Remember that time that the FCC sued AT&T for its throttling practices? Well it looks like Ol’ Blue and its throttling ways are making news again this week.
AT&T’s throttling policy is that unlimited data customers on 3G or 4G HSPA+ would be throttled at 3GB of usage, but only in areas that are “experiencing network congestion.” Unlimited data customers with LTE products won’t be throttled until they hit 5GB of usage, but a report from Ars Technica shows that those folks are being throttled all of the time, not just when they’re in a congested area.
One AT&T customer with unlimited data and an iPhone 6 discovered that on November 19, his cellular speeds dropped from 23.51Mbps to 0.11Mbps. His cellular speeds have hovered around that pace ever since then, and it looks like they’ll remain that way until his billing cycle ends on December 9.
An AT&T spokesperson has confirmed that unlimited LTE data users are throttled all of the time after 5GB of usage. That policy is expected to change “sometime in 2015,” at which point the same throttling policy should apply to all of AT&T’s unlimited data customers.
Today’s news is definitely a bit of a bummer, as those folks that’ve held onto their unlimited data plans for this long have had to shell out quite a bit to do so by buying their devices without a contract. That can be pricey, especially with high-end phones like the iPhone 6, and so the customers that do go out of their way to keep their unlimited plan shouldn’t have to worry about constantly being throttled. What’s worse is that AT&T doesn’t say when in 2015 this matter will be resolved, so unlimited LTE data customer could be dealing with it for quite some time to come.