A few days back, we told you the story of an AT&T customer whose data was throttled once he used a little more than 2GB on his unlimited plan. It’s no secret that AT&T has been throttling data for the top five percent of consumers since last year, but none of us were expecting that the [...]]]>

A few days back, we told you the story of an AT&T customer whose data was throttled once he used a little more than 2GB on his unlimited plan. It’s no secret that AT&T has been throttling data for the top five percent of consumers since last year, but none of us were expecting that the cutoff would begin at the 2GB threshold.

In order to explain the company’s actions, Mark Siegel, an AT&T spokesman has pointed out to the Wall Street Journal that AT&T’s top five percent data consuming customers use an average of 2GB per month. While AT&T reserves the right to throttle all customer who fall into that category, it’s not an automatic process. AT&T actually takes into account the user’s location and network capacity before enabling data throttling. Based on this system,  ”less than 1 percent of AT&T smartphone customers” were effected by data throttling policy last month.

There’s a very good chance you wouldn’t be slowed.Mark SiegelAT&T

While we’d like to take Mark Siegel at his word, the details are too vague.  We don’t know how many of AT&T’s customers are still grandfathered into AT&T’s unlimited data plan, but we can guarantee that the ”less than 1 percent of AT&T smartphone customers” calculation also accounts for all of AT&T’s customers with metered data plans.

We know that data throttling is here to stay. All we want is for carriers to be 100% transparent and tell consumers exactly when they will reach the throttling threshold.  What do you think AT&T should do to fix this issue?

Sprint has spent millions of dollars promoting their truly unlimited data plans the past year, so many were surprised when a Dow Jones Newswire report claimed that CEO Dan Hesse said they throttle the top 1% of users. A day later and we find out Hesse was actually misquoted. It turns out he was [...]]]>

Sprint has spent millions of dollars promoting their truly unlimited data plans the past year, so many were surprised when a Dow Jones Newswire report claimed that CEO Dan Hesse said they throttle the top 1% of users. A day later and we find out Hesse was actually misquoted. It turns out he was actually referring to roaming data and not talking about postpaid customers.

“We don’t throttle our unlimited postpaid customers,” Sprint executive Bill White told CNET. A Sprint blog post clarified the facts:

• Sprint does not throttle any postpaid phone data users for on-network or off-network usage. Sprint is the only national carrier offering smartphone users truly unlimited data with no throttling, metering or overages while on the Sprint network.
• Sprint does have terms and conditions which prohibit certain types of data use that may impair other customers’ usage or harm or interfere with the network. At yesterday’s investor conference, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse was referring to Sprint’s right to terminate service of data abusers who violate Sprint’s terms and conditions. Customers who abuse our network by violating the terms and conditions will be contacted by Sprint in an effort to have the customer change their usage to comply with their subscriber agreement. Customers who do not change their usage and remain in violation of the terms and conditions may be subject to actions reserved by Sprint, including but not limited to termination. Consistent with our advertising, engaging in such uses will not result in throttling for customers on unlimited data-included plans for phones.

So it appears all the fuss yesterday was a little overblown, but that doesn’t mean that Sprint won’t eventually start to throttle or create new limits. Sprint is expected to roll out their 4G LTE network by mid-2012 and we expect some new data plans will follow.

It would be pretty awesome if Sprint offers the Galaxy Nexus with unlimited LTE data, but we will have to wait and see.

UPDATE: Sprint dropped us an email to make sure you guys knew this new tiered data structure did not apply to smartphones, and there were no plans to remove unlimited data from their smartphone plans at this time. That being said, several Sprint users (myself included) have been reporting horrible 3G speeds since the iPhone was [...]]]>

UPDATE: Sprint dropped us an email to make sure you guys knew this new tiered data structure did not apply to smartphones, and there were no plans to remove unlimited data from their smartphone plans at this time. That being said, several Sprint users (myself included) have been reporting horrible 3G speeds since the iPhone was launched a few weeks back. For the heck of it, I ran a few 3G speed tests over the past half hour, and am averaging 100kbps down, 40 kbps up. Though they’re going to try to re-focus some of their spectrum on the old Nextel frequencies, we have a feeling the end of the unlimited data era is quickly going to be upon us. But again, that’s just our opinion. What do you think?

Oh Sprint, you really nailed it with those unlimited commercials when you launched them a few months back, but how quickly you take away your main differentiating factor.

Sprint has confirmed that they are moving away from offering unlimited plans for all non-smartphone devices except for smartphones starting today. Instead, Sprint will be offering the customary tiered data plans that customers of AT&T and Verizon have come to expect from their carriers. Sprint will be offering the following plans to all new and existing customers:

• Tablets-only: $20 per month for 1 GB of data
• Tablets + Hotspot: $35 per month for 3 GB
• Tablets + Hotspot: $50 per month for 6 GB
• Tablets + Hotspot: $80 per month for 12 GB

This move gives Sprint the cheapest tablet and hotspot data packages, providing users with the most GB bang for their buck. That being said, Sprint hasn’t exactly been offering the best in the way of data speeds, with users reporting 3G speeds that are similar to what I experienced on T-Mobile’s 2G Edge network (100kbps down/up).

This is quite a bold move for Sprint, though not unexpected. We reported a while back that Sprint was going to move their tablets, mobile hotspots and netbook devices away from unlimited data, and this is simply their move coming to fruition. Furthermore, we speculated that it was only a matter of time before they would move their smartphone data plans away from the world of the unlimited as well, something that’s more and more likely as Sprint’s network continues to deliver sub-optimal performance.

In our opinion, the era of truly unlimited mobile data is all but over. Though they have adamantly denied this notion, even a re-purposing of their Nextel Network and development of a 4G LTE network likely indicate the beginning of the end for Sprint’s unlimited plans. I guess time will tell.

Verizon has been hinting they would shift to tiered data plans as they roll out [...]]]> The days of unlimited data plans are soon coming to an end. A new report from Engadget claims that Verizon will implement tiered data plans on July 29th, following a similar move by AT&T last month.

Verizon has been hinting they would shift to tiered data plans as they roll out their new 4G LTE network later this year, but we didn’t expect the change to come this soon. No details on pricing have been revealed, but Verizon and AT&T tend to follow each others moves pretty closely. AT&T now offers two levels of data plans ($25 for 2 GB, $15 for 200 MB), so expect something similar from Verizon.

Even though no official announcement has been released, this looks like a pretty sure bet at this point. Verizon recently updated their MyVerizon Android application with new features, like the ability to monitor data usage. The only real question left: how much will the new plans cost?