Virgin Mobile coughs to choking its customers Virgin Mobile UK has admitted it is capping mobile data at 2Mb/sec - claiming it is for the benefit of customers - as it tries to keep everyone connected. Customers started noticing the speed cap in the last few days, but as it's being applied piecemeal it has been hard to pin down. That is, until the company last night …
It would depend what you want to do with it. If you want brief bursts of a high speed then its poor.
Offering an unlimited service then quietly capping the speed later is a bit shadey, sure if it was sold as unlimited & capped at 2mbps thats fine. The other way is rather dodgy ground, at least for customer perception.
"Offering an unlimited service then quietly capping the speed later is a bit shadey"
"Would this not constitute a change of contract"
Mobile data is never sold on speed, only on the monthly data usage. The only way it would be a change of contract is if the speed restriction prevented you from exceeding your usage allowance.
Constantly downloading at 2Mb/s for a month would allow you to download about 648GB a month. So your unlimited 1GB a month of data is still obtainable.
"My math says under your regime and given a limit of 1GB a month they would only need to provide you with a 0.3KB/s download speed."
Then that would be the minimum speed at which they are contracted to provide for a monthly period*. I don't see your point? What I said is still true regardless of the downvotes, you are not sold 1MB/s mobile Internet, you're sold XGB a month mobile Internet.
They cannot sell a speed based mobile Internet package for the simple reason that they cannot guarantee the speed, it is dependent not only on signal strength but also the number of users sharing the connection at any given time as well as atmospheric conditions.
* If you want to be really pedantic, they have to provide less than that since outages are usually written into the contract unless you have a business SLA.
And to make my point, you might want to take a look at the following data packages. None of which mention the speed anywhere.
http://www.o2.co.uk/broadband/ipad-tariff-data-plans
https://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/mobile-broadband/sim-only/
http://www.vodafone.co.uk/shop/internet/dongle/index.htm
Nobody has offered properly unlimited data on anything in decades. If you think they have, you should read the small print.
No doubt that that is part of the problem, in some way, but so what? Their fix is reasonable.
Mobile, why do you need more than 2Mb/s? Hell, nobody even guarantees that you can ever get your 8Mb/s (wireless connections and all that) and, nationwide, the average connection is going to be closer to nothing at all than 8Mb/s anyway. If you're RELYING on your 3G connection to go that fast, you need to buy something else - always have had to. If you're just a casual user, why do you need more than 2Mb/s (which is more than most iPlayer SD streams anyway).
I don't think I've even seen downloads faster than that, ever. I am a Virgin customer, was a T-Mobile customer and my first instinct was "Oh no!" followed by "Er, well, actually, who cares?" when I read the details.
It's a nationwide wireless shared resource. 2Mb/s is bloody amazing as far as I'm concerned and I'd be happier to get 2Mb/s everywhere I go than 8Mb/s in any one particular place / phone / connection / contract anyway.
I'd say those limits are tethering-related - from the giffgaff website:
Patterns indicating illegitimate usage
We monitor the mobile internet activity which takes place on the network each day and we have developed a system to identify tethering based on this information.
The specific triggers which help us to identify tethering are referred to as ‘tethering indicators’. The tethering indicators which we use are varied. They include, but are not limited to:
Having tested a number of devices and applications, we feel that any usage over 1GB/hour or 3GB/day is indicative of illegitimate usage
Using a significant amount of data for a long period of time (ie we’d expect someone to sleep at some stage within a 24 hour period).
It is a very small minority of members who are identified as tethering using these indicators, but unless this usage is prevented, illegitimate usage consumes an unfair amount of network resources.
Yes the giffgaff limits are there to DETECT tethering because not all phones are transparent about how the data is being used and there are some apps explicitly designed to hide tethering. So, even if you do manage to exceed 1GB/hour or 3GB/day on your phone, you'll still be blocked because they'll assume you are tethered.
Of course there is a way to get around those blocks, you use a giffgaff plan that allows tethering, though strangely enough none of those have an 'unlimited' data allowance.
