Turns our throttling isn't a thing of the past after all. Sprint has once again turned around, saying that it will in fact throttle its heaviest data users, but only when the network is particularly congested.
The confirmation came in a blog post from Sprint CTO John Saw, who titled the blog post "Protecting the 97%" and outlined the specifics of how Sprint will throttle its users.
While some might be frustrated at Sprint seemingly changing its mind, Sprint is being pretty generous compared with other companies, setting 23 GB as the threshold that customers need to cross before the throttling will kick in. Even then, Sprint will only throttle customers when a particular cell tower is being strained a little too hard.
The news comes a few months after Sprint was criticized for trying to limit how much data customers could use for things like streaming video, even though it advertised its data plans as being unlimited. At least now the company is being more transparent about its data-throttling practices.
Of course, hitting the 23 GB data-use threshold is no small feat—it would require users to stream all five seasons of Game of Thrones in order to hit the limit, as CNET points out.
The decision is a reversal from the decision Sprint made back in June, saying that it would stop throttling its customers. This was, of course, around the time of the controversy surrounding net neutrality, which ended up classifying Sprint as a common carrier under Title II, blocking the company from being able to tweak customers' data connections.
T-Mobile also throttles its users after 23 GB of data usage, and both AT&T and Verizon cut their unlimited data plans, making the discussion about throttling a little less important.
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.
Via: The Verge
