Rumors have surfaced that Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) will begin throttling data for smart phone users later in the summer based on a leak from an internal company handbook, however, further investigation has shown that the alleged throttling was incorrect speculation.
Engadget reported that after further investigating Spritnt’s alleged data throttling, they found that, in actuality, the feature being discussed by the leaked document was a specific enterprise setting that is expected to be announced in the future. Instead of slowing down speeds of heavy-bandwidth users in the future, instead Sprint will allow its enterprise customers to limit employee data usage.
Although the rumor has been debunked, based on AT&T’s recent move to end unlimited bandwidth offering for the iPhone, it’s easy to see how users could have assumed the worst. AT&T now offers two packages for iPad and iPhone users, one which offers users 250 MB per $15.00 per month or 2 GB for $25.00 per month.
T-Mobile announced in August that it would also switch to a data throttling system in which users of its 5 GB per-month webConnect data plan would no longer face charges of $0.20 per megabyte of data over the limit. After that limit, T-Mobile slows users connection speeds automatically to an undisclosed amount.
