Mobile service provider Vodacom has announced that it will be throttling the internet speeds of Blackberry users who use up a lot of the bandwidth. Blackberry’s Internet Service (BIS) is very popular with the younger market, as it provides users with unlimited on-device internet browsing.
In a statement, Vodacom said that they had “studied usage patterns to better understand the causes of congestion at peak times and one surprising finding was that more than 95% of BlackBerry data usage was attributable to less than 5% of users”.
Users caught using bandwidth excessively will have their connection speeds reduced from 3G to the more juvenile 2G, while Blackberry Enterprise Users will not be affected.
“When we realised that such a small minority was using the bulk of the capacity, we decided to implement measures that will ensure that BlackBerry users will enjoy a better browsing experience overall. Steps have been taken to ensure that the 95% of the BlackBerry users who are currently using the service fairly are not impacted by those who are abusing the service,” added Vodacom’s Chief technology officer Andries Delport.
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
When you start seeing companies cutting on users’ data consumption that is what marks the beginning of their end. Instead of throttling down innocent users on data usage which they’ve PAID for, why not boost the base stations?? With the arrival of more and more data intensive devices such as the Samsung S II and the soon-to-be launched iPhone 5, really something should be done about the network data speeds. It beats RIM’s logic of creating data intensive Blackberrys only for networks to be incapable to deliver! 🙁