Verizon changes it's unlimited plan, ALL video is now throttled

[normpearii]

26 minutes ago, Sampsy said:

$75 for that..... I'd laugh if it weren't so sad. It's time to launch a federal antitrust lawsuit against your telecoms companies and break them up. Seriously, write to your representatives - this is terrible for American consumers and the economy. 

Good luck with that. 


Nearly all of congress has someone involved with the big four cell providers and/or the large cable companies as their major donors.

[AnonymousGuy]

27 minutes ago, bimmerman said:

Well....this sucks, but I'm not switching off of my grandfathered Verizon plan. I get full 4G LTE driving to/from/at trackdays in the middle of nowhere, while everyone else I'm with on AT&T, T-Mo, etc have zero service. Verizon simply has coverage in the areas I go to fairly frequently, and the rest don't.

This is the line I always hear, but I don't see it personally.  Whenever I didn't have coverage, no one in my car had coverage with everyone on different carriers.  There were very small windows of time where I would have a couple bars, but we're talking 30 second windows before everyone else had coverage too.

[Exprima]

As someone that works at Verizon and takes great pride in it news of it this morning broke my heart. I've always taken pride in representing the best of the best, but I'm not so sure anymore.

[elkenrod]

Inb4 damage control statement from Verizon.

 

expect a mass exodus by customers who at least have a choice. 

[Lurick]

16 minutes ago, elkenrod said:

Inb4 damage control statement from Verizon.

 

expect a mass exodus by customers who at least have a choice. 

What choice?

All the other big carriers throttle just the same.

There's even talk that T-Mobile and Sprint will merge sometime this year or early next (I hope that doesn't happen which means it's all but guaranteed to happen )

[Donut417]

I see at lot of posts of people being pissed. T Mobile has been doing this for like ever. The only difference, T Mobile was up front about it. If you want higher res, you gotta pay for it. Ok no big deal. The fact is, these cellular data networks are not substitutes for a wired home internet connection. Even though for some poor bastards this is all they can get. I think this is indication that Big Reds network is not as great as they think it is. 

 

I think this is a fair price to pay, if you want higher res videos then use your homes internet connection.

 

From a happy T Mobile Subscriber. 

[Drak3]

40 minutes ago, Exprima said:

As someone that works at Verizon and takes great pride in it news of it this morning broke my heart. I've always taken pride in representing the best of the best, but I'm not so sure anymore.

Look at it this way: No bitching about service being about as slow as Jerry Smith during peak streaming hours.

 

And some services do this explicitly to avoid data caps and excessive buffering.

 

It's not like Verizon can just put up more towers to solve the limit of the frequency range available for them to use or interference.

[Not_Sean]

1 minute ago, Sampsy said:

 

Despite all the flag waving and ranting about the values of American society the U.S. public doesn't seem to actually give a shit, really about anything. 

The dumbing down of America is complete, and now we see the Results. 

[AnonymousGuy]

40 minutes ago, Lurick said:

What choice?

All the other big carriers throttle just the same.

There's even talk that T-Mobile and Sprint will merge sometime this year or early next (I hope that doesn't happen which means it's all but guaranteed to happen )

If they're all doing the same thing then I'll just take  my business to whichever fucks me in the ass for cheapest   Fully unlocked iphone, no loyalties to any carrier.

[Donut417]

50 minutes ago, Lurick said:

What choice?

All the other big carriers throttle just the same.

There's even talk that T-Mobile and Sprint will merge sometime this year or early next (I hope that doesn't happen which means it's all but guaranteed to happen )

Those rumors have been heard for a long time. The fact is Softbank wants the T Mobile leadership to run the combined company. Which might mean it wont be as bad. Though there will be layoffs of a lot of people which would suck. Hell, Softbank wants to merge Sprint with any company that would consider it. I think there was talk about Comcast or Charter merging with Sprint. Wall Street wants a merger. Shit, they wanted Comcast and Verizon to merge, because yeah, thats not a bad idea or anything. 

 

Until I hear official word, I take it with a grain of salt. 

[Jito463]

2 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

This is the line I always hear, but I don't see it personally.  Whenever I didn't have coverage, no one in my car had coverage with everyone on different carriers.  There were very small windows of time where I would have a couple bars, but we're talking 30 second windows before everyone else had coverage too.

It depends.  Smaller carriers will often buy access to the larger carriers infrastructure, so in that regards they do use the same towers.  In much the same way that a small local ISP will simply use the lines from one of the bigger providers.  The big guys (Verizon, US Cellular, Sprint, AT&T, etc) will have their own towers, because they can afford to and because it gives them a selling point when attracting new customers.

[Donut417]

7 hours ago, PCMasterDebater said:

Carriers share Cell towers.   Still don't understand.

While I think they lease some tower space from 3rd party companies. Ive looked up info on my local. towers. Yes, they are owned by the carriers. Besides the new one they are building. 

[Donut417]

7 hours ago, knightslugger said:

what do you suggest I do, given my needs for internet, and the reality of my situation, one which is shared 30 million fold?

 

My needs: Reasonable throughput for upload and download, reasonable latency, and uncapped unrestricted service.

My Reality: Live in the country, existing telecom older than my father, 10 properties on one road spanning 5 miles

 

>???<

 

Right now cellular service is was the only solution. now i don't have one. perhaps those telling us whiners to stop complaining know something we do not...? 

