According to a PDF memo available on Verizon Wireless? website (for now), they will begin to throttle the data-throughput speeds of customers that consume an ?extraordinary amount of data? and ?seamlessly? optimize content for smartphones which is estimated at 5% of customers at the moment and it is suppose to be starting today.
According to VZW, the move will ?provide the best experience to our more than 94 million customers.?
This moves comes very close to the launch of the iPhone. Verizon is obviously getting prepared for the flood of iPhone sales and since they are going to be giving unlimited data plans with this phone we can only imagine that the 5% figure they gave us will go up exponentially once there are more users on Verizon with the iPhone. Below are a few excerpts from the memo on Verizon wirelesses web site:
“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 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.”