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]

O2 has enough congestion on the network without allowing even more traffic due to all the streaming services out there.
Data traffic has to be managed, whether you like it or not, or else there would be some customers who would not be able to even download their emails.

[jonsie]

But I've never had a problem with o2 throttling Google Play music?

[Anonymous]

From reading the thread on EE, it boils down to, its encrypted traffic and:

“been difficult to differentiate peer to peer filesharing from iTunes/Apple Music”

No excuse really, but it would seem that technology has advanced faster than the networks can.

[MI5]

Must be something in the way that Apple have set up their servers as someone else pointed out there is no issue with Google Music....?
I have to say I don't struggle with Spotify either.

[jrhop123]

Think I've had enough of O2, going to switch to Vodafone. Apart from this problem, 3G/4G doesn't work properly in my area, O2 don't seem to acknowledge the issue.

[MI5]

3g rarely works anywhere at the mo !!

[Anonymous]

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@jrhop123 wrote:
Think I've had enough of O2, going to switch to Vodafone. Apart from this problem, 3G/4G doesn't work properly in my area, O2 don't seem to acknowledge the issue.

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Best advice is, get a pay & go sim for whichever network you are wanting to move to, even try a couple and see which gives the best coverage, best 3G, 4G coverage, and also the speeds that you will see on 3G, 4G.

I'm doing the exact same thing at this time as I'm moving away from O2 shortly after 17 years 

I've been trying EE out and also tried Three out late on last year, both were good, but I find EE to be better in my area and the difference I see in just 3G coverage is like night and day compared to O2, which in my is patchy and seems to want to kick you off of it and onto EDGE/2G. Also, I can get double speed 4G in my area whereas I can't get 4G with O2.

[Anonymous]

Well it's not been a successful experience, I can tell you that.

First call... we'll escale to Network Support and you'll get a response with 5 working days.  Nothing.

Second call.. we'll reset your network settings..  Restart phone after 30 minutes.  No change.

Third call.. we'll escale to Network Support and you'll get a reponse within 5 working days.  Nothing.

Last call it took them 20 minutes of convincing to acknowledge that I was even on a 4G SIM.  The whole thing is a joke.  I honestly used to think O2 was worth the extra money for customer service but this has literally proved otherwise.  You all said it and I never belived it.

No resolution.  No explanation.  No customer service.

My advice?  Don't use O2.  Spend your money elsewhere.

[Cleoriff]

Hi @Anonymous

Sorry to hear of all these problems with no resolution. You may wish to complain following the steps laid out here http://www.o2.co.uk/how-to-complain

[MI5]

Try EE