It doesn't seem at all reasonable to throttle a particular device and not other comparable devices. It seems more reasonable to have the tower/router adjust the bandwidth made available to each device in real-time to ensure there's enough bandwidth for all users in the face of capacity issues.
I think it's fine to advertise peak speeds if those are regularly attainable even if sometimes they are not. It's not OK to advertise such speeds if the device is sold in a configuration that can't take advantage of them without a hack or update from the carrier or manufacturer.
The blame here lies squarely with Apple for allowing the carriers to pull this sort of bullshit with their customers. They're the ones who implemented this whole carrier profile mess on their platform.
Carriers have been doing this stuff every since the first feature phone came out. I remember Verizon disabling things like USB access to storage so you'd have to use their gateways to get pictures off your phone at $1.50 each.
Why do carrier Android updates take so long? One of the reasons is probably so they can put these kind of "features" in.
Apple has done a lot for the wireless market. They were able to strong-arm AT&T into allowing them to ship a phone without all the standard preloaded carrier crud. My guess is this was a totally non-negotiable point on the carrier's side.
I'm sure if Apple didn't agree to those terms they wouldn't be selling the iPhone at all. They probably had to fight pretty hard just to avoid carrier branding on their phones.
Carriers are also allowed to do it to Android phones, but choose not to do so. Why is that? Do they make more money from Android phones, and are incentivised to make them appear better performing?
> Carriers are also allowed to do it to Android phones, but choose not to do so. Why is that? Do they make more money from Android phones, and are incentivised to make them appear better performing?
Studies have shown that iPhone user use far more data on average than Android users. Carriers would naturally throttle iOS devices first.
I think it's fine to advertise peak speeds if those are regularly attainable even if sometimes they are not. It's not OK to advertise such speeds if the device is sold in a configuration that can't take advantage of them without a hack or update from the carrier or manufacturer.