Verizon To Throttle High-Bandwidth Users 305
tekgoblin writes "Verizon has enacted a new policy today that allows them to throttle 'high' bandwidth users on their network. We're not sure exactly what 'high' means but it is probably over 2GB of data per month. This comes as the iPhone launches on Verizon's network. The policy is said to only affect the top 5% of data users on the network. When these 5% of users hit the soft limit they will be throttled during peak times of the day. From the note sent to customers: 'Verizon Wireless strives to provide customers the best experience when using our network, a shared resource among tens of millions of customers. To help achieve this, if you use an extraordinary amount of data and fall within the top 5% of Verizon Wireless data users we may reduce your data throughput speeds periodically for the remainder of your then current and immediately following billing cycle to ensure high quality network performance for other users at locations and times of peak demand. Our proactive management of the Verizon Wireless network is designed to ensure that the remaining 95% of data customers aren't negatively affected by the inordinate data consumption of just a few users.'"
Re:Bandwidth, People (Score:4, Informative)
Net neutrality and monthly data transfer limits are orthogonal.
Net neutrality means that ISPs don't discriminate between packets with different sources or destinations. In other words, they treat packets from Google with the same priority as packets from the search engine that your neighbor just started from his house. However, once you use your monthly allowance, then the ISP shuts you off, or slows down all packets* going to your device.
* When I write "all packets" obviously, there may be reasons to treat media streams differently from emails, but again, according to net neutrality principles it should not matter who is providing the video stream or the emails.