Top 5% of AT&T users still being throttled, threshold lowered to 2GBs

It is no secret that smartphone sales are way up, data usage is through the roof and streaming services are killing them. The device technology is there, but the cell tower technology just isn’t. It will be a while before the U.S. catches up to the tower technology that many other country’s have been on for years. When data usage started climbing all the major players switched from unlimited data plans to capped versions. This of course really upset those of us that rely on our devices for day to day life and living. Rendering many of the service like Netflix and Google Music almost worthless with out an available Wi-Fi access point to avoid exceeding the new caps. I personally don’t use my phone for anything data related when i am not on a Wi-Fi network. That really irritates me because it limits what I am able to do on my device when I am not at home.

Those of you that are still happily attached to a grandfathered unlimited plan aren’t as lucky as you might think though. In an attempt to keep your usage down AT&T has implemented a new strategy to keep you under control. They started throttling your usage if you hit the top 5% of data users in a given month. Meaning that your data speeds would slow down once they deemed you in that top 5%. What is that number though? Interestingly enough, it appears to be down in the 2GB range. So now you have this really great unlimited plan that they slow down when you use a meager 2GB of data. I can do that in a day and a half.

This was made apparent when one unsuspecting user, Wall Street Journal writer Willa Plank, received a letter from AT&T warning them of their usage. Claiming they were using 12 times that of which an average user is using. A similar incident happened to John Cozen. Plank just barely cleared 2.05GBs and Cozen hit 2.10GB and both got throttled.

Have any of you experienced similar letters or maybe a text from your service provider? We can understand the need to control out of control data users that effect the usage of others, but at what time do things start to seem like a strong arm effect instead of a movement to control spectrum resources?

Via WSJ & TalkAndroid