6 ms·

I'm actually a huge fan of "unlimited slow speeds" as a falloff, instead of a cliff. Aside from the fact it allows you to work with Starlink to buy more fast s

I'm actually a huge fan of "unlimited slow speeds" as a falloff, instead of a cliff. Aside from the fact it allows you to work with Starlink to buy more fast speed, it also allows core stuff to continue to function (e.g. basic notifications, non-streaming web traffic, etc).

frognumber 9mo ago
Years ago, I picked cell carrier because of this. When I ran out, it switched to O(200kbps), which is fine for email, basic web search, etc. It was actually a bit ironic that, at the time, you could burn through the whole high-speed quota in seconds or minutes, if you went to the wrong web page. Most carriers would stop or bill you an arm-and-a-leg after.
- kotaKat 9mo ago
  5G data roaming is hilarious for this. Verizon offered 500MB of high speed data roaming per day in Canada before throttling down to ~128kbps. I ran one single speedtest in the middle of Ottawa on Rogers 5G, didn't even finish the speedtest (hitting an error at the end that it failed), and got the text message going "You've run out of high speed data today. Do you want to buy another 500MB for $5?" At least it's 2GB/day now. And my 5G roaming is off...
  - londons_explore 9mo ago
    Roaming in some countries is like $10,000/gigabyte... At that price, I dunno why they offer it at all. Are they just hoping to sue someone to get their whole house because they once watched some netflix overseas and forgot to use wifi?
    - kalleboo 9mo ago
      They were deals that were made back in the WAP days where spending $1 a few times a day to check your business email made some semblance of sense, that then got neglected.
    - simondotau 9mo ago
      Companies should be required by law to nominate an explicit "credit limit" for every account, and customers should be allowed to reduce it to whatever they want. Morally there's no difference between a credit card with a $5,000 credit limit, and a cell phone plan where you can rack up $5,000 in charges if you do the wrong thing.
delichon 9mo ago
As a residential customer Starlink gave me the unlimited slow speed with a free mini for $60/year, as a tease to promote the full speed at $300/year. But it does everything I need it to, so I'm not incentivized to upgrade. I can listen to YouTube audio, make voip calls, download map tiles or talk with a chatbot without limitations. It's a large quality of life improvement for me because in my rural area there is no cellular connection during most of my driving.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
QuantumNomad_ 9mo ago
My mobile data plan is like this. It’s funny because when I’m “out of data” my provider sends an SMS suggesting I upgrade to more gigabytes, but then it still continues to work. And yes I checked my bills to make sure that they are not charging me for any usage excess of what’s included in the plan. It’s not even particularly slow. I can still browse the web, send and receive WhatsApp messages, images and videos, watch videos on TikTok etc. My current plan is 2GB with rollover. Last month I used 2.5GB, and somehow this month has 2GB included + 2GB rollover = 4 GB available which by itself is also weird. Maybe most of the 2.5 GB I used last month was rollover from the month before that or something. In total I have used 4.6 GB of mobile data so far this month, which is more than the 4 GB (2+2) I have available for this month and it’s still working.
- vachina 9mo ago
  There are still telcos offering 2GB plans. Wow. I’m on the cheapest plan and it comes with 400GB.
  - tuesdaynight 9mo ago
    I imagine they are not from USA. But it's a surprisingly low plan, even considering that
  - jcattle 9mo ago
    Where are you and how much do you pay?
    - cbm-vic-20 9mo ago
      Data point: I'm in the US on an old pre-paid plan that gets me 5GB per month at fast speed, dropping down to unlimited "2G" speed after that cap is hit, which I've done only twice in the past 12 years. $30 per month, and I always "bring my own device" (ie, I only buy unlocked phones, not through the carrier). I haven't shopped around for a while.
      - 9mo ago
consumer451 9mo ago
> I'm actually a huge fan of "unlimited slow speeds" as a falloff, instead of a cliff. When on cellular, I like to call that "HN-only mode." It is one of the few web properties that is entirely usable at 2G speeds.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- Salgat 9mo ago
  I would kill for a web renaissance to return to this format of webpages, as least as an option. Not only loading improves, but also navigation and accessibility.
  - Someone1234 9mo ago
    Indeed. That's why, when they finally kill old.reddit, I may legitimately stop using it entirely. They've already banned most of the good apps, forcing the pretty terrible official one.
    - MaxikCZ 9mo ago
      Recently the old reddit szopped working for me even after going to account settings and opting out of new design again (it was already marked as being opt out) across all my devices. Even after manually navigating to old.reddit.com, clicking any link would take me to new again. I had to install special extensions to reroute to old reddit everywhere.
      - Centigonal 9mo ago
