Hi Everyone,

I've got the Sunrise Take Away Max internet modem with monthly subscription, i have checked the contract and website info and it all mentioned it's "unlimited data limit".

After quite sometime using it crossing 18 GB data transfer in 3 weeks, i got a remarkable slow down in connection, when the modem is connected & software is detecting the connection, it's on WCDMA but when i actually click connect it drops down to HSPA.

This is happening at the same location i'm using it since 3 weeks already.

Did anyone encounter the same problem before or have a clue what could be going on?, i feel i've been tricked & they are slowing down the speed based on my data transfer.

does the contract mention fair use/throttling speed when you use it a lot?

Nothing mentioned about fair usage or limiting speed, it just mentions unlimited data volume....., though someone did mention it to me the other day that they do lock the speed after 10 GB of data transfer, is this even legal without a written notice?

Sunrise Take Away Max Offer

i remember looking at sunrise and seem to remember them mentioning that they throttle data rates if you exceed a certain limit.

I would like to see where this is written, as it's not in the contract i signed,nor website including the terms & conditions of usage!!

of course it's unlimited. unless you use it a lot.
it's a bit like free overdraft from your friendly bank... until you use it.

seriously its in the fine print.

Well this doesn't make sense to me, deal is a deal & contracts are supposed to be respected, i can't find any term mentioning i have to use it slightly or anything related to restriction of usage, when it's unlimited then it should be unlimited.

I'm a web designer & work alot on uploading & downloading multimedia files, all my files are pretty mid to large sizes, in addition i really don't understand how 10 GB would be considered (even for normal user) an average of usage within a month with all these rich content, multimedia enhanced & streaming sites out there, someone should tell them that the age of plain html pages is gone now

i guess the data limit is unlimited. you just have to download very slowly.

As far as I know all the phone companies restrict your access after about 10GB and for a normal user that tends to be more than enough! But you need to remember that a mobile connection is not intended to be your main internet access point! I just checked my Swisscom account and I have never gone above 6.5GB in a month and that includes doing some hairy database backups!

Good luck with that,

Jim

I would say they are fairly clear and upfront about it

here's what i see on their site ... in very plain English (okay, French ...)



Mentions légales et générales

(1) La taxe journalière de CHF 3.50 se réfère au moment de la première utilisation avant minuit.
(2) Fair usage: En cas de dépassement du volume de données de 10 Go par mois, la large bande est réduite.

Well unfortunately it's my only way to do work now as I'm moving apartments, so don't have lots of options here

Thanks for the link, though it wasn't mentioned in the contract & i asked the girl in the shop if it's ultimately unlimited on the same speed & she said yes

Anyway, i will discuss with them tomorrow if there's an upgrade or something to keep me running on same speed as this 10 gb is really nothing considering the projects I'm working on atm.

Thanks everyone for the help

two points:

- 10GB over a mobile network is still a lot of data.
- They don't guarantee you a certain download speed, so just as it is with ADSL, it's on a best effort basis. In fact, it's not possible to guarantee best speed to everyone since a mobile network is a shared medium(you have to share it with everyone else connected to the same antenna) and it depends also on network coverage(how strong the signal at your current location is)

That's how the technology works. Even if they want to give you super fast speed, the can't.

I agree about the antenna load point, but when the modem locks on WCDMA then after i click connect it drops to HSPA automatically then this is a server side settings on particular case not due to activity overload

That 10GB "ceiling" is pretty common for household internet usage, not only with what you signed but for many private use contracts "around the world" - in the course of playing WoW I've seen many folks complaining in the US and in Oceanic areas of this same thing.

Many ISPs have gone to this in recent years to both help protect more "casual" users from those who create a ton of traffic with frequent file transfers (those file transfers bog things down for everyone else far more than my MMO does) AND to help set some limits that put a bit of control back in the hands of the music / movie industry (RIAA)... the assumption there being that the folks that get throttled "often" are the ones pirating.



Meanwhile, I imagine that for BUSINESS contracts, there probably is a higher limit available, perhaps you should give them a call and find out?

And here's the same in German:
(1) Die Gebühr von CHF 3.50 / Tag bezieht sich auf den Zeitpunkt der ersten Nutzung bis Mitternacht desselben Tages.
(2) Fair Usage: Bei Überschreitung einer Datenmenge von 10 GB pro Monat wird die Bandbreite reduziert.

Every provider in the world has to have a fair usage policy and a mechanism to stop the extreme users from overloading the network and consuming much more resources than the average user.

Otherwise, the cost and effort to build a network would have to be dimensioned for the most extreme user, and every thing would be at least 10 times more expensive than it is today.

That's simple economics of network build.

So Fair Usage is a fact of life and you'll have to live with it - and the resulting restrictions it places on you when you get qualified as an extreme user....

WCDMA (or UMTS) is the general name of the "3G" technology. HSPA is the "High Speed Packet Access" that is built on top of WDCMA that gives you super-fast data speeds of up to 7Mbps. WCDMA on it's own is limited to 384Kbps. So when your modem shows you are on HSPA, that's a good thing, and not a downgrade of any kind

....but all mobile data subscriptions in Switzerland (and most other parts of the world) are not in fact unlimited. Almost all have a "fair usage" policy of 10GB per month or so. After you pass that limit, you connection will be throttled down until the next billing cycle starts, then you will get your fast speeds back.... if you use heavy data, then look into a fixed line connection, or try to use more wifi whenever possible...

Are you for real??, your a web designer and you have never come across a fair use policy?? even cable internet have a fair use policy, in fact every internet provider here and in the uk I have ever been with has had a fair use policy 18gb over a mobile is pretty extreme!!

How have you been tricked?? you didn't read the t&c's.

I'd say your pretty lucky they havn't barred your connection completely.

while your point is valid, its got little to do with the technology and everything to do with economics.

technically it is certainly possible to size the network so that each customer can be downloading simultaneously at max rated speed. however, that would be very inefficient from an economic perspective.

Not really, the radio connection is a shared resource. If less people are using it, the more bandwidth is available to them, and hence faster speeds. Here's an example of an OVSF tree used for UMTS:



as you can see, in theory based on Spreading Factors, you can have one guy using the whole bandwidth (SF1), or 16 people taking smaller pieces of it (SF16). The network should automatically scale you to the best connection available.

more explanation here:
http://radioraiders.com/umts-data-rates-modulation.html