AT&T changes data rules for ‘unlimited’ plans

Faced with regulatory pressure, AT&T now says it won’t throttle subscribers with unlimited-data plans until they have consumed at least 22 GB of data in a month, up from the previous limit of 5 GB. The customers who are on the plans were allowed to keep their old plans once AT&T eliminated the option. The change likely stems from network improvement on AT&T’s side, as well as the fact that only a small percentage of AT&T’s customers actually have unlimited data, thus decreasing the chances of network abuse.

AT&T said that it will send an alert to users when they hit 16.5GB of usage in a single billing period “so they can adjust their usage to avoid network management practices that may result in slower data speeds”, if they hit that 22GB cap.

Users often see speeds slow down considerably in highly congested areas when they have exceeded their high-speed data limits in a month. AT&T hasn’t offered unlimited data plans for years now, but many subscribers are still hanging on to the ones they signed up for years ago.

Millions of customers were affected by this throttling, according to the FCC’s findings. The company laid out the updated terms on their website. That’s a 340% increase, and a very, very welcome change for AT&T customers with grandfathered plans. But after the FCC objected and fined AT&T, the telco tweaked the policy so throttling only occurred at congested cell sites. Using AT&T’s Wi-Fi doesn’t count against you, so connecting to this when possible will help lessen the load.

Verizon and Sprint have each stopped throttling unlimited data users. T-Mobile’s policy states that it “de-prioritizes” service for customers who use more than 21GB of data during a billing cycle.

For its part, AT&T stays far from the “data throttling” nomenclature, instead calling it “network management”.