        Same thing happened to me, this fixed it: https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/1odehgj/is_old_reddit_finally_gone_for_good/nktgagu/ https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/1odehgj/is_old_reddit...
      - birdman3131 9mo ago
        Had that happen a few times but switching the use old reddit box off and back on fixes it.
dyauspitr 9mo ago
Have they quantified the slow speed? Because when I had Viasat the slow speed so so unbelievably slow it had a hard time loading a regular SPA page in 2-3 minutes.
bscphil 9mo ago
I do think it's vastly superior to preferential treatment for some traffic, which seems to be the most popular alternative. The one caveat is that ISPs need to be forced to be transparent about this. Often, with cell providers, it's "Unlimited 5G" advertised, with a tiny asterisk pointing to even tinier disclaimer text at the bottom explaining that they throttle your rates once you hit a (fairly low) cutoff. That type of misleading marketing undercuts the fairness of the offer.
londons_explore 9mo ago
Thing is, the heaviest users are often the ones with some malware on their machine using up 100% of the bandwidth. When you limit that to 512kbps, thats still 129 gigabytes a month, on top of the 100 gigabytes a month you let the user use at high speed. When a typical user might use just 10 gigabytes a month, it seems dumb to let one user use 23x what everyone else is paying for/using, especially when that user is most likely just malware infected and not even personally benefiting! A better limit I think is to limit the user to 10 kbps over a rolling 24h window, 100 kbps over a rolling 1h window, 1Mbits over a rolling 1 minute window, and 10 Mbits over a 1 second window. That way they can quickly check an email or load a web page... But it quickly slows down if they try to (ab)use it for hours on end.
- coryrc 9mo ago
  > it seems dumb to let one user use 23x what everyone else is paying for/using Bandwidth is use-it-or-lose-it. If nobody else was using it, then it doesn't hurt anything. And during high demand traffic shaping hopefully gives their traffic even lower priority.
  - londons_explore 9mo ago
    > If nobody else was using it, then it doesn't hurt anything. On networks I manage, there are clients who pay for large quantities of super low priority capacity - eg. for moving scientific data around, or backing up stuff that only needs to complete sometime in the next 30 days. That means there is no such thing as unused bandwidth - almost every link is 100% full of paying customers data, and anyone using more displaces one of those low priority customers.
    - coryrc 9mo ago
      Over wireless?
- Dylan16807 9mo ago
  It's not like 100GB is some huge amount of data. It's easy to hit, so if we're judging the overage amount we should be comparing it to the full 100GB, not some made up guy that only uses 10GB. There are users on unlimited consuming many terabytes, and they're not paying all that much more. It's not unfair to anyone if the cheaper plan is able to slowly reach 200GB or 300GB in a minimal-impact way. Also dropping all the way to 10kbps with enough use would just suck. It's effectively unusable and it would be extreme penny-pinching to make sure the maximum 24/7 user can't squeak out more than 3GB extra on their 100GB plan. You get more variance than that from different month lengths.
bigfatkitten 9mo ago
Starlink’s plans vary between markets, but in Australia they have a dirt cheap ($8 AUD per month or something) standby plan that gives you unlimited data capped at something like 500Kbps. If you’re going on a trip and need faster data, you can upgrade to a bigger plan for the rest of the billing month, charged on a pro rata basis, and then revert to the standby plan afterwards. I used to use Inmarsat BGAN. BGAN would top out at around 250Kbps on a good day, and cost a few bucks per MB on a terminal that cost almost ten times as much as a Starlink Mini.
- killingtime74 9mo ago
  I tried this and it's actually even enough to play YouTube at 1080p after some initial buffering. Calls definitely work
Waterluvian 9mo ago
Mobile has been like this for me for like a decade or so. But in the before times it was just barbaric and ridiculous to either be cut off or absolutely ravaged by fees.
olyjohn 9mo ago
I leave my Starlink Mini in Standby Mode, which is $5/mo and is capped at 500KB/sec. I got the dish for free because I'm already a subscriber at home, so adding the $5/mo really isn't a big deal. It's perfect to go camping, because I might want to let my friends know that I had to move campsites, but I don't want to sit there and surf all day long and watch YouTube. Though 500KB/sec is more than enough to do all of that...
Lvl999Noob 9mo ago
My internet providers (both home wifi and cellular) do this. The problem with unlimited slow speed is that it's too slow. I am sometimes unable to open the carrier's own app and pay for a recharge. Either the app just doesn't open or the transaction in the payments app fails.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

frognumber 9mo ago

Years ago, I picked cell carrier because of this. When I ran out, it switched to O(200kbps), which is fine for email, basic web search, etc. It was actually a bit ironic that, at the time, you could burn through the whole high-speed quota in seconds or minutes, if you went to the wrong web page. Most carriers would stop or bill you an arm-and-a-leg after.

