Saturday, February 8, 2014

Throttled Back!

I have "Unlimited" broadband service from Virgin but they do have a "soft" limit of 5GB, after which they limit your speeds. Last night I got the following email from Virgin Broadband:

"Your account has exceeded its data usage cap of 5120.000MB. We have reduced your data speeds through 02/13/2014."

I still have a week to go in my current month and had great WIFI to use at Cedar Key so I am not sure where all the usage came from. Maybe some operating systems got updated on the two computers, one smartphone and one iPad. I know I did not download any movies or music. Also, my Cradlepoint MIFI is not password protected so I guess it is possible someone tapped in on it but I can't imagine who or where.

Anyway, I decided to try to live with the slower speed for a few days and so far, I have not really noticed it. I cannot Skype but that is the only thing I have noticed.

I added money to my account at Virgin and can renew the plan any time I want but I will probably let it sit there until my month expires on the 13th. I am grandfathered on their original $40 per month pay as you go unlimited plan and have been happy with it. This is the first time in several years I have gone over my 5GB monthly limit.

10 comments:

  1. Playing a dangerous game there, having an unprotected connection. Someone with a booster could tap in from quite far away and use up your bandwidth. Even unlimited accounts aren't truly unlimited (I have a new 'unlimited' plan with Sasktel that has a soft cap at 10GB).

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  2. OK, I thought about it and you are right. I now have a password on the Cradlepoint router. If anyone wants it, just let me know. ;)

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  3. Replies
    1. Or maybe combine them for a hexadecimal number?

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  4. How interesting: We have a Virgin Mobile Broadband to Go....and we also got an email telling us that we had used up our 'unlimited data' and would now face slower speeds. We did Skype our Edmonton kids, last night, and it all worked fine! Not sure what to think....but we have not really noticed any slow down....yet!

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    1. Yes, interesting. My Skype did not work great from this location even before I was throttled back, maybe I am just in a borderline reception area. I can really tell when the kids get off school, my speeds slow right down.

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  5. So, you and Rene both got 'slow-down' notices? Sounds suspicious to me. I think maybe Virgin is trying to "throttle you". I wonder if you can get a detailed daily use for the past billing period? It might be interesting to see when those GB's were used.

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  6. Our house in Ohio is located far enough away from the other houses that we just knew we did not need a password.My neighbor called one night and asked me what the blue glow was in my side hedge. He had had problems with a similar glow in his hedges. It turned out that a family that was renting a home in our area, had a son who was addicted to gaming and as a result they were turning off their wifi at 8PM, the boy was pouching signals by crawling up on people's houses. We put a password on the next day. The lad was almost shot, down the hill from us, by a guy with three children. It all came to a head with gunfire, police cars and a ambulance one night over at the rental property. Addiction is what it is.

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