perhaps we should have provable throttling where if your connection is throttled you can prove this to a third party after the fact, and if a service provider is carrying subscriber data, it can prove so to a third party after the fact too. This way when say the fire department notices it's connection is being throttled, yet it suspects the network is not congested, then it can file a complaint after which it is up to the provider to prove it was indeed congested by data from other subscribers (by showing timestamps of hashes of data, signed by subscribers)

Before we allow ISP's to (ab)use fires, we should insist on provable congestion. If they refuse to self-regulate the internet traffic in the public interest, then the public interest should move to regulate internet traffic just like it regulates car traffic: priority to emergency services first.

There is a way for this. LTE has the RSRQ measurement. Example: -3 would equal nearly empty cell, -12 heavy load on the cell.

I've Googled a bit and I don't understand how this measurement works - it seems like a value that shows how good the received signal is.

Yeah, descriptions are confusing. Basically the quality lowers because other devices are using the network. I can post a plot later.

I was describing a hypothetical system such that congestion levels would be provable as they happen. For all we know our household connections could be artificially throttled during evening hours when the network is supposedly congested, while in fact they are trying to push us on more expensive plans.

In fact I am not against on the spot pricing schemes, as long as the demand and supply is provable.

I would consider such a system neutral enough. I wouldn't mind scheduling some datasets to download when network demand is low etc...

I'd definitely like to see this. Apparently you can pull the value from an unrooted Android, too.

Here it is, sorry for the delay:

https://i.imgur.com/vXIXSlA.png Here I started a download, the rsrq drops. After finishing, the rsrq rises again. Note that the values are still "jittery" so a single value should not be taken as a clear indicator that a cell is congested.

https://i.imgur.com/opdFV9d.png Here is a graph for the last 7 days. One can see that during nighttime received quality rises, while it lowers during daytime.

Device in use is a Huawei B618, no external antennas.

It’s not only the cell’s radio bandwidth that might be experiencing congestion. It could be another part of the network.

Maybe, but I think it is safe to assume that the ISP backbone is not the bottleneck.