3G throttling

[coolvehiclefan]

How long does it take for the 3G throttling to kick in on the $50 8.5gb 3G plan that I signed up for yesterday? 

[computergeek541]

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@Nathan08 wrote:

My wife and I both have Galaxy S7 phones and were with Virgin Mobile.  Where I am at, we get LTE speeds with Virgin.  To compare Public Mobile's speeds to Virgin's speeds, I switched my phone to Public Mobile and did a speed test. My wife also did a speed test with Virgin (same app same style phone).  I found the speeds were cut by 50% (both upload and download speeds.). I was still able to watch Netflix and Youtube, check e-mail, browse picture-heavy sites... no problem.

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The actual percentage of difference can vary greatly depending on the speed of the other carrier's connection.   For me, speed loss can be from 90 to 99% speed loss on a Public Mobile "3g" plan, but that's because with an LTE plan, I've occassionally been able to get download speeds around 300Mbps.

[Nathan08]

My wife and I both have Galaxy S7 phones and were with Virgin Mobile.  Where I am at, we get LTE speeds with Virgin.  To compare Public Mobile's speeds to Virgin's speeds, I switched my phone to Public Mobile and did a speed test. My wife also did a speed test with Virgin (same app same style phone).  I found the speeds were cut by 50% (both upload and download speeds.). I was still able to watch Netflix and Youtube, check e-mail, browse picture-heavy sites... no problem.

[Anonymous]

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@mynewhome wrote:

I don't see a 3g only option when searching available networks, does this vary based on geographical location? I only see public mobile lte and wcdma options.

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There are several different terminologies. In your case that WCDMA = 3G.

[mynewhome]

I don't see a 3g only option when searching available networks, does this vary based on geographical location? I only see public mobile lte and wcdma options.

[coolvehiclefan]

Yea i agree

[computergeek541]

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@coolvehiclefan wrote:

Yea i wont be running the speedtest app til I'm actually throttled  ive ran it once and used a bit over 100mb 

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That app can serve a purpose, but don't do it unless you fully know what you're getting into.  Unfortunately, I know people do get curious and don't want to feel as if they got ripped off on a speed, so they end up doing some testing.  I'm not going to say that I haven't use this app as I have, but when you think about it, this really just wastes data that you could have otherwise used on something else,

[coolvehiclefan]

Yea i wont be running the speedtest app til I'm actually throttled  ive ran it once and used a bit over 100mb 

[computergeek541]

@coolvehiclefan , I would say that no matter how fun it may seem to run that popular speedtest.net app and to try to compare to other carriers and network locations, I would suggest not doing that while you are in your first few days.  That app can use a lot of data in one test, especially while your full LTE speed is still enabled.

I don't know the maximum LTE speed that your device can support, but we've seen some results using up 0.5 to about 1.0GB in one try.  Some customers likely used up their entire data alotment running this app. 

[coolvehiclefan]

Awesome thanks for the help! 

[coolvehiclefan]

Great thanks! 

[Triguy]

LTE is normally faster than 3G but PM throttles it to 3MB/sec. 3G is not thottled so it's around 15MB/sec. 

[mimmo · Accepted solution]

i think it is 48-72 hours.