Last August, the Santa Clara Fire Department complained about getting throttled by the Verizon Wireless. The department used over 25 gigabytes of the allotted monthly data for coordinating and tracking personnel when they were handling a wildfire. Although, Verizon already apologized for what the company said was a customer error, throttling, since then became a public discussion.
To make amends for the mistake done, Verizon got rid of all data restrictions for first West Coast responders. Knowing they should have lifted throttling in times of emergency, the company admitted their mistake.
Despite both sides coming to terms, discussion about throttling continue. Consumers joined the issue, who, are not included from the data restriction exemption. With or without emergency cases, Verizon and AT&T customers sign an agreement where throttling caps not further 22 gigabytes per month.
Verizon is setting a higher restriction in data use unlike more generous providers like T-Mobile and Sprint both. The two carriers offer 50 GBs of data before throttling applies. Considering this fact, Verizon can be more generous for data restricting, knowing the company earns about $125 billion according to 2017 revenues.
Recon Analytics analyst, Roger Entner, said an average consumer uses about 7 gigabytes data a month. However, regular users of apps like Netflix and Youtube consume higher data than most customers.
In a survey conducted by Talking Tech on AT&T’s website, a consumer uses about 7.72 GB a month for sending and receiving 1000 emails, 8 hours of daily music streaming, surfing the internet, and posting 335 times on social media. The data use bulges to 35 GB after 40 hours of watching high-definition videos, and 114 GB for HD flicks.
Author and blogger, Josh Bernoff, said he changed the way he used mobile data after getting throttled by AT&T.
Data restrictions or throttling are corporate policy. Verizon preferred to point the issue to customer service, but critics believe it’s time, and it’s better to reconsider and change the company’s corporate policies.
