AT&T has laid the smack down on customers who are attached to unlimited data plans, throttling them after they exceed 2GB in data usage for that particular financial month. AT&T customer John Cozen blogged, “I received a message during my last billing cycle, warning I was in the top 5% of my region and would experience reduced data speeds next time I reach that level of data use. I immediately checked my data usage on the AT&T iOS app. 2.1 GB. Less than I expected considering AT&T offers a 3GB plan for $30 a month. The same amount I’ve paid for the unlimited data plan since signing up with them many years ago. AT&T no longer offers an unlimited data plan, anyone still on it has been grandfathered in.”
AT&T pushes the buck back to the customers, claiming that “Data consumption by all smartphone customers, including the top 5 percent of smartphone data customers, varies by month and by market. As of August 2011, the average data use across the country by the top 5 percent of AT&T smartphone customers was 2 GB per month.”