AT&T throttles data speeds at 2GB

[RCtennis3811]

Well hell that speed is more then enough to stream music (like Pandora) and check FB or whatever.

Exactly. All last week, iheartradio constantly skipped and stopped to rebuffer in the car on my commute. I tried it this afternoon during rush hour and not a single skip!

EDIT: I experimented with Netflix over throttled 3G this evening and it worked fine. Just tried it again now and videos worked - the only problem is that it took 30+ seconds to start an episode of South Park. Once it started, there was only a little pixelation once in awhile, but it usually cleared up within a blink of an eye..oh, and there was only one pause to buffer once the video started that lasted for 5+ seconds.



That's it for me tonight..sorry for the constant posting; it's just nice to have an iPhone feel somewhat normal again!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[cleankutazn]

Nice, I wouldn't mind that speed at all...does google maps load fine at that speed?

[formercanuck]

Still seeing .2-.3Mbps throttled speeds, this time back at my place in Downtown Orlando. It sure makes streaming Pandora/iheartradio easier! Hopefully this sticks if the dreadful throttling "must" remain in place..




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Speeds have gone up to 280kbps here in SoCal. Sad thing was that I set my iPhone to 2g, and was getting better speeds than 3G. I might as well use 2g for streaming out here... It actually works decently.

[fraydog]

Maybe AT&T is adjusting the throttle speeds to be at least somewhat useful.

It's a start.

[formercanuck]

Possibly. I wouldn't be surprised if they were worried that users would turn to 'faster' 2G EDGE and take it down over 3G.

I was hitting 180kbps over EDGE while ~128kbps over 3G.

[fraydog]

Possibly. I wouldn't be surprised if they were worried that users would turn to 'faster' 2G EDGE and take it down over 3G.

I was hitting 180kbps over EDGE while ~128kbps over 3G.

My preference would be 384Kbps. That's the base speed of UMTS. At least that is fast enough to use basic e-mail and social networking. I could accept that.

Note, the author of this post has been throttled by Verizon, I was upset at first, but once I knew what the throttle was, I learned how to deal with it.

[formercanuck]

My preference would be 384Kbps. That's the base speed of UMTS.

I agree with you on that. It would also be nice if AT&T moved the throttling point to 3G to match the 'standard' package, but that will probably never happen, as AT&T would lose its 'incentive' (read method of pushing users off of unlimited to tiered)

[RCtennis3811]

My preference would be 384Kbps. That's the base speed of UMTS. At least that is fast enough to use basic e-mail and social networking. I could accept that.

I'd like that too. Having said that, .2-.3Mbps has been sufficient for Twitter, Facebook, 5 e-mail accounts, and more thus far. Funny how such a small increase makes a world of difference!

Nice, I wouldn't mind that speed at all...does google maps load fine at that speed?

I'm finding that Google Maps loads tiles much faster than it did a few days ago. It's more than acceptable now by any means.

[Trocks797]

I think 300-400kbps is just fine for most of what people want to do. Heck, back in early 2010 before Verizon came through my city to prep backhaul and towers for LTE, 500kbps was all we had. I never had a problem, or wished things were faster. Now we rock at 2.0+mbps on 3G and 40+mbps on LTE, but 90% of what I do on my phone works just the same. Tethering of course, and occasionally streaming is kinda limited with lower speeds, but if AT&T throttled to 384kbps, I bet there would be no reports blasting AT&T for throttling. I guess it would be better if they also only throttled on congested towers like VZW, but perhaps that will change with time too.

[DoctaMario]

Possibly. I wouldn't be surprised if they were worried that users would turn to 'faster' 2G EDGE and take it down over 3G.

I was hitting 180kbps over EDGE while ~128kbps over 3G.

Those are about my average speeds here at my apartment in Nashville anyway. I got a "You're approaching the upper 5%" text Sunday (I'm about to hit 4GB of usage), but if those are the speeds then it's probably not going to affect me much anyway. :P

[milan03]

I think 300-400kbps is just fine for most of what people want to do. Heck, back in early 2010 before Verizon came through my city to prep backhaul and towers for LTE, 500kbps was all we had. I never had a problem, or wished things were faster. Now we rock at 2.0+mbps on 3G and 40+mbps on LTE, but 90% of what I do on my phone works just the same. Tethering of course, and occasionally streaming is kinda limited with lower speeds, but if AT&T throttled to 384kbps, I bet there would be no reports blasting AT&T for throttling. I guess it would be better if they also only throttled on congested towers like VZW, but perhaps that will change with time too.

