Unlimited always comes with an asterisk. Today Sprint has announced that it will begin deprioritizing customers who use over 23GB a month in a move to maintain a better network for the majority of its users.

The carrier says it will only slow down users who are in congested areas during busy times of day. Affected customers should then have their speeds return to normal once the traffic at a particular cell site goes back down or the user connects in a different location that is less bogged down.

This change will take effect immediately, affecting customers who sign up for a new data plan today and subscribers who choose to upgrade their handset while staying on an existing unlimited data plan.

This type of network management is hardly unique to Sprint. Other carriers have long had similar or more restrictive policies, with AT&T in particular drawing ire for the way it throttled users on its old unlimited data plans.

Source:

Sprint