| Title | AT&T’s Congestion Magically Disappears when it’s Signing Up New Customers | |
| Date | Tuesday September 30 2014, @01:37AM | |
| Author | n1 | |
| Topic | ||
| from the unlimited-data-at-300bit/s dept. | ||
Ars Technica brings us AT&T’s congestion magically disappears when it’s signing up new customers:
Like other carriers, AT&T slows the speeds of certain users when the network is congested. Such network management is a necessary evil that can benefit the majority of customers when used to ensure that everyone can connect to the network. But as Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has argued, the carriers’ selective enforcement of throttling shows that it can also be used to boost revenue by pushing subscribers onto pricier plans.
AT&T’s throttling only applies to users with “legacy unlimited data plans,” the kinds of customers that AT&T wants to push onto limited plans with overage charges. Initially, the throttling was enforced once users passed 3GB or 5GB in a month regardless of whether the network was congested. In July, AT&T changed its policy so that throttling only hits those users at times and in places when the network is actually congested, according to an AT&T spokesperson. The 3GB and 5GB thresholds, with the higher one applied to LTE devices, were unchanged.
You can use the Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine to see that, through June, AT&T throttled unlimited subscribers whether its network was congested or not. The site, both then and now, encourages heavy data users to switch to a tiered or shared data plan. AT&T says that more than 80 percent of its postpaid smartphone subscribers are on limited plans.
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