Apple Music - Download Throttling

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

I've been trialling Apple Music on my iPhone and spend a lot of time on the London Underground.  To this end I frequently synchronise and download tracks to my phone for offline listening.

When on WiFi everything works as expected.  When on 4G, though, my download speeds are positively awful and don't appear to be downloading any faster than they would be if I were streaming them in real time.

I run a speed test and am showing 20Mb down, 10Mb up on my 4G signal.  Apple Music downloads remain appalling.  Here's the kicker, though.  I have a VPN service that terminates in the Netherlands.  When I connect to my VPN and download the very same tracks over 4G via the Netherlands they come flying down the pipe and I'm able to synchronise entire albums in a minute or two.  I drop my VPN and continue... same album looks set to take an hour to download.

I can only conclude from this that O2 has a significant routing or throughput issue to Apple's network (technical issue) or is deliberately throttling Apple Music to little more than streaming speeds (which is in breach of service contract as far as I'm concerned).  Either way, I'm not happy.

Does anyone else have any experience of this or the ability to shed light on why I'm getting such a poor download speed from Apple over the O2 network?  Downloading Apps isn't affected, just Apple Music.

[MI5]

No one here works in O2 tech so would only be able to guess at an answer.
You'd be best advised to call cs and ask for the issue to be looked at by tech team.

[Anonymous]

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@MI5 wrote:
No one here works in O2 tech so would only be able to guess at an answer.
You'd be best advised to call cs and ask for the issue to be looked at by tech team.

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Even if they are managing traffic they wouldn't probably say as much - hopefully it's a routing issue.

[MI5]

I'm sure there is TM in place but it doesn't contravene any service agreements as it's mentioned in the T&C's.
What specifically it relates to though is not published.

[ewanrw]

O2 do operate traffic management policies, so not really in breach of anything...

"Traffic management policy

Traffic Management is the range of technical practices used to manage data across networks.

Our network is a shared resource, so we use Traffic Management to maximise performance and deliver the best quality of experience to our customers.

To make sure our customers are clearly informed about this, we support the Broadband Stakeholders Group voluntary Code of Practice on Traffic Management Transparency.

For further details of our Traffic Management policy, please see our KFI (Key Facts Indicator)"

ewan

[jonsie]

So best quality customer experience unless you use Apple Music piped directly via O2....

[Anonymous]

Well if they are throttling the traffic then it makes little sense.  If I'm clearly interested in the music enough to want it cached / offline then it stands to reason I'm going to be listening to it multiple times.  In the long run it saves O2 bandwidth by allowing me to conveniently download it once instead of repeatedly streaming it.

I also don't remember having this issue with Spotify but I no longer subscribe and can't confirm whether they're throttling that as well.  Ultimately I'm just trying to use a legitimate service using my paid for data allowance and O2 has more or less completely knackered one of the most important features of that service... if they're throttling it.

I've contacted support who said I'll get a response from the network team shortly (and pigs might fly) but I'll update if I hear anything.

[Anonymous]

Actually I've just looked at that KFI document on O2's traffic management policies.  That states that they're not traffic shaping anything in relation to day to day ordinary usage but they do prioritise certain types of traffic.

Hopefully then it is just a technical issue which can be resolved.

[jrhop123]

I have this same problem, it happens on Apple Music and iTunes downloads from iPhone over 3G or 4G, depsite have a strong signal. As in the original post I can do a speedtest and regularly get ~20MB down and ~10MB up and video streaming YouTube/BBC works pretty well, as expected over 3G/4G. But Apple Music or iTunes downloads are painfully slow, can take 5-10 minutes per track! If I switch to wireless they zip down in a few seconds even on a 4MB ADSL connection, so its def not a device issue. I also have a work iPhone 6 on O2 which is identical in its slow downloads.

O2 are definitely throttling iTunes downloads, but won't admit to it, even if you try and get through to a CS rep. Its almost as if its getting categorised as P2P which O2 admit to limiting to 50Kbps during the bulk of the day.

Looks like EE maybe doing it as well - http://community.ee.co.uk/t5/EE-Mobile-Network/4G-Speed-Throttling-iPhone-iTunes-Store-PAINFULLY-Slo...

[jonsie]

They will never admit to it and it seems if Apple aren't controlling the ios then o2 are doing their bit to restrict the customer experience.