O2 limiting 3G and HSDPA to 128kbps?!

If this is true, it's possibly a case for Trading Standards to get involved?

Imagine if a broadband ISP started artificially limiting the speeds of people who don't use a particular computer model the ISP is promoting.

My t-mobile only gives me 124kbps when 3.5G shows on the phone! Very suspicious!

Even funnier is the slip by O2's PR. that users wanting faster speeds should be painted as "techie nerds"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/09/o2_accidental_call/

Some Broadband ISP have some form of throttling in the UK during peak times. Virgin Media is a prime example where they trottle the bandwidth after X amount of data is downloaded.

As for trading standards getting involved, they don't when ISP say unlimited broadband and then add a fair use policy. Anyway O2 do not advertise any speeds for 3G and would probably be allowed to say "up to" as the ISP do with the broadband speeds. Also this will affect all 3G phones, it would really become an issue if the "3G iPhone" was not limited while the other 3G phones were.

I don't see a big problem, from what O2 said if you need higher speeds just ring and we would remove the limit. If majority of the users don't need it....

obviously network should be clever enough to sort it out automatically...

Well, I see it as appalling. Users should ge given whatever bandwidth is actually available (contention and location/time permitting). Forcing people to ring up and complain before letting them use (up to) 3G or 3.5G speeds is just ugly on many counts.

I get the impression T-Mboile do this here too. My 3.5G on the N95 is worse than my 2G speed most of the time in London.

welcome to my world! @ T-mobile netherlands.
Umts/Hsdpa capped @ 128kbps down/ 32kbps up!! :@:@

Not only are O2 obviously trying to paint the slow EDGE connection of the iPhone in a better light so they get the higher handset revenue (and data revenue), and being pretty bloody sneaky in the process, but you can bet your life that when the 3G iPhone comes out in a couple of months, they will allow full speed access on that - "Hey look folks, the 3G iPhone is SO much faster than all other 3G handsets out there - come and buy one now!". Of course, the bottom line is as ever money, and making things look good for shareholders.

Does corruption ever end?

Time for Ofcom to kick some O2 arse, no?

It's quite clever in a sneaky underhand kinda way.
I don't approve as a consumer, but it makes business sense.
Although now it's out in the open, and all over the InterWeb etc, it might be quite damaging for their reputation.

So, do you think the cap's on the Network, phone or account? I can only think it must be on my account...

I'm also with t-mobile in Holland, and they do exactly the same thing.
Download speed is limited to 128Kbps for the €9,50 per month flat rate subscription. If you pay €19,50 pm, you can get up to 384Kbps, but this is reduced to the slower rate once you have exceeded 250MB in a month...

Hardly what one would call lightning quick for a 3,5G phone!!

OMG! It must be true. I once checked my download speed when I was connected on 3G a few weeks ago and it was downloading at roughly 15kb/s.

128kbps / 8 = 16kb/s

Coincidence? I think not.

Will o2 definitely remove the throttle if I call them up and ask for it to be removed? I'm on o2 Pay and Go.

Hi,

Is this the reason i have great difficulty streaming vids, i.e youtube on my phone?? It works fine with wi-fi but not at all on o2 mobile web.

Which dept. should i call to get this restriction removed??

scott.herring wrote:Hi,

Is this the reason i have great difficulty streaming vids, i.e youtube on my phone?? It works fine with wi-fi but not at all on o2 mobile web.

Which dept. should i call to get this restriction removed??

I just called o2, i was told that they cannot simply de-restrict this at the click of a button.

They advised that only certain places in the country are able to get the faster connection (London).

***2 minutes later the same guy calls me back advising that as i am a o2 select customer, they will infact do this within 24 hours!?!***

They are obviously spilling a load of sh!t to their unvalued customers!!!

Scott,

Strictly speaking, you're not allowed to watch streaming videos on O2 Mobile Web. The T&C explicitly forbid this. In fact, you're pretty much not allowed to do anything with your Internet connection on O2 apart from browsing the web and checking your emails. And even there, unless you're paying by the KB or have subscribed to the �30/month data plan, you're not allowed to use more than 200MB of data per month, which amounts to less than 7MB / day. Download the email of your friend who attached their holidays pictures and you've already blown up your daily allowance.

