Posted on 07/29/2011 6:07:18 PM PDT by Swordmaker
AT&T today released the following statement, verbatim:
An Update for Our Smartphone Customers With Unlimited Data Plans
Like other wireless companies, we’re taking steps to manage exploding demand for mobile data. Many experts agree the country is facing a serious wireless spectrum crunch. We’re responding on many levels, including investing billions in our wireless network this year and working to acquire additional network capacity. We’re also taking additional, more immediate measures to help address network congestion.
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.
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.
This change will never impact the vast majority of our customers, and is designed to create a better service experience for all.
The amount of data usage of our top 5 percent of heaviest users varies from month to month, based on the usage of others and the ever-increasing demand for mobile broadband services. To rank among the top 5 percent, you have to use an extraordinary amount of data in a single billing period.
There will be no changes for the vast majority of customers. It’s not how much time you spend using your device, it’s what you do with it. You can 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.
Typically what puts someone in the top 5 percent is streaming very large amounts of video and music daily over the wireless network, not Wi-Fi. Streaming video apps, remote web camera apps, sending large data files (like video) and some online gaming are examples of applications that can use data quickly. Using Wi-Fi doesn’t create wireless network congestion or count toward your wireless data usage. AT&T smartphone customers have unlimited access to our entire Wi-Fi network, with more than 26,000 hotspots, at no additional cost. They can also use Wi-Fi at home and in the office.
The bottom line is our customers have options. They can choose to stay on their unlimited plans and use unlimited amounts of data, but may experience reduced speeds at some point if they are an extraordinarily heavy data user. If speed is more important, they may wish to switch to a tiered usage plan, where customers can pay for more data if they need it and will not see reduced speeds.
But even as we pursue this additional measure, it will not solve our spectrum shortage and network capacity issues. Nothing short of completing the T-Mobile merger will provide additional spectrum capacity to address these near term challenges.
Source: AT&T
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Every month it won't affect 95% of the customers, by definition.
AT&T or as we call it in our house “the phone company of the anti-christ” bla and boo to them.
My contract is done - I’m actively looking for another smart phone, probably with another company. I don’t move that much data, but the quantity of dropped calls IN MY OWN HOUSE are rather troublesome.
I went with AT&T because of the IPhone and the fact that they are the only company that has a signal in our work building.
Oh, and AT&T, let me guess, you're not going to count in this top 5% the massive video streaming network that goes to stores across the country? The true cause of the bandwidth crunch?
Go look in your local Circle K, 7-11, etc and look for the wireless hub with the AT&T cellular network card attached to it that's streaming video to that stupid display in the store that no one looks at. They're everywhere. Even in the checkout lines at the market. There's where all your bandwidth went, AT&T, as your sales force went out and gave away over half the bandwidth for less than the price of the current top tier throttled programs.
But we know that you'll be limiting only consumer accounts, and not these bandwidth hogs in the commercial sector. And please, please, please, be considerate and pull these bandwidth pigs off of other networks that are required under federal law to permit data roaming, even if the customer is in a location where there never has been any AT&T cellular service.
I finally got off my contract with ATT and went to Sprint with the EVO and couldn’t be happier!!
This seems quite reasonable, and therefore people will complain a lot about it.
My guess is they won’t be doing an actual analysis like that, they just figured out where the 95% number is, and that’s where they will start throttling.
Interestingly, this means that early in the billing cycle, they can still bog down the network, and then near the end of the billing cycle, suddenly the network will get better for everybody as they start throttling those who were using the most data.
Unless they spread the billing dates across the entire calendar, this could lead to interesting data throughput cycles. Obviously, it would be best if they spread out the throttling.
What they probably should do is throttle the top 5% of instantaneous use when the network gets above 90% utilization. Most of the time they wouldn’t have to slow things down, only when usage was peaking, and then they’d throttle whoever was really using it at that moment.
Well I have AT&T and I have no complaints. First class stuff. All the carriers will be doing this to survive. First internet and now mobile. Verizon and now AT&T. You have a small percent of bandwidth hogs that drive up the cost for everyone else and should indeed pay more.
Instead of beating up on these carriers I suggest everyone beat up on the FCC. They are pushing for free universal internet. This will have greater impact on all of us than this bandwidth hog price
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2379296,00.asp
Ah yes... the unlimited limit plan. Makes perfect sense
I thought Verizon now owns t mobile.
Don’t these top 5% have contracts guaranteeing them unlimited data?
We have been making the change from Sprint to AT&T, after having been pretty happy with Sprint. But we got EVOs on the promise of speed and 4g, which has been on the horizon for what seems like an eternity. My 4G EVO(3G network in our city) has slower internet than my Palm Pre(EVDO) did, which really burns me. I paid quite a lot to upgrade. I really like my EVO as a phone- big screen, a decent number of apps, but side by side tests with an iphone 3g on AT&T against my EVO on sprint are no comparison. AT&T is more expensive plans, but what good are the savings when I can’t get a web page to load or search for a local store? Plus we’ve had issues with calls not going through (between the EVOs and now between the iphones and my EVO).
Yes. 2 year plans, most likely
The provider can change what they provide, without penalty... but the customer has no ability to walk away from the deal, original or changed, without paying a steep penalty
Yea, that seems about right. /sarc
They still get unlimited data, it’s their speed that is being throttled back. Unlimited data does not mean unlimited speed.
This sounds like an excellent way to lose one’s customers to one’s competitors in a bad economy.
So true and they lie, lie and lie.
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