AT&T Changes Their Data Throttling Policy

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AT&T Changes Their Data Throttling Policy

AT&T disclosed today about the changes on their smartphone data throttling policy. This will affect the users that retain an unlimited smartphone data plan AT&T discontinued a while ago. This won’t affect the customers on the tiered data plans.

AT&T is now changing their throttling plans and putting their “unlimited data plan” users into the “limited data plan” which means the amount of GBs each costumer is allowed to use during the month.

The company clarifies that it will only start the users AT&T is clarifying that it will only begin throttling (It means that they will reduce the data speed) smartphone users that have 4G LTE devices after 5GB in a billing cycle period, and the other subscribers after 3GB of use.

To make it more clear bandwidth throttling is a reactive measure employed in communication networks to regulate network traffic and minimize bandwidth congestion. Or in other words its used to control the bandwidth which is used by network applications.

If you are an AT&T customer/user in any of these situations we recommend you to read AT&T’s statement below.

“With mobile data usage continuing to skyrocket and the availability of spectrum scarce, AT&T, like other wireless companies, manages its network in the most fair way possible so that we can provide the best possible mobile broadband experience for all our customers.

How we’re managing the network only affects a small minority of the heaviest smartphone data users still on unlimited plans. Put another way, this does not impact more than 95 percent of our smartphone customers.
Our unlimited plan customers have told us they want more clarity around how the program works and what they can expect. Here’s what customers need to know:

Customers with a 3G or 4G smartphone – who also still have our unlimited data plan – will see speeds reduced if they use 3GB (gigabytes) of data or more in a billing cycle. Speeds will return to normal at the start of the next billing cycle. For context, less than 5 percent of smartphone customers use more than 3GB per month.

For customers with a 4G LTE smartphone – who also still have our unlimited data plan – data speeds will be reduced if usage is 5GB (gigabytes) or more in a billing cycle. Speeds will return to normal at the start of the next billing cycle.

Customers will get a text message from us before experiencing a change in speed.
Even with reduced data speeds, these customers will still be able to email and surf the web, and continue to use an unlimited amount of data each month.

Not impacted by this program, launched last year, are customers on our tiered data plans.

The reason reduced speeds only apply to unlimited smartphone customers is because their data usage is significantly higher than those on tiered plans. For example, in January, the top 5 percent of our unlimited data plan customers used an average of over 50 percent more data than the top 5 percent of customers on tiered plans.

Because spectrum is limited and data usage continues to soar, we manage our network this way to be as fair as possible and so we can provide the best possible mobile broadband experience to everyone.

We encourage all of our customers to use Wi-Fi whenever possible – especially when watching video, which is the most data-intensive activity.

That’s because data activity over Wi-Fi does not count against the threshold for unlimited customers that triggers reduced data speeds or against customers’ tiered data plans. Customers can find out more at www.att.com/datainfo “

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