 

What chaps my ass probably just as much is that they are giving us far less quality of a product, and charging us the same as it ever was.

No offence you live in the sticks. What do you expect? The only reason Telephone wire is ran out to the sticks is because we the tax payers paid for it. Its not profitable for a DSL or Cable provider to wire you up. As DSL have distance limitations, and some DSL providers like AT&T and Verizon are selling off many of their areas or walking away from the lines period. Cable providers like at least 100-300 people on a fiber node. Plus there is distance limitations on coax as well I believe. Fiber is a no go as its hugely expensive, if it weren't, we in the city would all have fiber. 

 

If you want better service live in the city. Just pick the right city, as many only have 1 or 2 choices. When and if I ever buy my own house, ISP in the area will be a purchase factor. 

[bimmerman]

7 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

This is the line I always hear, but I don't see it personally.  Whenever I didn't have coverage, no one in my car had coverage with everyone on different carriers.  There were very small windows of time where I would have a couple bars, but we're talking 30 second windows before everyone else had coverage too.

I have ATT through work and Verizon that I pay for. At the track, my Verizon phone has full LTE. My ATT has maybe 1 to 2 bars. My friends on Google Project Fi (or whatever the name is) have zero service.

 

This is a rather big deal when you are at the track 1-2 times per month for 3 days at a time per visit.

 

Not the same as a temporary 30 minute no service window. Verizon is king when you're not in densely populated areas.

 

Now why am I not pissed? At the track I don't stream video, I'm doing outdoor things with racecars. Having LTE available for diagnostics and repair is most important. Back home it will suck to not stream at full resolution, but not enough to give up LTE where it is critical to have fast reliable internet.

 

Driving on the interstate through the boonies is VERY different from spending extended periods of time there.

[LAwLz]

You know, if the US had net neutrality laws (which were enforced) then this would be illegal.

Reading that list of restrictions is mind blowing to me. It's almost as a bad joke where the carrier tries to get away with as much shit as possible. How can they justify throttling tethering for example?

[captain_to_fire]

I guess my cousin in LA will be switching to T-Mobile once they've deployed their 600 MHz spectrum

[Bouzoo]

And here I am in god forsaken country with montlhy plan that has unlimited calls and messages (which is kind of standard right now) and 1TB of plan on LTE for $23. 1 TB. And nothing gets throttled, or at least I have not noticed. This is ridiculous. 

[DDC449]

Verizon still has the best coverage hands down. I haved a 70'' tv at home to watch Netflix on.

[Lurick]

11 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Those rumors have been heard for a long time. The fact is Softbank wants the T Mobile leadership to run the combined company. Which might mean it wont be as bad. Though there will be layoffs of a lot of people which would suck. Hell, Softbank wants to merge Sprint with any company that would consider it. I think there was talk about Comcast or Charter merging with Sprint. Wall Street wants a merger. Shit, they wanted Comcast and Verizon to merge, because yeah, thats not a bad idea or anything. 

 

Until I hear official word, I take it with a grain of salt. 

Yah, it's been rumored for a while so I'm still hoping it stays rumors  

[mikeeginger]

Verizon every body Verizon

[You_are_a_cunt]

Woah. US internet users are getting shafted left and right.

Y'all want a slice of my bandwidth?

[ETHREAL1]

20 hours ago, PCMasterDebater said:

Carriers share Cell towers.   Still don't understand.

Not all towers and a lot of the one that are shared use a provider priority system as in verison gets the priority and what ever is left goes to the “other guys”

[dalekphalm]

21 hours ago, PCMasterDebater said:

Carriers share Cell towers.   Still don't understand.

Not all carriers share every tower.

 

Each tower is usually owned by an "incumbent" - the carrier that operates that tower directly.  That carrier may also allow wholesale operators to rent space on their network, piggybacking on that incumbent carriers towers.

[W-L]

Alright let's stay on topic here.

 

-Thread cleaned-

[crystal6tak]

23 hours ago, knightslugger said:

what do you suggest I do, given my needs for internet, and the reality of my situation, one which is shared 30 million fold?

 

My needs: Reasonable throughput for upload and download, reasonable latency, and uncapped unrestricted service.

My Reality: Live in the country, existing telecom older than my father, 10 properties on one road spanning 5 miles

 

>???<

 

Right now cellular service is was the only solution. now i don't have one. perhaps those telling us whiners to stop complaining know something we do not...? 

 

What chaps my ass probably just as much is that they are giving us far less quality of a product, and charging us the same as it ever was.

If you got the money to burn, here's a crazy idea that works in theory: Rent/buy a place within 25 kilometers from where you live that has cable service. Then buy a ubiquiti powerbeam AC to project the signal all the way to your home. You'll have to figure out a way to provide line of site from cable place to your home for the signal, so be sure to plan accordingly (e.g. put it high enough so things like animals won't block the signal).

 

Again, it's a crazy idea that could work, if you're gonna do it, be sure to document it and put it up here on LTT!

 

As for the topic, holy crap, SO GLAD I don't live in the US... I personally know quite a few friends who rely on phone hotspot as home internet so I doubt it's uncommon in the US. I wonder if someone's going make a petition to revert the changes.