EVDO Isn't A Third Pipe: Sprint Follows Verizon Wireless With 5GB Caps
from the thanks-for-nothing dept
Well, this is unfortunate. Every time people want to pretend that there's "real" competition in the broadband market beyond DSL and cable, you hear them talk about 3G wireless services like Sprint and Verizon Wireless' EVDO. Of course, Verizon Wireless caps its EVDO service at 5GB/month -- go over that and it will cut you off. Sprint, however, remained customer friendly and having sold people "unlimited" plans, stuck to that plan and let folks use EVDO as much as they wanted to. I'm one of those customers, and have been a big fan of the service. When I travel, I use it constantly. It's convenient, reliable and more secure than WiFi. While it's not often, on heavy travel months, I almost certainly pass that 5GB barrier. Yet, now, according to Gizmodo and Phonescoop, Sprint is implementing its own 5GB cap. You can make all sorts of arguments about why it needs to do this -- or point to the fact that (eventually) it will have a WiMax network available (though, not for a while). But, in the meantime, a bunch of us were told that we were buying "unlimited" service. 5GB is hardly unlimited, and it's rather ridiculous to go back and change the deal after the company had already sold it to us. Either way, any time someone suggests that EVDO is a "third pipe" competitor to DSL or cable, remind them that it's an extremely limited third pipe with rules that change with almost no notice.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: bandwidth limit, evdo, third pipe
Companies: sprint
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Wow, there's a smooth move!
The company that is bleeding money & loosing customers from both ends has just decided to release all of it's "unlimited plan" customers from their contracts without ETFs?
Sweet!
Now I just have to research who else supports my HTC 6800 Mogul phone & I'm gone!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bite, Bleed, Pay
It's been said for years that com billing is puffed with fees to serve rural families but never did firms execute improvements. Current merchandising is the status of features not the delivery of conduit.
Warning: The future of communications is the history of transportation.
Soon like any package, com items will require a fee, a tax, and a delivery date -- wrapped and pleasantly traceable.
Read twice.
For each few blocks in major cities, all the Press Releases point to improved features. Yet on millions of monthly bills, fees and rates are paid for restricted, weak or diluted delivery. We know contracts and services are being ramped and diluted every day. It's easy. It's called lunch.
It's Condo Collusion as I see it. China, Lagos, Athens, Madras; districts around the world are complaining about poor spectrum allocation! They all know the services are only downtown; maybe districts, and follow venue. Now Americans will soon find that the urban neighborhood or the building where they live will be "feature restricted" soon.
Darn it. Haitians and French can march in the street. We merely wallet.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
recourse
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: recourse
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
for a company that's losing customers, this is an odd way to go about things.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What's 5GB?
It's tough to find out at what point the rate penalties kick in.
Are there bandwidth police, penalty warnings, referee whistles, flashing orange lights?? Can I ask my bank to cap payments to a com vendor?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Unlimited? No.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
gimme a break
Example.. internet connection speeds keep getting faster. Why? they don't let you download anything. Drawing a webpage at 10Mb isn't any faster than 3mb. They have upped the speeds to 10Mb but when I try to download large files in access of 100Mb I get throttled to speeds so rediculously low (because they are reseting the modem) my aircard is faster.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Carriers I Know
So, as long as there was nothing in your contract limiting you to 5GB, you can use unlimited everything and unless they send the change to you in writing, they cannot limit you without breeching the contract that they wrote up .. without consulting you.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Reality-move to Europe/Asia
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You WERE paying for "unlimited"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
BRAVO, MIKE! YOU GOT IT RIGHT!!
FINALLY!!! Somebody gets it. Bravo, Mike Masnick, for finally telling it like it is about 3G. EV-DO and UMTS and HSPA were NEVER to be a third pipe. Gullible reporters believed that every handset would have multi-megabit speeds and the operators and infrastructure guys didn't bother to correct that mistaken belief because it worked in their favor.
