It’s time for big boy internet

[mvweebles]

Originally Posted by smj

You need to read the fine print on the T-Mobile home internet as they will slow your speeds down if needed.
“During congestion, Home Internet customers may notice speeds lower than other customers due to data prioritization. “
Would that quote be considered throttling?

Not to me. That's true of any network. If they don't have capacity, they don't have capacity. That was the problem with Cable and DSL. Became over subscribed and performance suffered. Different than being punitive or policy based because incentives are different. VZ has incentives to twist the knife and force you to a higher level. Y-Mobile Home internet is competing with traditional ISP and high grade of service. At least that's my read

[Statistical]

Originally Posted by mvweebles

Not to me. That's true of any network. If they don't have capacity, they don't have capacity. That was the problem with Cable and DSL. Became over subscribed and performance suffered. Different than being punitive. At least that's my read

That isn't the same though. Not enough capacity means everyone's throughput would be reduced equally. This is saying when there isn't enough capacity THIS specific group of users is throttled to ensure the speeds of other users aren't affected.

[smj]

Originally Posted by mvweebles

Not to me. That's true of any network. If they don't have capacity, they don't have capacity. That was the problem with Cable and DSL. Became over subscribed and performance suffered. Different than being punitive or policy based because incentives are different. VZ has incentives to twist the knife and force you to a higher level. Y-Mobile Home internet is competing with traditional ISP and high grade of service. At least that's my read

I’ve always considered throttling as being the intentional slow down of service for any reasons, but my definition is probably wrong.
Maybe throttling is the slowing down of the service when one meets a certain GB limit?

[mvweebles]

Originally Posted by Statistical

That isn't the same though. Not enough capacity means everyone's throughput would be reduced equally. This is saying when there isn't enough capacity THIS specific group of users is throttled to ensure the speeds of other users aren't affected.

Which is what Starlink does. To me, throttling is a policy based enforcement, not a triage one. The incentives for Starlink to throttle changed recently when they went to $/GB for priority pricing. Someday when Amazon gets their satellite gig operational, will change to compete.

T-Mobile will risk their customer base if they cannot provide smooth performance compared to terrestrial ISPs with whom they compete. It may all be throttling, but in practice, incentives drive much different behavior.

Peter

[rslifkin]

We've got the T-mobile $50 / 100gb plan for our router on the boat. AT&T also offers a 100gb plan, and I think Verizon goes up to 150. Only the home internet options will get you unlimited, and of those, T-Mobile is the only one that doesn't care if you move the device around. At least around Lake Ontario and the NY Canals, I've had very few signal issues with T-Mobile (and I've got a Verizon cell phone as a backup if needed). And I think only once did we end up on a poorly performing tower. Typically performance has been perfectly adequate (and the couple of times it wasn't there was decent wifi available to pull in).

[jcapo]

I was a T-Mobile customer for many years. I switched to Verizon because T-Mobile coverage in Rocky's boatyard in St. Marys, GA was horrid to unusable.

I have the $50/month 50GB unlimited plan. I use 100GB+ every month with no noticeable throttling. Verizon's terms say that they may throttle when the network is busy so it may be that the network is never busy enough here for me to notice throttling.

My T-Mobile account did a hard throttle to 3G speeds when the limit was reached.

Verizon does throttle hot spot access when the limit is reached. Luckily Verizon can't count hot spot traffic properly when using an OpenVPN tunnel to a Vultr instance at least not yet.

Hopefully I'm back in the water in a few months and I will get to try Verizon in other areas.