But the big furor of the moment - and perhaps a window onto the future - comes from caps imposed on "unlimited-data" customers by AT&T Mobility, the nation's second-largest wireless carrier. When they hit the cap, customers have complained, they find their data speeds suddenly reduced to a crawl for the rest of their monthly billing cycle.
Similar "data throttling" affects customers of T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, though Verizon rejects the term and says its "network optimization" is more limited, affecting customers "only in specific locations during times of peak demand," according to spokesman Sheldon Jones.
How can you cap "unlimited" data customers, and how many are affected? AT&T, in particular, isn't answering many questions, though all three carriers link throttling to their need to manage network demands.
Spokeswoman Brandy Bell-Truskey offers a statement saying that "this policy only affects smartphone customers with an unlimited data plan if their data usage falls within the top 5 percent of all data users nationwide," and that it also is based on local conditions "such as spectrum, network capacity, and overall local data usage."
"Even if a smartphone customer with an unlimited data plan falls within the top 5 percent of data users nationwide," the statement adds, "it does not necessarily mean that their data speeds will be reduced. For example, in the most recent month, approximately one-half of 1 percent of our total smartphone customer base was affected by this policy."
Of course, for a carrier that introduced the first iPhone and that counts more than 100 million subscribers, that could mean the policy affects 250,000 to 300,000 customers each month.
