AT&T will begin throttling heavy wireless users on old grandfathered unlimited plans

> The company notes that “Starting October 1, smartphone customers with unlimited data plans may experience reduced speeds once their usage in a billing cycle reaches the level that puts them among the top 5 percent of heaviest data users. This is not surprising. And my guess is it’s just the beginning. Expect more stringent throttling soon.

Lots of my friends and some prominent bloggers kept their “grandfathered” plans last year when AT&T dropped the unlimited plan. They were no doubt thinking as long as they kept paying the higher fees for the old unlimited plan, they’d be able to keep that indefinitely. This, despite the fact that many of them don’t use anywhere near the 2GB a month cap on the cheaper $20 plan.

But I dropped my unlimited immediately, figuring that at the very least, when 4G comes out, AT&T would come up with some excuse why that was a DIFFERENT data plan, and thus wasn’t eligible for unlimited. Now it looks like they’re not even going to wait until the 4G iPhone rolls around.

So why pay $10 a month more in the meantime for something you’re not using, if in the future, when you need that extra data most, the carrier is just going to pull the rug out from under you anyway?