AT&T announced last year that it will throttle customers on unlimited data plans who use excessive amounts of data. AT&T said it will throttle only the top 5 percent of unlimited users and, initially, this appeared to affect customers pulling down 10 to 12 GB per month. Recent reports from John Cozen, who works for Oceanhouse Media, and Willa Plank of the WSJ suggest this limit might be creeping lower, as low as 2 GB for some customers.
Both Cozen and Plank report getting a message from AT&T saying they would be throttled, even though their data usage for the month was about 2 GB. Cozen even took his concerns to AT&T customer service, which confirmed the throttle warning was correct. As expected, the carrier offered to switch him to a tiered plan to avoid the throttling. Before you get up in arms, this 2 GB level may be region-specific as many customers claim they use well over 2 GB without throttling. Nonetheless, this report serves as a reminder to AT&T customers on an unlimited plan – if you don’t keep your usage in check you might find yourself on the verge of being throttled when you least expect it.
[Via MacRumors and WSJ; image from Shutterstock]