Surprise! Wireless ISPs Throttle Video Streaming

[Guest]

Northeastern University researchers discovered that wireless ISPs, including a satellite provider, throttle streaming video services and not other apps.

Surprise! Wireless ISPs Throttle Video Streaming : Read more

 

[Integr8d]

Funny how this news is running everywhere. But when Trump mentions search results about his name (and there's actual research confirming it), nary a peep from the tech sites.

 

[theyeti87]

Similar to this, I have a big gripe about my wireless service with Verizon. Everybody knows Verizon will throttle your wireless data connection if you're in a population-dense area.

Here's the rub for me. There are no more than 200,000 people living within 50 mile radius from me. I live in a town of 4,000 and work in a town of 140,000, which has a large Big Ten campus. At work, I get my full LTE speeds. I go near campus and I get a whopping 500kbps... which makes the phone unusable for apps. I pay for "unlimited data".

We need Net Neutrality.

 

[patrick47018]

I've definitely noticed something like this on T-Mobile, I can barely stream 720p@60 on YouTube which full 4G LTE signal, but if I connect to a VPN I can stream 1440p@60 or 4K without issue.

 

[Raymond_92]

This has nothing to do with Net Neutrality and everything to do with keeping the overloaded cellular data networks from being crippled by load.

 

[derekullo]

This has nothing to do with Net Neutrality and everything to do with keeping the overloaded cellular data networks from being crippled by load.

Yep 1000's of teenagers and young adults all doing netflix, youtube and torrents while on college grounds.

 

[caustin582]

Funny how this news is running everywhere. But when Trump mentions search results about his name (and there's actual research confirming it), nary a peep from the tech sites.

First of all, ISP throttling and search result filtering are two very different things. Most people have little to no choice when it comes to their ISP, so if it's actively working against their interests, they have no recourse other than just not using the internet. If you don't like the way Google presents search results to you, then you can use one of many other search engines. They're all free. They owe you nothing, and likewise.

Second, "when Donald Trump mentions search results about his name" it is just that, and nothing more. What this article is talking about is a study that looked at a vast amount of data and reported its findings. You can look at their methods and their data if you're skeptical. If Donald Trump conducted a similar study and tweeted about it while sharing the details, then we'd actually have something to talk about, but that's not what happened. He made a statement offering no evidence or argument, which is something that should be dismissed as quickly as it is brought up if you are a rational thinker.

This has nothing to do with Net Neutrality and everything to do with keeping the overloaded cellular data networks from being crippled by load.

If the issue were just about bandwidth, then ISPs would simply be capping or limiting a user's general bandwidth (which is something that net neutrality regulations never stopped ISPs from doing). But instead we see different content providers being treated differently, regardless of the type of content they're providing or amount of bandwidth they're transmitting. Basically, ISPs are now in a position to influence and even dictate where their users watch videos, do their shopping, get their news, etc.

 

[DRosencraft]

Like Raymond_92 said, I think the piece everyone seems to gloss over is the fact that this isn't some arbitrary move just to piss people off. NBCSports isn't throttled because its not highly used. Netflix is throttled because it is highly used. The picture is obvious - the big data spots are gonna be limited to keep loads down. You can argue about whether they're doing enough to increase bandwidth etc., but this article makes it seem like this an entirely malicious act meant to target specific groups of people.

 

[sykozis]

Funny how this news is running everywhere. But when Trump mentions search results about his name (and there's actual research confirming it), nary a peep from the tech sites.

When I search for anything Trump related (as I did for this post), the search results are as follows...
people.com
abcnews.com
npr.org
foxnews.com
cnn.com
cnn.com
vanityfair.com
newyorker.com
nymag.com

Nobody is censoring "conservative" websites or white nationalist websites as Trump claims. The only "research" confirming such, is from a "conservative" group that tries to push their socio-political bias. If you can find an unbiased source of such results, great, but as long as it's a "conservative" group making such claims, the "research" lacks any degree of credibility. Especially when it's from a group that wants to censor Liberal and Progressive media.

 

[caustin582]

Like Raymond_92 said, I think the piece everyone seems to gloss over is the fact that this isn't some arbitrary move just to piss people off. NBCSports isn't throttled because its not highly used. Netflix is throttled because it is highly used. The picture is obvious - the big data spots are gonna be limited to keep loads down. You can argue about whether they're doing enough to increase bandwidth etc., but this article makes it seem like this an entirely malicious act meant to target specific groups of people.

You should look at the graphs in the original article that Toms linked to: https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/09/10/new-research-shows-your-internet-provider-is-in-control/

There's no logical explanation other than the fact that certain ISPs are targeting specific companies as they see fit, rather than applying across the board throttling based on bandwidth usage. Do you think only ATT users watch too much NBCSports? iWireless users just stick to Netflix and never watch Youtube? Cellcom users somehow overload Amazon app but nothing else? Come on, man.

 

[jonathan1683]

there is no net neutrality and iirc it didn't apply to cellular networks anyways. If you want unlimited data there's the trade off which I'm happy with. T-Mobile is pretty transparent about this and I think they have a pay tier you can use for un-throttled you can even pay for 1 day of use. If you want to circumvent it set up a VPN on your router my netgear has it built in and i use it all the time.

 

[bit_user]

Net neutrality never applied to cellular data. Google and Verizon worked out an arrangement that apparently satisfied the FCC.

I'm trying to find a link, but it was some time ago, and those search terms generate a lot of false positives. I'm pretty sure it was even covered on this site.

 

[Christopher1]

Lawsuit time here. If they are doing this throttling when the network is totally uncongested this is a violation of the law in most states.
I have no problem with Quality of Service throttling that is done when the networks are truly congested and being heavily used. I have a huge problem with this 'across the board and always' throttling that seems to me as an uber-techie who is very well read on this issues should be illegal.

Especially it should be illegal if AT&T, Verizon, etc.'s own services are not throttled.