Regardless, 23GB is still rather generous, especially when you consider that a very small percentage of unlimited data customers actually use that much data in a month.
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Customers will see a slowdown after using 23GB of data in a month. It’s the latest roadblock thrown at unlimited data users from Sprint, which raised the price of its unlimited plan by $10 earlier this month, and another sign of the increasing cost of delivering that data.
Sprint will slow down the connection speed of its heaviest data users.
AT&T and Verizon abandoned their unlimited data plans years ago, complaining they were economically unviable as consumers started to use more data. Those customers will see their network speeds reduced, though will still continue to have access to unlimited data. While unlimited for a few basically means they use 5-10GB of data a month, there are a few who abuse the unlimited plans and use it to tether other devices, consuming way more data in the process and potentially hogging the bandwidth.
Unlimited data is a double-edged sword for carriers. While it attracts new customers, many of them tend to be the heaviest data users. T-Mobile United States, for instance, says in its terms and conditions it will deprioritize unlimited customers that exceed the 23 GB limit. John Saw published a blog post – titled “Protecting the 97%” – outlining the specifics today. The company retracted that policy last fall. Sprint customers that were on an unlimited plan prior to October 16 will be subject to the QoS policy when they upgrade their phone and remain on an existing unlimited data plan. In June, Verizon also stopped slowing unlimited-data traffic for 3G customers.
As of today, regulators haven’t commented on Sprint’s new plan. At that point, their data usage will be prioritized below the rest of the carrier’s customers, but only in “times and locations where the network is constrained”.
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“Performance for the affected customer returns to normal as soon as traffic on the cell site also returns to normal, or the customer moves to a non-constrained site”, Sprint says.
