Is Verizon throttling 4G unlimited data now?

NiasWagn wrote:
the neighbors always complain and fight it. They don't want that ugly thing in their neighborhood.

NIMBYs will be the cause of the end of civilization.

They want everything, but don't want it near them or to pay for it.

MrWizard wrote:
how the "H" do they expect it to work,
i guess they better start believing in Magic

I'm surprised at how many people think cell phones work off satellites.

so many people have cellphones, you think they would be happy to have a new tower in the area to improve signal

but No! they want Miracles, they want service, but they don't want the tower

how the "H" do they expect it to work,
i guess they better start believing in Magic

I worked in the software industry most of my life. What was true then is true still: software always outpaces hardware.

I'll chime in and defend Verizon a little bit on that. It seems, at least around here, when they go through the motions to add towers, the neighbors always complain and fight it. They don't want that ugly thing in their neighborhood.

My last 2 year Verizon contract expired last month so I switched to T Mobile's $30 unlimited web and text with 100 minutes talk pre-paid plan that is working out great for me. The $30 a month is billed to my Amex card and there is no contract. My wife is staying with Verizon but she only talks and texts. T Mobile says the first 5GB is full 4G LTE speed and then is throttled after that but I never go over 5GB since I use wi-fi most of the time.

Yes, new technology like XLTE help, but only to some extent until they also reach capacity.
XLTE helps on 2 fronts, its a faster transmission speed; but more importantly, it uses a new frequency band (AWS). Its that newer frequency band that helps us all, whether you're in an XLTE area or not, by moving some of the user load off the LTE 700 MHz frequency band over to the 1750 & 2150 MHz band.
However the above concerns remain valid, this new AWS freq band will quickly fill up to capacity if we keep on the same growth path and in a few years we'll be back where we are. There are only so many frequency bands available, some day they'll all be maxed out if we all think we're entitled to 40 gig a month cellular data.
or using the airplane analogy, we can make the planes fly faster, but we can only have a limited number of planes in the air on each route.

Thank you Jim.

I like your plane seat analogy. I read that DISH was a huge player in buying up new frequency slots that were recently auctioned off across the country. AT&T and Verizon were also big bidders. Many millions of dollars were spent to purchase these contracts.

Maybe the newer phones and the XLTE feature will provide some relief. I don't know enough about that feature to know if it will help or not.

Like I suggested, in two years network congestion has become a very real problem. Maybe not for everyone, but for enough to start discussions just like this one.

Verizon can add more infrastructure, but it will cost money. When enough customers demand better performance, then maybe things will improve.

There is no apparent end to the huge move over to wireless from wired.

The bandwidth available on the frequencies they are licensed to use is a limited resource. To some extent a power company can keep building new & larger power plants, a water company can increase its sources. But even then, when too may people run large air conditioners during the summer peak we experience brown outs. When faced with natural drought and/or population spikes, and users who continue to water lawns and take 30 min showers, we do occasionally run out of water. another analogy would be airplane seats, paying customers get bumped from their flights every day because airlines have to guess how many of their customers will actually show up. They can build more planes and add more flights when it makes business sense, but at some point, the skies are full.
Bandwidth is no different, its a limited resource. They can expand it to some degree, but eventually it reaches a max capacity and at peak times it gets overloaded. More & more users who stream movies, TV and music over the cellular system aggravate the problem.
Whether its power, water, planes or cellular, its a shared resource that sometimes gets over used or restricted.
If you think they "over sold" then maybe your alternate solution would be to restrict all cellular data plans to a 5 gig max, when they would be shut off for the remainder of that billing period.

"I think that Verizon has oversold their wireless network and that they can't handle customer demand. If Verizon was a power company, customers would be banging on their door for better electrical service. If Verizon was a water company and you couldn't get water for 8 hours a day, customers would be banging on their door."

No problems with Verizon around here, could be something wrong with your Wilson or device. 15 down / 3 up just now on my phone, and this is peak time.

Searching the Internet for people complaining about something is like searching a beach for grains of sand. Of course there'll be tons of results for any query that is "(brand name) slow download". The larger group of folks not having trouble don't make noise.