“Not too long ago AT&T began sending iPhone customers text messages notifying them they were using what the carrier considered too much data,” James Kendrick reports for ZDNet. “These customers were owners of unlimited data plans, normally a plan that would be safe from hitting a cap.”
“AT&T told the customers if they remained in the top 5 percent of data users in their particular area they would throttle speeds for the rest of that billing period,” Kendrick reports. “True to its word, customers started seeing bandwidth drop to the point of being largely unusable.”
Kendrick reports, “Customers with an existing unlimited plan were grandfathered in, and it’s clear AT&T didn’t like that one bit. The throttling is a direct result of the carrier’s trying to force unlimited customers onto a ‘more reasonable’ tiered monthly plan… As if the throttling wasn’t chicken enough, AT&T refuses to tell the customers how much data they are allowed before getting lousy dial-up speeds imposed. According to AT&T they are throttling the top 5 percent of data users in a given area. That definition is meaningless to the customers affected.”
Read more in the full article here.
No wonder my 3G has gotten south worse! Those bastages!
Yes, AT&T isn’t explaining things well enough, but these people are not using their phones normally. I am willing to be that the top 5 percent are using their phones and unlimited plans for unauthorized tethering. AT&T wants these people to switch to the 3 GB plan. That way, they will pay the same, and they will be easier to catch.
Not true. I stream Netflix and video from home at work and I got hit. Even at netflix’s lowest quality you can get about 10-20 tv show episodes a month…still pretty lame
What dubious criteria do you use for “Normal” usage on a phone designed to do just about everything? A heavy Instagram user could easily run over 3GB. Just syncing to the cloud can run over too.
How can you rationalize “Unlimited” data meaning less than 3Gb? Unlimited means just that, people pay for unlimited, they expect UNLIMITED.
Is it any wonder corporate America is so screwed up with mental midgets justifying their deceptive behaviors. “Unlimited” customers (who pay more btw) are now experiencing the classic “bait and switch”.
Uggggg.
Sync over wifi.
I don’t know about you, but I have better things to do than to watch my iPhone sync for 3 hours.
A couple of years ago my wife got an iPhone 3, We figured she wouldn’t be using much data so we signed up for the 250MB plan from AT&T.
On vacation we use her iPhone for directions on our trip. I was only for about an hour and a half using Google maps.
Later she received an email form our granddaughter. That email was followed by one from AT&T informing us that we went over her data limit and that we could sign up for the 2GB plan to avoid overage charges.
I checked the data usage on her iPhone and it showed about 1.5 GB. Turns out that just using the google maps for the hour and a half put her over the limit.
I then calculated the overage charges and they came out to over $450. Needles to say we opted for the 2GB data plan.
Without an unlimited data plan an iPhone is not an iPhone. It might as well be a Motorola Flip-Phone.
I find this incredible. We travel in our motor home often and use the Google maps on our iPhones constantly. We have never had any kind of warning nor noticed any slowdown of service. We drive up to 8 hours a day with Google maps on all the time. Something is strange with either your experience or ours.
The clear response has to be that all “unlimited” customers must band together to raise the bar to achieve “top 5%” status very high. Everyone with an unlimited plan should strive to double their data use each month for the next six months. Help ATT find a new “normal”.
I remember reading that some UK government “advertising watchdog” said the telcos could use the term “unlimited” even though there is a limit to the unlimited.
A guy at work got the text warning, and he is 100% legit.
He is Romanian, and streams Romanian radio in his car.
When the throttling kicks in, he can’t stream audio over 3G.
This is ridiculous!
Steve Jobs would be screaming like a smashed cat at AT&T for this.
At the very least, there needs to be a class action suit brought against them for breach of contract.
I was heavily streaming music through Rdio for a few months. We were renovating our new home and did not have internet hooked up yet. I used between 3-4GB/month working on site 6h a day with constant streaming.
I’m on a 2GB plan, so I paid for the extra GBs each month.
If I had an unlimited plan and they had throttled me, I would have had no recourse in terms of data.
I do not understand how they can sell someone an unlimited plan, then throttle it to the point of not being usable. In my opinion, that is a deceptive business practice. I’m not sure why they grandfathered these people into unlimited in the first place (it was nice, but shortsighted), but since they did, they should be honoring it. If they cannot do that, then provide a financial incentive to switch, rather than a punitive one, which this clearly is.
