Affiliate links on Android Authority may earn us a commission.Learn more.
AT&T touts their “future-proof” network yet still throttles some customers due to congestion
June 25, 2025
This week, AT&T made a number of different statements about how ready their network was for future data use by customers. In one speech, the CEO of AT&T, Ralph de la Vega, proudly proclaimed that AT&T had a large lead in the connected car market. By some estimates, AT&T will ownover 50 percentof the growing market during 2015.
But shouldn’t AT&T be slightly worried about the potential for a network strain if the connected car market takes off and data usage increases? Nah. In fact, AT&T wants to see “more gigabytes burned up by the connected vehicle.”
AT&T is so confident of their network that Chris Penrose, senior vice president of AT&T’s Emerging Devices business, discussed AT&T’s effort to “future-proofagainst the coming influx of connected vehicles.” (WirelessWeek)
In terms of online video traffic, AT&T made it clear that they aren’t worried about that either. As John Donovan, senior executive vice president of AT&T’s technology and operations,told a crowdat CES this week, AT&T is ready for the increase in data demand, whether it be from YouTube or FaceTime.
But wait, if AT&T is so confident of their network going forward, why are AT&T customers on an unlimited data plan still being throttled for using just several GB’s a month due to AT&T’s “network management process“? As AT&T’s own site states, AT&T throttles those unlimited data plan customers who have are using a 3G or 4G smartphone, have used between 3GB-5GB in a billing period and are located in an area that is “experiencing network congestion.”
Even though AT&T claims to throttle when “experiencing network congestion,”Ars Technica pointed outlast month that AT&T was simply throttling all unlimited data plan customers after several GB’s in a billing cycle. One only needs to glance atArs Technica,RedditorDSLReportsto see that virtually all of AT&T customers with unlimited data plans see their speeds brought to a crawl almost every month. In one instance, AT&T slowed down a customer from LTE speeds to just 0.11Mbps.
AT&T has since responded by claiming that those unlimited data plan customers in congested networks would in fact be the only ones throttled “sometime in 2015” and when it was “technologically available” to AT&T.
AT&T once told us that customers who used more than 2GB’s a month needed to be throttled and were thereason for slow speeds. Then AT&T decided that they needed to throttle customers using their network due to “fairness.” Now, AT&T seems to have given up trying to find a new excuse for throttling other than they want customers off unlimited data plans and onto their more expensive, data capped mobile plans.
But speaking of “future-proof,” AT&T seems to enjoy using the phrase when advertising services:
AT&T is full of “future-proof” services. Hopefully AT&T can find a way in the next few years to “future-proof” their throttling technology for customers just on unlimited data plans.
Thank you for being part of our community. Read ourComment Policybefore posting.
