atechstl wrote:
According to AT&T, I can downgrade to the 2GB plan and pay $10 per 1GB overage. This would have allowed me to go over the 5GB I was just blocked at. So why should I have to downgrade my data plan in order to use more data then my Unlimited plan?
How do they determine the top 5%? I am in the St. Louis market and have a hard time understanding that 5GB falls in the top 5% category.
you where not hard blocked you where throttled (although the upper bandwidth limit is so low that may appear you are bloked), it is not a hard capped at all. it is determined by the top 5 percent of the users, so if last month you used 10 GB then you where probablyt in the top 5 Percent and your connection was throttled, this month you use 6 GB you may not have made the top 5 percent so the connection is not throttled.
The majoroty of carriers that enforce their fair use policy utilize the 5GB limit before they throttle or shut down functionality, att decided to use a sliding scale for some reason. Know of at least one carrier that if you exceed the 5GB limit in a billing cycle they turn off all data access except for messaging and email delivery until the billing cycle is finished.
Even broadband users are feeling the pinch on "unlimited data" , one carrier has the rules that if you exceed a 250GB limit more then a decoumented set of times they terminate your connection and flag your address / name for no reconnect for 6 months.
Unfortunatley the days of the all you can eat data packages are gone and the restrictions will get tighter as time goes on
