Verizon Wireless to throttle data speeds of heaviest users, optimize content; starts today

 

According to a PDF memo available on Verizon Wireless’ website (for now), the company will begin to throttle the data-throughput speeds of customers that consume an “extraordinary amount of data” and “seamlessly” optimize content for smartphones. Hit the jump to read all the details.In regards to data throttling, the memo reads:

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.

We bring this to your attention as we’re sure more than a few of you fall into that upper 5%. According to VZW, the move will “provide the best experience to our more than 94 million customers.”

The same memo also notes a new data optimization schema the company is putting in place:

We are implementing optimization and transcoding technologies in our network to transmit data files in a more efficient manner to allow available network capacity to benefit the greatest number of users. These techniques include caching less data, using less capacity, and sizing the video more appropriately for the device. The optimization process is agnostic to the content itself and to the website that provides it. While we invest much effort to avoid changing text, image, and video files in the compression process and while any change to the file is likely to be indiscernible, the optimization process may minimally impact the appearance of the file as displayed on your device. For a further, more detailed explanation of these techniques, please visit www.verizonwireless.com/vzwoptimization.

 

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