Andre Yoskowitz
25 Feb 2012 19:00
A new study has torn apart AT&T argument for throttling mobile data.
The carrier shut down its unlimited plans last year, saying it was aiming at stopping the "top 5 percent" of bandwidth hogs, who allegedly accounted for over 50 percent of all mobile traffic during the year. Users who go over 2GB on an unlimited plan are throttled back down to 2G/EDGE speeds.
Validas, a company that promises to "slash your cell phone bill, on average, by 20%," conducted the study, by examining over 55,000 cell phone bill from Verizon and AT&T in 2011.
The study showed that AT&T's alleged data hogs were not actually using much more data than anyone else. The study says that the top 5 percent of data users on AT&T's network use (on average) 3.97GB per month, only 780MB more than the top 5 percent of those that use tiered plans, which come in different flavors and prices.
In conclusion, the company says AT&T is throttling to force users over to their tiered plans, which are "easier to manage" and efficiently block the occasional user who does use a massive amount of data that actually puts a strain on their network.
Read the report here: Validas Blog