This sort of stuff should be illegal. AT&T should at least allow unlimited to reach 3gigs before they throttle them.
I can’t see how AT&T is still struggling to handle the load on it’s network. It’s had the iPhone since 2007. It should be investing most all it’s money back into the network instead of the corporate bonus pool.
Why can’t ATT just throttle their sales of Smart Phones?
I mean if their network can’t handle it, why sell it ?
While I’m not one of those who get all white hot with rage at carriers for limiting data consumption, what AT&T is doing is positively idiotic. There is no way for a customer to guess how much is too much in his area, how soon he’ll be throttled, and exactly how slow that slow speed is supposed to be. How is one supposed to make a personal (or worse yet, business) decision based on that?
Presumably, when you hit that arbitrary limit, you’re taken off that 3G and down to EDGE. However, the article implies that the throttled speed is even significantly slower than the typical EDGE speed (“dial-up speeds” tend to be in the neighbourhood of 45-50kbps, while EDGE seems to manage some 200kbps (almost sufficient for slowest YouTube bitrate), and recently even faster (up to 400kbps). For this lack of clarity, AT&T deserves all the crap it gets.
I don’t think for one moment, though, that those screaming about it would change their tone even if AT&T were completely transparent, upfront and specific regarding throttling regions, data limits and throughput limits…
…. btw.. can’t WAIT ’til the next iPhone comes out and I can finally move away from ATT.
and go where?
Unless you’re moving to Sprint, you’ll get throttled by Verizon. But they never offered an unlimited iPhone plan, so you’ll just get overage charges.
Yes, they did – and I have it, as do my wife and daughter.
You have an unlimited data plan from Verizon???? I have never heard of that. It doesn’t exist on Verizon’s site. How did you get it??
You had to be on an unlimited plan before the iPhone. For me, I had the original Droid, and then I got the iPhone 4S when it came out, with unlimited data.
Verizon also has legacy unlimited plans from people who had them with Alltel ( I used to have an unlimited 3G MiFi) and NO CONTRACT that Verizon consented to to clear the DoJ.
Specifically bought one without contract for the open ended data.
…and the orwellian redefinition of the word “unlimited” continues.
These grandfathered accounts are all unlimited – but some are more unlimited than others.
I don’t think there is anything “orwelian” in the definition. Those who are still on unlimited plans can still consume unlimited amount of data. Those on limited plans get charged extra for every MB of data they consume beyond their plan. Unlimited users will NEVER get charged extra, no matter how much data they consume. AT&T is just making it much more difficult for them to consume significantly more than those on metered plans.
So you pay for 3G service and an UNLIMITED data plan, and AT&T deciding that you are using too much data and throttling you to less than 3G speeds is OK?
What the heck is wrong with your reasoning ability? IF unlimited data is too much of a burden, it shouldn’t be offered. It’s deceptive, greedy, and just plain not right. This is NOT how HONEST business is done.
When you signed up for the more expensive plan AT&T does not tell you: “Well, the data is unlimited, but after 3GB we are gonna make it so slow it is impossible to do much?
Does that really sound like a good customer service? Do you really think it’s reasonable?
Well, that’s precisely what I said (I believe the word I used was “idiotic”).
T-mobile offers unlimited pre-paid plans at several tiers: $50, $60 and $70. They are all unlimited everything (talk/text/web), but with different throttling limits (100MB / 2GB / 5GB). It is clearly stated what is offered, at what price and with what limitations. AT&T might want to take a quick look at the competition to learn how it’s done.
The problem with what AT&T is doing is that they did not sell the unlimited iPhone plans with any throttling conditions applied. There was no, “Unlimited Data, unless you get to 3GB, at which point you can keep using data but it will be really, really slow” warnings.
Throttling, in case you hadn’t noticed, is a limit on your data service. It didn’t say “unlimited amounts of data,” it said “unlimited data plan.” Putting artificial limits on an “unlimited” plan is, IMNTBHO, actionable.
If you look at your AT&T contract, with which you agreed when you activated your service, AT&T does NOT GUARANTEE bandwidth, nor availability. Your unlimited data usage essentially means you can suck as much data as you possibly can and they won’t charge you any extra, as there are no limits. Depending on the network and other factors, the speed at which you are downloading those unlimited amounts of data may be slower (whether due to network congestion or other factors, such as artificial throttling).
It would be extremely difficult for anyone to claim damages in court over this one, and AT&T surely knows this.
