Sprint was throttling speed to unlimited data plan subscribers but stopped after FCC fined AT&T $100M for same practice
Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure, speaking with a Kansas City, Mo., television station, said the carrier may do away with current pricing on unlimited data plans later in the year. Sprint currently offers unlimited data, calling and messaging services beginning as low as $50 per month when tied to a device leasing plan.
“For the next few months, unlimited continues,” Claure told KSHB. “We might increase prices toward the latter part of the year.”
Sprint in 2013 rolled out a set of rate plans that included guarantees of unlimited services for customers beginning at $80 per month. The carrier followed up the promotion with comments from management that it had sufficient capacity on its network to continue supporting unlimited data services for smartphone customers.
The move away from unlimited data by Sprint is widely interpreted as a way to shore up revenue while embarking on a network improvement investment strategy. Claure has repeatedly alluded to major network infrastructure upgrades coming to Sprint in the near future. Most of those efforts revolve around the carrier’s deep 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings, which should be able to handle significant data traffic in areas where it’s deployed.
Also relative to Sprint’s unlimited data offering, the third-ranked U.S. carrier last week curtailed a policy that saw heavy data users’ connections throttled to free up network capacity.
“Sprint doesn’t expect users to notice any significant difference in their services now that we no longer engage in this process,” a company representative told The Wall Street Journal.
The move from Sprint came in the wake of the Federal Communications Commission putting AT&T Mobility on notice that the company can expect a $100 million fine for misleading customers about unlimited data offerings. Specifically, FCC investigators allege that AT&T Mobility “severely slowed down the data speeds for customers with unlimited data plans and that the company failed to adequately notify its customers that they could receive speeds slower than the normal network speeds AT&T advertised.”
AT&T Mobility first began offering unlimited data in 2007; that service option has since been discontinued. Customers who opted into the plan when it was available, however, are able to renew those plans.
Fast-forward to 2011 when the FCC alleged that AT&T started applying a “maximum bit rate” policy that capped data speeds for unlimited customers once the subscriber reached a data threshold associated with a monthly billing cycle.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said the commission’s move is in the interest of consumer advocacy.
