Virgin Mobile bids farewell to unlimited too.

[tli]

I listen to Pandora about 3 hours a day with good traffic lol. Guess I'll be screwed.

It all depends on what the throttled rate would be... anyone knows?

 

[Kreatur3]

It all depends on what the throttled rate would be... anyone knows?

No idea but wondering, does this effect all plans or just the cheaper ones?

 

[Sean OGorman]

Kinda a bummer because I know I was using 4-5 GB a month when I had a G2 on T-Mobile. I've only used the phone for tethering once or twice, but 40-50 minutes a day in the car, streaming music can add up. I suppose if I keep it on Wifi whenever possible I should be fine. Even then, the times I've been stuck on 1x, even XM streams at seemingly the same quality as 3G, it just takes longer to buffer.

 

[shawne11]

It all depends on what the throttled rate would be... anyone knows?

This article suggests 256 kbps or below. I've have had speedtest numbers below this and never had trouble streaming Pandora.

Virgin Mobile Revamps Pricing, Will Throttle Data | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

 

[tli]

This article suggests 256 kbps or below. I've have had speedtest numbers below this and never had trouble streaming Pandora.

Virgin Mobile Revamps Pricing, Will Throttle Data | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

Thanks for the info. As long as the average throttled rate remains above 150Kbps, then it should be OK for Pandora with normal quality audio. Pandora's HQ audio requires at least 300Kbps on average so that's will not work under throttled condition. I suspect that VM would not throttle the rate so much that it would disable one of the more popular web services like Pandora. Thus, a throttle rate of 150Kbps to 256Kbps seems reasonably likely.

 

[camf3xu]

This makes me really mad that ima have to start watching my Pandora usage. Why couldn't they havechosen a more realistic value directed at ppl tethering :[

 

[Eollie]

This makes me really mad that ima have to start watching my Pandora usage. Why couldn't they havechosen a more realistic value directed at ppl tethering :[

For what its worth..this is a typical cap on most carriers.

 

[draetheus]

I have to pre-cache everything via wifi in google music because I ride the subway to work and 3G cuts out in tunnels. Guess this won't affect me then.

 

[MarkD426]

I use pandora about 5 hours a day/6 days a week (all 3G, no wifi at work) and haven't gone over 2.5 GB in a month. A great little widget called Data Counter Widget counts Wifi, 3G, and Tether usage. If you dont abuse 3G and use wifi when ever available most everyone one will be fine. Throttling sucks, it will only load about 5 seconds of music at a time when kicked down to 1x on Pandora.

 

[gater]

I'm sure there are apps available.

Sucks to be the guy who posted a thread here who used something in the area of 17 GB. No longer.

He could still do it...it would just take him a lot longer

 

[mmarz]

E

That thread is a garbled mess, and I couldn't find anyone who claimed it worked who would repond to questions about how.

Not that I wanted to do it, but anyone following that link hoping to do this will be disappointed.

Install the stock S rom, then:

1. Dial ##3282#
2. Enter Multimedia
3. Select Edit
4. Enter your MSL

And you'll see all the entries are blank. The settings are built into the phone's NV memory. It doesn't matter what you flash in terms of roms, kernel, or recoveries. You need to use the S stock rom to access the setting since the other roms don't have the correct menu item.

 

[psygn]

This was bound to happen, so no surprises here. I mean, they had advertised their 3G mobile Internet plan as "Unlimited" at one point, but after some time they had to lower that down to a measly 2.5GB.

The Unlimited data portion has attracted many users, and Virgin Mobile knew this and used this to grab a larger customer base (besides the nice 300min + unlimited text).

I just wish it was 5GB hard cap instead of 2.5GB with throttle. VM throttles are often below the point where streaming is possible, which makes it pretty much useless. Trust me, I use to own a VM Mifi 2200 with this same soft cap.

 

[Retorrent]

Well you can thank all the A hole data hogs for causing this,when you got the morons using it as a home connect instead of just ponying up for internet its going to cause VM to take notice, honestly they should just leave everyone unlimited until they prove that they are a data hog then cap them at the 2.5 GB. Why punish the 97% for what the jack ass 3% do?

