Verizon Quietly Turns on 3G Data Throttling

Verizon switched on its 3G throttling as promised and announced it in a rather low-key fashion through an updated policy page on Thursday. The top five percent of 3G unlimited data subscribers will experience slower connections when on significantly congested cell sites both for what’s left of their billing period and for the following billing period. Anyone on a 4G or tiered data plan can rest assured they won’t see the effects of throttled data, for now.

Verizon is quick to point out that its data throttling policy seems relaxed compared to other carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile. For example, AT&T plans to slow down connection speeds for its top five percent users regardless of what plan they are subscribed to. T-Mobile aims to slow down any users once they exceed 5GB anytime in their billing cycle.

Big Red’s decision to start enforcing 3G data throttling comes just weeks before the highly anticipated next generation iPhone. The iPhone 5, whenever it does decide to come out of hiding, is widely expected to dramatically increase data usage for most US carriers.

Meanwhile, Sprint is the last big carrier who is still offering true unlimited data plans, and is claiming they are ready and willing to take on the iPhone 5. The Now Network is speculated to be using this strategy to lure new customers away from the otherwise big players in the wireless industry.

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