[OT] AT&T Throttling

Bob Sneidar bobs at twft.com
Tue Feb 7 16:45:16 EST 2012


It happened to me and, unless you are talking about a new policy, you are perhaps misinformed on some points. If you are in the top 5% of data users AT ANY TIME of the billing cycle, the first month they warn you that you will be throttled if it happens again. If it does happen again (and by the way let me reiterate that if it happens AT ANY TIME, including the first day of the billing cycle, where not much use *might* put you into the 5%) you are throttled for the remainder of the billing cycle. Afterwards your connection is restored, until it happens again. 

Furthermore, the speed they throttle you to is not 10 times less than the theoretical maximum, but close to 25 times. It's worse than modem speeds. I tested it by using a bandwidth metering app on both my iPad and my iPhone. The iPhone was clamped while the iPad was not. The speed test on the iPad revealed very close to the 3 Mbit capability of 3G. (We are VERY close to a cell site. It is on our roof!) The speed test on the iPhone however indicated that my down speed was 94 Kbit. That, dear friends, is abusive, and I have to think a breach of contract on their part. 

Of course, this kind of usage typically happens with tethered devices, but not always. It is however, clearly a policy intended to punish those with unlimited data plans, who have tethered their iPhones to take advantage of the plans, because the tethering is clearly not legally actionable. 

And while AT&T's official response is that they are trying to protect other users bandwidth against those who would overload the cell systems' data capabilities, studies done on the subject all seem to show that the cell system is far from reaching it's capacity. I can see a reduction in speeds something on the order of 5 times slower. This protects other users bandwidth while leaving the "offender's" connection somewhat usable. 25 times slower is, I assure you, hardly usable at all. 

You could never prove it in a court of law, but this is AT&T's, Oh yeah??!? Well take this!!!!" infantile response to the fact that they cannot enforce policy regarding the use of mobile devices. As an aside, I just got back-charged for a UVerse installation fee that the sales rep told me he waived. It didn't show up on the first or second billing cycle, but did on the third. That likely means some supervisor saw I had not been charged, and reimposed the fee. AT&T is a perfect example of how a company should *not* be run, but they are so big, and the damages to any one individual so small as to be unworthy of litigation, that they get away with it. 

Bob


On Feb 7, 2012, at 12:30 PM, Geoff Canyon Rev wrote:

> Have you read the latest on how AT&T is treating those of us hanging onto
> our "unlimited" plans? (I do the same thing) I've seen demonstrations of
> how they throttle your connection once you exceed about 2GB per month. You
> pay as much as someone with a 3GB plan, but beyond 2.1GB or so, you get
> roughly 1/10th the bandwidth :-/
> 
> gc
> 
> On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Bob Sneidar <bobs at twft.com> wrote:
> 
>> I rooted my iPhone ONLY because I could tether it without having to pay
>> YET AGAIN for the unlimited data I was grandfathered into.
> _______________________________________________
> use-livecode mailing list
> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com
> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences:
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode





More information about the use-livecode mailing list