Bandwidth throttle app?

[davidortenn79]

So, I'm trying to save money. I one thing I'm doing is trying to get my phone bill down. I just switched from an at&t unlimited plan costing me like $150 a month to a new company called red pocket that works off of at&t's network and I'm now paying $10 a month. I am setup on a plan with unlimited talk and text but I only get 1 GB of high speed data and then unlimited slower data. I seriously used up the 1 GB my first month during the few minutes I was setting up the phone. The slower data is basically useless. Nothing works. Most places I go, I have wifi. But, not everywhere.

I was wondering if there was an app that I could throttle all of the apps on my phone. Maybe I could allot more bandwidth for certain apps. My phone isn't rooted and I dont think I can root it. But, I was thinking if there was an app that setup a local vpn and forced all of my traffic through it and then could throttle the apps, seems like it would be possible. But, I can't find an app like this... I see apps that will tell me the bandwidth used per app, but not one that would allow me to throttle the bandwidth per app. BTW, I have a Samsung S22 Ultra.

 

[AugieTN]

Red Pocket has been around for quite a while (15+ years)

You may not need an app. It sounds like you have a bad app that is constantly using bandwidth.

1 GB of data is not much. How many GB of data were you using with AT&T? A lot of people get by fine with 3 GB of data per month

In Setting>Apps can you see what apps have unrestricted data?

 

[davidortenn79]

Well, it was when I was first setting up the phone. I don't think I have a bad app. I just reset my phone to factory defaults and I don't really have much on it. Just, these days, most apps are not designed to work on less than 1 GB of data a month. Right now, I'm just turning off my mobile data when I'm off of wifi. But, it's annoying always turning it on and off.

 

[davidortenn79]

On at&t, I had an unlimited plan. I seriously used close to 1 TB of data last month.... lol. But, I was downloading a ton of data on purpose. We dont currently have high speed data at our house and have a ton of data I need to download off of google drive. Although, we're getting fiber in a week, so I think I'm done pulling down that much data.

 

[Dannydet]

Visible mobile has unlimited plan at $25 a month. Owned by Verizon. You can't beat that for unlimited data. Problem solved....

 

[davidortenn79]

Verizon service doesn't work well where we live. AT&T has way better cell signal in our area.

 

[davidortenn79]

And, seriously, i'm pinching pennies. That's $15 more a month. I know it's silly. But, it feels good getting it down to $10. My parents, when my age, didn't need internet when they were out of the house or in the house. They could go on a drive or to the store without internet and they survived. These days, theres things that just need internet, but most things you don't need it. Just looking for a way to make 1 GB of data work. It's more of a challenge and a goal than a necessity to make it work.

 

[AugieTN]

Your thread almost seem like an April Fools Joke. How can I cut down from 1000 GB to 1 GB. To be honest I've read forums where people with unlimited wireless plans get cut off by their carrier for using a lot less data. Even with unlimited home internet, it's not unlimited. Good Luck.

 

[davidortenn79]

I was waiting to get some kind of notice from at&t for using 1 TB of data. Never got a notice.

 

[davidortenn79]

It wasnt like I use 1 TB of data a month just doing stuff. I was purposely downloading files. I have thousands of 2 GB files I was downloading and offloading to my PC. When the local storage filled up, I would hook it up though USB and move the files over. We have unlimited data on our home, but our home is also 4G, so it's only like 12 Mb/s. We stream our TV, so if I'm downloading 1 TB of data, our TV works terrible. So, I was using my phone's data so it wouldn't interfere.

 

[davidortenn79]

Were getting fiber next week. I knew we were getting fiber soon... at least hoping. But we bought this house a year ago. When we bought the house, we were told we'd have fiber within 2 months. I work from home. I'm like, I can make 4G work for 2 months. Well, 2 months kept getting extended longer and longer. A week or so ago, they finally got the fiber cable up to the house. They're now scheduled to install it in the house next week. But, over the last year, I've made 4G work for me. It works surprisingly well. I have a huge pole on the back of our house with an antenna pointing at the local 4G tower that's over our roofline. My wife is a cop so we get the firstnet truly unlimited plan, no data caps at all, which is why we can stream our tv on 4g and not run out of data. I work from home.... it has been rough though the last year working on 4g. It's not always reliable. It has its good days and bad days.

 

[davidortenn79]

So, back to the original question. Does anyone know of a bandwidth throttling app? Since posting this discussion, I did find out, in the developer options, there is an option to restrict bandwidth. Problem with this setting is it's system-wide. So, it changes the setting for both wifi and cellular. There's no quick way for me to just toggle it on and off that I can tell.

 

[ocnbrze]

i don't have a need for such an app. have you looked in the play store? i found this one, but i don't know how well it works or if it fits your needs:

Bandwidth ruler - Apps on Google Play

An android bandwidth manager [ Data saver]

play.google.com

 

[davidortenn79]

So far, bandwidth ruler is the only one I can find. But, when I search for it in the google store, it says it's not available for my phone because it was designed for an older version of android. So, doesn't help me...

