AT&T may have done away with its unlimited data plan for new wireless phone customers a little while ago, but the company still has a number of older customers who have had their unlimited data deals grandfathered into their contracts. That includes older users of the AT&T version of the iPhone. Now there"s a rumor that those remaining unlimited data users will find that their data speeds will be cut when it reaches a certain amount.
According to 9to5mac.com, AT&T will begin to throttle data speeds for its remaining unlimited data customers sometime in the first week of October. The article doesn"t say what the broadband cap will be when it"s put in place, but whatever it turns out to be AT&T wireless customers with the unlimited plan will see their data speeds get cut down after that cap is reached. The speed cut will stay in effect until the end of a customer"s billing cycle when the data speeds will be bumped up again.
The new policy will only affect the top five percent of unlimited data users on AT&T"s network. It adds that since the launch of the first iPhone in 2007, AT&T has seen its wireless traffic increase by 8,000 percent. The end result is that AT&T has been forced to beef up its network infrastructure to meet the massive demand. Having a data throttling plan would perhaps help the company deal with the increase in demand, especially with the upcoming launch of the next version of the iPhone which is expected to happen sometime this fall.