Items tagged with throttling
Apple drew a lot of scrutiny and backlash when it was discovered that the company was secretly throttling performance of select iPhones models in order to preserve battery life. While the practice was understandable given that lithium-ion batteries degrade over time, the fact that Apple was so secretive about the practice -- and did not notify customers at all about the performance throttling -- is what caused many customers to become upset, Apple faced a number of class-action lawsuits -- 66 to be exact -- for its CPU throttling, and it now looks as though a settlement has been reached. According to the proposed settlement, Apple will pay up at a minimum $310 million, and up to...
Read more...
AT&T is finally facing the music with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for its "Unlimited Data" practices – to the tune of $60 million -- 8 years after it first fleeced customers. The problem lies in the fact that AT&T marketed its smartphone plans as having unlimited data, but instead began to throttle customer's connections after surpassing preset data thresholds during their monthly billing cycle. According to the FTC, AT&T "misled" customers over throttling practices for unlimited data, and added that in many cases, customers found their cell service "difficult or nearly impossible to use" once the restrictions were put into place on their accounts. In some cases,...
Read more...
Report Shows Wireless Carriers Are Cheaping Out And Throttling Your Video Streams Whenever They Want
We all know that wireless carriers throttle data. After all, throttling has been commonplace ever since carriers moved from their "buckets" of data in 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB sizes, for example. Once carriers started fully embracing unlimited data, they started implementing policies where they would throttle data once customers reached a certain threshold (usually around 20GB) if cell towers are overloaded. But now new research shows that carriers are throttling video streams even when customers have not reached the carrier-set threshold or when "data congestion" isn’t a serious problem on the network. This information comes from Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts Amhert,...
Read more...
During the terrible wildfires that ravaged some California counties, firefighters working to save lives and property had a problem with the cellular data service they were receiving on the Verizon network. The problem was that Verizon throttled their plan making the internet access the teams needed slower than it should have been. Verizon's response on the issue of slow internet speeds for the county was that it needed to upgrade to a better plan; which is ultimately what happened, so the firefighters had the tools they needed to get their life-saving work done. Legislators in Texas want to be sure this never happens in their state, and a bill has been introduced in the Texas House of Representatives...
Read more...
It looks as though both Samsung and Apple are facing the music in Italy over their use of software updates to purposely slow down devices. Italy's antitrust watchdog fined Samsung and Apple each $5 million euros, which works out to around $5.7 million. The regulatory agency said that Samsung and Apple had harmed customers with the secret software controls, and concluded that both "had caused serious dysfunctions and reduced performance significantly, thereby accelerating the process of replacing them." In addition, it was determined that this was a somewhat underhanded ploy to slow down older phones to the point that customers would simply give up and purchase a new device. Apple of course garnered...
Read more...
Verizon Wireless is catching heat for throttling data services of the Santa Clara County Fire Department while wildfires ravaged California. The fire department's chief, Anthony Bowden, said the throttling impeded his department's ability to respond to emergencies, and that Verizon was informed of the "significant impact" its decision was having. Santa Clara Fire pays Verizon for what is supposed to be 'unlimited' data. However, it apparently reached the limit of unfettered data and had its services throttled, which primarily affected a fire department vehicle that is "deployed to large incidents as a command and control resource." This rolling command center tracks, organizes, and prioritizes...
Read more...
If there's one bit of messaging we keyed on, with respect to Samsung's recently announced Galaxy Note 9 flagship and its high-level feature set, it was the promise of a robust thermal solution that would maintain performance over time and under pressure. Samsung claims the new Galaxy Note 9 employs a "water-carbon cooling" system, with a heat spreader for its Snapdragon 845 SoC and associated circuitry, that's three times larger than the previous generation Galaxy Note. So we figured we'd like to put that to the test. Meanwhile, we've also been spending quality time in the test lab with none other than the OnePlus 6 -- an Android superphone in its own right, with 8GB of RAM and a near bone-stock...
Read more...
