AT&T Starts Throttling Heavy iPhone Data Users To 2G Speeds
(Photo/TipB.com)
If you’ve been whining about why the iPhone 4S has no 4G, get ready for a real letdown — 2G speeds. The move by AT&T to throttle its top 5 percent of data users to a snail’s pace is an unwelcome Christmas present for many iPhone users.
It appears AT&T is breaking the news to subscribers via text message. The text reads: “Your data usage is among the top 5 percent of users. Data speeds for the rest of your current bill cycle may be reduced.”
Earlier this year we reported on AT&T’s decision to throttle some accounts, starting in October. It’s unknown how much data you must consume to make it into the 5 percent affected by the throttling; however, AT&T has made it clear in the past that this move should only effect jailbreakers on unlimited plans who are using tethering Cydia hacks to get around subscribing to AT&T’s official tethering plan.
It is ironic that the iPhone may help AT&T add a record number of smartphones during the fourth quarter. This morning, the carrier proclaimed it’s network is the only one where “iPhone 4S users [can] download three times faster and talk and surf at the same time.”
While it’s unknown whether any other carriers will follow AT&T’s lead, the move could give an advantage to Sprint, which boasts no data limits. However it shakes out, I can just hear iPhone users adopting the “Occupy Wall Street” mantra: We are the 5 Percent.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
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