
Verizon and AT&T Are Slower After Adding Unlimited Plans - ourmandave
http://gizmodo.com/yup-verizon-and-at-t-are-a-lot-slower-after-adding-unl-1797480110
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goda90
My regional carrier, US Cellular, recently started an unlimited plan. Right
there in the small print it says it's capped at 1.5 Mbps from the beginning,
and drops to 2G speeds after 22 GBs used. Unlimited plans are just a marketing
move, with no real substance at all.

~~~
mikeash
AT&T's unlimited plan is similar. You high speeds up to 22GB/month, then
"speeds may slow" which in practice probably means 2G speeds.

As it happens, this is exactly like all their other plans, except for the size
of the soft cap. And, get this, the "unlimited" plan _isn 't even the highest
one_. They have a 25GB plan with a soft cap that's actually cheaper than the
"unlimited" 22GB plan.

I guess people really, really, really want "unlimited" plans and don't care to
actually look at what they're getting.

~~~
tyingq
The drop to 2g may be preferred by people that don't want unpredictable
overage charges, and like that they can at least use email and light web
browsing if they go over.

~~~
mikeash
Oh sure, I have no problem with that as long as they explain what they're
doing (and they do). It's just ridiculous that not only is their "unlimited"
plan just as limited as all of their other plans, but it's not even the top
tier.

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ksec
That's because Verizon and AT&T knows with 4.5G / 4.9G or 5G ( What ever the
decide to call it ) they will have much more capacity.

8x8 MIMO, More Spectrum Refarmed, Multiple CA, (Possible) LTE-LAA / WiFi Off
loading, we are talking about 3x to 5x more capacity in the near 2 - 3 years
time frame.

But Of course the more capacity, the faster your connection speed, and the
more Data you consumed, and more addicted you will be to Data ( News / video
etc ). The more likely you will pay more / same for Data. ( They would always
want higher or at least flat ARPU rather then race to the bottom )

It really is like selling drugs without you noticing it.

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excalibur
So much hostility toward T-Mobile. Don't worry, if the Sprint merger goes
through they'll go back to sucking just as much as... Sprint.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
I've been a happy Sprint customer for a long time. What do people dislike
about it?

~~~
excalibur
As a company, I actually like them better than Verizon or AT&T. However their
network coverage and performance have always been subpar in my experience.
Granted, these things are heavily dependent on your location. But I lived in a
crowded suburb of a major city, and I had to go outside to make a phone call.

~~~
snuxoll
Their coverage has been improving dramatically this year, I went to visit my
grandfather in rural Nezperce, ID - previously only Verizon had coverage
there, now on the southern half of town I get (fairly flaky, but still there)
T-Mobile coverage as of May. This dinky town is 60 minutes from the closest
small city, and 30 minutes away from any of the large towns in the area!

T-Mobile's network is getting better every day, but it still has a long way to
go in many aspects - but as someone on a grandfathered Simple Choice plan who
is paying something like $160/mo for 7 lines with 2GB of high-speed data each
I can't complain too much.

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nfriedly
For a while, I had an old grandfathered-in unlimited Verizon plan, which was
nice but kind of annoying since I knew it included a phone subsidy that I
couldn't use (because getting a new phone would mean getting a new contract,
which would mean loosing unlimited data). So I bought my phones off of swappa,
but it always annoyed me that I was paying Verizon something like $300/year
for a phone that I had long-since paid off.

I was a big fan of their new plans that separated the phone cost from the
service cost. I dropped down to a 2GB/month plan and cut my bill by like
$6-700/year. (Well, I occasionally go over 2GB, but not most months. The
actual savings are probably more like $5-600 when factoring in the overage
costs.)

The new unlimited plan seems a lot like the one that I was "stuck" with,
except more honest.

No surprise that their average speed is dropping, though. I remember when LTE
could hit 70+ mbps. That doesn't happen often these days. (Of course, it's not
like you could actually _use_ 70mbit for very long - that speed can burn
through a 2GB plan in under 4 minutes.)

~~~
snovv_crash
To me, in Europe, those prices sound ridiculous. I can buy 4GB of data from
Vodafone for EUR29.

~~~
nfriedly
Yea, they are ridiculous. There are cheaper options, although they generally
don't have good coverage in rural areas (where I and a lot of my family live).

------
j_s
Verizon still has legacy unthrottled unlimited (kicked off after 200GB?)
customers. I'm trying to figure out what I should do with 2 lines I don't want
to afford anymore.

~~~
throwaway40483
I'm surprised Verizon hasn't "transitioned" these legacy accounts to a "newer,
better and faster" ( _cough_ ) accounts..

