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Verizon Reserving Right to Throttle Data Speeds for Top 5% of Users

Thursday February 3, 2011 6:47 am PST by Eric Slivka

Just as pre-orders for the Verizon iPhone begin for the carrier's existing customers, BGR points to a PDF document on Verizon's website revealing a new policy that will see the carrier possibly throttling data speeds for the top 5% of its customers when it comes to data usage. The policy takes effect for customers subscribing to data services beginning today. From the document:

Verizon Wireless strives to provide customers the best experience when using our network, a shared resource among tens of millions of customers. To help achieve this, if you use an extraordinary amount of data and fall within the top 5% of Verizon Wireless data users we may reduce your data throughput speeds periodically for the remainder of your then current and immediately following billing cycle to ensure high quality network performance for other users at locations and times of peak demand. Our proactive management of the Verizon Wireless network is designed to ensure that the remaining 95% of data customers aren't negatively affected by the inordinate data consumption of just a few users.

Verizon is also announcing data "optimization" efforts in which it seeks to increase the efficiency of its network by compressing text, images, and video, perhaps most notably "sizing the video more appropriately for the device". The carrier notes that while most effects of the optimization will be indiscernible, it may "minimally impact the appearance" of content on users' devices. The document links to a page on Verizon's website discussing the optimization techniques, although the page is currently unavailable.

Update: The page on Verizon's site explaining optimization is now live.

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