Yep, the dreaded October 1st is coming tomorrow. It’s dreaded, at least, for those with unlimited data with Verizon still. This was announced a few months ago (back in August I think) that Verizon would begin throttling it’s unlimited data users, in an attempt to repair their network capacity. Because right now they are running out of bandwidth, which explains the slower speeds in a lot of areas. For example, in most of Detroit I get around 10mbps or lower on Verizon. But in the suburbs I can get into the 40-50s and even 70mbps depending on where I am. It’s all based on the amount of traffic on that particular tower and as the largest carrier, there’s a lot of traffic.
Verizon is calling it Network Optimization. Now while it is basically that, network optimization, a lot of people are looking at it as a way to get more money out of their customers by putting them on shared data plans. Here’s the criteria for Network Optimization: “Top 5% of data users (you use 4.7GB of data per month or more). Enrolled on an unlimited data plan or feature. Have fulfilled your minimum contract term. Are attempting to use data on a cell site that is experiencing high demand.” So if you meet any of those criterias, you’ll likely be throttled for up to 60 days. Which is pretty insane. As most other carriers (AT&T, T-Mobile, and even Sprint) only throttle you for the remainder of your billing cycle.
The FCC was supposedly looking into this, but we haven’t heard anything really, since that letter they sent to Verizon’s CEO a few months ago. So those with unlimited data on Verizon, watch yourself. You’re gonna hate getting throttled because their 3G service is pretty bad. How many of you are still on Verizon’s unlimited data plans?