Verizon begins throttleing "high bandwidth" users

[GreyGeek]

Verzion is my cellphone vendor. Note from Verizon:

'Verizon Wireless strives to provide customers the best experience when using our network, a shared resource among tens of millions of customers. To help achieve this, if you use an extraordinary amount of data and fall within the top 5% of Verizon Wireless data users we may reduce your data throughput speeds periodically for the remainder of your then current and immediately following billing cycle to ensure high quality network performance for other users at locations and times of peak demand. Our proactive management of the Verizon Wireless network is designed to ensure that the remaining 95% of data customers aren't negatively affected by the inordinate data consumption of just a few users.'"

The bandwidth limit is 5GB/month, or is it 2GB/Month? This limit was announced just hours after Verizon began offering the iPhone with UNLIMITED DATA AND TETHERING! Care to guess where they will get the bandwidth for the iPhone users they want to lure from AT&T?

Say you use Pandora while at work 8 hrs/day/20days/month. It streams at 64Kb/s, which is 21Gb/month!!! , so a third of that is 7 Gb/month, three times the 2Gb limit.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i...h%3F&t=ff3tb01

How can you use what Verizon advertizes here, which includes music, video on demand (movies), movile TV, apps, and GPS ("location services"), and stay within the 2GB/Month limit and not get throttled for the remainder of the month you go over and ALL of the following month?

I was going to switch from the cellphone plan that was grandfathered in from their Alltel acquisition to a pair of Android 4G wireless phones to replace my current Internet connection and cellphone contracts.

Not now.
You pay the big $$$$$.

Take streaming music. How you are supposed to stream music on your Verizon wireless phone is shown here:

Get Unlimited Access to Music
Subscribe to V CAST Music with Rhapsody for just $9.99 per month and transfer music from your PC to a subscription capable phone.

Get that? You pay them $10/month to "subscribe to V Cast" for the privilege of using your own PC and ISP to download from THEIR music catalog at prices ranging from 0.69 to $1.99 PER SONG, then you plug your wireless into your PC's USB port and copy them over from your PC to your wireless. iPod Nano is a lot cheaper. An mp3 player with music you rip from your own purchased CDs or DVD, or from the web is even cheaper.

What about the videos, movies, and mobil TV? Here you learn that you'll need a $10/Mo subscription to V Cast, in addition to your data plan fee, obviously,

V CAST Video on Demand Packages
Enjoy your favorite full length TV shows, plus the latest in news, sports, weather, and live entertainment, on demand and right to your phone. Watch unlimited basic videos and receive no charges for data received while accessing V CAST Videos.

and then you have the privilege of choosing which "plan" you want: $3/day(phone) or $10/month (via your cable ISP or phone), but the exact difference between the two isn't spelled out. So, in addition to your monthly wireless phone service fee, your data plan fee (for 2Gb/m) and your V Cast fee of $10/mo, you can pay another $90/mo to access what you "thought" you were getting with your original wireless data plan.

Dictionary, meet your new definition for "Greed".

[dibl]

Re: Verizon begins throttleing "high bandwidth" users

Yep, that's been kind of expected, I think. I suppose there are as many views of whether it is more "fair" as there are people with opinions. However, one thing I'm clear on, I'd rather live with per-GB/month billing, and keep net neutrality, than lose net neutrality.