Your Bandwidth Will Be Throttled. Here’s Why

The days of all-you-can eat mobile bandwidth are already ending, and landline broadband could soon follow suit. You, my data-hungry friend, my not be ready for it, but your Cookie Monster-like habit of gobbling up data has made this a certainty.

You may rail at the injustice of it all, but that won't stop it from happening.

AT&T has promised to start throttling the top 5 percent–their heaviest data users. It began sending out texts last week to inform those users that the time had come to occasionally reduce their 3G speeds down to 2G (that is, the molasses-like Edge network).

Those who received these data notes, however, seemed shocked to learn they're among the top 5 percent: those who use more than 2 GB of data a month.

One user, Fox News anchor Shep Smith, was apoplectic. I know. I was there when he went ballistic on live TV. He called AT&T names and accused the mobile service provider of getting users hooked on data, then charging more when they know users can't stop using their smartphone. Check it out:

Smith could not get his head around how he used so much data. He never streams video. He did admit to browsing the web all the time on his phone. Plus he takes photos and send them to others. (Depending on the size and the frequency of the picture files, that could account for it.)

He was so angry at AT&T that I didn't get to explain that Verizon will also throttle its top 5 percent — though they may wait until there are any local network issues before doing so. I am unaware if they have ever sent notes to users informing them of what they're doing.

You could say AT&T was brave in its transparency. The company could have quietly throttled its users; they would have noticed the difference, but might have chalked it up to the vagaries of the network. T-Mobile also does it (though they wait until you hit 5 GB). Even the unlimited data network, Sprint, will throttle users — but only those in the top 1 percent.

All of these networks would prefer, I'm sure, that we moved to tiered plans (where you pay more for 3GB or 5GB of data than you do for 2GB and 200 MB). They'll make more money and have more funds to support our ever-growing data needs.

Whether or not you believe that, the truth is that we will witness the end of unlimited data, and sooner than we might think. Even average users will ultimately be throttled or pushed into tiered plans as their data appetite turns from healthy to voracious.

What's driving this growth? I have some ideas:

Location, Location, Location

Virtually every app and mobile service wants to use your location. This can mean a quick GPS-based calibration, plus a ping to servers to find local deals or other information that the phone can push to you at any moment.

These small acts eat data. It seems likely that more people allow location-based services than those who do not.

Photos

You smartphones are now equipped with 8 megapixel cameras that shoot high-resolution images, which you regularly post to social networks or share directly with friends.

This has always eaten data, but better pictures also equate to bigger files. Sending, sharing and receiving ("oh, look, Janet's new baby!") all eats data.

Email

Your email app will troll for new messages as often as you let it. Sending and receiving e-mails, often image-rich messages that are more like full web pages than text, eats up data.

Social Networking

Every single social network you join uses the data networks to get its work done. You not only share all the time, you check in to see what other people are sharing. We're not just looking at one social network, we're looking at three or four: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, etc.

The Cloud

Apple's iCloud will only back-up and sync your data when you're on a Wi-Fi network. This means iCloud won't consume copious amounts of 3G data. Google, however, has a different approach.

Google+ recently launched Instant Upload for photos and videos. Depending on your settings, it can use Wi-Fi only or your mobile network too. The latter option might as well read "Consume Mass Quantities of Data."

Google acknowledges this possibility. In a note at the bottom of the Instant Upload setting page, it says: "Uploading over a mobile network will use your data connection and may cost you money." It may also get you thrown into data-throttling pokey.

Video

Stream video on your mobile device and you are eating lots of data. You won't be able to watch many two-hour movies before finding that your data speeds have been reduced to 2G.

There is some good news here: You can track your own data usage. I'm a Verizon customer and the service helpfully shows me exactly how much of my metered 2 GB of data I've used, every minute of every day.

What have I learned? In short, I use a lot of data. Most of it is in fairly small increments that could usually be measured in kilobytes. According to Verizon, I am using my full data allowance each month, and roughly a gigabyte every two weeks.

Oddly, I have not gone over my limit, though sometimes my throughput does seem unnaturally slow. Am I being throttled? I have no idea. Verizon isn't telling me.

Most other service providers will let you take a good long look at your data usage (on their web site and even via text alerts). You can use this to help monitor and control your usage.

But make no mistake, based on the increasing power of our smart phones and tablets, the richness of our web sites, photos, video and email and our penchant for sharing, data usage is going nowhere but up. Just get ready to pay for all that data you use.