kotaKat 9mo ago
5G data roaming is hilarious for this. Verizon offered 500MB of high speed data roaming per day in Canada before throttling down to ~128kbps. I ran one single speedtest in the middle of Ottawa on Rogers 5G, didn't even finish the speedtest (hitting an error at the end that it failed), and got the text message going "You've run out of high speed data today. Do you want to buy another 500MB for $5?" At least it's 2GB/day now. And my 5G roaming is off...
- londons_explore 9mo ago
  Roaming in some countries is like $10,000/gigabyte... At that price, I dunno why they offer it at all. Are they just hoping to sue someone to get their whole house because they once watched some netflix overseas and forgot to use wifi?
  - kalleboo 9mo ago
    They were deals that were made back in the WAP days where spending $1 a few times a day to check your business email made some semblance of sense, that then got neglected.
  - simondotau 9mo ago
    Companies should be required by law to nominate an explicit "credit limit" for every account, and customers should be allowed to reduce it to whatever they want. Morally there's no difference between a credit card with a $5,000 credit limit, and a cell phone plan where you can rack up $5,000 in charges if you do the wrong thing.

delichon 9mo ago

As a residential customer Starlink gave me the unlimited slow speed with a free mini for $60/year, as a tease to promote the full speed at $300/year. But it does everything I need it to, so I'm not incentivized to upgrade. I can listen to YouTube audio, make voip calls, download map tiles or talk with a chatbot without limitations. It's a large quality of life improvement for me because in my rural area there is no cellular connection during most of my driving.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

QuantumNomad_ 9mo ago

My mobile data plan is like this. It’s funny because when I’m “out of data” my provider sends an SMS suggesting I upgrade to more gigabytes, but then it still continues to work. And yes I checked my bills to make sure that they are not charging me for any usage excess of what’s included in the plan. It’s not even particularly slow. I can still browse the web, send and receive WhatsApp messages, images and videos, watch videos on TikTok etc. My current plan is 2GB with rollover. Last month I used 2.5GB, and somehow this month has 2GB included + 2GB rollover = 4 GB available which by itself is also weird. Maybe most of the 2.5 GB I used last month was rollover from the month before that or something. In total I have used 4.6 GB of mobile data so far this month, which is more than the 4 GB (2+2) I have available for this month and it’s still working.

vachina 9mo ago
There are still telcos offering 2GB plans. Wow. I’m on the cheapest plan and it comes with 400GB.
- tuesdaynight 9mo ago
  I imagine they are not from USA. But it's a surprisingly low plan, even considering that
- jcattle 9mo ago
  Where are you and how much do you pay?
  - cbm-vic-20 9mo ago
    Data point: I'm in the US on an old pre-paid plan that gets me 5GB per month at fast speed, dropping down to unlimited "2G" speed after that cap is hit, which I've done only twice in the past 12 years. $30 per month, and I always "bring my own device" (ie, I only buy unlocked phones, not through the carrier). I haven't shopped around for a while.
    - 9mo ago

consumer451 9mo ago

> I'm actually a huge fan of "unlimited slow speeds" as a falloff, instead of a cliff. When on cellular, I like to call that "HN-only mode." It is one of the few web properties that is entirely usable at 2G speeds.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
Salgat 9mo ago
I would kill for a web renaissance to return to this format of webpages, as least as an option. Not only loading improves, but also navigation and accessibility.
- Someone1234 9mo ago
  Indeed. That's why, when they finally kill old.reddit, I may legitimately stop using it entirely. They've already banned most of the good apps, forcing the pretty terrible official one.
  - MaxikCZ 9mo ago
    Recently the old reddit szopped working for me even after going to account settings and opting out of new design again (it was already marked as being opt out) across all my devices. Even after manually navigating to old.reddit.com, clicking any link would take me to new again. I had to install special extensions to reroute to old reddit everywhere.
    - Centigonal 9mo ago
      Same thing happened to me, this fixed it: https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/1odehgj/is_old_reddit_finally_gone_for_good/nktgagu/ https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/1odehgj/is_old_reddit...
    - birdman3131 9mo ago
      Had that happen a few times but switching the use old reddit box off and back on fixes it.

