Sprint Will Slow Down Speeds for Its Heaviest Data Users

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Beginning next month, if you are one of Sprint’s more prolific data use customers, you can expect to be throttled back to what Sprint considers appropriate usage.

The move is likely to upset some people, but may prove a necessary step for Sprint to maintain a consistent experience for the majority of its users
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Yeah, I'm on T-Mobile and realized I got throttled this month. I was initially upset. Then I went into my usage on the phone and realized that I had already used 3.64GB of data before I was throttled. So yeah, I'm good with that. Especially since I only pay $45 a month for unlimited talk/text/data.
 
throttle back the data, but the thing has still become a shackle. enjoy padding someone's pocket.
 
I have Sprint, and have had them for 14 years now. I always tell people: "it's easy for Sprint to offer unlimited data. The service is so terrible there is no way in hell you could ever go over 1 GB."

I have a Note II, so i have to pay an additional $10 for "premium data service" on top of my $70 a month plan. But their network sucks so bad, I doubt that I've ever used more than 600 MB. Considering they've been advertising 4G service for almost 4 yeas now, it would be really nice if they actually had it in more than a couple hundred cities.
 
Figures, as soon as I get 4g in my area and actually GET to use it for Netflix and HBO Go I'm getting capped.
F$ck this, they start throttling me I'm going to T-Mobile for $45 a month over the $100 a month I pay now and will just buy a Nexus flat out.
 
Speaking of bad service, For shits and grins I went into one of their corporate stores ran a speed test. The best I could get was around 3.2 mbps. Same test on my AT@T S4 phone 12.2 mbps... Yeah great fucking service. Even ran a trace route to google.com on one of their shitty ass mobile laptops between 250 to 1000ms. That is just fucking ass retarded. Latency/routing sucks ass. BTW this from Reno, NV. FYI Stay the fuck away from this fuck hole.
 
SGA76 said:
Figures, as soon as I get 4g in my area and actually GET to use it for Netflix and HBO Go I'm getting capped.
F$ck this, they start throttling me I'm going to T-Mobile for $45 a month over the $100 a month I pay now and will just buy a Nexus flat out.
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Exactly what I did. I was with verizon, and even after a 20% discount my bill was $98 a month. For just a single voice line, unlimited texting, and 10GB of data (that I never really used)


Yeah it was smoking fast, 20-40Mbit, but why the hell do I need that speed on my phone? I bought a Nexus 5 and went to Straight Talk. Unlimited minutes, unlimited text, and "unlimited" data. + an extra $50 in my pocket each month.

I had sprint for 2 years around 2010, sucked ass. Them saying they will slow down the heaviest data users? So that means the guy downloading his 2Mbyte work attachment gets throttled while they guy downloading the ascii erotica gets a free pass? That's about the level of what their network seems to be able to handle.
 
Do they still charge an extra $10 for that bullshit 4g even if they don't have 4g in your city? Reno I think is still 3g or at least a fake 4g. Only in certain cities i.e.. Las Vegas will you get real 4g out of them. This was a couple of years ago but who knows... fuck'em.
 
acidrain97 said:
Do they still charge an extra $10 for that bullshit 4g even if they don't have 4g in your city? Reno I think is still 3g or at least a fake 4g. Only in certain cities i.e.. Las Vegas will you get real 4g out of them. This was a couple of years ago but who knows... fuck'em.
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Heh. "real" 4G. No one has "real" 4G. The real 4G standard calls for 100megabit speeds in high mobility applications, and gigabit in low mobility applications. There's a reason "4G LTE" has the "LTE" after it...because it is a laughable place holder until real 4G can come about, and the cell companies wanted a good sounding marketing term.
 
Sprint is so slow to begin with. Their LTE could be up to 5MBPS but that is only if you are within half a mile of the antenna. I swear their LTE towers are very low power so 90% of the city is 3G (which is very very slow). Plus there are lots of dead spots. Sprint is a bill of rotten goods.
 
acidrain97 said:
Do they still charge an extra $10 for that bullshit 4g even if they don't have 4g in your city? Reno I think is still 3g or at least a fake 4g. Only in certain cities i.e.. Las Vegas will you get real 4g out of them. This was a couple of years ago but who knows... fuck'em.
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Yes, they even changed it to be $10 ("Premium data) for a smart phone even if the smartphone doesn't have LTE.
 
acidrain97 said:
Speaking of bad service, For shits and grins I went into one of their corporate stores ran a speed test. The best I could get was around 3.2 mbps. Same test on my AT@T S4 phone 12.2 mbps... Yeah great fucking service. Even ran a trace route to google.com on one of their shitty ass mobile laptops between 250 to 1000ms. That is just fucking ass retarded. Latency/routing sucks ass. BTW this from Reno, NV. FYI Stay the fuck away from this fuck hole.
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Don't ever take speeds at stores at the gospel, because typically they all are equipped with microcells which affect the score. For instance, do that at an AT&T store and you'll likely get 6mbps, which is their target QoS sped for HSPA+ phones.

Also reading up on this, it sounds just like what Verizon did with their highest unlimited customers. If you were in the top 5% of users, the minute you were seen on a congested site, you are throttled. Move away and the throttle is lifted. People didn't have a problem with that then, but they do have one now.

Before anyone say I'm sticking up for sprint . I use AT&T.
 
SGA76 said:
they start throttling me I'm going to T-Mobile for $45 a month over the $100 a month I pay now and will just buy a Nexus flat out.
Click to expand...

I upgraded to t-mobiles family plan last year when we decided it was time for the kid to have a phone, and wanted to upgrade the wife from her slider phone.

I went from $70/month from 500 minutes, limited text, and 2 GB data, to 3 phones, each with unlimited voice, unlimited text, and now 1GB data for $90

Bought 2 of the 16GB Nexus 4's when Google was clearing them out for $250.
If my 2 year old Samsung dies, I'll probably replace it with the Nexus 5 unless I can find something else close the that price.
 
