someone needs a good throttling?!.....Verizon's 'unlimited' plans are now all permanently being 'throttled'......

[NewtonMP2100]

....'member a few months ago when it was discovered that Verizon throttles Netflix and YouTube even before the 22GB limit.....??


......they've modified all unlimited plans now to throttle video.....to as low as 480p on smartphones.....starts tomorrow for new customers and 'soon' for existing customers.......


Verizon permanently throttling video on all unlimited plans, as low as 480p on iPhones

....We noted last month that Verizon was throttling Netflix and YouTube usage for ‘unlimited’ plan users even before they hit the 22GB level at which the company says it may reduce bandwidth – and it has now been revealed that this was just stage one.

Verizon is now starting to throttle all video on its ‘unlimited’ plans, with bandwidth limited to as little as 480p when watching on a smartphone.

As The Verge reports, Verizon is splitting out its so-called unlimited plan into three versions.

Go Unlimited: $75/month. Video capped to 480p on smartphones, 720p on tablets.
Beyond Unlimited: $85/month. Video capped to 720p on smartphones, 1080p on tablets.
Business Unlimited: Price varies. Video capped to 480p on smartphones, 720p on tablets.

Not only this, but unlike the previous plan which allowed the carrier to reduce your data speeds after 22GB in one month, small-print in the basic Go Unlimited plan lets Verizon do so any time there is network congestion – aka the company not providing enough bandwidth to meet customer needs.

Existing customers can keep their current plan, and you’ll also get 15GB of full-speed LTE hotspot usage (up from 10GB) – but that still won’t protect you from video throttling.

This is what’s likely going to enrage Verizon customers most. No matter what plan you’re on — whether it’s the old, grandfathered unlimited data plan or a tiered plan or the new unlimited plan — Verizon is taking a tighter grip over video streaming. “Moving forward, HD video on all legacy plans will also match Beyond Unlimited’s HD quality.”

So you’ll soon be limited to a maximum video quality of 720p streaming on phones and 1080p if you’ve got a tablet on your plan.

The company claims that nobody can tell the difference between 720p and higher on a phone and 1080p and better on a tablet, claims which are clearly ridiculous on an iPhone and iPad.

Customers were able to circumvent the previous Netflix- and YouTube-specific throttling by using a compatible VPN, but it’s unclear whether this will help if the company is limiting the bandwidth of all video. The new limits kick in tomorrow for new customers, and ‘soon’ for existing ones, so it seems we won’t have to wait long before we find out.


Verizon 'unlimited' plans no longer really.......'unlimited'........?!

[cbelt3]

Man is not meant to fly...
Going faster than a horse can run will drive people insane...
There is perhaps a need for 3 to 4 computers in the whole country....
Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM....
A reality TV star as president ? Ha ha ha....
Nobody will notice if we throttle their data...

Many famous last words....

[bfd]

Not thinking ahead got them to this place. When iPhones debuted, who'd have ever thought that people would be using them to watch feature length films at 1080? Well, someone was working on that at the time, and Verizon, AT&T and the rest just ignored it for the sake of marketing. Now they're sorry, but why take the blame and build out their capacity when they can just throttle the consumer and keep making money.

[Will Collier]

That'll have a short lifespan. T-Mobile and Sprint will eat them alive (and so will the Death Star if they have anybody in marketing who isn't a complete idiot). The churn ads practically write themselves.

Verizon's suits keep dreaming that one day they will once again be The Phone Company, and people will just have to pay up.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

Will Collier wrote:
Verizon's suits keep dreaming that one day they will once again be The Phone Company, and people will just have to pay up.

Actually, it is AT&T that was The Phone Company. Verizon got its humble beginnings as long distance carrier MCI, IIRC.

[JoeH]

N-OS X-tasy! wrote:
[quote=Will Collier]
Verizon's suits keep dreaming that one day they will once again be The Phone Company, and people will just have to pay up.

Actually, it is AT&T that was The Phone Company. Verizon got its humble beginnings as long distance carrier MCI, IIRC.
Verizon was formed by several of the "baby Bells" being merged over time, not from MCI, etc. Verizon started with the merger of Bell Atlantic with NYNEX, which had been formed by merging NETel and NYTel a few years before. This happened in the late '90's. Later they acquired GTE and MCI in the following decade to provide service outside their original area.

AT&T is the former Southwestern Bell, they had acquired a number of the other baby Bells, Eventually they purchased the remnants of the original AT&T at about the same time as Verizon purchased MCI.

[Ombligo]

Wonder where we would be if Bell had not been broken up...

[M A V I C]

bfd wrote:
Not thinking ahead got them to this place. When iPhones debuted, who'd have ever thought that people would be using them to watch feature length films at 1080? Well, someone was working on that at the time, and Verizon, AT&T and the rest just ignored it for the sake of marketing. Now they're sorry, but why take the blame and build out their capacity when they can just throttle the consumer and keep making money.

In 2001, I was working on putting feature length films on phones. Albeit not HD, but that was what we were doing for desktop. It was imminent.