Along with network upgrades, AT&T is looking to crack down on heavy mobile data users. Ralph de la Vega, the head of consumer services at AT&T, recently spoke to investors and mentioned that 40 percent of their network capacity was being eaten up by only 3 percent of users. He attributes much of that data to streaming media.
The iPhone, and AT&T’s other smartphone offerings, currently do not have any sort of bandwidth cap in place. (The 5GB limit you keep hearing about is specifically tied to data cards). While he didn’t say anything about a cap specifically, it’s the easiest way for AT&T to start limiting mobile data users. De la Vega did say that the company will try to figure out incentives to change usage habits.
Says De la Vega, “We’ve got to get them to understand what represents a megabyte of data. We’re improving all our systems to let consumers get real-time information on their data usage.”
It’s been a fun ride while it lasted, but it looks like we’re soon going to have to start rationing our iPhone data usage. AT&T will apparently soon offer better tools to allow subscribers to track their data usage more easily.
[Source: Apple Insider]
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December 9th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
I think it's only fair. If only 3% of users are screwing it up for the rest of us they should pay more. Just like Netflix, cable TV and so on have tiered pricing, so should data usage on their network.
December 10th, 2009 at 3:49 am
I pay $30 to AT&T for unlimited data access. Fair is fair, If they want to change this agreement, they should start offering smaller, cheaper access plans. $5 per 1GB/month or something like that.
December 10th, 2009 at 5:43 am
To be fair, $30 data plans aren't unlimited for other mobile carriers. AT&T probably won't ever do something consumer-friendly as offer cheaper data plans–but we can probably expect higher data caps, or *truly* unlimited data, at a higher price point.
December 10th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
AT&T needs to wake up and smell the coffee. Data usage is not going to decrease over time. As more and more people start using smartphones, the demand will only get larger. They need to get busy upgrading their network to support it. You can't charge people more money and hope the problem goes away while your main competitor (Verizon) keeps moving forward.
December 26th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
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