Carriers Concerned Over 3G Usage and Capacity
As more and more people buy smartphones, the cost of data plans continues to rise. Carriers are worried about the usage reaching their capacity. While they could raise prices further, this could cause customers to sign on with one of the competing companies instead.
We have already seen many AT&T and Verizon stop offering unlimited data plans, and customer’s current unlimited data plans are being throttled when, “they reach the top 5% of data usage”. This, however, has proved to not be quite true, as customers reported being throttled at just over 2gb of usage, while they pay more than the 3gb limited data plan.
This video displays the effects of a throttled iPhone over an unthrottled iPhone. There is a massive difference in data speeds, essentially making the throttled iPhone unusable. In the video, AppAdvice performs a series of tests involving the Google Maps app as well as using the Speedtest app to find the exact data speeds on the throttled vs unthrottled connection. As you can see, the effects of throttling are immense.
The text message received when AT&T is about to throttle your iPhone
Recently, AT&T lost a lawsuit in a small-claims court regarding the throttling of phones. They had to pay the plantiff $850 as compensation. This leads to the possibility of more throttled users to follow suit, especially the ones that have been throttled at as low as 2gb.
TechLasts Mar 1, 2012 at 6:43 AM in AT&T, Cell Phones, cell phone, iPhone tagged iPhone phone at&t carriers throttling 3g data usage