Following criticism from FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, Verizon has decided to kill its plans to throttle unlimited users.
According to a report from Gigaom, Verizon said in a statement that it “greatly valued the ongoing dialogue over the past several months concerning network optimization” and had subsequently “not to move forward with the planned implementation of network optimization for 4G LTE customers on unlimited plans.”
The moves comes after Wheeler in July sent a letter to Verizon CEO Dan Meade, stating his objections to Verizon’s plans to throttle LTE customers on unlimited plans that use an exorbitant amount of data.
At the time Verizon said the change would only affect about 5 percent of its users and framed the move within the scope of network managment, saying the practice would only be used when the network was seeting heavy traffic.
Wheeler balked at that reasoning, saying that he was disturbed “that Verizon Wireless would base its network management on distinctions among its customers’ data plans, rather than on network architecture or technology.”
Given the competition among carriers to offer more data for less, the distinction between unlimited and a 30 or 60 GB bucket of data may be less of an issue moving forward.
