Verizon Has Begun Throttling Connections of Heaviest Users

Verizon Wireless has begun slowing down the connection speeds of its customers who use much more data than average. This is intended to reduce congestion on heavily used cell towers.

This will affect only a small percentage of this carrier's subscribers -- those who have a 3G connection and an unlimited data plan, and are in the top 5% of data users. The person also has to be connected to a cell tower that is heavily congested. It does not affect anyone on a tiered data plan, or 4G users. 

Back in February, Verizon announced a plan to throttle the connections of its heaviest data users, but this has not gone into effect. Under that plan, once a user reached a certain amount of data transfers during a billing cycle, the carrier would have slowed down their connection speeds for the remainder of the cycle and the following one. Under the plan the carrier just implemented, the connections will be slowed down for the heaviest users only during times the cell towers they are connected to are congested.

More Lenient Than Some
Verizon is not the only U.S. carrier who uses throttling on subscribers who are above average consumers of data. AT&T will slow down the connections of its top 5% who use its unlimited data plan. Those with T-Mobile's unlimited plan have their speed throttled when they pass 5GB of data transfers in a month.

Sprint is the only member of the Big Four U.S. carriers whose unlimited plan is still available to new customers, and is completely unlimited.