why has your downloads on pc been throttled for years.

The speed that you pay for on your home connection has no relation to what certain parties are willing to provide you. Gigabit Internet is designed for a family of four heavy users

There may be many factors between you and the Microsoft servers that has absolutely nothing to do with either one of your Internet speeds.

All downloads from Microsoft servers are throttled according to local server loads and the size, and usually tap out somewhere around 250 Mbps. For example a 500 MB game will not be allocated the same band with as a 5 GB game.

could also be that the throttling they had implemented last year due to covid and extremely high demand on all networks globally are still in effect in a lot of area's, i know the EU last year ordered all the ISP's in the EU to throttle certain things to keep the internet flowing normally for all.

i have 500Mbps connection and only get 120 to 180Mbps download speed on console and pc via the xbox network, all other connections seem to be ok i.e steam, epic etc where i get full speed downloading.

i know netflix throttled bandwidth too, not sure if they still are or not.

Could be throttling due to covid, but then my ISP hasn't throttled as steam downloads full speed. Which begs another question, why does Microsoft throttle the download speeds when Steam has around 30 million more monthly users than Xbox does? If anything I'd have thought MS would have had the technology to keep up with demand more than Steam could.

could also be that the throttling they had implemented last year due to covid and extremely high demand on all networks globally are still in effect in a lot of area's, i know the EU last year ordered all the ISP's in the EU to throttle certain things to keep the internet flowing normally for all.

i have 500Mbps connection and only get 120 to 180Mbps download speed on console and pc via the xbox network, all other connections seem to be ok i.e steam, epic etc where i get full speed downloading.

i know netflix throttled bandwidth too, not sure if they still are or not.

Could be throttling due to covid, but then my ISP hasn't throttled as steam downloads full speed. Which begs another question, why does Microsoft throttle the download speeds when Steam has around 30 million more monthly users than Xbox does? If anything I'd have thought MS would have had the technology to keep up with demand more than Steam could.

It does seem like the servers are being throttled for downloads. If your downloads are super slow though, doing a console restart has been working for others.

But still, the downloads are still going to be slower than normal with the volume of people downloading.

How are you measuring the speedtest on your PC? Are you using Speedtest.net?

If so, manually select a server from the Seattle/Redmond area. Then compare these measurements with the download speeds on your console.

The only way to improve your download speed would be to physically move closer to the nearest Microsoft data center of your region, or investigate, if your provider is intentionally throttling downloads from high bandwidth services.

Usually, they don't tell you. But try to do a speedtest on your computer WHILE you are downloading on your Xbox.

To hide the fact they are throttling you, they will stop the throttle whenever they find you're measuring on known speedtest sites. If your download speed increases WHILE you are measuring, they are doing the throttling.