I presume there are some legal reason why they haven't done so yet?

~~~
j_s
They try super-hard to do so every time there's a change on the account
(probably 90%+ were lost when the "free phone" came with a new contract), and
they've raised prices (+$20/line). They also instituted the 200GB (maybe
100GB) limit.

[http://www.droid-
life.com/2015/10/08/verizons-20-unlimited-p...](http://www.droid-
life.com/2015/10/08/verizons-20-unlimited-price-hike-more-details-about-who-
it-impacts/)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2017/01/11...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2017/01/11/these-cellphone-carriers-are-about-to-make-life-harder-
for-grandfathered-unlimited-data-users/)

[http://www.droid-life.com/2016/07/26/fyi-verizon-
unlimited-d...](http://www.droid-life.com/2016/07/26/fyi-verizon-unlimited-
data-plan-no-longer-unlimited/)

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Jonnax
Is that really a logical assumption?

Could it just be that they have more customers and they haven't upgraded
infrastructure to keep up with demand?

~~~
sturmen
Are you positing it could be "we added (X*Y) number of subscribers this
quarter, and for every Y subscribers we need to add 1 tower, but we only added
(less than X) towers"? Reportedly, Verizon has some of the slowest[1]
subscriber growth among the smartphone carriers, so that doesn't pass the
smell test unless Verizon simply decided that hoarding money was higher
priority than providing the good customer experience that drives growth.

For months (years?) there have been swirlings that Verizon can't handle
"unlimited", accusations they've denied[2], OpenSignal's conclusion seems the
most likely.

[1] [https://www.cnet.com/news/even-sprint-topped-at-t-verizon-
in...](https://www.cnet.com/news/even-sprint-topped-at-t-verizon-in-customer-
growth/) [2] [http://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/verizon-execs-
dismiss...](http://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/verizon-execs-dismiss-
network-concerns-about-unlimited-data)

~~~
willidiots
I'd posit it's an increase in per-sub utilization vs total sub count. Users
aren't motivated to limit their LTE usage with these plans, and in some cases
eschew Wi-Fi entirely.

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maaark
Just to remind everyone how bad the USA is, I pay £17/mo for unlimited data &
text, and a couple hundred minutes on Three UK.

The price for unlimited data on new contracts has gone up since i got it, but
they haven't attempted to force me to renew or raise the price on me.

~~~
fhood
I don't actually know what I am talking about, but I would assume that the
price differences are at least partially due to the fact that US telecom has
to provide service to a country with way less population density than most of
Europe or Asia.

~~~
Spivak
Which I think is really weird. I would pay $20/mo for unlimited data in my
metropolitan area and be metered everywhere else.

~~~
fhood
Those of us that don't live in metropolitan areas are happy to distribute the
costs.

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kevingadd
I was a happy T-Mobile customer for a few years, and until I recently moved I
was reliably getting speeds in the neighborhood of 40mbps down and 10+mbps up
over 4G in my bedroom - consistently faster than our expensive home DSL, and
unlimited*. I ended up using it for things like Twitch streaming.

Unfortunately, when I moved to San Jose my 4G reliability went into the toilet
- inconsistent signal and average down/up speeds of <1mbps. Even getting a
cell booster didn't fix it, so I had to switch carriers. :( It makes me wonder
how much of T-mobile's speed is lack of congestion and how much is just better
investment in hardware. The towers near my new apartment seemed to be in bad
shape and customer service often told me they were shut off for repairs.

It's interesting that t-mobile offers free unlimited roaming in some other
countries (like Canada) but the performance there definitely suffers. One
reason for that is all traffic getting routed back to the states, but it's
interesting to consider what all the behind-the-scenes business deals are like
to make that possible.

~~~
matwood
> It makes me wonder how much of T-mobile's speed is lack of congestion and
> how much is just better investment in hardware.

TMO poisoned pill a couple of take over bids and used the money on
infrastructure [1]. Their network has greatly expanded in the last couple of
years in both coverage and speed.

> The towers near my new apartment seemed to be in bad shape

Many (most?) towers are no longer owned by the providers. Separate companies
now deal in 'vertical real estate', and sell space on the towers. It's
possible this was a legacy TMO owned tower though.

> It's interesting that t-mobile offers free unlimited roaming in some other
> countries (like Canada) but the performance there definitely suffers. One
> reason for that is all traffic getting routed back to the states

Are you talking about data or voice? TMO offers international as part of their
normal plans, and they are one of the main reasons I use/like TMO. The free
tier is 2-3g speed, but the pay for/regular tier is the same thing you would
have anywhere else.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/12/att-admits-
defea...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/12/att-admits-defeat-on-t-
mobile-takeover-will-pay-4-billion-breakup-fee/)

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jrs95
Having recently moved from T-Mobile to Verizon, I'm much happier with the
service I get from Verizon. The speed I get from having a better connection
sometime has made a massive difference. I don't think I was anywhere near the
max speed on T-Mobile because I was lucky to have 3 bars most of the time.