Thats fine, if it suits you thats great but you do understand other people may have need of a faster connection. If virgin advertise unlimited, any form of limits beyond those of contention or the actual physical limits of the deployment is fraud. Yes they are technically allowed to BS their way to putting in limits and fair use clauses, but just because you can buy your politician doesn't actually make it right, it just stops you being sued.
As for what do I use my lte connection for, wuxga vnc seems to take up a reasonable amount (its painful on 3g) and uploading proofs goes a lot quicker. Netflix also seems to use a fair bit :-)
I agree on laptop resolutions, it's pathetic. Trying to find anything with a half-decent res that isn't the size of a bus is impossible. I'm trying to replace my Asus Z71VP 1680x1050 with something in the £400-£500 range, it turns out there's nothing with a better screen than my 7 year old beast. I don't think I'm being unreasonable in my expectations, I don't even care about clock speed, an i3 is fine for editing text files, just let me buy a laptop with a resolution that isn't rubbish!
Rant over.
Whether the pixel count does or not, you've fallen into a trap. The point at which they do, you'd have to have your phone close enough to take up more of your total vision than a laptop does when you watch a movie.
It's the "HD TV syndrome" all over again. If the screen is 6 foot away, I need about a 50" screen to cover my vision. On my laptop, I need a 17" inch screen to cover my vision, and to be about 18 inches away. On a phone? I'd need either a huge screen or LITERALLY to have the thing on the end of my nose to cover my vision.
Hence I can choose to look silly, damage my eyesight through extremes of focus, pay a fortune, risk lots of bandwidth charges, and pay through the nose for the phone in the first place, in order to watch HD on the move, or I can just watch an SD movie or (actually) not care that the movie is HD or SD and hold it at, say, a comfortable arm's length like I would if I wanted to watch a blockbuster movie on a phone (?!). Let's not even get into MPEG artifacts, either - HD or not, you're going to "lose" more information for your eyes that way than ANY other anyway.
Personally, I watch lots on my laptop. SD or HD has never really been a concern at all because I don't sit at the point where I could spot individual pixels on the screen (don't think "one white dot on a black screen", because your eyesight will pick that up - think "single rogue black dot on a really dark scene anyway, while moving and I'm trying to concentrate on the film") or the laptop fills my vision. Hell, I used to watch TV on a PCI TV card with dedicated aerial on my early Super VGA screens (1024x768), and it was so pin-sharp that people used to comment on it, even when it was tucked into a on-top window or full-screen. People literally couldn't believe that the monitor was that good, from the same image source.
Hell, most people's "fix" for having a HD screen is to enlarge their default font size and image scaling in their browser. They don't complain that the images are blurry, even though there's NO OTHER WAY for the image scaling to work.
HD screens on phones might come about. HD data rates might come about. But if you were to secretly switch them to an SD-bandwidth stream mid-flow (easily possible with VBR encodings), they'd be hard-pressed to ever notice at all.
To paraphrase XKCD, your top-of-the-range HDTV is about as good as the monitor I bought in 1998, and not quite as good as the one I bought in 2002. When it gets to 15 years after your first HDTV purchase, you'll see that actually it's nothing magnificent or fabulous at all, unless you are doing pixel-work.
A lot of what the extra pixels are used for is cancelling out the effects of the MPEG artefacts, that and dithering the appalling course colour pallet (skies do work in 8bit blue). Its a mistake to think that the resolution of your eyes is the only limiting factor. As Nokia have recently demonstrated with their 40MP camera, it doesn't have all those dots to make a 40MP picture, it uses them to make a decent 6 or so MP picture.
The calculations of angle of resolution of my TV at home suggest that I don't need HD, but its easy to tell the difference between HD and SD. Its easy to tell when iPlayer only has the SD version rather than the HD one, or when the net is being lousy again and the HD stream isn't usable.
Besides, phones have HDMI output, so when stuck in a hotel it can be useful to drive the telly from the phone.
Now my point about laptops is entirely different. There, personally, I just want more bloody dots on the screen to display more information, the main thing I do to earn a living doesn't work properly on a 1080line display, I've built a work flow that needs more.
