It has had it's prioritization placed behind those plans which have not yet met their data thresholds before they become subject to re-prioritization. 600kbps is not 50kbps.Īs has been pointed out, on the GoUnlimited plan, your data is not "throttled" to you phone. Sometimes does not mean every day all day. It may be fully legal but it is far from ethical. Unusable service unless an additional fee is paid with no guarantee that fee will not increase or that additional fees will be needed to use the service I am paying for. It’s just consistent logic.Using a different name and underlying process does not change the result. … Rightly you have to say faster is better. “It’s one of the few ways of how you can quantify your quote-unquote superiority in a way laypeople can understand. “It really matters in marketing,” Entner said of network test results. Operators that slow data transmissions too drastically risk having their networks outperformed by the competition, which rivals would surely use as a key differentiator in TV ads and other high-profile campaigns. So in the era of unlimited LTE data, carriers increasingly find themselves walking a fine line between throttling speeds to keep network congestion to a minimum on one hand and delivering data as quickly as possible on the other. Regardless, third-party network tests have long been a key marketing metric for carriers, even if end users may not notice a difference in data speeds from one operator to the next. Also, it’s worth noting that both network-measurement firms use crowdsourced data gleaned from their apps-and users are much more likely to launch those apps when their connections are either sluggish or abnormally fast, Entner noted. While T-Mobile has focused intently on urban areas over the last few years, Verizon still claims the nation’s largest network footprint, so speeds in some rural areas may drag down its results. Meanwhile, other factors are likely at play in the data from Ookla and OpenSignal as well. Some are acquiring more spectrum, and they're using technologies such as carrier aggregation, higher-order MIMO and even LTE-U and LAA (which conducts transmissions in unlicensed spectrum) to meet ever-increasing demand for data. “Is there a meaningful difference in your user experience if your network runs at 20 (Mbps) or 30 (Mbps)? I doubt it.”Įvery carrier is employing a variety of different strategies and technologies to increase capacity on their networks. “The big question is when these tests are happening, does it really matter?” Entner asked rhetorically. But even if capacity constraints are a speed bump for customers, the differences between LTE speeds of the three largest carriers are likely to be unnoticed by virtually any subscriber. Our data does not bear this out and it seems likely we’re seeing reduced performance due to high usage deprioritization and consumer plan choice.”ĭeprioritization affects a tiny fraction of subscribers, though, so it’s unlikely that it plays a significant role in the slowed network speeds of Verizon and AT&T, Roger Entner of Recon Analytics said. However, if they were, we’d expect to see the number of tests at every level of speed decrease. “Whether these carriers are deprioritizing customers or customers are flocking to slower, more budget-friendly plans, both AT&T and Verizon are seeing an increase of customers experiencing speeds less than 5 Mbps,” Ookla wrote, noting that some people “have argued that these networks may be saturated. Ookla suggested that deprioritization policies may be to blame for the slower speeds in its tests, however. Under Verizon's overhauled plans, for instance, the operator can slow speeds during times of network congestion for users who have surpassed 22 GB of data in a billing cycle. ![]() Throttling, which carriers like to refer to as "deprioritization," enables operators to slow data speeds under certain conditions for subscribers once they've reached specific usage thresholds. “Verizon’s latest change to their unlimited offering (in which they can throttle users at any time) suggests that they don’t have as much headroom as they might have previously expected,” New Street Research observed in a September research note. ![]() And while Verizon executives insisted its network was performing well in the unlimited era, the carrier raised eyebrows in August when it overhauled its unlimited plan in what appeared to be a clear indication that capacity had become a concern. ![]() Ookla’s data was mirrored by an OpenSignal report issued in August that determined T-Mobile operated the fastest network in the United States during the second quarter of the year, while the speeds of both Verizon and AT&T had slowed.
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