The United States carrier had a limit of 5GB in place for unlimited data plans, and passing this bar would cause connectivity to the internet to be limited altogether. The company now gives customers 22GB of high speed data before throttling.

“We will notify customers during each billing cycle when their data usage reaches 16.5GB (75% of 22GB) so they can adjust their usage to avoid network management practices that may result in slower data speeds”.

“As you would expect, these network management practices have continued to evolve over time to benefit our customers and take advantage of the billions we have spent to expand and augment our networks”, reads AT&T’s updated policy on legacy unlimited data plans.

To provide the best possible user experience for all of our customers, AT&T has established certain network management practices. “Most major wireless companies manage network resources in a similar fashion”. See the official website for more details. “Congestion can start and stop over a very short time period (often measured in fractions of a second), further minimizing customer impact”. If the congestion ends, or if they move to a different cell site, the throttling will end.

AT&T’s supposed all-you-can-eat buffet used to cut you off – as in throttle your speed – after a 5 GB helps, but now you can pile 22 GB on your plate before your connection slows to a crawl.

AT&T no longer offers unlimited plans, so the change only applies to grandfathered unlimited plans.

AT&T has adjusted its data-throttling policies in an attempt to make heavy data users (a bit) happier.

In June, T-Mobile tweaked its Simple Choice unlimited data plans to only go up to 21GB of data before the company would begin throttling users.

AT&T customers who’ve hung onto their unlimited data plans now have a lot more full-speed data to play with.