3 ms·

Why can’t it throttle to something slightly higher? Even 100-200 KBps? Is that a requirement from the “upstream” network provider?

johndoylecape 8mo ago
It's not. We chose this baseline sort of by default based on the practices of some other major carriers. Your question is a good one, and we'll take it as feedback.
- altairprime 8mo ago
  I would be a lot less worried about signing up for that plan if I could soft-cap myself at 10GB until I login to the app and push a button that says "yeah for real I'm going to use another 10GB of mobile data", so that if iOS goes bonkers and tries to download my entire 90GB iTunes library over cellular, it doesn't fuck me over for a month. I haven't exceeded 7GB/mo intentionally for years, but it's happened twice so far against my express wishes, and carriers are uniformly awful at that.
  - bsstoner 8mo ago
    This is good feedback. We don’t want caps and throttling to be a blocker for signing up and using us. Since we’re at a premium price point we should economically be able to be a lot more generous than existing carriers.
    - chirau 8mo ago
      I would like to try Cape. How do guys deal with IMEI tracking from folks like Google when i search or use their email? Or that one is beyond your control?
      - throawayonthe 8mo ago
        Can you elaborate?
      - ThePowerOfFuet 8mo ago
        What makes you think Google has access to your IMEI through using their search engine?
        bdangubic 8mo ago
        Friends at Google :)
        ThePowerOfFuet 8mo ago
        Chrome may well have access to persistent identifiers on Android, but websites do not. The search engine has nothing to do with it.
        alek-cape 8mo ago
        I thought access to IMEI and IMSI was pretty heavily restricted starting with Android 10. Graphene [1] makes a few extra restrictions beyond AOSP [2], but it's been around for a while now. To get access to IMEI and IMSI, you need to either be a carrier app, allowlisted, or grant the `READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE` permission. Unless Chrome is running at a system level in AOSP or some OEM specific firmware, I wouldn't expect it to have `READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE` [1] - https://grapheneos.org/faq#hardware-identifiers https://grapheneos.org/faq#hardware-identifiers [2] - https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/device-identifiers https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/device-identifi...
    - bombcar 8mo ago
      Charge $5 more for everyone, and then rebate $5 against your next bill if you don't go over X GB or whatever. It ends up being the same as charging $5 if you go over, but it'll feel much more premium.
      - quietsegfault 8mo ago
        This is what my carrier does for me, except the limit is like 2GB or something.
    - altairprime 8mo ago
      Yeah. As a olde ex-carrier type person, I want burst mode unlimited, I expressly do not want continuous saturated unlimited, if that makes any sense. So if you tune the service to warn me “you’ve used 10% of your cap in five minutes so we’ve slowed your service down temporarily, respond with YES if this is intentional and we should speed it back up, otherwise it’ll reset in the morning”, that would be an example of best in category service that’s on my side rather than the carrier’s overage fees profit line item. I don’t mind that you have caps, I consider caps to be a marketable form of 90th percentile billing to consumers, so please don’t take this as “remove all caps” — but definitely find an in-between that’s more nuanced than “you reach arbitrary threshold 50G at 1gbps 5G and so it only took 8 minutes and 40% battery, too bad so sad now your entire month of data is at DSL speeds”. (This sarcastic tone is not a critique of you! but of the general carrier practices that leave me worried about you.) In a dream world my usage percentile for the past 30 days would be inversely proportional to my bandwidth speed so that momentary usage to download a software update had no meaningful impact, but running nonstop continuous data for four hours straight caused a measurable drop in bandwidth (which protects my battery and the network health). It’s not fiber-optic or fixed-installation wireless and I do respect the shared base antenna capacity problems!
    - quietsegfault 8mo ago
      I don’t think keeping the status quo of throttling caps will stop anyone from signing up. As long as it’s not any worse, I don’t think it would deter me due to the other features you offer. The main reason why I don’t change is my spouse and kids don’t care about privacy and I can get them service for cheaper! I don’t really think about caps all that much except in theory. I would love speed tests to be excepted from caps, but I get why that isn’t always workable.
  - quietsegfault 8mo ago
    That’s a great idea. I rarely use more than 10-15 GB except if I’m tethering and something decided to slurp up all my data.
- phantom784 8mo ago
  A few Mbps would be nice - fast enough to make the modern web mostly usable. 256 Kbps is almost the same as not working at all.

