AT&T changes stance on hard throttling for users of unlimited data plans

In the early days of the smartphone when the original iPhone launched, you could get actual unlimited data plans with the device. As time went on AT&T and other carriers began to put limits on the "unlimited" plans much to the anger of their customers. If you are on one of those old grandfathered unlimited data plans, you know that the way AT&T tries to keep you from using what you pay for is by throttling your speed.

Turing down the speed on unlimited users makes it very hard to surf the web on your mobile device. AT&T gave the "unlimited" users 5GB of data per month before they were throttled. Once that limit was hit, speeds were snail-like for the remainder of the billing cycle.

AT&T said in the past that users in congested network areas would be throttled at the 3GB mark. Users on the network anywhere who hit the 5GB limit would be throttled if the network was congested or not. AT&T has made a change to its policies that seems to indicate the hard limit on 4G LTE plans has been removed.

The tweaked verbiage suggests that the only time throttling will take place is in congested areas. Granted, AT&T is the one who gets to say if the network is congested. No announcement of this change has been made by AT&T just yet, and perhaps it won't be.

SOURCE: Droid-Life