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A Look at AT&T's Throttling for High-Use Unlimited iPhone Data Customers

I called AT&T customer support in December about throttling my account. The lady I spoke to told me the follow.

She just can back from an att seminar regarding throttling. AT&T is throttling ppl in high usage areas as they are updating their towers to 4G. They would like for me to help in keeping the congestion down as towers are taken offline for the upgrade. When they are finish with the 4G upgrades they will stop throttling.

She ended by saying that AT&T will again offer unlimited data plans once they are running 4G.

She did not sound like she was reading a script. I'll cross my fingers and see what happens.
 
I get those throttled speeds all the time in New York City.
And I get those unthrottled speeds (or better) all the time in Miami.
...no matter how much data I use.
 
smoothisfast said:
I called AT&T customer support in December about throttling my account. The lady I spoke to told me the follow.

She just can back from an att seminar regarding throttling. AT&T is throttling ppl in high usage areas as they are updating their towers to 4G. They would like for me to help in keeping the congestion down as towers are taken offline for the upgrade. When they are finish with the 4G upgrades they will stop throttling.

She ended by saying that AT&T will again offer unlimited data plans once they are running 4G.

She did not sound like she was reading a script. I'll cross my fingers and see what happens.
Click to expand...

This would be the best news, I hope it's true. Thanks for the info. :)

I went to VZW and opened another iPhone 4S account to test against my (throttled) unlimited data AT&T iPhone 4S. Even throttled, my AT&T iPhone beat VZW at home, on the road, in NYC and rural area's. This disappoints me as I was hoping to "vote with my dollars" regarding AT&T's current throttling of unlimited data users.

I'm returning my VZW iPhone and canceling the account. I'll wait until the iPhone 5 with LTE/GSM/CDMA support is released this Autumn. I know VZW has a stronger LTE network at the moment, let's see what AT&T does with their LTE rollout this year. :)

hakuin said:
If this is only about people on unlimited plans, then AT&T's idea may be:

(1) Make unlimited plan annoying for people in "top 5% data usage group" (by throttling)
so
(2) Some people in "top 5% data usage group" change from the unlimited plan, or reduce data use
so
(3) The "top 5% data usage group" now uses less data than in the past
so
(4) Throttling occurs earlier, and earlier, and earlier
so
(5) More people are motivated away from the unlimited plan

Does that make sense?
Click to expand...

^This. Exactly what I believe is occurring. I have been on this issue for months and the majority of us have determined it's not geo-specific nor is it specific to actual data usage. If anything, there is a randomness to what accounts are throttled, almost to instill panic for the general unlimited data plan population. It seems AT&T is hoping the general consumer is ill-informed with regards to cellular data and usage, and as such using these scare tactics of text warnings and slower speeds will scare/force consumers out of their unlimited plans and into a tiered plan. I don't mind paying more, I wish I could buy more data with my $30/mo plan, but you cannot unless you switch. AT&T can also claim they are not breaking their contractual agreements by slowing down data, but when that speed is throttled so harshly that Safari doesn't load it is simply a game of semantics.
 
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JonneyGee said:
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It seems as though in recent months AT&T has drastically lowered the point at which they begin throttling (perhaps because people using 5 GB+ found a new plan when they began throttling). About a year ago I was hearing 7-8 GB was the threshold for throttling but it seems it's now closer to 2 GB. Definitely pathetic considering they offer a 2 GB/month plan for $5/month less.
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That's because they are coy and evil in their contract. Notice that 'top 5%' is a shifting concept; so yes, last year it was 7-8, this year, with more people being in the limited capped data, the 'top 5%' definitely shifted down, and as more and more users use less of their data, the 'top 5%' keeps on slipping down.

T-Mobile seems to be more fair; they put a number (2 GB) and stick to it.

On a related note, I left AT&T and it was the best decision ever. Sprint is slower, yes, I am not deulsional, but it is very useful and I get consistent 1.3 Mnps... very happy (but still haven't forgiven AT&T for stealing money from me, theives!)
 