I swear the next time I hear some one say "Well it's my data I can do what I want with it!" a.k.a the tag line of the data hog. I am going to punch them in the face tell them "This why we can't have nice things!"

 

[lou61166]

Well you can thank all the A hole data hogs for causing this,when you got the morons using it as a home connect instead of just ponying up for internet its going to cause VM to take notice, honestly they should just leave everyone unlimited until they prove that they are a data hog then cap them at the 2.5 GB. Why punish the 97% for what the jack ass 3% do?

I swear the next time I hear some one say "Well it's my data I can do what I want with it!" a.k.a the tag line of the data hog. I am going to punch them in the face tell them "This why we can't have nice things!"

That's never how it works going after the select few,but we may never know the real reasons for them throttling,but every other provider except sprint has done away with true unlimited,.

 

[LeslieAnn]

Well you can thank all the A hole data hogs for causing this,when you got the morons using it as a home connect instead of just ponying up for internet its going to cause VM to take notice, honestly they should just leave everyone unlimited until they prove that they are a data hog then cap them at the 2.5 GB. Why punish the 97% for what the jack ass 3% do?

I swear the next time I hear some one say "Well it's my data I can do what I want with it!" a.k.a the tag line of the data hog. I am going to punch them in the face tell them "This why we can't have nice things!"

The cap will not effect 97% of people.
If it doesn't effect them, then how is it punishment?

And yes, data is data, we should be free to use it how we wish, and while I do tether occasionally, I have probably only exceeded 500 megs (total) a few times. So it's not just the cry of data hogs. It's the cry of someone wanting to be able to use what we pay for (bandwidth).

 

[koopakid08]

People abuse unlimited and now its not unlimited anymore -_-
I love sprint Hippocratic commercial though

 

[JerryScript]

LOL, how can you abuse unlimited? Just seems like an oxymoron to say you have a limit to your unlimited plan.

I don't tether, other than to test the ability on ROMs, but I do believe data is data. I can use the software provided by the carriers to download a file to my phone (image, sound, video, webpage, document, etc) and then transfer it to my PC. What's the difference with tethering to save a step? It's the same data over the same network, but only one method is acceptable?

Seems to me like a classic bait and switch, come get your unlimited data, just don't use too much of it.

 

[Retorrent]

The cap will not effect 97% of people.
If it doesn't effect them, then how is it punishment?

And yes, data is data, we should be free to use it how we wish, and while I do tether occasionally, I have probably only exceeded 500 megs (total) a few times. So it's not just the cry of data hogs. It's the cry of someone wanting to be able to use what we pay for (bandwidth).

Well my rant wasn't aimed at people like you it was more towards those folks who are excessive with their use. It was towards the ones like my co workers who downloading 5gig+ flies over their tether and where pretty much part of the problem. On VMs site it says"Unlimited does not mean unreasonable use" now what they define as unreasonable we don't know, but I am pretty sure when you start hitting 5 gigs in one night that falls into the "unreasonable" category.

 

[lou61166]

I can see some people need to further read how different a network that requires frequencies to land line networks work,cell networks can easily be bogged down by to many users trying to access to much data at once,without at least in the USA enough frequencies, there is a limit to what cell networks can handle,is this the carriers fault in a way yes they should not use the word unlimited,as more and more customers are buying smartphones,this was bound to happen,so saying Data is Data regardless to how you are receiving it is a not a correct statement when comparing land line to wireless networks.

 

[notown]

LOL, how can you abuse unlimited? Just seems like an oxymoron to say you have a limit to your unlimited plan.

I don't tether, other than to test the ability on ROMs, but I do believe data is data. I can use the software provided by the carriers to download a file to my phone (image, sound, video, webpage, document, etc) and then transfer it to my PC. What's the difference with tethering to save a step? It's the same data over the same network, but only one method is acceptable?

Seems to me like a classic bait and switch, come get your unlimited data, just don't use too much of it.

LOL, how can you abuse unlimited? Just seems like an oxymoron to say you have a limit to your unlimited plan.

this^


btw does this mean we're going to pay more now too?