Virgin Mobile Starts Throttling March 23 Use More than 2.5 GB, Get Slowed to 256 kbps Last July Sprint-owned wireless carrier Virgin Mobile changed up their pricing plans significantly, and announced they'd be implementing a new throttling system that involved throttling user speeds back to 256 kbps if they consumed more than 2.5GB a month. In order not to sour the launch of a few new devices, last September Virgin announced they were postponing their throttling plan until "sometime in 2012." 2012 is here, and Virgin Mobile this week announced that the throttling will begin as of March 23. According to the Virgin Mobile website, starting March 23 users will receive a text message informing them if they've consumed more than 2.5 GB of data in any given month on their "unlimited" data plan. Once you cross the line, your speeds are throttled to 256 kbps for the rest of your billing cycle, and when a new billing cycle starts, your speeds return to normal. "By putting this data speed reduction in place, we're making sure we can deliver the same quality service you've come to expect from Virgin Mobile," says the company about their plan to slow you to 1999-era speeds. "We hope you understand."
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  mix
join:2002-03-19
Utica, MI | Heh I wonder how many people are really getting better than 256 kbps on a regular basis with how saturated many Sprint towers are? | |
|  |  digiblurGot Sipura?Premium
join:2002-06-03
Louisiana | Re: Heh said by mix:I wonder how many people are really getting better than 256 kbps on a regular basis with how saturated many Sprint towers are?
Exactly. 256k throttle is normal all day everyday. Hell I'd be happy to get 128k in some places.
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SouthWest Louisiana PC Users Group »www.swlapcug.com | |
| |  Vchat20Landing is the REAL challengePremium
join:2003-09-16
Columbus, OH
 ·Dish Network
| They are supposed to be upgrading capacity in many areas (»network.sprint.com/). And I would believe it. I've never really hit above around 512/128 tops on my Mifi in this area. Tested yesterday in the middle of the afternoon and hit around 1200/512 which is not shabby at all.
To be honest: The convenience of having an available connection without overages is a huge benefit and the 256k limit isn't that big of a deal imho when you consider the viable alternatives. Those being any cellular data with no caps are usually slower speed 'hacks' (QNC on Verizon at ~10kbps, Nextel's still unlimited data at ~14kbps, I believe GSM has a similar dialup-grade 1G network left intact with no caps).
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I swear, some people should have pace-makers installed to free up the resources. Breathing and heart beat taxes their whole system, all of their brain cells wasted on life support.-two bit brains, and the second bit is wasted on parity! ~head_spaz | |
| | | talz13
join:2006-03-15
Avon Lake, OH | Re: Heh said by Vchat20:I believe GSM has a similar dialup-grade 1G network left intact with no caps).
GPRS i think? | |
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| Jack_in_VAPremium
join:2007-11-26
Mathews, VA
kudos:1 | said by mix:I wonder how many people are really getting better than 256 kbps on a regular basis with how saturated many Sprint towers are?
Quite a few. It's Verizon that is about dial-up here
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| | Bizarre Again I have to wonder why management doesn't enable off-peak unlimited hours, the same way congested satellite providers do? Is it really necessary to throttle someone at 3 AM? | |
| |  dib22
join:2002-01-27
Kansas City, MO
kudos:2 | Re: Bizarre said by sonicmerlin:Again I have to wonder why management doesn't enable off-peak unlimited hours, the same way congested satellite providers do? Is it really necessary to throttle someone at 3 AM?
They will eventually  Think of bandwidth as the new minutes... | |
| | elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA Reviews:
 ·SONIC.NET
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| said by sonicmerlin:Again I have to wonder why management doesn't enable off-peak unlimited hours, the same way congested satellite providers do? Is it really necessary to throttle someone at 3 AM?
Yes, it is really necessary to throttle *some* users ALL of the time.
Even at 3 AM.
You probably don't wish to recall the truth that was revealed during the VMUSA "unlimited" fiasco - but as I was telling y'all it would end badly and quickly, we had forum activists proudly boasting 400GB worth of downloads before being cut off - temporarily. Without some marginal cost for consumption, waste and abuse will soon follow.
I agree that Cellco should do something less punitive than bucket-based throttling at 2.5GB. Whether they are technically proficient enough to do so, and whether they can implement a policy that is both dynamic, consistent, and comprehensible by the consumer, that doesn't violate applicable NN nonsense, is anyone's guess. | |
| | | | | Re: Bizarre I don't think you understand how networks actually work. Off-peak hours at night are completely uncongested. Whether a person downloads 40 GB, 400 GB, or 4 TB doesn't matter, as long as it's occurring at night when no one else is using the network. Granny watching a youtube video at 8 PM is causing far more congestion than a torrent user at 1 AM.
quote:
Without some marginal cost for consumption, waste and abuse will soon follow.
Only a die-hard neo conservative, white baby-boomer Republican would say this. Bandwidth has no marginal consumption cost. It's there all the time, and any unused bandwidth is wasted potential. This is why even incredibly congested satellite providers offer unlimited use at night.