As I said, T-Mobile did this right: three pricing tiers for three throttling plans, but all unlimited data. You know exactly what you get, and nobody is complaining.
“artificial throttling”? As opposed to what? Throttling is throttling.
Comcast does the same thing. They won’t tell you how much is “too much”, but if exceed that amount, whatever it is, they throttle your upload/download speed. Miserable, greedy beggars!
Calling all weasel-bastard lawyers in need of a large class action lawsuit to support their midlife crisis!!!
@Drew… your assumption is weak… I am in the top 5 percent and I don’t tether. I use my phone the way it was designed to be used. There is nothing illegal, jai broken, unlocked, or anything like that on my phone.
You are completely wrong.
Falsely advertise unlimited plans and then limit them should be a case for the courts. I thought false advertising was illegal in the U.S.
Yes, they either offer them to the truest sense of the word “unlimited” or they don’t. Take away unlimited plans if not, don’t be disingenuous or weasely. Or a policy change that says something definitive like after 5Gb of data your speed will be lowered to 2G under the older unlimited plans. Some kind of policy everyone understands.
I smell a clas action lawsuit brewing.
5% makes absolutely no sense. Every month there will some people that will fall in the top 5%. Say you only had 100 people, where the first person uses 1Mb, the second 2Mb, and so on. The 100th uses only 100Mb, but would still be in the top 5%. So they will now be throttled. Stupid.
Hey, cut AT&T some slack! They’re installing new hot data tanks as quickly as they can. It’s entirely unfair when one person can just use up all the hot data first thing in the morning and leave the rest of us to shiver. Just dial back the hot data usage a bit and when the new tanks are installed we can all share the love!
Sorry, but my charges don’t go down when I use less data – and if I use less data, they’ll have less incentive to build out their network. In business, if you make a promise, you either live up to it, refund some money, or go out of business. Besides, AT&T hasn’t asked us to do that – they’ve simply imposed throttling. Sounds adversarial, not conciliatory, to me.
NO NO NO – Don’t cry to me about fair, I am paying for UNLIMITED DATA and 3G service on four iPhones. If AT&T doesn’t have the capacity to deliver what they have sold me (and everyone else) and are charging for they are a FRAUD. So what then is their motivation for overselling and under-delivering? My conclusion: GREED.
I don’t really see it as a capacity issue anyway, that data is cumulative. Theoretically, I do not see how it makes one bit of difference to anyone else how much data I have used in a month. How is 3GB the magic number? Explain to me how after three GB other users are affected? BS
I have started a petition asking AT&T to stop throttling it’s customers w an unlimited data plan. Please go sign if u wanna see a change! It’s at http://www.change.org
Let the mass switch to Sprint begin. Their network is slower but not limited. I can deal with slower (I wouldn’t enjoy it, but I can deal) but I won’t deal with being limited or being overcharged. The consumers will speak with their wallets.
When I was looking around for a telco for the 4S I tried the iPhone at Sprint. I could not get anything to download. There system is too slow to be of value. Go check their forums concerning slow iphone speeds. You’ll be amazed.
“data users in a given area”
That coud just be your street…
I am not one to call on corporate greed… But this is just fraud!
Here’s my opinion on this: I have no sympathy for those on unlimited plans. If I am on a tiered plan, paying approximately the same amount of money as someone who is getting unlimited data, then I should be exempt from throttling of any type. The person who is exempt from overages of any type because they are on an unlimited plan but not exempt from throttling.
Sprint is the only carrier with unlimited data right now and it’s dog-slow while AT&Ts is the fastest 3G network–that’s hardly a coincidence, considering AT&T cut its teeth on high iPhone traffic since ’07 and built its network to accommodate the increased data traffic. While I’m no fan of any one company, I see this as a far more fair approach to mitigation of data congestion. Now, the raising of upgrade fees is another story…. (in short: greed)
Definition of unlimited:
Not limited, Unrestricted, unconfined.
Just the act of throttling implies restriction and breach of contract. They should be sued at the minimum, and you should be able to terminate your contract with no penalty at the maximum.
If Verizon EVER throttles my unlimited data plan, I’ll terminate my contract right then. Or, perhaps, upgrade phones and THEN terminate.
Again, you still have unlimited data consumption; nothing has changed.
