Do MVNOs get second class cell service?

[CA]

Just ran across this, and I know that some think VM gets slighted, so:

[top]Do MVNOs get second class cell service?

By: Andrew Moore-Crispin on July 27th, 2012
Posted in: Blog, Customer Experience, Making Sense

Comments: 6 Comments and 2 Reactions






We’ve fielded this question several times and we hear whispers that voice, text and data traffic from MVNOs like Ting get shoved aside, like so many serfs, in favor of the network operator’s own customer traffic.
There’s a certain dark logic to it: serve your customers first and best and let the rest sell the leftovers. However that doesn’t alter the fact that it’s not true.
The truth of the matter is, Sprint’s MVNO contract states that Sprint must provide its Customer MVNOs with service parity to traditional Sprint wireless voice and data service. It’s all laid out in very clear terms. Well, as clear as terms can be when lawyers come together to create a tome.
In short, Ting voice, text and data traffic gets equal priority on the network as all traffic is equal regardless of which customer is using it. Also, there’s plenty of bandwidth to go around. The LTE network that’s coming online, starting in major city centers, offers 10 times the capacity of 3G, which means there’s all kinds of room to grow too.
The problem is, the discussion of whether or not carriers throttle and traffic shape MVNOs on their network takes on a conspiratorial tone online. I know, it’s shocking! Suppositions get accepted as fact. Assumptions leap off from suppositions and next thing you know, it’s all true because someone read it on the Internet. Hopefully this helps to dispel the myth… though the truth is somewhat less juicy than the rumor in this case.

https://ting.com/blog/do-mvnos-get-s...-cell-service/

When Lte gets out better things will get interesting! I'm thinking of a Nexus 7 with a VM MIFI (or best deal)!

[gunterm]

VM is owned by sprint though, so they could legally do it...

[Churner]

Someone in this forum did a packet trace a year or so ago and claimed that VMUSA's Internet traffic is all routed through a proxy in Kansas. That result differed from their identical test of Sprint prepaid traffic, which was routed through a node in the user's city. Logically, just considering the amount of extra distance the packets would travel, that would result in slower connections.

[silentjudge]

Someone in this forum did a packet trace a year or so ago and claimed that VMUSA's Internet traffic is all routed through a proxy in Kansas. That result differed from their identical test of Sprint prepaid traffic, which was routed through a node in the user's city. Logically, just considering the amount of extra distance the packets would travel, that would result in slower connections.

This is unfortunately true for a lot of MVNOs. I've done some research into this on GoPhone, Straight Talk BYOD AT&T SIM, and Simple Mobile.

- Using GoPhone, my data was routed through Seattle whereas I'm in California. Postpaid AT&T users are routed through more local routes.
- With Straight Talk, all data is routed through either Chicago or Atlanta depending on if your using the mvno proxy server or not. But either way, your data has to go farther before it hits the public internet
(This is also applicable to AT&T MVNOs like Red Pocket, H2O Wireless, etc)
- I tested a Simple Mobile Prepaid Broadband plan and I recall my data going through some location outside of California, unfortunately I don't recall where
- I had a VMUSA Mifi for almost 6 months (later sold it due to declining data speeds). Data was indeed routed through Kansas although I think they later added another datacenter on the west coast.

Bottom line is for most MVNOs, don't expect your data to take the fastest path to the public internet. Your going to take a longer path which results in higher latency and thus lower download speeds and also slightly slower page load times.

Some reasons I can see them doing this is
1. Legacy systems, it was just setup that way. On AT&T Postpaid for example, the "pta" and "phone" APNs take a more optimized path/route than the older APNs. You get much better latency due to the shorter paths on these APNs.
2. It makes bandwidth usage accounting my easier plus it can be near real-time.
3. It makes it easier to throttle or cut off users (this may have been more so in the past)

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The only prepaid where I have received the same optimal routing as postpaid is on T-Mobile Prepaid and T-Mobile Prepaid Mobile Broadband.