AT&T Starting To Throttling Unlimited Data Plan On Heavy Use Customers
AT&T today announced that America is facing a serious wireless spectrum crunch and as a result they are going to slow down data access speeds on their heaviest wireless users to help address network congestion. AT&T says that the throttling will take place on October 1st and just for the 5 percent of the heaviest data users. AT&T didn’t say how many customers this would impact or mention a way to see if you are considered part of the top 5% of data hogs. You can login and see your monthly data usage reports, but they don’t show your usage percentile. AT&T also failed to explain what what speed you’ll be capped at if you are deemed as using too much bandwidth.
Starting October 1, smartphone customers with unlimited data plans may experience reduced speeds once their usage in a billing cycle reaches the level that puts them among the top 5 percent of heaviest data users. These customers can still use unlimited data and their speeds will be restored with the start of the next billing cycle. Before you are affected, we will provide multiple notices, including a grace period. One new measure is a step that may reduce the data throughput speed experienced by a very small minority of smartphone customers who are on unlimited plans – those whose extraordinary level of data usage puts them in the top 5 percent of our heaviest data users in a billing period. In fact, these customers on average use 12 times more data than the average of all other smartphone data customers. This step will not apply to our 15 million smartphone customers on a tiered data plan or the vast majority of smartphone customers who still have unlimited data plans.
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