The original contract specifically says that AT&T does NOT guarantee data speed. Depending on location, network congestion and other factors (such as artificial traffic shaping), you may or may not always get 3G speeds. This contract clause clearly gives them the right to throttle without breaching it.
Due to network constraints, the 5% who are using the most bandwidth cause a degradation in the service of 95%. AT&T either takes this move or the 95% suffer.
This was inevitable: Fees that don’t vary by level of use (such as $30/month) are tantamount to a $0 price for incremental use. This encourages over-use.
We’ll continue to see this issue as mobile phones transition to 4G. We are also likely see it in internet service for the home. Bandwidth is a scarce resource and is inconsistent with flat monthly fees (i.e., a zero price for incremental use).
Wrong. There is no degradation of service. If there was why would AT&T allow true unlimited usage – as long as you pay for it? I’m on a bs unlimited plan – and have my speeds capped. However if I wanted to shell out for limited data plan and overages I can run amok. No throttling. Call it what it is. A money grab from AT&T. Degradation. Yeah right. Way to drink the kool-aide.
Correct, that is the corporate spin and it is BS.
They will gladly sell me more data throughput if on a lower tier plan at outrageous rate. How can degradation of other customers be the reason for throttling if they let another class of user exceed 3GB without throttling?
It makes no sense other than greed, deception and BS.
BS. I got a warning last week that I was in the top 5% at 2GB.
Do people on the 2GB or 3GB tiered plans degrade the service?
this is exactly why I switched to Sprint. It wasn’t largely unusable it was unusable – and I tracked it for amonth or so. I would get a text when I hit ~3.7 gig. and the next day I couldn’t use my phone except as a phone (or on wifi)
There are so many problems with AT&Ts line of reasoning on this. It’s woefully transparent that this is a cash grab.
Since they give zero data on the matter, and there should be plenty to back up their claims if it was truly an issue, it is impossible to understand this 5% model for throttling as being a fair and reasonable approach to solving this particular problem.
To throttle a user based on cumulative data transfers serves no practical purpose for an alleged bandwidth problem.. what if a user lives in a rural area (probably no congestion at anytime) and only transfers data at off peak hours? Even though their is never any congestion, the user easily falls into a 5% threshold for their area without a bandwidth problem for anyone. And I bet that is the case 95% of the time. All of this data transfer management could be alleviated by AT&T with no impact to any users outside of a congested area at a peak time. So the problem arises when many users sustaining data transfer rates that exceed the available capacity. AT&T can throttle in that case, of course, AUTOMATICALLY. Then go back to normal service when traffic dies down. Problem solved. No need to throttle specific users, redefine bandwidth, and pass their infrastructure issues onto their customers. And then they can pinpoint exactly where to alleviate these issues in the future. And to blame customers.. who does business that way? ridiculous.
What I am waiting for- is Apple to put up their own cell/wifi infrastructure. Good bye AT&T, and it would be yet one more industry apple would topple over and conquer.
Ahh, the Achilles Heel of ‘THE CLOUD’ that is supposed to free us all from needing desktop computers or computers for all our shiny new iToys. The Greedy Bastards in Mobile Telephony have decided it’s time to squeeze now that they have your testicles in their hand…
AT&T, the company that will gladly charged people $15/month for 250MB of data has decided it wants to make room for more lemmings.
How’s that free market working for all you Republicans and Acolytes of Ayn Rand?
Yes, and this is exactly why Amazon and Google are going to be bitten in the ass with their wonderful “cloud” services.
Everyone sneered when iCloud was shown to be a syncing service not a streaming service: “What, you still have to have the media taking up local storage in the age of webapps and streaming? Is Apple crazy??”
Yeah baby, yeah: so how’s that streaming working out too? The advantage of iCloud is it doesn’t require the internet to even be available much less affordable. If Maiden NC goes dark, then it just takes longer for photos to migrate from your phone to your pad or whatever. But all of your media is still present locally because you’re not dependent on pulling it down from a cheap and plentiful internet in real-time. Good luck with that, Google/Amazon.s
CLASS ACTION SUIT. Do it now.
Truth is all the money owed to apple by the mobile carries At&t, sprint, Verizon has taken a toll on these carriers to up the price for their plans in order to pay apple. plus the push for them to inplement LTE. That’s why they are starting to push other phone out the door like android that will cost them less in license fee and At&t is planning to upgrade most of it product line with windows phone (CSE). They are currently training staff on the product and sale of windows phone.