicity coverage but it's not very strong (~ -95dmb).