Rumor: AT&T to Begin Throttling Unlimited Data Subscribers in October

If you are one of the lucky few still basking in the glory that is AT&T’s unlimited data plan, you may be in for a rude awakening come October. Rumor has it that the telecom will begin throttling data speeds for subscribers of its unlimited data plan once they reach an as-of-yet-undetermined data cap.

9to5 Mac first reported the possible change in policy and it has since spread across the web like wildfire. Many sites, including Business Insider seem to think that the new data cap will be somewhere between 2 GB to 4 GB, which would line up with AT&T’s current top-tier data cap of 2 GB.

The introduction of a throttling policy in October would make sense for AT&T since, if the never-ending cavalcade of rumors are to be believed, Apple may be unveiling its new iPhone around that time, which could swamp the telecom’s data network. Throttling heavy data users would free up more bandwidth and could help improve AT&T’s oft-maligned 3G speeds, which have been frustratingly unreliable for some users since the introduction of the original iPhone.

Some of AT&T’s biggest rivals — including Virgin and Verizon — which now offers the iPhone, already have similar throttling policies in place. Verizon’s policy penalizes the top 5 percent of data hogs. T-Mobile throttles data your data too, and does so at 2 GB.

via 9to5Mac, Business Insider