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AT&T announced today that they will be throttling high end users with unlimited data plans.
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.
Early AT&T iPhone customers were offered an unlimited data plan for their devices. Even after AT&T stopped offering an unlimited plan, they allowed existing customers to retain their unlimited plan through device upgrades.
This change will affect any of those users who still have an unlimited plan and are considered to be in the "top 5 percent of heaviest data users". For those users, download speeds will be reduced until the next billing month. By definition, this should affect 5% of users each month.
AT&T claims that users can still "send or receive thousands of emails, surf thousands of Web pages and watch hours of streaming video every month and not be in the top 5 percent of data users."
Top Rated Comments
(View all)How much puts me in that top 5%? Don't just start sending me texts when I get close to it, tell me what qualifies for that top 5%. It seems asinine that I have a unlimited plan and they can just slow down my speed at their whim.
I'm going to start keeping a record for when my service isn't usable and then I'll just deduct that out of my bill at the end of the month and we'll see how that goes over...:rolleyes:
I thought 98% of their users used less then 2GB per month? That would mean the top 5% would include people who used less than 2GB.
The top 5% part is what stinks. They should come out and say this is 4GB or 5GB or whatever.
Do you really need to throttle people when your service is slow as crap and spotty/unreliable already? And for this we pay $30/month. Very nice.