Throttling doesn't bother me, I'd rather pay $10/gig past a data cap for high speed than have unlimited but slow data, but the fact that I can't tether on the 2 gb plan pisses me off. I paid for 2 gigs, what do they care what I do with it. that's like saying they charge you extra to put a call on speakerphone, should be illegal.
 
If you are in PAC or MNY market you will have your data speeds reduces at 2gbs. The more congested the market the quicker you will see your speeds reduced. The markets make up more than one state so just because you dont live in California or New York if your market is either one of those your speeds will be reduced at 2gbs.
 
So the interesting thing here is that for the past few years, there has been no "unlimited plan" available. That means that every new (millions) of customer being added to AT&T is pegged at 2gb plan. As the number of people on the 2gb plan continues to increase, virtually every unlimited plan holder that uses more than 2gb will end up in the "top 5%" so effectively, AT&T has let people keep an unlimited plan that they signed up for, but has this slow but ingenious way of keeping them from actually using it. Class Action Lawsuit anyone? I have been with AT&T for 15 years, and let me say I think I have probably gotten about 2500$ in checks from class action suits they have settled, I have a strong feeling this is going to be another one.
 
Congestion

The thing that really gets me is that I can go into AT&T today and order 2,000 new lines in the busiest market and they will happily accept the order. If congestion is such an issue why don't they stop adding new customers?!?
 
aidensocal said:
So the interesting thing here is that for the past few years, there has been no "unlimited plan" available. That means that every new (millions) of customer being added to AT&T is pegged at 2gb plan. As the number of people on the 2gb plan continues to increase, virtually every unlimited plan holder that uses more than 2gb will end up in the "top 5%" so effectively, AT&T has let people keep an unlimited plan that they signed up for, but has this slow but ingenious way of keeping them from actually using it. Class Action Lawsuit anyone? I have been with AT&T for 15 years, and let me say I think I have probably gotten about 2500$ in checks from class action suits they have settled, I have a strong feeling this is going to be another one.
Click to expand...

FYI my monthly usage is at "2088.98 MB of Unlimited" so in theory if I was paying 50$ for the 5GB plan, I would only be able to use half of it before being throttled?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A405)

WHY is a lawsuit taking so long?
 
Got my first message this morning. I used a pretty good chuck on data through this week so I'm not shocked. Grandfathered into the unlimited. I'll have to watch and wait. Once you get the text how long before the throttle begins?
 
Class Action Suit

I'm hoping a lawyer who is an owner of an iPhone with an unlimited data plan will file a class action suit against AT&T for breach of contract. If anyone know's how to begin this process please comment on it so we can get the ball rolling against AT&T.
 
aidensocal said:
FYI my monthly usage is at "2088.98 MB of Unlimited" so in theory if I was paying 50$ for the 5GB plan, I would only be able to use half of it before being throttled?
Click to expand...

They're only throttling users that are still on the unlimited plan. If you were paying $50/month for 5GB, then you'd have unrestricted bandwidth to those 5GB. Once you surpassed the 5GB, they'd charge you an additional fee to use more data.
 
AT&T are a bunch of lying, conniving mofos. For the past 2 months they have started throttling me (to a max of 30kbps) within the first week of a new billing period telling me I had used 6GB worth of data- when I never used more than 5GB in any prior month in total!! iPhone stats told me I had used less than 600MB, so I spent over an hour with a higher-level tech support guy- who told me this was due to "a 3-day lag" between what my phone tells me, and the "real data usage".

Meanwhile, I'm almost at the end of my cycle and I have still only used 2.2GB after an entire month, NOT the 6GB they told me I used over 2 weeks ago for only that one week.

Liars. This stinks. SOMEBODY has to hold them accountable. How can they prove their data throughputs are right when they're obviously not, and just doing everything in their power to get rid of the grandfathered unlimited plans??

