Seems like it will. I hope the abusers who needed me to pay for their bandwidth will go to sprint.
I don't think so. If all I could get was 1.5 Mbps, I'd go without Internet on my phone.
Well I'm not sure I'd call an Unlimited user that uses a bunch of bandwidth "abusers" as they were encouraged by the bandwidth provider to purchase the "unlimited" plan in the first place. AT&T has changed the rules to better favor their profit margins is all that has happened. So maybe the Unlimited users are abusing AT&T's profit margins...but that's it.
Still, I've always been surprised to see so many people posting "Nope, still using 10 gigs here, no throttling" and yet now that this new program is in place (and appears to be universal), not a single one has come on here stating "They are finally throttling me!" I'd expect a least a few spotty rage posts here...unless, once again, AT&T is using discriminatory practices in who gets throttled and who doesn't.
Back when everyone was on EDGE, there was plenty of bandwidth, because most people were able to connect at 200-700 Kbps, and the 5Mbps to 10Gbps backbone connecting each tower was adequate, and there was plenty of spectrum using TDMA to multiplex the users. However, HSPA and HSPA+ don't use TDMA to multiplex anymore, they use a form of CDMA, so rather than being able to squeeze many people into the same frequency ranges, you can only get a couple of people, so they need to use more frequencies. As a result, the GSM companies (around the world) are regretting their unlimited data plans because their infrastructure can't really support the 3-10Mbps connections to hundreds of people per tower both due to the available frequencies over the air (aka bandwidth) or the available data flow over their backbone (also aka bandwidth). As a result, they have to use what ever means are at their disposal to give the majority of the people the best experience possible. If that means throttling those people who are tethering or using 10 GB per month, so be it. Some places the towers and backbone are being as widely used as in others, so there is much more leeway, and they won't care until you start interfering with others abilities to use the service. Also, you will find at&t to have the biggest problems in LA, New York City, and San Francisco. All of which have major hurdles that you have to go through in order to add new towers, in order to add more capacity. New York also has the tall buildings in Manhattan that absorb rather than bounce the signals.
"The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few."
(btw - T-Mobile doesn't have this problem because they throttle everyone over 2GB, and there aren't enough customers clustered together like at&t has to cause these issues. Plus they are using a frequency that behaves the same everywhere because they use mainly the 1700 Mhz range, whereas at&t is using at least two if not three different frequencies, depending on their license, in order to build and support their network, and each range behaves differently.)
TEG
