Question

Internet throttling

  • 18 January 2022
  • 6 replies
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I have had home internet for over a year. It has worked great compared to the dsl i had. I usually get between 15 and 25 mbs, however for the last few weeks at night it is throttling back to less than dsl was. sometime .15 to .25 mbs which is useless. I understood that it would throttle back and take a back seat to phone service during busy times but throttling back to unusable speed is not good. Getting ready to dump them. Tmobile if you are listening see if this can be fixed.


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My experience was similar at the beginning of 2021 but turns out that were upgrading towers. After that was done, I was getting amazing speeds. Then I guess the tweaked the towers and now get decent speeds but they definitely throttled service back.

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I forgot to mention that my service was similar on both phone and home internet. 

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Yep a few months ago when I called about service dropping every afternoon, they said they were working on the tower near me. Well last week my neighbor who is also having issues called and was told the tower near us has not been upgraded and they have no time frame for when it will be done. So who knows what is going on. Unfortunately where I live i have either this or dsl. The dsl i have have I am at the end of the slick and i am lucky to get 1.5 mbs with them. Not sure what to do. Happy you got the upgraded tower, maybe they will get to this soon.

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“They are working on the nearby towers seems to be their go-to story (read: Lie). I felt sorry for the poor guy in that call center in the Philippines desperately trying to get me to believe he really cared about my problem and absolutely promised me he would personally call me tomorrow with an update on my problem!

Dude! Don’t try so hard! I don’t expect a call-back! And you didn't call me back!!

Look, I don’t know what this issue is, but I was SO PLEASED with my T-Mobile Service when I first got it I felt guilty that my phone is Verizon! But at the time I was switching phones, T-Mobile had just stopped offering a deal on the newest iPhone I wanted and Verizon did. But I definitely would have preferred having both my phone and my home (rural) internet with T-Mobile. Well, it’s a good thing they aren’t! Otherwise I am certain I would not have been able to use my phone’s hotspot ability with my desktop iMac. They would have had to throttle both my cell phone serve along with my home internet in order to maintain the charade that there is something wrong with the towers getting an upgrade! My home internet speeds have been less than ONE Mbps for TWO WEEKS GOING ON THREE. NOT 24-48 hours!

My next phone call to them tomorrow will be to tell them I am filing complaints with the FCC and the FTC for violation of their service agreement.

By the way, this is NOT the first time my internet service has been INTENTIONALLY THROTTLED by my service provider. I KNOW what intentional throttling looks like and if it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and like a duck, it’s a duck!!

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So to be upfront, i’m copy pasting my response I gave on another post.   This is because I am completely frustrated by my experiences with their home internet and would love T-Mobile to take notice.

I picked up their home internet box and they absolutely prioritize mobile users.  For one single day I got 100+ mbs on my box.  Since then my box, with a full 5 bar connection, says 0.5-2 mbs while my 5g phone always gets 100+mbs on the network.  That’s during peak hours, between 8am-5pm.  You know, the core hours of the day.  I have spent days, trying to tweak positioning but it will consistently drop off every morning until every evening.  And even at night, I can’t always stream a show.  It has brought back memories of using a 56k modem and I can’t believe I’ll be going back to DSL because at least I know I can connect to work.  

How they can advertise it being “reliable and fast” is beyond me.  Because it sure seems like a scam.
Right now they’re celebrating their “business success” but with that free trial, everyone can experience just how unreliable it is.  

I have a similar story…

About 15 months ago I switched from DSL (Centurylink) to T-mobile home internet. I don’t have 5G in my area, so 4G was just gonna have to do. Our DSL was only 3 Mbps (barely enough to stream video on one device) so the prospect of getting up to 150 Mbps was astounding! We were very happy with the performance and for the first 6 months had average speeds of 40-120 Mbps. Then we noticed a sudden drop during early morning hours (2-6 AM) where the speed was under 1Mbps! Just surfing the internet was like dialup speed (ridiculous). At first it was an hour or two, then 3-4 hours, then sometimes 6-8 hours. (BTW, I was never told anything about throttling of my internet. They claimed there would be no caps)

When I called customer support, I got the impression that they were throttling (although they didn’t use the term) and I was told that my high usage was limiting my speed. I was offered a 5G package once it became available in my area (but there was no timeframe when that might be). After a couple more months of increasing throttling, I decided to look for another option. I found out that another company was offering DSL in my area and they had increased the DSL speed to 25-50Mbps (which is fine for us). We switched last month and couldn’t be happier! The speed has been exactly what I was told (nothing more, nothing less) and never wavering.

what’s more, the company is based in Charlotte NC (my home state) so I feel I might get better service.

Brightspeed 

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