AT&T: new limits on 'unlimited' plans

AT&T unlimited plans will be slowed down for users who use 'too much' data. The new AT&T limit kicks in after 3 gigabytes per month. 

|
Mark Lennihan/AP/File
This February photo shows a screen on a smartphone with a text message to an AT&T customer in New York. AT&T has since changed its data limits for its 'unlimited' plan to more than 3 gigabytes of use in a month.

AT&T Inc., citing limited availability of wireless spectrum, said Thursday that it will slow upload and download connection speeds for mobile phone users who use too much data even though they signed up for an unlimited data plan.

The carrier said speeds will slow for 3G (HSPA+) users who consume more than 3 gigabytes of data in a month. Users of 4G LTE phones will see their speeds slow when they exceed 5 gigabytes of data in a month.

The latest move follows a policy change in June, when AT&T began slowing speeds for users in the top 5 percent of consumption. With the changes announced Thursday, that policy is being abandoned. Previously,AT&T didn't slow speeds for unlimited data customers.

The changes do not apply to AT&T customers who are on tiered data plans.

AT&T said on its website that the change is in response to "soaring mobile broadband usage and the limited availability of wireless spectrum."

The Dallas-based telecommunications giant said it has seen a 20,000 percent increase in data consumption by its users in the past five years, and has gone from 7 million smartphones on its network in 2006 to 39.4 million in 2011.

In that five-year time span, AT&T says, it has spent more than $95 billion to build out its network, both wireless and wireline, and it plans to spend an additional $20 billion in network upgrades this year.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to AT&T: new limits on 'unlimited' plans
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0303/AT-T-new-limits-on-unlimited-plans
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe