Throttled data question

[QRWN]

Hello,

I am coming from Koodo and I've read that PM throttles the speed at speeds like 3mbps. My questions are. Is the throttle speed always 3mbps? How do they throttle? Is it from the beginning or as you use more data?

[Korth]

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@darlicious wrote:

@Korth  Seeing as you're a bit of data/speed expert...

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Hardly an "expert" but thanks lol. Is this the question I saw answered on another thread last night? (The poor performance you describe is likely hardware limitation, hardware bloat, or misconfiguration. Assuming your speedtests aren't on machines polluted by malware, you don't have a leech sucking all your bandwidth, and your Telus service+account are supposed to provide more. Ditch the wireless in favour of wired as much as possible when you don't need mobile devices. Login admin your gateway/router/modem to get logs about who and what and when are eating up your bandwidth, and to impose limits or priorities or lockouts.) 

[darlicious]

@Korth  Seeing as you're a bit of data/speed expert...I would like to pick your brain for a minute so I can grasp the concept of internet speed. In particular how it relates to home WiFi speeds. I have been doing daily internet speed tests since the beginning of September after I noticed how slow the internet was just trying to view photos stored in my Google account. It started to take 5, 10, and up to 60 sec to retrieve and "focus" photographs that are backed up. As a low user of the internet  I leave it up to my one gamer roommate to reboot the modem if necessary. After talking to him he reported how slow it had been all summer. After testing for a week it was 0.5-2.0mbps download and 2.0-8.0mbps upload. We pay for 50mbps....obviously I don't expect to get that but shouldn't be getting 1% of that either.. we're not a big internet household. My one gamer plays online mostly after his shift at 2am. The other one checks the tide charts and plays a little online poker here and there. The boyfriend likes his social media and myself other than my increased use since joining the community  is mostly photography based (I upload about 15gb/month) and then view and edit. On average we use about 75gb/450gb barely 20% of our allotment.

 After going through 2 hours of telus tech work outs and other such tech stuff they do.....speed tests were averaging over 50mbps down and 37mbps up.  Great! We were told we had too many devices which I do not believe and at the very most there might be a pc, tablet and a smartphone at any one time but that is rare usually 2 devices max.  The internet speeds lasted about 24 hours before dropping right down again. Rebooting the modem every couple of days which boosts it for maybe an hour to 8.0/12.0mbps. Been doing about 6 tests a day 11am, 5pm, 9pm,1am and one between 4-6am. All except the last one are no more than 2.5mbps down and 8.0mbps up. I get the highest readings around 5am but can really vary with today's reading having the highest of the month but averaging 5mbps down and 8mbps up. PM 3glte 3.0mbps down 2.5mbps up always.

Today's 4:30am tests: 4.8/4.6  2.2/6.5  3.5/14.5  8.4/7.2  6.1/12.5  4.6/7.2  12.4/20.1  4.0/5.1  3.9/9.2mbps  all preformed within 15 minutes. Why would the upload speed be consistently higher than the download? Sometimes triple the speed. Upgraded fibre optic connection 2 years ago but I can't remember if they upgraded the router but the modem was and original installation done in 2012. Anything you can tell me before i call telus would be great so i can at least sound like i know what im talking about will go a long way in my negotiations. Thank you in advance.

[Korth]

Yes, it can take a little while (hours, days) before the upper cap on PM's "3G" gets uniformly imposed. Even afterwards it sometimes surges upwards by a few Mbps, it sometimes even connects at full 4G speeds (briefly or for long Data sessions), it seems to depend on network demands/conditions which are beyond the user's (and apparently beyond Telus's) ability to influence. Already been said that nobody really knows how or why. 

Note that in practice it's better than real 3G. Because performance rarely drops below the 2.5Mbps-3Mbps cap. And because network latencies are 4G-based so there's minimal slowdowns or delays. You can't get those amazing LTE transfer speeds on large files and you can't get amazing LTE brag-n-swag on your speedtest metrics... but you can get all your email, surfing, social media, and (up to HD720x30 or HD1080x25 quality) video streaming to load, refresh, and playback without things feeling sluggish or getting stuttery.

It's exactly the same network and exactly the same "3G" used by Koodo and Telus (and, I daresay, perhaps also Bell, Virgin, and Lucky), even if their billing systems give it different names. 

[geopublic]

@QRWN  truth is nobody really knows. I have done speed tests just before my plan renewal in the past and was getting  19 Mbps connected via LTE on a 3G data plan.

[Anonymous]

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@QRWN wrote:

Hello,

I am coming from Koodo and I've read that PM throttles the speed at speeds like 3mbps. My questions are. Is the throttle speed always 3mbps? How do they throttle? Is it from the beginning or as you use more data?

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Traffic congestion notwithstanding...yes. The first couple of days will be full speed LTE then it dials back to the so-called 3G speeds of 3mbps.

Doesn't matter to me how they do it technically so without searching...dunno.

afaik

[computergeek541]

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@QRWN wrote:

Hello,

I am coming from Koodo and I've read that PM throttles the speed at speeds like 3mbps. My questions are. Is the throttle speed always 3mbps? How do they throttle? Is it from the beginning or as you use more data?

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For peoppe on "3g" plans, the throttle to 3Mbps is applied whenever the customer is connected to the LTE network.  You get full speed for the first 48 hours as a new customer, but after that, the throttle is enforced.