Report: Orange backs off iPhone 3G throttling

iPhone 3G owners in France should soon start to notice faster 3G download speeds.

(Credit: CNET)

French owners of the iPhone 3G are irate over Orange's practice of capping their 3G download speeds at a rate far slower than what their neighbors can access, but are in for a speed boost.

The carrier has apparently backed off its decision to cap iPhone 3G downloading speeds at 384Kbps, according to a report from France-Info. AppleInsider tracked the furor that arose after French iPhone 3G owners started comparing the speeds of their iPhones with their German neighbors, and discovered that iPhone 3G users on T-Mobile's German network were seeing speeds far greater, up to almost 2Mbps.

France-Info reported that Orange will raise the download speeds to 1Mbps by the middle of September as a result of the outcry, which spanned several French tech-related Web sites.

[saffroncapital]

Typical French.... but is this good for Apple?? It can't control what 'rhymes with nothing' does... so does this damage Apple's brand or do people correctly finger the carrier as the bad guy??

Just a thought....

[Vegaman_Dan]

In the end, it's the whole Apple iPhone experience that suffers. It may not be Apple's fault, but the consumer only knows that their iPhone doesn't work as well as it should or was advertised to. I don't think we'll see Apple putting out ads saying, "It's not our fault! Call your cell provider!"

[TravisOwens]

Was Orange afraid that if they gave you too much speed you'll surf more? The human mind can only read at one speed. The fact if it takes 1sec vs 5secs to load the webpage doesn't affect that. So to be honest, your download speed isn't going to make a huge difference in the amout of data you send a month. I really don't see iPhone users trading DVDs online and other large BitTorrents.

Secondly, aren't they paying an extra fee to be on the 3G network (the US does), so isn't the whole point is to provide better speed. Why take away the most important feature in the new phone? I mean look, it's in the device's name!

Third, this reeks of a setup to begin tier pricing in the future, so by default you get 384kbps, how much you want to bet if you pay more, you can get access to more of the 3G bandwidth. Maybe that's fair, maybe it's not, it's arguable but not something I like.

[Douglas W. Goodall]

According to the Speedtest program (from the app store) I am getting around 512Kb/sec downward over 3G. That is not stellar, and doesn't even challenge the speed of crippled DSL. I am wondering what other people are getting for throughput on 3G? DFoes anyone care to share? Remember to disable wi-fi before running the test.