johndoylecape 8mo ago

It's not. We chose this baseline sort of by default based on the practices of some other major carriers. Your question is a good one, and we'll take it as feedback.

altairprime 8mo ago
I would be a lot less worried about signing up for that plan if I could soft-cap myself at 10GB until I login to the app and push a button that says "yeah for real I'm going to use another 10GB of mobile data", so that if iOS goes bonkers and tries to download my entire 90GB iTunes library over cellular, it doesn't fuck me over for a month. I haven't exceeded 7GB/mo intentionally for years, but it's happened twice so far against my express wishes, and carriers are uniformly awful at that.
- bsstoner 8mo ago
  This is good feedback. We don’t want caps and throttling to be a blocker for signing up and using us. Since we’re at a premium price point we should economically be able to be a lot more generous than existing carriers.
  - chirau 8mo ago
    I would like to try Cape. How do guys deal with IMEI tracking from folks like Google when i search or use their email? Or that one is beyond your control?
    - throawayonthe 8mo ago
      Can you elaborate?
    - ThePowerOfFuet 8mo ago
      What makes you think Google has access to your IMEI through using their search engine?
      - bdangubic 8mo ago
        Friends at Google :)
        ThePowerOfFuet 8mo ago
        Chrome may well have access to persistent identifiers on Android, but websites do not. The search engine has nothing to do with it.
        alek-cape 8mo ago
        I thought access to IMEI and IMSI was pretty heavily restricted starting with Android 10. Graphene [1] makes a few extra restrictions beyond AOSP [2], but it's been around for a while now. To get access to IMEI and IMSI, you need to either be a carrier app, allowlisted, or grant the `READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE` permission. Unless Chrome is running at a system level in AOSP or some OEM specific firmware, I wouldn't expect it to have `READ_PRIVILEGED_PHONE_STATE` [1] - https://grapheneos.org/faq#hardware-identifiers https://grapheneos.org/faq#hardware-identifiers [2] - https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/device-identifiers https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/device-identifi...
  - bombcar 8mo ago
    Charge $5 more for everyone, and then rebate $5 against your next bill if you don't go over X GB or whatever. It ends up being the same as charging $5 if you go over, but it'll feel much more premium.
    - quietsegfault 8mo ago
      This is what my carrier does for me, except the limit is like 2GB or something.
  - altairprime 8mo ago
    Yeah. As a olde ex-carrier type person, I want burst mode unlimited, I expressly do not want continuous saturated unlimited, if that makes any sense. So if you tune the service to warn me “you’ve used 10% of your cap in five minutes so we’ve slowed your service down temporarily, respond with YES if this is intentional and we should speed it back up, otherwise it’ll reset in the morning”, that would be an example of best in category service that’s on my side rather than the carrier’s overage fees profit line item. I don’t mind that you have caps, I consider caps to be a marketable form of 90th percentile billing to consumers, so please don’t take this as “remove all caps” — but definitely find an in-between that’s more nuanced than “you reach arbitrary threshold 50G at 1gbps 5G and so it only took 8 minutes and 40% battery, too bad so sad now your entire month of data is at DSL speeds”. (This sarcastic tone is not a critique of you! but of the general carrier practices that leave me worried about you.) In a dream world my usage percentile for the past 30 days would be inversely proportional to my bandwidth speed so that momentary usage to download a software update had no meaningful impact, but running nonstop continuous data for four hours straight caused a measurable drop in bandwidth (which protects my battery and the network health). It’s not fiber-optic or fixed-installation wireless and I do respect the shared base antenna capacity problems!
  - quietsegfault 8mo ago
    I don’t think keeping the status quo of throttling caps will stop anyone from signing up. As long as it’s not any worse, I don’t think it would deter me due to the other features you offer. The main reason why I don’t change is my spouse and kids don’t care about privacy and I can get them service for cheaper! I don’t really think about caps all that much except in theory. I would love speed tests to be excepted from caps, but I get why that isn’t always workable.
- quietsegfault 8mo ago
  That’s a great idea. I rarely use more than 10-15 GB except if I’m tethering and something decided to slurp up all my data.
phantom784 8mo ago
A few Mbps would be nice - fast enough to make the modern web mostly usable. 256 Kbps is almost the same as not working at all.