An open letter to Mr. G. Lund, spokesperson, Cricket Communications, Media Relations: 7-15-2010



Mr. Lund,

This throttling is absolutely nonsensical. One would think that it
would be taken off with the advent of the new billing cycle. I mean,
after all , when a person pays their bill and there is no amount
owing, things become new. I even accepted the garbage about the
throttling being 30 days from the date they (sandvine) imposed it.
This is what I was told by Cricket personnel. I was told that it
would stop with the new billing cycle....I was told that it would stop
30 days from the date it was imposed, and now thanks to the miracle of
rolling throttles, no one on heaven or earth knows when it will be
lifted. I am paying money for full service and am receiving sub dial
up download rates. My download capability ranges from 10 to 14 kpbs
and that is an outrage.

You may think that the only people who are hurt by this are the
seeders like bit torrent. Not so! What about the folks like myself,
who have a paid account with NetFlix and who are allowed to download
movies from them? What about the folks who listen to internet
radio....gobble gobble bandwidth! If I had had any idea that your
company would have so severely handicapped my speed to this degree, I
would have stayed with Sprint. I also find it atrocious that your
company doesn't give any kind of warning before imposing this severe
restriction. I do not advocate throttling in any case, but the
severity with which your company is engaging in this practice is
abominable.

Mr. Lund, I realize that most folks don't have much choice when they
come to Cricket. And, I am sure you guys realize that too. But all
it is going to take is one smart ISP with plenty of bandwidth and a
heart to open their arms and accounts to the HUGE disgruntled Cricket
Broadband base and, Leap and Cricket will feel the hurt in the
pocketbook. To be honest, I am not an expert on bandwidth, few people
are. But if you hang around in the Cricket Forums, do a google search
on cricket broadband complaints, you will see that of all the
correspondence, 80 percent is negative when asked for
feedback/opinion. I understand that ISP's are selling bandwidth they
don't actually own, I have heard that time and time again. Mr. Lund,
why is it that Clearwire can have unlimited broadband and Cricket
cannot. I believe it is simply a matter of greed. I may be mistaken,
but I don't think so. Cricket chose to go in cahoots with Sandvine,
unfortunately. Sandvine, who was the throttle technology behind the
Comcast debacle. Now Comcast may have gotten three appellate judges
to find in their favor, how that came to be is beyond me, since they
(Comcast) were throttling bittorrent and flat out lied about it,
Judges used to be very intolerant of untruths. The FCC will have
authority over broadband I am sure, because who else?

I have asked, pleaded and cursed in an attempt to get the damnable
throttle off my account. Yet, still it remains. I really do not know
where to go from here. I guess I will either accept being unfairly
penalized forever or leave Cricket.

But, believe me, Mr. Lund, Cricket is making no friends with this
unfair throttling. It is so hard to understand that the common folk
can't understand it, your tech support doesn't have an adequate
command of the English language to properly explain it, well, actually
it is nonsensical, so I don't believe it could be defended. I mean
come on, with a new billing cycle take the throttle off, let bygones
be bygones. Or even, shudder, the thirty day deal from when the
throttle was imposed although that is horrendous and not good
business, that is way unpopular with your customers. But to have this
rolling thing going on, it makes no sense. I have tried to explain it
to IT's and they are incredulous. Whoever masterminded this rolling
throttle thing NEEDS to be throttled.

Anyway, that is about all I have to say. One of your escalation
department personnel , Omar, send me an email offering to explain my
OPTIONS....that is laughable. I have tried to understand my options
for the longest and there do not seem to be very many options
available to me. I spoke to Liz here at Leap and her hands are tied.
Everyone's hands are tied and the throttling continues on my account.
And the accounts of countless thousands of your customers. My
original message to Cricket was, "Step up Cricket and do the right
thing." I don't believe that is going to happen any longer. I am
very saddened and disenchanted as to what I see in Cricket. I was a
Cricket customer a few years ago and it is tragic to me to see the
company in this way. Customer service used to be very high on the
Cricket list, and I found that very heartening as it is a pay as go
service.

Anyway, that is it, Mr. Lund. If you have gotten anything out of my
missives, other than being a pain in the rear, I am glad. I hope that
Cricket returns to the manner in which it operated in the past. The
customer may not always be right, but they are always the customer!

Stephen