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Yesterday, many of you expressed disdain for Sprint’s All-In plan. Not because the plan was bad or anything (it’s not terrible, we’ll put it that way), but because this plan seemed to enforce a special throttling clause that didn’t previously apply to any other Sprint plans.
That clause was that video streaming would be limited to 600 kilobytes per second at all times. To be clear, Sprint has always been upfront about having to throttle data usage, but the company’s previous policy was that this would only happen during periods of network congestion, a common tactic among all major wireless carriers.
Now, Sprint has decided against it. The company came forward with a blog post today saying they heard your cries and will no longer go through with plans to permanently limit video streaming speeds, though they were quick to note that they still may “manage the network” in times where things are clogged up.
The move comes at a time where the FCC is cracking down on companies for questionable practices that violate the net neutrality rules that were recently put in place (and more coming into effect down the line). Those rules don’t completely forbid Sprint from limiting speeds in situations where they deem it necessary to maintain network quality, but they do state that the company has to be upfront about it.
And, in defense of the Now Network, they actually were upfront. But they probably thought about that huge $100 million fine AT&T got slapped with not too long ago and thought it best to just avoid getting on the FCC’s bad side altogether.
Check out my Ookla Speedtest result. What’s your speed? http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/1347220387
I’m on Sprint not Boost
Ping is a little high, but still reasonable. DL Speeds are higher than my last hurrah with Sprint in the Spring of 2014. I was seeing 35 down & 8 UP average. Never accessed Spark in my short time with a Spark enabled handset.
Once Carrier Aggregation takes effect, you should see a substantial increase in download speeds: http://s4gru.com/index.php?/blog/1/entry-386-sprint-lte-advanced-carrier-aggregation-discovered-live-today-in-atlanta-b41-2xca/
Great for sprint. Now if they would only just include hotspot with there plans just like T-Mobile does
They do. All of the family share pack plans include a hotspot at no extra charge
Yeah but Tmobile has a unlimited plan with 7gb of hotspot data for $80. Sprint unlimited for $110 and 5gb of hotspot data. It’s not even close.
See, I noticed this. But I have 3 lines. So that means 3 phones times $25 per line. I don’t think I’m saving
Plus you’ll actually get a signal with T-Mobile
Who cares? All carriers are guilty of data throttling in some form or another. The claim of “network prioritization” is just a disguise.
I’m sure people who are considering these new plans do care.
While 600 kbps is rather draconian, the simple fact levels of network throttling have to happen or it will simply end up doing it by itself. Every company prioritizes its data because some things are more important than others. Access to a financial system is a higher priority than Youtube.
An ISP has different requirements, but it’s still similar. They need to make sure as many of their customers as possible get the performance they are paying for. For many email, especially those who use their phones for business, email is far more important than video streaming.
The simple fact is that the ISPs either do it actively or congestion will do it for them.
Prioritizing for network management is one thing, but putting artificial limits on a particular type of traffic even when there’s no congestion is just plain stupid and unacceptable.
i hate coming to phandroid to read press releases…ughh…
no mention of the fact that when Sprint announced they would stop throttling after ATT got hit with their fine they said that users would experience NO. DIFFERENCE. IN. SERVICE.
…which is as close to an admission that throttling users only serves to incentivize them through inconvenience into getting a more expensive plan…it’s a business model and has absolutely nothing to do with network congestion…they don’t have that many users…yet you guys will regurgitate their BS PR like it never happened…