~~~
martinald
Bars don't really correlate to speed. Cell site congestion is much more
important (and harder to figure out).

~~~
encoderer
I'd have thought that fewer bars == more attenuation == more packet loss?

~~~
WalterSear
Only when the signal gets really bad.

~~~
martinald
Yes. LTE can hang on at crazy low levels. Like -130dB on L800

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syphilis2
Is there any plan that offers truly unlimited "3G" equivalent speeds? "Up to
2G speed" is an unusable scam. I used to tether to my phone on a truly
unlimited 3G connection and that was what I used for home internet. Netflix,
YouTube, etc worked great. Online games did not due to latency.

It seems that most carriers are trying to implement this in a roundabout way
by letting services send video at reduced data rates in exchange for the data
not counting against the user's data plan. What a complicated mess, and very
scary with regards to net neutrality.

~~~
closeparen
Using 3G for home internet is an extremely poor allocation of resources. You
have a less constrained alternative (wired infrastructure to your home), and
your use deprives mobile users (who have no alternative) of bandwidth. The
market is doing exactly the right thing by waving people off of this behavior
through prices.

Bandwidth is limited and has to be allocated somehow. Prices aren't the worst
idea.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
LTE at home however is pretty great and quite good use of resources. In
countries it is available it quickly replaces wired internet for casual users.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
When he says "good use of resources" he doesn't mean "good value for the
money" like you do. He meant that we can't all use wireless signals for all of
our internet needs because it will literally run out. Just like there can only
be so many radio stations on your dial.

If people who are at home, can be persuaded to use wired connections, it frees
up the wireless signal for people who don't have access to a wired connection.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
That's not really an issue in practice though. Austria and Finnland already
push a lot more traffic and users per base station and there is ample room to
grow even before opening up more frequencies or changing the underlyong
technology. LTE is an incredibly efficient use of spectrum.

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dagenleg
Every time there's a thread about American ISPs it's like a self-help group
meeting in the comments. I imagine a group of citizens of some kind of
Orwellian state would sound roughly the same - abundant horror stories and
what seems like a complete lack of a reasonable alternative or escape.
Occasionally a lucky guy jumps in and tells everyone how he had avoided the
giant cogs of the system and actually gets a decent service for his money.

It would be quite funny if it wasn't also in equal measure disheartening.

~~~
diogenescynic
Americans don't travel much, so many don't realize how screwed up our country
is. America is inferior in so many ways to other develop countries. Trump is
only making this worse by appointing crooks to the FCC.

~~~
bitJericho
Americans don't want to know what's going on. Americans think the people in
power are trying to do good, even though they're not. Americans think the
system can be fixed where it's broken, it cannot as it stands.

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Spooky23
AT&T is a lot slower because the cheap ($60) unlimited plan is speed capped to
3Mb.

My good old AT&T unlimited data plan regularly gets 100 Mb.

~~~
Spivak
$60/mo is not a cheap plan by any stretch. $20/mo for metered and $30/mo for
unlimited is cheap.

~~~
Spooky23
Where in the US do you find a single line unlimited plan for $30/mo?

I'm not emigrating to save money on my phone bill.

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humanrebar
Does anyone know why carriers charge based on volume (total gigabits
downloaded) and not congestion (gigabits downloaded during peak hours)?

It seems like if the issue was contention, it would be helpful to encourage
people to, for example, download podcasts and videos on wifi or overnight.

~~~
gumby
Because it's hard for the end user to know that in the moment, and often hard
to time the download. That unpredictability would drive people away.

It's like the Uber surge pricing which passes people off, no matter how much
it matches Classical economic theory

~~~
humanrebar
Phone carriers used to do "night and weekends" plans and people weren't
confused about that.

~~~
URSpider94
No, but they resented it horribly, and the first companies to abolish those
plans taunted the others mercilessly in their ads -- think guys refusing to
call their mom back until Friday night to save on minutes ...

Also, given how much people live on their phones these days, I doubt that
congestion varies as much by time of day, as much as it just moves around from
office district to suburban neighborhoods.

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mikelward
Average speed on Verizon dropped from 16.9 to 14.9, AT&T went from 13.9 to
12.9. I'd hardly call that "a lot slower".

But if the trend continues...

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DiscoKing
I use 100gb+ a month on tmobile and see no slow down. Hmm. Although, they do
slow down HD video. VPN bypasses that for now.