That said, I noticed the same thing as you. I've had an E90 for 4 months and no matter which application I use, trying to watch youtube video on 3G with O2 is hopeless while it works a treat over wifi. Loading web pages is also blindingly fast on wifi but terribly sluggish over 3G. A few weeks ago, I compared the loading time for a few web pages between my E90 over 3G and a friend's iPhone over EDGE and both loaded the pages as fast (I mean as slow). I was starting to believe the Apple-fans arguments that 3G was no better than EDGE and that Apple made the right decision in not integrating 3G in the iPhone.

Guess it's time to give O2 a ring.

ajck wrote:Not only are O2 obviously trying to paint the slow EDGE connection of the iPhone in a better light so they get the higher handset revenue (and data revenue), and being pretty bloody sneaky in the process, but you can bet your life that when the 3G iPhone comes out in a couple of months, they will allow full speed access on that - "Hey look folks, the 3G iPhone is SO much faster than all other 3G handsets out there - come and buy one now!". Of course, the bottom line is as ever money, and making things look good for shareholders.

Does corruption ever end?

Time for Ofcom to kick some O2 arse, no?

O2 aren't doing this to boost the iPhone.

I bought an XDA Exec 4 years ago specifically to use it's 3g connection and I had to call to get the cap lifted back then.

I didn't realise the restriction was still in place nowadays.

Now that o2 have advised me to wait up to 24 hours before i have full bandwith, please advise me how to test the rate at which i am downloading info.

I assume it is through some application i will need to get!?

Thanks

O2 will not remove the cap. It appears at first they but now they are getting quite a lot of calls regarding the matter it's "no we can't remove the cap, however it should be removed in a couple of months". Don't hold your breath. I'm expecting o2 to remove it for everybody when the 3g iphone hits.

Though, hopefully Apple will see sense, and go with a different network provider who has a more capable network.

O2 has tarnished there reputation. Not so much by restricting speeds, but by lying about it for months, and only admitting now they have been forced to.

Yep - same for me. I was just told by CS that they could not remove the cap for voice customers. Not happy since I'm 8 weeks into an 18 month �45 per month contract (with internet browsing bolt on) with an N95 8Gb that is running at crippled speed on 3g, despite being told in the shop that this was the best phone for browsing on 3G!! Feel like I've been mis-sold.

Just to CLARIFY T-Mobile doesn't have any restrictions in the UK as far as I'm aware.

I get speeds over 1Mbits/s on my phone and very quick speeds when connected to my laptop. The speed is almost the same as my broadband connection.

Please don't confuse slow bandwidth with 128kbits/s cap, the most likely cause of slow downs is during busy periods or you're not in a very strong signal area.

Unregistered wrote:I'm expecting o2 to remove it for everybody when the 3g iphone hits...

The original cap wasn't put in place to boost the iPhone (see my earlier post) but O2 could well be working to improve 3g capacity in time for the next iPhone launch. It probably won't look too good for O2 if Apple finaly move to 3g and its no faster than the original.

Unregistered wrote:Yep - same for me. I was just told by CS that they could not remove the cap for voice customers...

scott.herring wrote:Now that o2 have advised me to wait up to 24 hours before i have full bandwith, please advise me how to test the rate at which i am downloading info.

I assume it is through some application i will need to get!?

Thanks

Anybody???

I would like to now test my connection to see what i am getting,

please advise.

Thanks

You can easily test your speed using www.dslreports.com/mspeed but remember that it is using your data allowance (don't try it too many times or you're in for a nasty shock when the bill arrives!)

I am getting around 188 / 191 kbps. So o2 have not done as they said. I will call them shortly and query this!

zxon wrote:Will o2 definitely remove the throttle if I call them up and ask for it to be removed? I'm on o2 Pay and Go.

Anyone?

Unfortunately i dont know if they will do it for PAYG, im sure they would do as you are a paying customer like myself.

I have just tested it and got a speed of 1028 kbps

To be fair, I read this article so called up O2 and they took the restriction off with no fuss at all. Its probably a good thing as long as you know about it becuase I'm not being slowed down by all the other people who dont care about the speed now 😊

just on the phone to customer services now. They have removed the 3g cap no issues, you do not have to be a select customer at all.

If they were limiting it so much how come video calling works fine?

Liam