Sprint wants to “protect” you with data throttling

Customers will see a slowdown after using 23GB of data in a month.

Sprint today said it will throttle speeds for “unlimited data” customers after they use 23GB in a month.

“This practice is meant to protect against a small minority of unlimited customers who use high volumes of data and unreasonably take up network resources during times when the network is constrained”, said John Saw, Sprint’s chief technology officer.

Sprint goes to great lengths to point out that heavy data users will only be throttled when they’re in an area where the network is constrained. T-Mobile U.S., for instance, says in its terms and conditions it will deprioritize unlimited customers that exceed the 23 GB limit.

Sprint’s “Unlimited” data plans are about to become ever-so-slightly limited. While it attracts new customers, many of them tend to be the heaviest data users.

Sprint is following T-Mobile’s lead again, but not in a way that will make a few unlimited data users happy.

Unlimited data is a double-edged sword for the carriers.

Sprint isn’t the only carrier to do this, of course: AT&T will throttle users’ unlimited LTE connections if they’re over 5GB of data consumed per month during periods of network congestion. The FCC also challenged Verizon when the company planned to expand its data throttling policy to its 4G customers.

Sprint at the time did state that it reserved the right to regulate network traffic depending on a customer’s rate plan.

It’s important to note that Sprint customers will still be able to use as much data as they want when on unlimited data plans, it’s just that their data speeds might slow down a little after 23 GB. The carrier claims, this would help it to restore full-speed for users once the overall congestion at the site returns to normal, as prioritization is applied or removed every 20 milliseconds automatically after the 23 GB ceiling. Sprint also says that number is “far more” than most of its customers use in a typical billing cycle. Performance for an affected customer returns to normal as soon as the local traffic returns to normal.