Virgin Mobile to Cap 'Unlimited' Broadband at 5GB

[Marcus Yam]

All good things...

Virgin Mobile to Cap 'Unlimited' Broadband at 5GB : Read more

 

[amk09]

Eh, understandable, this probably won't effect 90% of the people, and to the 10% who it will effect, they were getting a hell of a deal for $40 dollars anyways.

 

[xantek24]

T-mobile does this and let me tell ya, after the 5gb pass, you might as well use an EDGE phone.

 

[Wikiality]

Hey Marcus!

 

[teknomedic]

the only reason this is happening is that most consumers are ignorant and accepting the the "caps". If we as consumers all stood together and said "we're not going to accepts caps", then the ISPs would have to bend and remove the caps.... then they'd have to upgrade their networks to support fast speeds with no caps.

Instead we accept that "5GB really is a lot of data" line-o-crap and the ISPs don't have to upgrade their networks.

The amount of data you download will continue to get larger and larger and these caps will continue to be reached quicker and quicker.

Personally... I'd rather just have a pure price increase for true unlimited than a "fake" (yet effective) price hike with a cap.

 

[Guest]

Actually, the plan is going away altogether:

You have to be grandfathered in in order to use it.

http/www.virginmobileusa.com/legal/terms-of-service-virgin-mobile#bb2g_account_status

Something they explicitely left out, but want to deliver "outstanding customer service"

If that's not shady, I don't know what is.
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$40 Broadband2Go Plan Expiring on February 15, 2011

Until February 14, 2011, you may purchase or switch to the $40 Broadband2Go plan described below. If as of February 15, 2011 the last plan you purchased was the $40 Broadband2Go plan, you may continue to purchase the $40 Broadband2Go plan until further notice or until you switch to one of the other Broadband2Go plans. Once you switch to another Broadband2Go plan, you will not be able to switch back to the $40 Broadband2Go plan. If as of February 15, 2011 the last plan you purchased was a plan other than $40 Broadband2Go plan, you will not be able to purchase or switch to the $40 Broadband2Go plan.
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[tpi2007]

Yes, it normal, they don't want these services to overlap into the desktop area. If you're using a desktop computer you will use a lot more than 5GB nowadays with flash content on every site and HD flash videos, etc.

I do think that they should tell you what is the minimum speed you will get. In fact, they should be obliged to tell you what the minimum speed is, because you might consider it insufficient and choose another plan or carrier.

Where I live, one of the mobile carriers has a plan that after a certain usage is capped to 128kbps and that is too slow. 256kbps should be the minimum nowadays.

 

[aaron88_7]

Virgin mobiles 3G is so f-ing slow that it would take a year to download 5 gigs worth of data. I can't possibly imagine anybody using this crap service that much. I haven't had download rates this slow since I had dial up...and I think even that was faster!

 

[alyoshka]

Down our side I've been using this type of a device for over a year now, they give us a max speed of 3Mbps but it's actually constant, which is good I think, and do have the 5Gb limit for my unlimited pack the moment I cross it, that's like in the first half of the month, the speed goes down to 15Kbps it sucks at those speed but then I use it for my mails and Toms from home so it's not that bad, the only difference is they're charging us 20$ and not 40...

 

[Guest]

Anyone out there wanting to start a class action regarding the hardware you had to buy to make this work? The mifi or the usb unit. I got this email today and I replied by asking them for my money back for the 150 I paid for the mifi unit.

I fee I was induced to spend money to get myself ready to use their service that I would not have if I had know about any caps.

I had only used it for one month, so I think this is very unfair. I think you should get the original agreement for at least six months or a year to help amortize the cost of the adapter.

I have not heard of anyplace to return the adapter to receive a prorated refund.

Lets hear it for gov't oversight!

 

[Guest]

Lets see what happens when they decide to remove the 5gig plan for $40. This will happen sooner than later. This means that there will be no unlimited in the sense. When you buy 3gig that means 3 gig once reached your cut off. This is their plan.

 

[scoobertdoo]

looks like i am going back to verizon. $40 and poor service, vs $65 after tax and great service. for the same number of gigs. at least with verizon i can have 4g in limited areas.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

so why call it unlimited?

 

[Guest]

Bait and switch

 

[matt87_50]

@teknomedic: with what money? exactly?

but sure, maybe if you complain enough, a massive national wifi broadband service will just magic itself into existence for free...

it was fine to have unlimited plans when the networks were only used by early adopters, that is no longer the case. and don't kid yourself into thinking the few early adopter's $40 every month was in anyway enough to cover the infrastructure. it was an investment for the future, when it would be mainstream.


quite apart from the fact that paying the same amount no matter how much you use is completely unfair... maybe water and electricity should work like that...

 

[Travis Beane]

[citation][nom]amk09[/nom]Eh, understandable, this probably won't effect 90% of the people, and to the 10% who it will effect, they were getting a hell of a deal for $40 dollars anyways.[/citation]
Wind mobile has done that for a while here. Still unlimited, just crippled after 5GB.
Over here in Canada, Virgin charges $85/month for 5GB for Broadband2Go (only $65 for a smartphone though), and $50/GB for anything over.

 

[darkchazz]

Well it sounds like the only company that hasn't been fucked.

 

[td854]

[citation][nom]matt87_50[/nom]@teknomedic: with what money? exactly?but sure, maybe if you complain enough, a massive national wifi broadband service will just magic itself into existence for free... it was fine to have unlimited plans when the networks were only used by early adopters, that is no longer the case. and don't kid yourself into thinking the few early adopter's $40 every month was in anyway enough to cover the infrastructure. it was an investment for the future, when it would be mainstream.quite apart from the fact that paying the same amount no matter how much you use is completely unfair... maybe water and electricity should work like that...[/citation]

Water and Electricity are physical mediums that consume many other physical mediums to be processed or created. Network bandwidth, regardless of the theoretical or approximate limitations of said network (in speed only) consumes nothing physical regardless of how much is downloaded or uploaded per month. It is downright ludicrous to say they can limit a network as such, it's like going to the store to buy a 10/100/1000 PCI NIC and reading on the box "Price includes 100MB of combined transferred data."

If a network cannot handle providing each and every customer the speeds that they offer at any given time, then they should be capping the speed lower, not the combined UL/DL per month. It makes perfect sense to regulate the transfer rate due to maximum limitations of their backbone but there's nothing there to say that if I download 10TB or some ludicrous amount in a month, that some limit is going to be reached and no one else can download after this point. It's just not going to happen.

As for the "with what money?" question, I don't know about the company in question, but Verizon and AT&T are in the Fortune 500 top 20 so I'm pretty sure they're not doing too bad.

I'm sorry but it's just narrow minded pro-capitalist thinking like yours that drives me crazy and is inevitably stunting the growth of today's technological infrastructure.

 

[sndcj1]

[citation][nom]td854[/nom]If a network cannot handle providing each and every customer the speeds that they offer at any given time, then they should be capping the speed lower, not the combined UL/DL per month[/citation] Let me make sure I'm clear on your suggestion, you are OK with the company saying "1000 people per tower, each tower has a 100 megabit link to the network, so we cap everyone at 100kb" or "We only have 2000 gb of total network backbone, we have 40 million subscribers who use data, so we cap them all at 50kb". I think I prefer the option of the highest possible at the moment, and those that use EXTREME amounts of data on a MOBILE device, get capped as they go over.

 

[pinkfloydminnesota]

I bet they do this due to pressure from the copyright interests who know this is the only way to limit torrents among the entire population.