I have a new mobile data plan with a contractually agreed-upon bandwidth limit of "up to 3 Mbit/s". To my knowledge, the "up to" only accounts for unavoidable reductions in bandwidths, e.g. due to infrastructural limitations, regional differences in network coverage, outages etc. For instance, it is not allowed to advertise "up to 15 Mbit/s" when there is a systematic bandwidth cap in place that limits all customers to 5 Mbit/s - which would amount to fraud.
According to a popular online internet bandwidth test, the available bandwidth appears to average at a stable 440-500 kB/s or 3.5-4.0 Mbit/s, which is significantly better than advertised.
However, I noticed that the actual bandwidth is being throttled in an unexpected and rather perfidious way:
- a single active connection (e.g. a file download) always tops out at a measly 120-150 kB/s
- upon adding a second active connection (e.g. a second file download), the bandwidth for each individual connection immediately rises to around 250 kB/s, corresponding in sum total to the advertised/measured bandwidth limit
- any additional connection will diminish the bandwidth of each individual connection such that the total bandwidth does not exceed the advertised/measured limit
This effectively limits the bandwidths for individual connections to only about 250 kB/s or 2 Mbit/s, which is actually significantly worse compared to both the advertised and measured bandwidth. In fact, for only a single active connection, the actual bandwidth is reduced to only 120-150 kB/s or little more than 1 Mbit/s, which is only 1/3 of the advertised value!
Is this even legal?
In practise, this prevents customers e.g. from using any high-quality video streaming services, although on paper both the advertised and measured bandwidth should be expected to provide ample room e.g. for video streaming at 720p or even 1080p resolution!
If proven to be true, such practise could serve internet service providers (ISPs) to prevent customers e.g. from using high-quality video streaming services with their cheapest mobile data plans (arguably the main contributor of bandwidth consumption in private households and certainly an important use case for customers when selecting data plans) and thereby
- reduce costs by severely and systematically undercutting the advertised bandwidth and discouraging the usage of bandwidth-intensive services,
- increase profit by coaxing and coercing customers to upgrade to much more expensive data plans,
- while possibly circumventing legal problems, since it remains "technically possible" to reach advertised bandwidth ceilings as a sum total by multiple concurrent connections.
Question: Is such fraudulent practise common and does it conform to EU law (Swiss and German regulations in particular)?
