Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile have been throttling the data speeds of customers that exceed 2.5GB of data use in a month since 2012. Under the current policy, those customers' data speeds are slowed to sub-256kbps speeds. That'll be changing soon, though, as Sprint has confirmed that it will begin throttling speeds even further later this year.

Sprint has revealed to PhoneScoop and WirelessWeek that starting on May 16, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile customers that use more than 2.5GB of data in a monthly cycle will have their speeds slowed to 128kbps. Sprint explained the policy change by pointing to "the enormous data usage driven by the increasingly sophisticated smartphones we make available, and the more extensive uses customers are finding for these devices." The big yellow carrier does say that customers that have been throttled can top-up in order to restart their month and return to faster speeds.

Getting your smartphone data speeds throttled is always a bummer, and I'm sure that some Boost and Virgin customers are going to be pretty upset if they hit their 2.5GB cap after May 16 and find that they've been slowed to 128kbps speeds. Even super slow data is better than no data at all, though, and so at least Boost and Virgin aren't yanking their "unlimited" data plans altogether. Plus, at least we know about the policy change a couple of months in advance, so heavy data users on Boost and Virgin won't be surprised when they hit 2.5GB of usage after May 16 and discover that their speeds have slowed even further than they were before.

Via PhoneScoop, WirelessWeek