I can't switch providers, as I need to browse and talk at the same time, and sometimes use GPS too.
 
AT&T vs. VZW Speeds

The video comparing load speeds on Throttled vs. Non-Throttled look very much like the difference I have experienced between my AT&T 3GS and my new VZW 4S. Although I have no indication that my usage has triggered throttling on either account, my 3G download with Verizon is irritatingly slow.

I have seen little discussion of this subject when people compare the carriers. I chose to move to Verizon to improve telephone and data geographical coverage (home is rural Utah), and that may have improved slightly, but data speeds are so much slower that I wish I had canceled the account early on and returned to AT&T.
 

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Gee, where are all the past AT&T apologists who argued so stridently that throttling was still unlimited and we who were complaining about throttling where just whiners?

Throttling is not about preserving bandwidth for the bulk of the users. That's the pretty face they put on it. Throttling is just a money grab by AT&T, one of the slimiest companies out there (next to Monsanto, of course).
 
Just got a message from AT&T warning of the top 5%!!! I'm at 2,088mb! I totally think this should only apply when you go above their top data plan, the 3gig or 5gig. At this rate in a few months the unlimited plan users will hit the top 5% before users in the 2 or 3gig plans!

I'm in Richland, WA; not a large city (35,000 probably) so I'm not sure if this is just being enforced in big cities or heavy markets or what....

I hope 4G will open up data more. I stream music mainly in the car.... If that's hitting the top 5 I hate to think of video on Netflix and stuff...
 
SpaceKitty said:
At&ts 3GB plan is better than Verizon. I have 2GB for $30 on Verizon right now so AT&T is the better value.
Click to expand...

It seems that it's going to be the "sweet" spot for unlimited users too. Currently pay $30 for the old unlimited plan & am being warned around 2gigs, if I switch to the limited I would get an extra gig for the same price; but they could just tack on extra fees as soon as I go over... Which with 15 days left in my cycle, would seem likely.
 
Download one iBooks textbook and your "unlimited" data plan is toast for the rest of the month.
 
Yep, I'm going to hold off and use wifi more to preload some radio and podcast stuff before I jump in the car with hopes that we will get grandfathered in still with unlimited on LTE & maybe that it will have a higher cap, or just throttle down to like 150kb or something more manageable.
 
The BIGGEST problem is the one that people are skirting around.

How can we possibly trust their data records?

I proved to them, from my bills over several months, they they are at LEAST DOUBLING the accurate I/O data count that the iPhone keeps. I used 5-6gb per month, for several years, and now-- with MUCH LESS audio streaming, they told me I did 6GB in one week last month??? When my phone had it clearly under 1GB??? I got their text and was throttled on the 6th day of the cycle!

For months there never was any disparity between their records and mine. Now, all of a sudden they are "seeing" data throughput at double or triple the true rate? Bull puckey.

This is going to come back and haunt them. I can only pray for their big comeuppance. Some lawyer is finally going to have enough of these liars and hand their hats to them, and it's going to cost them billions!
 
Grr! Arrgh!

I just got the text this morning from AT&T. I am 6 days into my billing cycle and I am at 1.66gb of data usage.

I've explained to AT&T, ad nauseam, that I do use wifi when I can but when I'm at work, in the car, or in the gym, I can't.

I use Netflix, iTunes Match, ESPN Radio, Pandora, Maps, etc...Which can all be data intensive.

I told them that the phone is utterly and completely useless when it's being throttled and not letting me use services that I PAY FOR like Netflix and iTunes Match!

Why don't they get that I don't use Netflix on my phone when I'm in my house?

Like many of you have said, this is just probably a money-grab tactic from AT&T to get us all to switch to the tiered plans.

Oh and by the way, if you have the 5gb plan and are using data at the same rate as someone with the unlimited plan, will you be throttled? I don't think so...That has to be illegal in some shape, way, or form.

This has to stop now!
 
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