 

[davidortenn79]

The only thing I really "need" data for when I'm out and about is checking my finances... bank account stuff. So far, it seems to work when I'm out of data and working on the super slow data. But, takes a minute or so to get in. So, if I'm at a cash register and checking out and then suddenly need to check, I might be sitting there an extra minute twittling my thumbs waiting for it to open. But, the goal is, from all of this money I'm saving being a penny pincher, I will need to do that less anyways!

 

[davidortenn79]

So, while all of you will get to your retirement age at like 80 because of the blood sucking technology that drains the wallets but sitting there enjoying the speedy data, I'll be sipping on my margaretta in the carribians when I'm 60 retired on a boat with my phone in my hand and pissed off because I can't get anything to load and probably end up throwing it in the ocean in a rage of anger. (That's my goal... but I am still too addicted to technology.... )

 

[davidortenn79]

Growing up, my parents made like half of what I make. My parents had a house on a lake. All of my school buddies thought we were rich. My parents had a 42 foot yacht on lake Michigan. We hung out with millionaires. But, my parents drove beater cars because they didn't want a car payment. Technology wasn't a thing, so they weren't throwing away $200-$300 or more a month for a family of smart phones. $300 a month is half the cost of a car or yacht payment a month. It's crazy what we (as society) have decided is normal. Then don't get me started on subscriptions. You own nothing these days. Everything's a subscription. Saw one automaker, I think GM, is going to make heated seats a subscription service in their cars. They'll suck all your money until you're drained.

 

[mikedt]

The only thing I really "need" data for when I'm out and about is checking my finances... bank account stuff. So far, it seems to work when I'm out of data and working on the super slow data. But, takes a minute or so to get in. So, if I'm at a cash register and checking out and then suddenly need to check, I might be sitting there an extra minute twittling my thumbs waiting for it to open. But, the goal is, from all of this money I'm saving being a penny pincher, I will need to do that less anyways!

I'm thinking instead of trying to throttle the bandwidth with some app. You could just turn on mobile data when you actually need it. like for when you need to check your finances, or whatever. And leave it off for the rest of the time. On your S22, there should be a short-cut for Mobile Data ON/OFF in the pull-down tab from the home-screen..

 

[davidortenn79]

I'm doing that too. Just figure I'll forget one day. Doesn't take long for a semi-bandwidth hungry app to use 1 GB of data. I'm an IT engineer. Engineers can never be OK with OK. We're not going to settle with a half a$$ed solution. You break apart a problem and figure out the better solution. Problem here is it doesn't appear to be a better solution short of writing an app myself which I'm not that good yet at programming.

 

[mikedt]

I'm doing that too. Just figure I'll forget one day. Doesn't take long for a semi-bandwidth hungry app to use 1 GB of data. I'm an IT engineer. Engineers can never be OK with OK. We're not going to settle with a half a$$ed solution. You break apart a problem and figure out the better solution. Problem here is it doesn't appear to be a better solution short of writing an app myself which I'm not that good yet at programming.

Apart from the above mentioned Bandwidth Ruler app, AFAICT there are no other bandwidth throttling apps, unless you do manage to code one yourself? Maybe because 99.9% of smart-phone users have no desire to reduce the bandwidth available on their devices? In many users may desire more bandwidth available from their carrier networks.

If you do have any rogue apps installed that are stealing data when not required, suggest you remove or disable them.

I have 40GB a month available on my current plan, but I rarely come anywhere near that, and the app I use that consumes the most data is YouTube, when I'm watching videos.

 

[Dannydet]

Apkmirror.com for any old versions of apps you may want....

 

[davidortenn79]

I don't think the apk is the problem. The problem probably is my phone is running too new of an Android OS to run it, no matter if it installed from google play or from an apk.

 

[davidortenn79]

I was almost going to splurge today and upgrade to the 10 GB plan for like $20 extra.... but then I said na. I'm admitting failure. My grandparents had rotary dial phones when I was a kid. We had touch tone as a technology. But, for them, it was an extra $5 a month for touch tone service. My grandparents didn't want to spend the $5 for touch tone, so every time we went to their house and wanted to use the phone, we had to use rotary phones to dial. That was to save $5 a month. It's the idea that all these little services nickel and dime you to death.

 

[mikedt]

Well when I was a kid, our family didn't have a phone, and neither did the grandparents. If we wanted to communicate, we had to write and send letters. And when we did eventually have a line installed in 1978, it had to be a party line, that was shared with the neighbour. This had rotary dial of course, as British Telecom didn't offer push button touch-tone until about the mid-80s in the UK. In fact in many towns and cities, BT couldn't offer touch-tone service until the mid-90s, because much of the exchange equimpment was still ancient Strowger and Crossbar switches. You could still use push button phones, but they had to be pulse rotary dial mode.

From what I've read many times on AF, it seems that the American telcos and carriers will nickel and dime you at every opportunity. Like you making pay extra if you want do data tethering from your phone to a computer.

 

[davidortenn79]

Just found an app that does mostly what I was looking for.

https://m.apkpure.com/throttly-network-tools/me.twocities.throttly/download

Only problem with this is it seems to be all or nothing. I can't figure out a way to tell it to only activate or throttle the mobile data but not touch the wifi. But, maybe an IFTTT type app to tell it to only use it for mobile? IDK... I'll have to tinker with this.