Sprint to begin throttling data this summer? Nope, engadget just jumped the gun

[TheWart]

From Engadget:

nothing to see here, move along!

 

[Bateluer]

Will be throttling both their 3G and their 4G networks, or just the 4G?

Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon would have a great competitive advantage over AT&T with their expensive tier pricing.

 

[Gooberlx2]

...but still might stink for those planning to use the EVO as a hotspot with regularity.

If I were paying yet another $30 per month for hotspot, on top of the $10 EVO tax, on top of regular the everything data fees, I'd be pissed if was getting throttled. Hopefully people paying for hotspot would be the last to be throttled, unless their usage was absolutely absurd (like 24/7 torrenting or something).

 

[Fingolfin269]

As usual, this is something that will probably only adversely affect the small percentage of people that clog the network. More than likely nothing that will ever bother me so I don't really care as long as my service price remains the same.

 

[Brian Stirling]

Hopefully people paying for hotspot would be the last to be throttled, unless their usage was absolutely absurd (like 24/7 torrenting or something).

Now that's funny right there! While they could throttle on a person-by-person basis and they could give preference to the hotspot users don't hold your breath. What good would it be to throttle that average user that's NOT downloading the 1GB torrent from a hotspot -- not much bandwidth to be gained. However, if you throttle the hotspot user that is downloading that 1GB torrent there is some bandwidth to be free'd up.

The model for this is satellite internet and there "fair use" provisions. You get decent download speed for a bit then they throttle you back to a crawl. When the pipe is of limited size what do you expect?

I expect the throttle plan will be driven by demand and when demand is high they will lower the setting. I'd guess that 1 hotspot user will eat, when they're using it, at least 10X the bandwidth of a non hotspot user so the more people using the hotspot feature, whether it be legaly or not, the more the throttle will be lowered.


Brian

 

[Toonces]

This was debunked, it's a feature for enterprise administrators to throttle abusive users in their environment.

See the updated article. Really poor journalism on Engadget's part.

 

[shortylickens]

Big surprise.

What we really need is more wifi phones and more wifi hotspots around town. Cellular networks just cant handle it.

 

[zerocool84]

This was debunked, it's a feature for enterprise administrators to throttle abusive users in their environment.

See the updated article. Really poor journalism on Engadget's part.

Yea it seems like it. Good news for us.

 

[Anonemous]

This was debunked, it's a feature for enterprise administrators to throttle abusive users in their environment.

See the updated article. Really poor journalism on Engadget's part.

The damage is already done, Engadget really screwed it up. Sprint is now associated with throttling for all users.

 

[Fingolfin269]

The damage is already done, Engadget really screwed it up. Sprint is now associated with throttling for all users.

Yep and just like any good "news" outlet they did not post the correction with as much excitement as the original article. The original article was just edited as it slowly slid further back in the line of old articles. Typical.

 

[Slick5150]

The damage is already done, Engadget really screwed it up. Sprint is now associated with throttling for all users.

Uhh, yeah. I'm sure hundreds of millions of Americans went running into the street paniced over Engadget's story.

Either that or 99.999999999% of American's either never saw it, or already forgot about it.

 

[Brian Stirling]

I will be surprised if Sprint does NOT throttle the speed at some point. If you get a bunch of people on the same tower using the hotspot and downloading huge files it could make the access to that tower almost useless. Of course, there's artificial throttling and natural throttling (pipe operating at maximum rate) so either way the rate will slow for the average user.


Brian

 

[gsaldivar]

Is this thread still being bumped...?