virgin mobile throttling service

dovlek

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Feb 27, 2011
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"Here at Virgin Mobile, our mission is to deliver an outstanding customer experience. Sometimes that means making difficult choices in order to provide the best possible service to the greatest number of customers.

To make sure we can keep offering our Beyond Talk Plans at such great prices, we're putting a data speed reduction in place for anyone who uses over 2.5GB of

data in a month.

How will it work? Starting March 23, 2012, if you use over 2.5GB of data in a month on your Beyond Talk Plan:

Data speeds may be reduced to 256Kbps or below for the rest of your month. If data speeds are reduced, they will return to normal as soon as your next plan month starts. If you'd rather not wait for your new month to start, you can restart your plan immediately through My Account.

Will it affect me? Based on your activity for your last plan month ending in December, you could be affected by this change.

If you continue to use the same amount of data as you did in your last plan month, you may see your data speeds reduced during a plan month when the data speed reduction is implemented on March 23, 2012. You can still use your phone to do everything you currently do, but you may experience slower page n and file downloads and lags in streaming media.

This will not affect your ability to text or make calls with your phone.

How will I know if my data speeds have been reduced? If you reach 2.5GB of data in a month, you will receive a text message letting you know your data speeds will be reduced for the rest of your plan month.

By putting this data speed reduction in place, we're making sure we can deliver the same quality service you've come to expect from Virgin Mobile. We hope you understand.

Thank you. Virgin Mobile "
What do u people think of this? It starts on march 23. I do use more than 2.5 GB a month, because of netflix for example.
 

bassic83

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Oct 23, 2011
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It seems that 2GB caps are the new "normal". I am grandfathered in at Big Red for unlimited data, but so far, their 4G is flaky, bouncing between the 3G and 4G constantly. Part of that is probably the build-out blues, but I wonder if it's not intentional to limit data hogs at times. I consistently use around .93GB of data a month, my wife uses almost 1.5GB. A 2.5GB data plan would actually be fine for us, based on past usage. I don't stream Netflix much, I do stream some talkradio at work, I down tunes from the net, other times I listen to Pandora a little, and down my mail (on demand, not pushed, to save battery). I know I will get flamed for this, but how about tiered plans, where you get 2-2.5GB as a base, if you go over, you can pay a small (and I do mean small, like $5/GB) fee to "unlock" your cap. If you go over, say 4.5GB, they could bump you up to the next plan; for say, $10 more, you'd get 5GB, with the option to extend for $5/GB.

Keep in mind that Virgin is a Sprint reseller, using Sprint's network. Sprint still has unlimited data (for now), perhaps that is an option for you?

Bandwidth caps are the future of broadband, until there is so much capacity that large portions of it go unused...don't hold your breath. On the other hand, it may indeed lead to new compression schemes/formats/algorithms for data, and for multimedia files, this could be a boon as well. It is also forcing people to make changes in behavior, learning to be a little more frugal with what they download, and how much data they are consuming. Example- for me, I don't download all the pictures in emails (html), preferring instead to read the content, if I need further clarification on what something looks like, I may choose to download the images at that time. It doubtless saves me bandwidth, after all, it's a PHONE, not a PC. But at least I know what the email was about, and if I can wait until I am home, I can fire up my computer and look at it with being all micro-sized. More satisfying that way.

All in all, it's their bandwidth they are selling you, you have the option to either control it to some degree, or to choose another provider. Even home cable bandwidth is metered- my Comcast account has a 250GB limit. I never reach it, except one time when I was downing multiple Linux OSes to try. It is an aggregate of media files and data files, to my understanding, and HD Netflix gobbles the gigs! But I rarely get too close there, either.

So to me, 2.5GB seems pretty fair- better than the competition, which is 2GB as a standard (VZ, ATT, TMO), with Sprint being the last holdout (probably to woo customers, which they need in order to continue in business). Just my opinion, your mileage may vary, etc., etc...
 

dhwagner

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Feb 14, 2011
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Actually you can stream 5 full length netfix movies and you will hit 2gb of data - that is a lot of movies in one day - but I guess some do that... becoming mindless zombies ... most people across the country do not even come close to 2.5gb in a month of usage.
And on Virgin you just re-up your service early and you are kicked back up to full speed for another 2.5gb - I guess it's a matter of how much watching the movies is important to you.

For the price VM is the best service around with what we get.
 

dovlek

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Yeah i mean i dont stream that much but i guess in a month i watch at least 5 movies. But yeah im still on the 25 plan and its great, but i guess they had to Make a change to control the the heavy traffic. Im just wondering since sprint is going for LTE now for 4g will virgin ever adapted? That be nice but probably till 14-15
 
Apr 25, 2011
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Yeah i mean i dont stream that much but i guess in a month i watch at least 5 movies. But yeah im still on the 25 plan and its great, but i guess they had to Make a change to control the the heavy traffic. Im just wondering since sprint is going for LTE now for 4g will virgin ever adapted? That be nice but probably till 14-15
Might be sooner than you think: http://prepaidmobilephonereviews.co...-divisions-boost-and-virgin-mobile/#more-1974

Sent from my Triumph using Tapatalk
 

dovlek

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Nice article.......we can only hope it happens soon. Imagine paying 25 for unlimited 4g service lol ill bet the plans would have to change......hope not. :)
 

toxicityj

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Jul 21, 2011
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So how does this throttling work? if I'm already getting god-awful 3G speeds (like x3 the speed of dialup if I'm lucky) will I be affected at all even if i go over the cap? Do they throttle you down by a percentage or down a speed bracket from the top?
 

brokdikdog

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Feb 4, 2011
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I'm not buying this 2.5 GB limit. I used to get up to 1MB down but now I am lucky if I get 200kb down even on my first day of new month. 370 or so ping, less than 200 kb down and 500+ kb up.

Sent from my Triumph using Tapatalk
 

bander59

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Oct 17, 2011
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On a good day I might get 860Kb, not exactly high speed.. The throttling would just slow it down to a crawl. I'm lucky to have wimax access at home, work and my favorite hangouts, otherwise Virgin Mobile would be losing this customer.
 

dhwagner

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I agree - throttling does not bother me either -
I use the free app ONAVO to measure data - well for $25.00 a month (even those paying $35) it's the best deal out there.
I realized that I spend about 80% of my useage on WIFI anyway - it is just about everywhere.
Use WIFI analyzer to find what's available - and it's faster than even those 4g lines.

So VM is still the great secret and once we get CM9 running - the Triumph really will Triumph :)
 

UnThrottled

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Mar 29, 2012
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Hey guys, at around 3 or 4 am I was downloading a few torrents at about 50+ kbps, which is unusually high, because I usually get speeds of like 300-900 B/s. Then at 6 am I get a text from virgin mobile that says I exceeded the 2.5 GB cap and now my speeds will be throttled. Guess what? Now they are at 150 kbps! LMAO. Thats almost the speeds I get out of my DSL (250 kbps). I like being throttled!
 

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