Verizon Wireless Caves To FCC Pressure, Says It Won't Throttle 4G Users 46
MetalliQaZ writes Verizon Wireless was scheduled to begin throttling certain LTE users today as part of an expanded "network optimization" program, but has decided not to follow through with the controversial plan after criticism from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler. All major carriers throttle certain users when cell sites get too congested, but Wheeler and consumer advocates objected to how carriers choose which customers to throttle. The fact that Verizon was throttling only unlimited data users showed that it was trying to boost its profits rather than implementing a reasonable network management strategy, Wheeler said.
what's this? (Score:4, Interesting)
A sensible decision from the FCC ?
Next you're gonna tell me they decided against the fast lanes?
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Verizon Wireless Caves To FCC Pressure, Says It Won't Throttle 4G Users - opting to strangle them instead.
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These fuckers just can't stomach the fact that I'm still on an unlimited data plan.
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And Verizon is basically pure, incorporated evil, so it all makes sense in the cosmos.
Re:English is so wonderful flexible. (Score:5, Funny)
I wouldn't be surprised if you told me that Verizon execs were carried around on golden chariots carried by starved eunuch slave children.
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Screw the 767, Google has a fight jet, or more accurately a Dornier Alpha Jet.
Hah! (Score:1)
GrumpyCatGood.JPG
I've been keeping an eye on my speed today, waiting to see the hammer come down but my connection kept chugging away. Got both 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows 10 at full speed.
Throttle, indeed (Score:5, Funny)
Verizon confirms new 'strangulation' policy.
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And then charge your estate for "early termination".
4G is Losing to Wifi (Score:5, Informative)
This is really just a PR spin on desperation. Verizon can't afford to alienate 4G users, they invested heavily in 4G (and dumped all new fios investments) because they thought 4G would be a cash cow. But all the data caps and throttling they've done have chased customers to free wifi hotspots and there ain't no reason to come back. [stopthecap.com]
Re:4G is Losing to Wifi (Score:5, Informative)
It's not PR spin. They're not allowed to throttle LTE service for grandfathered unlimited accounts. It's part of the agreement they made with the government when they bought the 700Mhz spectrum. They were probably hoping everyone had forgotten.
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It's not PR spin. They're not allowed to throttle LTE service for grandfathered unlimited accounts. It's part of the agreement they made with the government when they bought the 700Mhz spectrum. They were probably hoping everyone had forgotten.
What were the terms of that agreement, exactly? Because they sold the 700Mhz spectrum they bought to T-Mobile for $2.4 billion. Are they still bound by the terms of that auction, even though they no longer hold the fruits of that auction?
Re:4G is Losing to Wifi (Score:4, Informative)
As far as I know, they only sold their A and B blocks and still have the C blocks that they bought.
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I'd imagine that this problem will eventually resolve itself, as Verizon isn't letting users keep their $30 a month Unlimited data plans when they get a new phone on contract.
Sure, some people are willing to pay $750 for their shiny new iPhone 6 to keep their unlimited plan, but I'll bet that most rather get it for $199 on a new contract and get downgraded to a 2 GB plan.
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Yeah, and then you pay more in the long run because the 2gb plan actually costs more than keeping your old unlimited. Amortized over two years (average life of the phone) costs $10 more than my existing voice + unlimited data, plus an extra $15/month if you go over your cap (assuming you use 2.1gb every month) comes out to $240 more for just the plan + $360 for overages + $200 you paid for your phone = $800. Far under the $600 price tag for the brand new GS4 I bought over a year ago. For me, paying retai
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Unfortunately it hasn't stopped AT&T from throttling the speeds of their grandfathered unlimited plans. If you go over 2GB of data in a month, they throttle you to Edge speeds.
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They do throttle, but the threshold is 5GB. http://www.att.com/esupport/da... [att.com]
They also claim to only reduce speeds during network congestion (deprioritizing your traffic, essentially). In practice, I haven't noticed any slowdown. YMMV.
Re: 4G is Losing to Wifi (Score:2)
Verizon is bound by certain open access rules because of the 700MHz spectrum it bought. Apples and oranges.
AT&T has more latitude in managing its spectrum than Verizon does.
