Boost Mobile, a Sprint owned company, plans to start throttling customer data usage that exceed 2.5 gigabytes of usage each month. Once the throttle cap is hit, speeds will drastically come down to a meager 256kbps. This new policy will go in effect despite the prepaid carriers’ pay-as-you-go “unlimited” marketing we’ve all come accustomed to. These changes will set in “on or around” January 20th, according to a post on Boost’s Facebook page.
This throttling of data speeds kind of blows. It seems to be the industry standard when it comes to true “unlimited.” The thing is, throttling at 2.5 gigabytes is really unnecessary because the majority of users don’t even come close to that amount of data used in a month. Boost assured everyone that the slower speeds will only affect a small percentage of customers.
Since Boost Mobile is owned by The Now Network, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if this move had something to do with Sprint’s Network Vision plan. Getting spectrum in this country is a grind, so the new wave for major carriers now is to re-purpose the spectrum they already have. This could be one of those instances.
Who on Boost uses more than 2.5 gigabytes of data a month?
[Boost Mobile (Facebook); via The Verge]