Throttling upsets AT&T customers
Source: CECILIA KANG and HAYLEY TSUKAYAMA
AT&T's announcement that it will slow down wireless service for its heaviest data users on unlimited plans has left some of its loyal customers irate and confused.
AT&T said Friday that it will throttle speeds of the top 5 percent of data consumers on its unlimited data plans beginning Oct. 1. These big data users are mostly longtime subscribers who were able to keep unlimited plans after June 2010, when AT&T stopped offering them to new customers.
The problem is, AT&T won't say whom exactly these customers are and how much data consumption would trigger the slowdown.
The move is the latest blow for wireless consumers, who are increasingly being charged for each byte they use as providers struggle with the strain of video and music streaming apps that are clogging their networks.
Several commenters on Twitter and consumer blogs said that they thought the company had offered them a bait-and-switch by promising they could keep their plans. "Another reason to hate AT&T," commented one user. "I should throttle my AT&T bill," grumbled another.
AT&T isn't the only provider that has sought to limit those who are seen as data hogs.
T-Mobile throttles services for unlimited data users who hit 5-gigabyte caps, and Verizon Wireless stopped offering unlimited data plans in June. Sprint Nextel is now the only major non-prepaid national carrier that does not cap data or impose speed limits on heavy users.
But until last week, AT&T had differentiated itself from the pack by claiming to offer unlimited service to an elite group of longtime customers.
Scott Ehrlich, a Web producer from Los Angeles, said that he's been an AT&T customer for 20 years and keeps an old number to hold on to the legacy unlimited data plan. "It's a psychological thing," he said when asked if he's worried about exceeding AT&T's cap with his iPhone. "I use my devices freely because I know it's unlimited."
AT&T described the affected users as "a very small minority of smartphone customers" who use 12 times as much data as the average smartphone customer. But the company did not specify how much data that is.
"No one knows the effect of data usage on networks, what triggers the throttling or even why, what the costs are to the network or even how it is determined that rationing schemes are to be imposed on consumers," Harold Feld, legal director for public interest group Public Knowledge, said in a statement. "It is all one big black box."
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