FCC Chairman brushes off Verizon’s excuse for throttling unlimited LTE plans

Verizon defends itself saying the practice is necessary to maintain quality of network

Verizon’s recent actions haven’t been too inspiring for FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler who even wrote a straightforward and rather harsh letter to the company regarding its plans to throttle some unlimited LTE subscribers and the response which he got in return wasn’t satisfactory enough to make him content. Verizon was quick to defend themselves stating that other major carriers in the US including AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile have also done this. Moreover, the Big Red had a strong defensive point when they said that this is important for maintaining the quality of the network.

Wheeler wasn’t so convinced and said even his kids couldn’t understand this excuse just given by Verizon. He said “All the kids do it’ is something that never worked with me when I was growing up” and he also cleared that he wasn’t only targeting Verizon but had sent letters of similar nature to other major carriers around the country. These letters were sent after the first one was sent to Verizon and he demanded that all those carriers also explain their reasons for following such practices.

Some might not think of it to be such a big deal considering that this practice being followed by Verizon is going to affect just a handful of people which will include the the top 5 percent users of the carrier’s obsolete unlimited LTE data plan. Wheeler is more concerned about Verizon’s plan of “choosing between different subscribers based on [their] economic relationship with [the company].”

source: wsj