Nice Knowing You, Verizon

I believe ATT has been doing this. Not a lot of people go over 5GB of data. Instead of using ALL data, turn on WIFI.

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The moment I get throttled, I'm off to T-Mobile.

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For their "unlimited" ?

T-Mobile also throttles your data once you reach a certain GB on their unlimited

It only applies at highly congested locations and when using data hungry features according to what I've read



I'm not unlimited anyway so I don't have a dog in the fight

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It only applies at highly congested locations and when using data hungry features according to what I've read

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so streaming video in a large city

you know, exactly what I use my phone for

Verizon is the "Democracy" of cell providers.

It sucks, but it's better than everything else.

I was ready to rage against the machine when I realized how much AT&T wanted everyone off of unlimited.

Then I realized two things.

I wasn't using an unlimited amount of data so why should I care if there is a cap? My wife and I were averaging about 4GB per month.

Second, hitting a cap and having the option to either stop using data or pay for more is better IMO than hitting an arbitrary threshold and having my data speed slowed to the point of being unusable.

After realizing this, we went on a mobile share value plan and share 10GB per month. Couldn't be happier. I actually use more data because I don't have to worry about hitting 5 anymore. Plus, I'm saving a little money and getting unlimited calling (the 550 min we were sharing wasn't cutting it). And I can tether my connection now.

Long story short...sometimes there's no good reason to cling to an "unlimited" plan.

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After realizing this, we went on a mobile share value plan and share 10GB per month. Couldn't be happier. I actually use more data because I don't have to worry about hitting 5 anymore. Plus, I'm saving a little money and getting unlimited calling (the 550 min we were sharing wasn't cutting it). And I can tether my connection now.

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I pay $150 for the 10gb plan and 3 phones on AT&T. My wife won't use more than 2.5gb and her mom doesn't ever go over 100mb. So that leaves me with a little more than 7gb which for me is usually enough.

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Now I'm using between 12-15 gb a month, mostly from streaming video while I'm at the gym. About 90% of that data is my twitch.tv app.

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Man that's a ton. But yeah, if you stream a lot of video then that makes sense. I think you're lucky in the sense that the throttling hasn't made video unwatchable.

I honestly thought Verizon had kicked people off the unlimited plan a long time ago.

What's your monthly data usage look like?

EDIT: nevermind, just saw it in your post above. That's a lot.

I know AT&T throttles after 5GB, but I think I've reached 5GB on my phone maybe once or twice. The way I see it, my wife and I could do one of the following:

A. Switch to one of the newer 10GB plans, which costs more than our current unlimited plan (including the cost of phones), and generally be completely fine with the data cap, but on the rare occasion we hit that cap, either stop using data that month or pay extra for overage.

B. Keep our current plan, and generally be fine with the data cap, but on the rare occasion we hit that cap, we continue to use data freely but at reduced speeds.


I understand the annoyance if you're hitting 4.5-5GB in the first 2 weeks of your billing cycle.

Also, I can't find any fine print about T-Mobile's $80 unlimited plan throttling you after a certain amount of data. I did read an article where the CEO mentioned a fair use policy that would only be put in effect if there was network congestion at particular times of day. There was no GB threshold associated with it. That would go against their recent "uncarrier" campaign, part of which criticizes the other carriers for throttling their unlimited plans. The only definitive limit on it I see is 5GB of tethering. Seems like even T-Mobile's lower tiered plans with data caps don't even charge you for overages. They just drop you to painfully slow 2G speeds after you reach the cap.

EDIT: Just reading up on T-Mobile has me tempted to switch. I guess I should read the caveats since the price looks too attractive. Mainly, how do they handle phone upgrades, and of course, what's reception like in BR?

EDIT 2: Holy shite, their Jump plan is even worse than ATT Next.