They starting blocking tethering on my account earlier this year. It's been working fine for the past 3 years but according to Virgin's support team they "don't allow tethering". Unfortunately I can't find my 3 year old contract to see what it says about tethering.
Looks like I'll have to jump ship when my contract comes up for renewal. The annoying thing is that I only tether once every few months and NEVER use much data, in fact my plan is capped at 1GB.
The One plans allow unmetered tethering, within normal acceptable use limits. To quote three's web page
'If you're on The One Plan you can use the internet when you're out and about with other devices including laptops, tablets and games consoles, just by connecting them through Wi-Fi or USB to your phone. You can tether on all our One Plan tariffs including SIM Only with a 1-month rolling contract.
Some of our other Pay Monthly plans as well as Pay As You Go plans come with all-you-can-eat data, but they don't allow tethering.'
I've been a Virgin Mobile customer for many years now. TBH, their service has been reliable and I've never had any qualms about the speed of the data connection. As long as it will continues to be reliable, sync my mail and allow for some browsing and emergency tethering (which I can still do!) I'll be happy.
Do I need more than 2Mbps to my phone? Nah, not really.
so the question is whether customers would sign up to a service that offers up to 8mb/sec only to flog them off with 2mb/sec speed that still might not be guaranteed....the answer is obviously no....but unfortunately they forget to mention this to their own customers. i call this not only misleading the very people who keep them profitable and in business but down right scandalous.....these mobile networks just seem to have a free reign in doing anything they want without consequence with the regulator (ofcom) pathetically weak to do anything about it...and if they do its years away and by that time the networks would already have profited enough to introduce new ways of scamming thir customers.
2 MB is somewhat sufficient for a family of 4 (500kb/s each), how you utilise your bandwidth is primarily up to you, you may wish to use WMM-QoS... 802.11e (uses half celling) you may prefer to use Application-Port-Service-QoS 802.11p (works much more efficiently, when configured correctly according to your needs, but causes more overhead within a LAN)
160p HD works with roughly 250kb/s :-) so what are some people on about! Your eyes cant see much difference anyway! 1080p requires more 750 - 850kb/s.
At this point, do the math of what you actually require... taking into account the following:
Its up to you to download and install updates correctly, its up to you to ensure your devices aren't virulently spreading malware, its up to you to be careful what links you click on. Its also up to you to ensure you are fully aware of the contract you signed up to.
Traffic management has pretty much been written into every ISP contract for over 10 years now, so you cant say 'I never expected this' or shout 'I'm going somewhere else' ... because you're just changing the goalposts.
It is no good having a connection which says 16MB/s that you shout at your ISP for... or brag about down the pub if 14MB/s of it is noise and subsequently discarded! >_<
Lets all get real with whats realistic... Users and ISPs included.
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"160p HD works with roughly 250kb/s :-) so what are some people on about! Your eyes cant see much difference anyway! 1080p requires more 750 - 850kb/s."
160p "HD"? Whut? You sure that wasn't a typo of "720p"?
Anyway, let's assume 0.25 bits per pixel compressed video in 1080p.
1920*1080 = 2,073,600 pixels.
2,073,600 * 0.25 = 518,400, divided by 8 = 64,800 bytes per frame.
At 25 frames per second, that's 1,620,000 bytes per second. Quite a bit more than 850 kilobits. In fact several times as much. At 30fps it goes to 1,944,000 bytes per second, which doesn't really leave much of a budget out of that 2mbit/sec. None at all with a very large amount owing, actually. In fact you wouldn't get much change out of two megaBYTES per second.
Now remember that video streams are not regular, and tend to have keyframes every few seconds followed by a bunch of delta information showing how stuff has changed since the last keyframe. Suddenly, that 2mbit/sec limit seems a little... small.
Of course, not many people will play 1080p over a mobile phone... but some people have tablets, and some of us do like to tether, or plug our HDMI-port-enabled phones into TVs.
(edited because of a few schoolboy errors.. the real figures are even worse!)