Sprint's "unlimited" service was never worth the money, since we never got a usable signal anywhere we actually wanted to get online. I remember being amazed when I got fast loading webpages when waiting for my car oil change - I was impressed to see 9Mbps speeds on speed test...and never saw such fast speeds again, since I only get my oil changed once every 6 months. Apparently that was the only unloaded 4G tower in the entire area :(

I shopped around and discovered that I could get a similar plan (had 2 smartphones, each paying the $10 bullshit 4G fee) from Verizon for $20 less a month! Now we get usable-to-speedy 4G just about everywhere, and although my plan has a 4GB limit for two phones, we rarely exceed 2GB together. This makes me realize how stupid it was to be holding onto "unlimited" plans - unless you're a corner case, your data usage is relatively small and also fairly predictable.
 
carlbme said:
Yeah, I'm on T-Mobile and realized I got throttled this month. I was initially upset. Then I went into my usage on the phone and realized that I had already used 3.64GB of data before I was throttled. So yeah, I'm good with that. Especially since I only pay $45 a month for unlimited talk/text/data.
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You pay for "unlimited" and then you're good with getting throttled?
 
It's a couple years old, but I switched to T-Mobile when they started unofficially accepting iPhones (but still limited them to 3G).

sprint_speed_slow.jpg
 
Sounds like Sprint hasn't improved one bit since I dropped them for Verizon ~2011. The same non-existent 4G that they charge you an extra $10 for and the 3G that runs at dial-up speed with packet loss and latency. Instead of using whatever money they have to improve their network they succumb to bad business decisions like wasting it on the iPhone flop and now they want to buy Tmobile? Seems like Sprint is content with a business model of selling an a broken oversubscribed network based on empty Network Vision promises. The best thing that can happen is Google invest in Tmobile's network improvement and expansion, Sprint customer base jump over to Tmobile and Sprint goes BK so it can never buy and poison Tmobile.
 
carlbme said:
Yeah, I'm on T-Mobile and realized I got throttled this month. I was initially upset. Then I went into my usage on the phone and realized that I had already used 3.64GB of data before I was throttled. So yeah, I'm good with that. Especially since I only pay $45 a month for unlimited talk/text/data.
Click to expand...
You've been conditioned well.

3.64GB of data is not even a single DVD.

My biggest problem with these networks is that they love to advertise unlimited to get lots of people to sign up with them but then after they are baited they switch and come back with silent soft caps where you're throttled to hell.

They should just outright advertise it as 60GB a year (or 5GB a month with carry over), and you use it as you see fit, and then inform the customer that if they exceed that it either cuts them off or puts them on a slow speed until they buy more data.
 
Sprint's speeds suck, we all know this.

Their coverage is still better than T Mobile's and AT&Ts. When on tour, I set my Virgin Mobile phone to be a wireless hotspot so I could work on some stuff on my laptop while in the van. I had uninterrupted coverage on the interstate. Everyone in the van who was on TM or &T all ended up having to tether to my phone to have any internet access whatsoever.

I've since switched to Verizon and even had trouble maintaining coverage with them. Even when I'm in a big city. Dead zones for Data EVERYWHERE. Sure, I can make a call, but their data coverage is next to worthless at times.

My speeds were utterly terrible on Virgin but the coverage was still better.

The only way I would accept any sort of data limit on cellphone plans at this point is to sell speed tiers and not data overages.

Unlimited at 300Kbps, Unlimited at 500Kbps, Unlimited at 1Mbps, Unlimited at 5Mbps, etc... I want to be able to use my service without worrying about being charged more for anything.
 
I was with sprint for close to 10 years, I just never bothered to change carrirers, the perfect customer as it were, but it got to the point with my HTC Evo 4G (and no WiMax at any location I could find so no 4G) that any kind of speed was slower then my first dial up modem I actually used, which was a USR 33.6k... most speeds were in the 5-9k/s speeds... useless for anything but text, so I dropped them for T-Mo... much better, most places I hit 10-15Mb/s and at a friends house, 50 down 20 up... (and this was in San Bernardino) much better.
 
So I got a notification today on my Sprint Note 2, telling me that my area has been upgraded (miami), so while I'm driving to my first appointment this morning.... I tried to download an app from the play store.
Scout (15mb?) took over 10 minutes to download. That works out .2 Megabit/S. Fantastic 4g service, on a plus note it's about 4 times faster than the dial up I was using 20 years ago, it's just more than a 100 times slower than broadband. And in theory, I could download a single blu-ray in a month.

So I guess it's improving... at least I was able to get a signal.
 
So checking the Sprint website - it appears that the unlimited everything plan is $110 per month. Except now it's not REALLY unlimited - it's so many GB of data and then a throttle.

In other words - it's now the same thing as Walmart's straight talk plan.

Sprint - $110
Straight talk - $45

Talk about about a bait and switch :)
 
carlbme said:
Yeah, I'm on T-Mobile and realized I got throttled this month. I was initially upset. Then I went into my usage on the phone and realized that I had already used 3.64GB of data before I was throttled. So yeah, I'm good with that. Especially since I only pay $45 a month for unlimited talk/text/data.
Click to expand...

You do realize that you can download more data per month with a 56k modem, right?
 
Unlimited. Always. Forever.

Until we say otherwise...
 
Hmm and once FioS becomes available everywhere I wonder if Verizon and GOogle will do the same.

I love FioS had it when I lived in Europe, just a 24 meg line but ping times to even Scandinavia were 20ms, to Russia not even 100. It was amazing.
 
I'm on boost mobile, and terrible signal from sprint. Any other recommendations like ST?
 
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