Someday the worst generation in American history will grow old and disappear. Hopefully it happens sooner rather than later. | |
| | | | elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA Reviews:
·SONIC.NET
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: Bizarre said by sonicmerlin:I don't think you understand how networks actually work. Off-peak hours at night are completely uncongested. Whether a person downloads 40 GB, 400 GB, or 4 TB doesn't matter, as long as it's occurring at night when no one else is using the network. Granny watching a youtube video at 8 PM is causing far more congestion than a torrent user at 1 AM.
quote:
Without some marginal cost for consumption, waste and abuse will soon follow.
Only a die-hard neo conservative, white baby-boomer Republican would say this. Bandwidth has no marginal consumption cost. It's there all the time, and any unused bandwidth is wasted potential. This is why even incredibly congested satellite providers offer unlimited use at night. Someday the worst generation in American history will grow old and disappear. Hopefully it happens sooner rather than later. As usual, you resort to name-calling. So much for civility.
I am neither a neo-conservative, white, baby-boomer or Republican.
Care to add any more racist, ageist and classist, closed-mind assumptions?
Torrents are very efficient at gobbling up every available ounce of bandwidth - and while they can be tailored to play better with others, they typically aren't, and the result is an unusable network for everyone else. Even at 3 AM.
In order to allow Granny or other insomniacs the use of their connection at 3AM, some protocol or pricing needs to be in place to assure that the data hogs do not bring the network to its knees, just "because they can". | |
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| | Vmobile I'm paying $25/month and get 300 minutes, unlimited text, and 2.5GB soft data cap - I'm a happy Virgin Mobile customer  | |
| | Reviews:
·Charter
 ·Virgin Mobile Br..
·Millenicom
·HughesNet Satell..
 ·ooma
| Re: Vmobile History repeats itself with Virgin Mobile (generally shafting customers in the long run).
UNLIMITED is a word that should never be used with any cell carrier or internet provider.
Lets take for example, when VM first came out with BROADBAND2GO.... "unlimited" internet for $40 a month. I tried that for a while since I was without anything except dialup.
VM uses sprint's towers and their services always seem to be on the bottom of the prioritization of service.
I knew "unlimited" wouldn't last long off a mobile broadband device, and it didn't. Within a short period, it was reduced to 5GB, and shortly after that, reduced to 2.5GB with a new price of $50. So, now even the word "throttling" is entering the picture.
Broadband2Go never really had a good speed, 700-800kbps at the most, and I won't even go into the routing nightmare VM went thru when they first launched the service.
THEN comes their Beyond Talk plan and the Launch of the first Android powered phone, the Optimus V. "unlimited" data, yeah, right. I had one of these too, Speeds were never over 500-600kbps. (and not alot of people in this town even knew Sprint had a tower here).....Well, as you can see, "unlimited" means 2.5gb here too with throttling here as well. And all this with a rate hike. $25 to $35. (and of course, VM went thru the same old data access routing issues that they did with the Broadband2Go. left customers without 3G for days and days).
Now its official, throttling to 256kbps after 2.5GB of data.
Their claim is "unlimited" means "unlimited access", not "unlimited download capability".
What a crock of sh*t. Tried both previously, cancelled both.
Hard to believe this flim flam VM operation is managed and owned by SPRINT! | |
| | | | | Re: Vmobile it is unlimited but you only get 2.5 GB of full speed data.
Didn't cable vision used to do this in the past use to much data and they slow you down. | |
| | | | | I had a VMUSA Mifi on their Broadband2go for a while, it got 500-800kbps normally, topped out maybe 1mbps. Not very good speeds at all, but that was 2 or so years ago and it was fine back then. Now I use a different service thats much faster. | |
| | | | | Unlimited is an absolute term. This means it obeys boolean logic, i.e. true or false. If there's a limit, it's not unlimited. A throttle is a limit. A threshold of 2.5GB is a limit. But we must distinguish between a natural limit and an arbitrary limit. The way I see it, when an internet service is advertised as unlimited, it means without arbitrary limits. The maximum physical speed of the service is a natural limit. A throttle and a usage threshold are both arbitrary limits. Therefore when a provider advertises a service as unlimited but imposes arbitrary limits, it does not in fact offer an unlimited service. | |
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| mix
join:2002-03-19
Utica, MI
1 edit | Not $35/month? Is $25/month a grandfathered in price? | |
| | | | | Re: Vmobile yes, it was grandfathered late last year. | |
| | |  davoice
join:2000-08-12
Saxapahaw, NC | Yes, grandfathered and happy I'm an old fart who's grandfathered in! | |
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| BiggA
join:2005-11-23
EARTH | Exactly. 2.5GB for $25 or even $35 is so incredibly generous that it's hard to complain. Plus, web, most apps, and Pandora would still work just fine at 256kbps. | |
| | | | | Re: Vmobile said by BiggA:Exactly. 2.5GB for $25 or even $35 is so incredibly generous that it's hard to complain. Plus, web, most apps, and Pandora would still work just fine at 256kbps.
