Guess what? Tiered cellular data plans don't reduce usage!

The practice of data speed throttling and the reasons behind it look less sanguine now following the results of a study showing that on average there is little difference between the data usage of the top five percent on both tiered and unlimited plans. So now what's the excuse?

I have been beating the drum against throttling for much of this month on the pages of BetaNews. First was my response to AT&T's unfair treatment of long-time customers. Then Cisco came out a week later with a study that shows consumers are using more data than the carriers lead us to believe. AT&T of course responded to this, blaming you for its bandwidth issues.

Validas, a firm that specializes in cell phone usage analysis and plan recommendations for its customers, looked at about 55,000 wireless bills from 2011. What it found goes against yet another carrier reason for throttling you: making you pay for additional data instead of offering an unlimited plan will limit your data use. It doesn't.

"It’s curious that anyone would think the throttling here represents a serious effort at alleviating network bandwidth issues", the company writes in a blog post. "After all, Sprint gets by fine maintaining non-throttled unlimited data to its customers".

Such a shocker. Let's look at Validas' data. For the purposes of brevity, we'll focus on AT&T and Verizon Wireless, two of the more agressive throttlers. On Verizon, average data usage is nearly identical between the two among the top five percent: 3.59GB for those on unlimited plans versus 3.57GB for those on a tiered plan.

There's a bigger difference for AT&T, which very well may have to do with being the most agressive throttler among the big four. But even here the difference isn't substantial: tiered heavy data users were still using 3.19GB, with their unlimited counterparts using 3.97GB.

I could not ask for better data to prove my point that this is all a ruse to get you to fork over more money to the coffers of the carriers. There's just too much data out there now that shows the problem of bandwidth is more one created by the carriers, and us as consumers are bearing the brunt of it.

AT&T is a perfect example of this. With the new tiered plan, the average top five percenter is going to fall outside of the 3GB bandwidth allotment. While the base plan is $30 per month (the same as the old unlimited plans), each additional gigabyte is $10. So under the new structure, the average heavy data user is paying extra.

There's a problem here: all of us are using more data. Eventually it will not just be the top five percenters paying extra, but an ever bigger portion of everyday users. Just wait until videoconferencing becomes popular. With video, 3GB of bandwidth is nothing.

Like I said earlier this month, the carriers pushed smartphones on all of us, including a lot of people who really don't need them. Why was this done? Money. Look at the difference between a wireless bill for a "dumb" phone and that for a smartphone. It's pretty staggering. There's money to be made.

All I am asking here is for the carriers to come clean about the real reasons for the end of unlimited data. But why would you ever admit you're taking advantage of the customer to increase your bottom line?

That will never happen.

Photo Credit:  Leigh Prather/Shutterstock