I've been trying to preach that gospel for the last five years.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Devil's Advocate
Firstly, some of you don't seem to understand that this discussion is ENTIRELY about the USB or PCMCIA data subscriptions for laptop computers. This is NOT related to any data plan for your phone (ex: the HTC Mogul in post #1). But those plans are also limited (other ways) in the fine print.
Secondly, if you bought the EV-DO service to be your primary Internet connection, and you are a medium user, you will probably exceed 5GB. The target market for this is someone who already has another Internet connection at work or home, and uses the EV-DO for mobility only, OR a light Internet user with no other connection, like grandpa in his RV who only checks e-mail and a few web pages.
The EV-DO network, though fast, does not have the capacity to handle many active Internet users on each tower, thus they need to limit how much data each user can send. Caps are the correct approach to a constrained capacity situation. In fact, the carriers should have been smarter and sold 1GB plans for ~$25, 3GB for ~$45, etc. That would have given many partially nomadic people a suitable plan, and given them a better option than Wi-Fi.
The problem is (was) that Verizon and Sprint chose not to make the limitations clear in their original marketing. They chose to call it "Unlimited*", and who reads the fine print?
So my defense of carriers is pretty weak, but my argument is that they made the mistake years ago by misrepresenting the plans as 'unlimited'. What they are doing now is actually the right thing.
For those of you who think Sprint will suffer because of this, tell me, do you think thousands of Verizon Wireless EV-DO laptop subscribers changed to Sprint when VZW announced their 5GB cap a year ago?
If you use one of these services, BTW, you can do what I do. I have firewall software on my laptop which I ONLY use when I'm on the cellular network. The ZoneAlarm settings are configured to block all Internet traffic except the few applications I actually want to connect. This allows Outlook, web, and IM, but blocks pings, windows updates, and other traffic that is either useless or can wait until I get on REAL broadband.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
USA's low rank
For example, just one $3.99 movie rental purchase is 2G of the 5G monthly allocation already at $60. Streaming Public Radio will pop a 5G cap too. Sprint & Verizon should offer a Lynx browser download to protect users that are depending on the web.
I'm surprised that defenders post the old "Love It Or Leave It" bumper sticker as a rational response. Arbitrary contract dilution is serious. Increasing fees in a damn odd American infrastructure is serious.
I'm less surprised when corporate factors are spelled out to grab my sympathy, as if paid spin.
It seems to me that unless we're number one and prove it, we shouldn't be happy that our pipes drain our budgets and keep most of us below the full experience promised in adverts.
Until we're happy with our pipes and wires, diligence & bitching is a duty, ey wot?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
bait-and-switch
Amazon has so far mostly kept its discounts, but they are still competing with other online booksellers
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No
" With this plan and your Mobile Broadband Card or USB modem, you have instant Internet access wherever you go on the largest national Mobile Broadband network.
This plan includes
* Internet access on the largest national Mobile Broadband network.
* 5 GB/mo. in total or 300 MB/mo. while off-network roaming. (1024 kb=1MB. 1024 MB=1 GB)
* International data roaming may incur additional charges. Sprint reserves the right to limit throughput speeds or amount of data transferred."
That off-network roaming limit could be a killer - when I use my Aircard, I have no idea when I am doing that aside from a slowdown in thruput.
Rock and a hard place...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Killer costs on roaming after 5GB
I called Sprint and complained that if I had know I would have just went to a hotspot and bought a $10 daily charge with bongo. $744 for 1 month.... a little bit of gouging there. Needless to say I think EVDO has a long way to go to be affordable and I plan to get rid of it even if I have to pay the $200 disconnection its better than getting swanked with an $800 plus bill every month.
Everyone out there be careful, SPRINT will not even warn you they just send you the bill at the end of the month and you have to beleive you downloaded 35G because they say so. There bill doesen't even detail the data amounting to that charge... just a roaming fee ---- $744
[ link to this | view in chronology ]