Says the corporate suck-up. Germany has 80 GB for $80. Netherlands it's unlimited. | |
| | | | BiggA
join:2005-11-23
EARTH | Re: Vmobile This is $25 or $35... | |
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matt5
join:2001-10-06
Lagrangeville, NY | What do you want? I just picked them up again (was about 2 years since I had a cell) on the same plan as the another poster but at the higher price $35, 300min + unlimited everything else. TBH, for $35, I mean anyone show me any other carrier that is giving you that kinda of bandwidth for that price.
In my area just ran a speed test, higher than normal 895/873 more normal is 243-445 / 750-826
3am I've got 1125/766 2 bars -95db.
You get what you pay for... $25 be better $35 works, tether at work to pc/laptop.
Anyone else want to show me $35 for 300m / unlimited text / 2.5gig data then throttle to 256k?
I would be happy to switch for a better deal!
lol got a buddy on nextel (so sprint, just iden) he's pissed he is paying 50 for 400min (unlimited n/w @ 9pm) with no txt, no data, and 50c/min overage rofl. He finds my phone a great deal, even with the cap.
Get what ya pay for. | |
| | | | Re: What do you want? tbh i would take this over what i have now.
on sprint with my evo and unlimited im getting owned. 85$ a month..
mostly i use for pandora, so a 256k cap wouldnt matter to me.
btw i didnt mean to respond to you, hehe mainly to the main thread. | |
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 XBL2009------
join:2001-01-03
Chicago, IL |  Telecom just plain sucks
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|  BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | Throttling better than overages I'd rather get slowed to 256 kbps than pay $10 per GB overage. | |
| | | | Re: Throttling better than overages I agree. I'd rather be throttled than lose all data capability. I'm starting to wonder if I haven't been jinxed by defectors from all the other carriers looking for unlimited data. 2.5Gb/month is nothing if you decide to transfer a large file or two from home using say Bdrive.
I'm curious is it 2.5 Gigabits or 2.5 Gigabytes? The fatalistic side of me wonders wen they will increase their cap to 10 Gigabits from 10 Gigabytes and say I've recieved 4 times the data usage lol
And finally, totally agreeing that I see nothing close to 800 kbps here at home, though a small caveat is that I was at my chiropractor the other day and saw html email load pretty fast. | |
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Reviews:
 ·Verizon FiOS
| not worth it.. This service as 'billed' is not worth $30+ a month... (once they throttle and your subscriber experience hits the toilet). If you can't offer at least 1 megabit throttled instead of 256kb you might as well pack it in and stop offering service now. Who cares if it's even so-called unlimited if the bandwidth is barely enough to carry VOIP, let alone other kinds of data. | |
| | talz13
join:2006-03-15
Avon Lake, OH | Re: not worth it.. I use 200-600MB / month, so this limit is far beyond what I use. Also, I never see speeds beyond ~500kbps anyway on Sprint, so throttling to 256kbps wouldn't be earth-shattering. | |
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| | The beginning of the end Sprint users throttle the cheap pre-paid plans first, then move on to post-paid.
I will say atleast their limit is reasonable 256k is much more reasonable than t-mobiles 50k | |
| | Reviews:
·Verizon FiOS
| Re: The beginning of the end Sprint users said by MovieLover76:throttle the cheap pre-paid plans first, then move on to post-paid.
I will say atleast their limit is reasonable 256k is much more reasonable than t-mobiles 50k
Lots of consumers went wireless as their ONLY device/phone service/isp... watch how consumers switch back when they see these greedy companies slamming consumers with caps, overages, and overall crappy throttled service AT ANY PRICE.... these handset makers are going to be quite pissed when they can't even give away handsets anymore. It's the chicken and the egg scenario.. with the wirleless companies choking themselves on their higher prices, slow speeds, and bad terms of service (insanely high ETFs, overages, taxes & unfees). Millions of handsets will go unwanted as consumers shun wireless again. Just a matter of time..
This bandwidth is like end of the copper loop DSL over wirless but supported by an oversold cablemodem node as the backbone. | |
| | Reviews:
·T-Mobile US
| said by MovieLover76:I will say atleast their limit is reasonable 256k is much more reasonable than t-mobiles 50k
Hey! I resent that TMO 50k comment ( sarcasm) It has gotten better in the past 2 months or so ( dependent on hardware from what I've heard and seen). I just hit my 2GB stride on T-Mobile 2 days ago and this is a screenshot from today on my G2X of what I'm getting after throttle. Still 256k if you can get it is still better than what I'm getting. | |
| | | matt5
join:2001-10-06
Lagrangeville, NY | Re: The beginning of the end Sprint users | |
|
phazah
join:2004-05-02
Findlay, OH Reviews:
·AT&T Midwest
·AT&T DSL Service
| throttleing back to 256kbps i wish i could get that...
on a good day i might get 200kkbps, on a bad day i get nothing...
my Virgin Mobile is a 3G service??? more like dial up....
when i first got my droid and "unlimited" account i used only 450mb listening to streaming radio stations or facebook, im lucky to get 150mb and that's when im miles from a major city | |
| | | throttle speeds i connect at 54 mbps the throttle is 256 kbps. it takes four 256 kbps to make a 1 mbps connection, which will lower your speed by approximately 99.5 percent. will virgin be refunding our purchase money for phones we purchased? | |
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