Verizon Wireless will force unlimited data subscribers who use over 200 gigabytes of bandwidth per month to change their plan to one with a data cap, or face having their wireless service disconnected.
Employees were recently advised of the policy change, which targets customers managing to average more than 200 gigabytes of usage on a single line "over several months." Affected customers are being sent notices of their excessive usage, with a deadline of Feb. 16 to change their plan.
If a line is disconnected under the new policy, customers will have a 50-day window to resubscribe, though only to plans without unlimited data. The highest-capacity plan Verizon lists on its website offers $100 gigabytes of data per month for $450, with line access fees of between $5 and $20 per connected device.
This is not the first time Verizon has performed a purge of its heaviest users. In July of last year, the carrier encouraged high-bandwidth users to make a similar price plan change, at the time targeting customers using "well in excess" of 100 gigabytes on a single device.
Carriers have spent a number of years slowly migrating its customers away from unlimited data plans in favor of capped services, partly due to the high resource consumption affecting other lower-usage customers. Users with grandfathered unlimited data plans sometimes abuse the service by using it as their sole Internet connection, tethering computers and streaming set-top boxes in their home instead of using broadband.