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I wonder how many people are left on those grandfathered accounts. The only way to stay on it is to continue to buy a phone outside of Verizon and swap in a sim card. As soon as you buy so much as a lollipop from the Verizon store you are switched to the new plan.
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Not true. You can buy your phone directly from Verizon. You have to pay full price, tho. I've seen me do it. When the S5 came out, I walked into a store (a real Verizon store, not a partner store) and explained that I wanted to make sure my unlimited data plan got transferred. Walked out 5 minutes later with unlimited data on my new phone and around $700 less dollars to my name. And I can use my old phone as a mini tablet.
The only time I've run into trouble was the last time I traveled internationally
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So if you hate the way the cellular oligopolists are fucking with us, you can stick it to them by running an openwireless.org wifi hotspot. [openwireless.org]
I wonder how he is... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Ignorance. The word for when you don't know something is ignorance. Negligence is the word for when parents don't teach their children basic vocabulary. Negligence.
Re:I wonder how he is... (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, he didn't actually do anything regarding throttling except to voice disapproval. As someone else mentioned, making noise and taking action are two different things, and so far he's really only done the former. It's an improvement over past chairmen, perhaps, but not something we should necessarily be satisfied with.
Damnit Wheeler (Score:3)
They throttle anyways (Score:1)
I do still carry an unlimited data plan. I have been tethering for free for a few years now too, (wifi hotspot, bluetooth and via USB cable). As I reach somewhere from 6-9GB per month now of data usage, I still have my connection but it is throttled from the typical 15-20mbps, to more like 500kbps or less.
They're already throttling... what's this stupid FCC BS about? They don't have control.
Telenor... (Score:2)
Holy inflammatory headlines, Batman! (Score:1)
"Caves to FCC Pressure"? Really?
Oh that poor Verizon, can't just exploit its customers like so many sheep to the slaughter, what is this world coming to.
Samzenpus is really trying to turn this place into FoxSlash, isn't he? This some of the most sycophantic corporate-asslicking prose I've seen here so far.
Thanks Wheeler (Score:3, Insightful)
While I still dislike most of the political rhetoric coming out of Verizon and Verizon Wireless, I have to concede that this is a huge benefit for me personally. I'm an unlimited 4G customer who uses my phone as my primary Internet connection (I pay an extra $30/month for the privilege of "legally" tethering via the built-in Mobile Hotspot app that comes standard with Android; the app is disabled if you don't pay up).
It's plenty fast enough for my needs, even when the network is congested. It's a perfectly viable primary Internet connection, with native IPv6, and can be shared with desktops, laptops, smart devices, tablets, and other phones using 802.11ac, Bluetooth, or USB RNDIS.
I'm perfectly fine with being temporarily slowed down if the tower I'm on is congested. All they have to do is use a fair queue algorithm, not too dissimilar to what the Linux kernel's I/O scheduler does. But what was being proposed was to single out unlimited data users who use more than a certain amount of data, and slow them down artificially even more than everyone else.
I think this brought me back from the brink of having to face the prospect of getting ADSL or cable again. The problem with these services, in my area at least, is that every time we've ever tried them, they prove to have about a 50% uptime. That is to say, they're very intermittently available. They may not go down for 2 weeks at a stretch every month, but you'll certainly experience 10, 20, or 30 different 2 or 3 minute dropout periods during the course of a single day; sometimes the dropouts are longer, and sometimes there are more or less of them. I experience nothing of the sort with LTE.
While it would take the construction of many more towers in suburban and urban areas to be able to offer *every* customer unlimited data on LTE (or even to increase the typical monthly cap from around 2 GB to around 200 GB), and some people think that it would require the construction of "too many" towers, I'm still glad that this decision benefits me.
I'm certainly not going to become a Verizon Wireless booster, singing their praises on high; but this gives me a little respite from the endless barrage of anti-consumer laws and corporate practices that have been coming down the pipe lately.
A little bit of sanity goes a long way, in this case. For me and thousands of others who still have unlimited data.
Thanks Wheeler (Score:1)
You're throwing away 30 dollars a month. Paying to have it unlocked doesn't make it legal. It's already legal.