dyauspitr 9mo ago

Have they quantified the slow speed? Because when I had Viasat the slow speed so so unbelievably slow it had a hard time loading a regular SPA page in 2-3 minutes.

bscphil 9mo ago

I do think it's vastly superior to preferential treatment for some traffic, which seems to be the most popular alternative. The one caveat is that ISPs need to be forced to be transparent about this. Often, with cell providers, it's "Unlimited 5G" advertised, with a tiny asterisk pointing to even tinier disclaimer text at the bottom explaining that they throttle your rates once you hit a (fairly low) cutoff. That type of misleading marketing undercuts the fairness of the offer.

londons_explore 9mo ago

Thing is, the heaviest users are often the ones with some malware on their machine using up 100% of the bandwidth. When you limit that to 512kbps, thats still 129 gigabytes a month, on top of the 100 gigabytes a month you let the user use at high speed. When a typical user might use just 10 gigabytes a month, it seems dumb to let one user use 23x what everyone else is paying for/using, especially when that user is most likely just malware infected and not even personally benefiting! A better limit I think is to limit the user to 10 kbps over a rolling 24h window, 100 kbps over a rolling 1h window, 1Mbits over a rolling 1 minute window, and 10 Mbits over a 1 second window. That way they can quickly check an email or load a web page... But it quickly slows down if they try to (ab)use it for hours on end.

coryrc 9mo ago
> it seems dumb to let one user use 23x what everyone else is paying for/using Bandwidth is use-it-or-lose-it. If nobody else was using it, then it doesn't hurt anything. And during high demand traffic shaping hopefully gives their traffic even lower priority.
- londons_explore 9mo ago
  > If nobody else was using it, then it doesn't hurt anything. On networks I manage, there are clients who pay for large quantities of super low priority capacity - eg. for moving scientific data around, or backing up stuff that only needs to complete sometime in the next 30 days. That means there is no such thing as unused bandwidth - almost every link is 100% full of paying customers data, and anyone using more displaces one of those low priority customers.
  - coryrc 9mo ago
    Over wireless?
Dylan16807 9mo ago
It's not like 100GB is some huge amount of data. It's easy to hit, so if we're judging the overage amount we should be comparing it to the full 100GB, not some made up guy that only uses 10GB. There are users on unlimited consuming many terabytes, and they're not paying all that much more. It's not unfair to anyone if the cheaper plan is able to slowly reach 200GB or 300GB in a minimal-impact way. Also dropping all the way to 10kbps with enough use would just suck. It's effectively unusable and it would be extreme penny-pinching to make sure the maximum 24/7 user can't squeak out more than 3GB extra on their 100GB plan. You get more variance than that from different month lengths.

bigfatkitten 9mo ago

Starlink’s plans vary between markets, but in Australia they have a dirt cheap ($8 AUD per month or something) standby plan that gives you unlimited data capped at something like 500Kbps. If you’re going on a trip and need faster data, you can upgrade to a bigger plan for the rest of the billing month, charged on a pro rata basis, and then revert to the standby plan afterwards. I used to use Inmarsat BGAN. BGAN would top out at around 250Kbps on a good day, and cost a few bucks per MB on a terminal that cost almost ten times as much as a Starlink Mini.

killingtime74 9mo ago
I tried this and it's actually even enough to play YouTube at 1080p after some initial buffering. Calls definitely work

Waterluvian 9mo ago

Mobile has been like this for me for like a decade or so. But in the before times it was just barbaric and ridiculous to either be cut off or absolutely ravaged by fees.

olyjohn 9mo ago

I leave my Starlink Mini in Standby Mode, which is $5/mo and is capped at 500KB/sec. I got the dish for free because I'm already a subscriber at home, so adding the $5/mo really isn't a big deal. It's perfect to go camping, because I might want to let my friends know that I had to move campsites, but I don't want to sit there and surf all day long and watch YouTube. Though 500KB/sec is more than enough to do all of that...

Lvl999Noob 9mo ago

My internet providers (both home wifi and cellular) do this. The problem with unlimited slow speed is that it's too slow. I am sometimes unable to open the carrier's own app and pay for a recharge. Either the app just doesn't open or the transaction in the payments app fails.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]