Is AT&T throttling my unlimited data?
Do you find the current unlimited data plan from AT&T Internet slower than before? You may not be seeing things when you feel like you are seeing things. Some of these complaints have alleged that the telecommunication giant has deliberately slowed down the internet speed of customers with unlimited data plans to encourage them to subscribe to the tiered systems.
Throttling, or throttling back as Fowler and Norman used it, therefore means a slowing down or a holding back in a process. In simple terms, it refers to deliberately reducing internet speeds once a customer reaches a specified data consumption in a monthly plan. This makes it difficult to perform simple things like watching a video or listening to music online.
This company was among the first to adopt the model of tiered data plans with caps several years ago but didn’t cancel the option of unlimited data for its clients. But throttling allegations assert that now AT&T is actively throttling the speed of these legacy unlimited plans to push people to upgrade to the limited but costly data plans that are currently trending.
A cycle of throttling complaints and legal actions
For quite some time now, customers have been complaining that ATT throttles their data use. In 2011 a class action lawsuit was filed in California alleging that AT&T, the telecommunications company, was intentionally throttling the data usage of mobile users with unlimited data plans after these customers used a certain amount of data each month. However, AT&T refuted that they were throttling speeds, but confirmed that the company had to slow down the speeds of the data using customers who made use of the 5% who used the most amount of data when the particular cell station hits a limit of traffic congestion.
The matter continued to heat up in the following years with AT&T later on introducing an option through which the unlimited users that required throttling could do it less if they were willing to pay an extra monthly fee. Consumers’ advocates said the only correct strategy was for AT&T to bolster the ability of networks to address increasing loads of data.
In 2014, the company also experienced a class action lawsuit concerning the throttling of unlimited plans after shifting to the Sponsored Data model. The FTC also started receiving complaints about throttling in the same year, 2015. While denying the throttling claims in the same year, AT&T started to allow unlimited data users to exclude their traffic from the throttling scheme in return for seeing their throttle rates above a certain limit lowered to standard definition streaming.
This shows that yes AT&T tech infrastructure was reaching these capacity checkpoints where speed throttling of the highest utilizers of unlimited data was the standard practice without these compromise points proposed.
We can see more evidence of throttling here
More throttling allegations emerged through 2018 & 2019 as unlimited data customers subjected themselves to mid-month slowdowns that slowed down GPS navigation, froze up video calls, etc.
In 2018, two researchers from Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts wrote a paper where they looked into AT&T mobile data for the years 2015, 2016, and 2017. Many of them alleged that their findings presented clear evidence of deliberate slowing down. The researchers stated that despite appearing to be throttling, AT&T was doing it most randomly – some of the unlimited data users had extreme cuts in their speed while others could use only slightly more than the baseline even with high usage.
The researchers maintain that this difference proves that the throttling was not related to normal network management as some ISPs attempted to claim. It painted a picture of selective discrimination of customers over others with reasons that may not necessarily be on capacity but rather on strategic attempts to force those with old unlimited data plans to shift out of the plan.
Throttling still rages on with no possibility of coming to a halt shortly
As AT&T argued that the reduced capability of heavy data users is a method of effective network management for the benefit of all customers, the users with unlimited data plans responded that it is only an apparent justification for aggressive throttling of those customers in particular. With throttling having already been applied to power users, many believe they are being treated as budget-grade customers, who should not be given the full speeds that the network can offer just because the users do not agree to switch to tiered data.
Unless AT&T can build capacity by a massive margin that the company no longer needs to throttle in the first place, this wound of suspicion and distrust with unlimited data consumers who were left when the company stopped allowing new sign-ups to unlimited data plans years ago will persist. Although unlimited data users may not be as organized as net neutrality proponents, if further proof like the one above continues to surface and AT&T persists in denying or minimizing the extent of the breakdown, unlimited users will continue to complain about throttling for the foreseeable future.
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