It seems as though controversy is destined to stay with Apple these days. In recent months, Apple came under fire for its failure-prone keyboards on MacBook/MacBook Pro models, but that backlash was somewhat mitigated by a third-generation design that largely cures the problem. However, a new controversy is brewing over processor throttling on the new 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro with the Core i9 (Coffee Lake) processor option. YouTuber Dave Lee first brought attention to the problem earlier this week when he discovered that while under the load the MacBook Pro with Core i9 option reported clock speeds as low as 2.2GHz instead of its base clock of 2.9GHz. Apple...
Read more...
Bad news for AT&T and good news for consumers at large—the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) does in fact have authority over the wireless carrier and other common carriers, an appeals court has determined. That means the FTC can dole out punishment to AT&T Mobility for throttling data on its unlimited data plan on the basis that doing so was "unfair and deceptive" to customers. The issue dates back to a lawsuit the FTC filed against AT&T in October 2014 in the US District Court in Northern California. It was the FTC's claim that AT&T advertised unlimited data to wireless customers, but ultimately throttled speeds by up to 90 percent in some instances. AT&T...
Read more...
If you've been following the tech world over the past two weeks, Apple hasn't had this much negative attention aimed at its products since the MacBook Pro battery life fiasco stirred by Consumer Reports, or perhaps the iPhone 4 "Antennagate". Apple's decision to throttle older iPhones with degraded batteries -- while not informing customers of the practice -- has invited swift backlash. Not surprisingly, some of Apple's competitors are latching on to its misery, while at the same time reassuring current -- and potentially, future -- customers that they would never use such secretive tactics. The Verge received statements from both HTC and Lenovo/Motorola on the issue. A representative for HTC...
Read more...
It was only a matter of time before the lawsuits would start raining down after Apple admitted to throttling CPU performance on older iPhones. Apple confirmed the practice after users complained on reddit about degraded battery performance leading to slowdowns, which was later confirmed by analysis from Primate Labs. In fact, Apple has been hit by not one, but two lawsuits that are seeking class-action status. The first lawsuit was filed by Stefan Bogdanovich and Dakota Speas, both of which own an iPhone 7. The iPhone 7 was first launched in September 2016, and was subject to Apple's throttling mechanism in iOS 11.2. The lawsuit alleges that Apple is "purposefully slowing down older iPhone models...
Read more...
T-Mobile has made a name for itself by bucking industry norms and charting its own path. From special T-Mobile Tuesday promotions, to enticing bundle offers, to generous "unlimited" data throttling limits, the third-place wireless carrier usually takes a customer-centric approach to its business model (well, if you don't count that brief Apple Watch Series 3 blunder). Today, T-Mobile is taking yet another step to appease its customer base by raising the "prioritization point" after which your data speeds can be throttled to dismal levels. For AT&T and Verizon Wireless, that limit is set at 22GB. Sprint sets its limit at 23GB, while T-Mobile previously bettered the completion with a 32GB prioritization...
Read more...
Has your House of Cards binge been plagued by lag? Verizon admitted to having recently experimented with capping download speeds to 10Mbps on mobile devices. The test seems to have particularly targeted popular video streaming services like Netflix and YouTube. Verizon’s cap was uncovered through tests last week with Netflix’s speed test tool fast.com. Although Netflix was the only service that was able to verify these numbers through a test tool, other video streaming services such as YouTube seemed to have also suffered from lag. Many people argued that these numbers were confirmation that Verizon was throttling services like Netflix. Verizon implicitly admitted that there recently had been...
Read more...
When companies advertise unlimited data plans for its customers and then renege on that promise, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) definitely wants some answers. The latest wireless company to come under the watchful eye of the FCC is none other than T-Mobile, which has long touted its unlimited data plans as an advantage over its competition. However, the company began throttling “data hogs” on its unlimited plans back in 2015 if they consumed more than 17GB of data per month (the “Top 3 percent” according to T-Mobile). This “magical” threshold for throttling was not explicitly made clear to customers at first — it was not until customers complained about the reduced data speeds that...
Read more...