Also take into consideration how much your Smartphone experience differed back in 2010 from what you're doing in 2012. There are so many more rich media applications available to you today that you may be attached to vs back in a day.
That also speaks volumes how much data usage has increased in just two years. The ultimate goal is to take that home experience with you wherever you are. Throttling is basically killing that ultimate goal.

[veriztd]

That also speaks volumes how much data usage has increased in just two years. The ultimate goal is to take that home experience with you wherever you are. Throttling is basically killing that ultimate goal.

I think you are right on target. Unfortunately, the actual infrastructure has not been running a parallel course with the new data technology. I do blame the carriers for not keeping up in a more efficient manner. I see throttling as a band aid approach to a major, gaping wound. I am certainly giving any cellular carrier a pass in this case.

[GSMinCT]

I think you are right on target. Unfortunately, the actual infrastructure has not been running a parallel course with the new data technology. I do blame the carriers for not keeping up in a more efficient manner. I see throttling as a band aid approach to a major, gaping wound. I am certainly giving any cellular carrier a pass in this case.

No. The idea is not to take the entire experience, it is to stay connected. The concept that we will ever have unlimited wireless (actual unlimited) on the tier 1 carriers again is false. There is a limited amount of spectrum, and wireless data use is still growing a lot.

Data use is going up a lot. I know in my case, I started a couple years ago with an E71, that was like 50MB/mo on EDGE, now I have the iPhone, and my normal data usage is 300-400, and when I start working, it will be close to the limit of my plan (2 or 3GB) for streaming audio. However, we are never going to replicate the home experience on mobile with video or large downloads. It doesn't make any sense on tiny screens, and home broadband is faster anyways. What is happening is a shift of email and basic, quick web lookups to mobile, as well as in-car audio streaming and the like, all of which will collectively add up to a lot more data.

[milan03]

No. The idea is not to take the entire experience, it is to stay connected. The concept that we will ever have unlimited wireless (actual unlimited) on the tier 1 carriers again is false. There is a limited amount of spectrum, and wireless data use is still growing a lot.

Data use is going up a lot. I know in my case, I started a couple years ago with an E71, that was like 50MB/mo on EDGE, now I have the iPhone, and my normal data usage is 300-400, and when I start working, it will be close to the limit of my plan (2 or 3GB) for streaming audio. However, we are never going to replicate the home experience on mobile with video or large downloads. It doesn't make any sense on tiny screens, and home broadband is faster anyways. What is happening is a shift of email and basic, quick web lookups to mobile, as well as in-car audio streaming and the like, all of which will collectively add up to a lot more data.

"Stay Connected" was the slogan back in 2009 when most people were on EDGE networks and 1x. But looking back to 2007, Steve Jobs was already talking about the "Desktop Level Experience" when announcing the original iPhone.
Look, we can agree to disagree, but I suggest doing a research on Qualcomm, ALU, Ericsson, and pay attention to what they're talking about and trying to create.
Now the fact that Tier 1 carriers are having their own sets of issues is a completely different story and in AT&T's case, their LTE network is completely unloaded, and is mind boggling why would they cap their LTE users at 2.1GB point, all the way down to EDGE speeds in the year of 2012.

[formercanuck]

Carriers should look to how the Cable companies manage their DOCSIS networks.
Using 'schemes' like BOOST to help keep traffic normalized along with other forms of QoS should be used.
Not all traffic needs to be sucked in at +14Mbps or running all the time. Applications such as YouTube buffer in large chunks initially, then maintain a specific amount of buffered data. Items like this alone, help keep data from being wasted (why buffer a 10 minute YouTube vid if you only watch 30 seconds of it).

I would almost surmise that a large percentage of users wouldn't care if many apps like Facebook, email, Twitter ran at ~500kbps. Carriers could easily sell these packages, BUT, like Cable industry, 'faster is better' sells. Just take a queue from AT&T's LTE commercials... they're not selling plans, but speed.