I'm using one of Virgin's 30-day rolling contract deals. The "unlimited" internet deal is, if I remember correctly, currently subject to a 3GB / month "fair use" policy, with vague threats about something perhaps happening should you go over that limit.
The only time I've breached one Gigabyte on my phone was the month I drove eight hundred miles with Google Navigator displaying the aerial photography overlay - being a pillock in other words. The infrastructure isn't there for everyone to stagger around perpetually streaming high definition video, and probably never will be. Accept it and cheer up.
You can bet that, come the day that the other operators have 4G coverage and launch their services, offering the ability to stream high bandwidth video will be *exactly* what they encourage their customers to do in their advertising.
I mean what else is that high-speed connectivity for? Most other uses are at most a bit bursty but only video and file transfers will actually max out the connection available.
I am in the middle of an argument with Virgin at the moment, they are saying I have the movies switched on and I don't. But that's a full rant for another day
You can pretty much set your clock with the throttling of bandwidth. At 7p.m. I go from having 20 mbps to 2mbps. It is generally frustrating and some times fucking frustrating. This is on the home broadband not their mobile.
To be fair I am pretty pissed off at them.
Well, Virgin do throttle their land-line broadband.. but only after you download a gigashitload all at once during peak hours, and only for the duration of the day.
Honestly, they're possibly the best land-line ISP out there. Just a shame the mobile offering seems a bit pants.
The issue isn't really the cap itself, although 2mbit down isn't great.
The issue is that they have implemented it in such a horribly broken way that you get a burst of high speed data for a second or two, then nothing, then another burst a few seconds later.
This causes problems with audio and video streams, and makes sites load slowly in the browser.
If they had implemented the cap properly, most people would not have made a fuss. The cap which they have implemented gives you bursts, not a continual stream of data, which causes problems.
Tmobile used to cap their PAYG offerings to 384kbit/sec down. Although this was annoying and they lied about it, their cap was implemented properly and you would get a continual 384kbit/sec down.
Virgin, on the other hand, have made an utter mess over the implementation which has allowed a lot more people to notice it than otherwise would have.
Also, it took them far too long to be honest about it, and they are still lying by stating that their data is unlimited. It isn't, it is limited, by a speed cap.
"Also, it took them far too long to be honest about it, and they are still lying by stating that their data is unlimited. It isn't, it is limited, by a speed cap."
Though when has "unlimited" ever meant "unlimited speed"?
I'll grant you the "unlimited" word has been truly abused by mobile ISPs, but as long as you can download as much stuff as the pipe is capable of without incurring extra fees or a cut-off.. then I'd happily call that unlimited. Unlimited use.
Research "the tragedy of the commons"
Ever been to a "free bar" - some people take advantage and get paralytic. An "all you can eat" buffet? take a look at the average American to see the result of that.
17 years ago I hosted my websites on a server offering "unlimited traffic", then the provider hosted a porn site on the same box. Access speeds dropped to totally unusable. I moved everything to a capped service that guaranteed the consistent level of service I needed.
The problem is that the typical tech-ignorant punter just looks at headline speed marketing garbage and disregards the asterisk taking them to small print.
I would rather have slower and reasonably consistent than superfast sometimes and virtually dead at others. With Mobile we are in any case familiar with the voice/SMS services going to poor or no signal - even in well served areas your SMS at midnight on new years eve/day from trafalgar square will struggle so surely nobody expects data to be consistently good.
Anyone know a good uncapped domestic electricity supplier? No, you pay for what you use.
If there are people who need 8mbit on their mobiles let them pay a premium, don't just hope those with lower usage will subsidise you.
The difference is that there is no finite reservoir of bits that's about to run out if everyone uses them up. This isn't like dragging a few kilowatts out of the mains grid and expecting the power station to stay fuelled forever.
The problem is, too many people seem to think that there is some kind of bit reservoir. There isn't. The only limit is the amount of data that can be transferred in any given time period. With sensible traffic management and by not oversubscribing your networks with endpoint connections that are way too high for the core network to cope with, then yes, unlimited usage of a mobile network connection is very possible. Three are managing it right now.
2mbit is a bit low, though.
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