Forum Discussion
kusius
2 years agoFriendly Neighbour
Streaming throttling
Hi, why is there such throttling of streaming from my mobile device? I’m on a 5G+ plan (with a 15 Pro Max phone), but I can barely watch Twitch or YouTube at 720p. Speedtest always shows 200+ Mbps an...
kusius
2 years agoFriendly Neighbour
Thanks for all your messages. I've walking around downtown Toronto with my wife, who has a Samsung, testing this thing. Youtube 4K or Twitch 1080 have terrible buffering everywhere around downtown Toronto, on 5G or LTE, on both our phones, whether in the app or in the browser. Youtube 1080p was acceptable but not what I would expect from Telus network. So it's not a phone or app issue. There was one random case though when we were inside a store with 2/4 bars of LTE reception - no buffering at all, lightning fast video rewinds.
As I know, streaming videos even in 4K doesn't require much bandwidth. 25 mbps would be more than sufficient to have a decent viewing experience, and even LTE networks should be able to easily handle that. On my phone, speedtest shows 300/400+ mbps so I don't understand if it's all fake or what. But anyway, I believe that if Telus network wasn't good enough to handle 1080p Twitch streams, just in general the whole web browsing etc. experience on my phone would be unusable, but it's not, everything else is great. Just the video streaming has these weird issues, which leads me to believe that Telus purposely throttles video streaming speeds - unless there is another technical explanation I am not aware of, I am not a pro in the world of mobile networks. One of the main competitors seems to be doing that already - didn't test that myself but their 480p SD or 1080p HD streaming plans suggest they wouldn't allow customers to watch 4K content as well. But on Telus, I can't even watch a 1080p Twitch stream!
Tried calling customer support - waited for 30 min for someone to pick up, was redirected to a tech support team, waited for another 45 min, and just gave up. Maybe I'll try calling again but I don't think they can help.
- TELUS_Support2 years ago
Official Support Team
You can always try the Live Chat option, visiting the nearest TELUS store so our team can take a look, or resetting your Network Settings to see if that helps.
- kusius2 years agoFriendly Neighbour
Going to a Telus store was actually kinda funny - I showed the issue to the employees there, and they didn't believe it at first, thought something was wrong with my device, so they decided to check it on their phones - and guess what, they were also throttled! 1080p or above streaming just doesn't work. As it doesn't for everyone else on Telus network that I asked to check this issue. And then I showed them that with VPN I can easily stream anything in 4K - which just proves beyond reasonable doubt that Telus does throttle. They were surprised but what can they do, they still have to sell people these 5G+ unlimited plan with "blazing fast data" that only allow streaming up to 1080p at best, realistically it's just 480p/720p though.